Started in a post by Levi Stahl on Ivebeenreadinglately, the Invisible Library idea is catching on and now has it’s own website.
Earlier this summer, inspired by book-filled novels by Graham Greene and Vladimir Nabokov, I hit upon the idea of using the Internet to start a catalog of books that exist only within other books—a Borgesian invisible library. [. . .]
Come by for a visit: whether you find your fancy piqued by Odo Stevens’s wartime memoir Sad Majors or Fellowes Kraft’s Joseph-Campbellesque mythic exploration Time’s Body or Sebastian Knight’s little-understood first novel, The Prismatic Bezel, we promise you’ll leave empty-handed.
I think this is a really fun idea, and I’m sure there will be a ton of additions from Bolano’s Nazi Literature in the Americas in the near future.
In reading the new translation of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Levi Stahl came across a really interesting translation issue. In “The Prisoner,” when Madame Verdurin suggests inviting Comtesse de Mole to a party, the Baron de Charlus insults her:
“Well, well, there’s no accounting for tastes,” M. de Charlus had replied, and if yours, dear lady, is to spend your time with Mrs Todgers, Sarah Gamp and Mrs Harris I have nothing to say, but please let it be on an evening when I am not here.”
Fans of Dickens will recognize these three women as characters from Martin Chuzzlewit—and their names, you can surely imagine, were quite a surprise coming out of the Baron’s mouth.
A note accompanying the line explains:
M. de Charlus’s reference in the original is to Mme Pipelet, Mme Gibout and Mme Joseph Prudhomme, minor creations of hte nineteenth-century writers Eugene Sue and Henri Monnier. They are chosen as examples of women utterly lacking in social distinction: Mme Pipelet, for example, is a concierge. Three comparable characters from Dickens have been substituted.
As Levi points out, this isn’t a huge issue, but it is sort of weird, since in either case—leaving the names as were, or using ones from Dickens—an explanatory note is necessary . . .
Reviewed by Chad W. Post
One of the most interesting facets of Translation Is a Love Affair is the brief bio on Sheila Fischman:
Sheila Fischman has published more than 125 translations of contemporary French-Canadian novels including works by Jacques Poulin, Francois Gravel, Anne Hebert, Marie-Claire. . .
Reviewed by Rhea Lyons
The innovative works of legends like Borges and Cortázar not only defined a literary movement, they created an exotic and well-known image of Latin America and its people. A key element of works in the tradition of the magical realism. . .
Reviewed by Will Eells
Contemporary Japanese literature is all too easy to stereotype. As far as the American reading public goes, the only books that come out of Japan seem to be under one of three genres. The first is the “bizarre things happening. . .
Reviewed by Jessica LeTourneur
I was born in the final decade of communism’s flailing grasp on the Eastern Bloc, and so what I know of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism has long been relegated to what I learned. . .
Reviewed by Dan Vitale
The short novel is a form in which writers typically exercise great control over their material, accepting the abbreviated length as a kind of challenge, working within that limitation to craft a tight, jewel-like story in which all the elements. . .
Reviewed by Monica Carter
In the most recent translation of Swiss writer Robert Walser’s work, The Tanners, we are reminded once again why Kafka and Musil were fans—his wit. And like everything in Walser’s writing, it is nuanced and subtle. Instead giving us. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
Rosa Chacel (1898-1994) sculptor, novelist, poet, essayist, feminist was born and died in Spain, with Brazil as a second home. She was a contemporary with the Generation of ’27, which included Garcia Lorca and Ramon Jaminez, and she was familiar. . .
