Light reading catch-up

I missed my chance to write a review of Sarah Manguso's riveting new book, Ongoingness: The End of a Diary, but I highly recommend it (and have been keeping a few links open to post, namely a Rumpus interview and good account by Michelle Dean at the Guardian).

I obsessively devoured Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, which gets my vote for book of the year (only it will make you cry): won't say more now, as I am indeed reviewing this one, but it's really something remarkable.

Seanan McGuire's Pocket Apocalypse was delightful (I liked it even more than the earlier installments in this series, as it switches characters and modes to something more like the Mira Grant books - good additional use of Australia research done for How Green This Land).

A rather good pair of urban fantasy novels, Michelle Sagara's first two Queen of the Dead Installments (link here), and then, addictively, the first six in Diana Rowland's Kara Gillian series (demon summoning, serial killers, slightly too much demon sex for my taste and also less good when it moves to the demon world as opposed to the very fully rendered Louisiana life - reminiscent of Charlaine Harris, very well-written). Fortunately for me the next installment is due to drop in a few more days....

Basically I'm just about keeping my head above water; this week, that's been managed by doing the bare minimum required for work and life, but I am coming up on a very busy couple weeks that are going to require me to keep my wits about me. Going to Philadelphia this evening to hear what promises to be a glorious performance of one of my favorite pieces of music EVER. Trying not to think about the long list of tasks that I am neglecting but that will no doubt get done in the end. School is "over" in four more weeks (plus about three additional weeks of still fairly demanding obligations): after that I am going to go into an orgy of exercise and writing.

Akathisia

Not online (I will link to it directly if it goes up later on), but my review of Sarah Manguso's The Guardians can be found in the current issue of Bookforum.

"Why Stop With a Barnacle?"

At the Believer, Sarah Manguso interviews Lydia Davis (link courtesy of Maud):

BLVR: Is it better to use the word prosaic because it’s the literal translation of prosaique, or to use the word dull because it occupies the same context in contemporary English as prosaique did in Proust’s French? You chose the former, [C. K.] Scott-Moncrieff chose the latter.

LD: I can’t re-create now what led to my choice of prosaic—but as I was translating Swann’s Way I did of course check and double-check every tricky choice to make sure the translation came as close as I could make it to conveying in English in these times what Proust conveyed in French in those times. In your example, I think I liked the closeness in sound of prosaic to the French: it has the same three syllables and the pr opening. It is historically, and rhythmically, entirely different from dull—which is a wonderful word in itself, of course, and one I would be much more likely to use in my own writing than prosaic.

BLVR: In similar situations, would you always choose the cognate?

LD: Whenever I could, I would use the cognate, but often enough that was for reasons of sound, rhythm.

BLVR: In his biography of Beckett, James Knowlson says that Beckett chose to write in French because in French it was easier for him to write “without style.” You’ve said similar things about translating—that it’s an exercise in not imposing one’s own style on the writing. It sounds like the least postmodern position one can possibly take—that there’s some essential truth that style only cloaks.

LD: No, I wouldn’t say there’s some essential truth that is cloaked by style—if I’ve understood your question. I’d say that if I were to translate into my own style rather than preserving, insofar as I could, the style of the original, I would change the nature of the work in an essential way.

I tried, once, for fun, translating Laurence Sterne into more contemporary English. It worked to some extent—some of the narrative content was preserved, some of the humor, quirkiness, etc.—but it was painful. Each time I abandoned some phrasing of his in favor of an “updated” version, an essential, delightful peculiarity of the work was lost.