The Bridge Series: David Bellos

Last week we featured David Bellos’s Is That a Fish in Your Ear? on our Read This Next, website and after reading the sample we made available (along with the interview and full review), I’m sure that everyone in the greater NYC area will want to go see Bellos talk about his book as part of The Bridge Series.

To be more specific, David will be talking at McNally Jackson (52 Prince Street, between Lafayette & Mulberry) on Thursday, October 13th at 7pm.

Here’s some info from The Bridge website:

“Forget the fish—it’s David Bellos you want in your ear when the talk is about translation. Bellos dispels many of the gloomy truisms of the trade and reminds us what an infinitely flexible instrument the English language (or any language) is. Sparkling, independent-minded analysis of everything from Nabokov’s insecurities to Google Translate’s felicities fuels a tender—even romantic—account of our relationship with words.”
—Natasha Wimmer, translator of Roberto Bolaño’s Savage Detectives and 2666

“In the guise of a book about translation this is a richly original cultural history . . . A book for anyone interested in words, language and cultural anthropology. Mr Bellos’s fascination with his subject is itself endlessly fascinating.”
—The Economist

Funny and surprising on every page, Is That a Fish in Your Ear? offers readers new insight into the mystery of how we come to know what someone else means—whether we wish to understand Astérix cartoons or a foreign head of state. Using translation as his lens, David Bellos shows how much we can learn about ourselves by exploring the ways we use translation, from the historical roots of written language to the stylistic choices of Ingmar Bergman, from the United Nations General Assembly to the significance of James Cameron’s Avatar. Is That a Fish in Your Ear? ranges across human experience to describe why translation sits deep within us all, and why we need it in so many situations, from the spread of religion to our appreciation of literature; indeed, Bellos claims that all writers are by definition translators. Written with joie de vivre, reveling both in misunderstanding and communication, littered with wonderful asides, it promises any reader new eyes through which to understand the world.

Definitely go check this out—I can guarantee that it will be fascinating, fun, and interesting.