Hand-wringing about AI, Part III: “We’re Stuck in the Middle”
Back for Part III? Curious if I can land this plane? (ME TOO.) If you missed the earlier pieces, here's Part I, and here's Part II. To recap: we've seen how AI can thrust us into a world of infinite choice by theoretically translating (or eventually writing) any book out there, which is interesting from the point of view ...
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Hand-wringing about AI, Part II: “Write Me an Ad Campaign”
You might want to read "Part I" before going any further, but if you just want a recap, that post is essentially about how AI could translate the world (and/or create millions of new novels), which, on one hand, could be useful in bringing unique, diverse voices to an English audience, but, on one of the many other hands, ...
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Hand-wringing about AI, Part I: “I Want to Read it All”
Many many moons ago, in a dark bar on a wintry Rochester night, I sketched out a series of eight posts/topics that would roughly correspond with my plan of reading all of In Search of Lost Time (in the semi-recent Penguin set with each of the seven volumes translated by a different translator), and would investigate ...
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Zoo, or Letters Not about Love [Excerpt]
Forthcoming in a new "Dalkey Archive Essentials" version (with a different cover than the one depicted to the right), Zoo, or Letters Not about Love, translated from the Russian by Richard Sheldon, is one of Viktor Shklovsky's most beloved works. An epistolary novel written while Shklovsky was in exile in Berlin—and in ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 14: “What We Talk About When We Talk About Dreaming” [THE DREAMED PART]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR 15.11: “Everyone’s Been Talking to Me About You” [Vernon Subutex]
Following up on last week's catastrophic technical difficulties, Brian recaps some of his conversation with Frank Wynne before he and Chad dive into volume three of Despentes's Vernon Subutex. They talk about hippies, Dan Deacon, cults, Cultish, Vernon's purity, and much more. This week's music is "The Crystal Cat" by ...
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Writing about Granta’s “Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists 2”
Just about a decade ago, Granta released their first ever list of "young Spanish-language novelists." This was a momentous occasion for a number of reasons, starting with the point that, until then, only young British and American writers had been featured by the magazine. (There had been three lists of best British ...
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Five Questions with Michael Holtmann about HOME
As part of our ongoing series of short interviews featuring the people who helped bring great new translations to the reading public, we talked to Michael Holtmann, the executive director and publisher of the Center for the Art of Translation and Two Lines. Before getting into the interview, I wanted to point out ...
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Five Questions with Annie McDermott about “Dead Girls”
To mark the release of Dead Girls by Selva Almada (Charco Press), we asked translator Annie McDermott a few questions. Enjoy! How did you come to Dead Girls? Annie McDermott: In fact, Dead Girls came to me. Chris Andrews, who translated—brilliantly—Selva’s first novel, The Wind that Lays Waste, was too busy ...
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TMR 11.3: “”What We Talk About When We Talk About Dreaming” [THE DREAMED PART]
Aside from talking about how we're all about five days away from becoming Howard Hughes, Chad, Brian, and special guest Derek Maine talk about dreams vs. rationality, Nabokov and Bob Dylan, dream lovers and MTV videos, Twin Peaks and fantasy baseball. (OK, not the last one.) It's a fun podcast, a minor distraction that ...
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10 Anecdotes About the 2019 National Book Award Translated Literature Longlist
As you likely know already, the National Book Foundation announced the longlist for the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature yesterday. It's always hard for me to figure out what to say about something like this—it's exactly the sort of thing we should be presenting here on Three Percent, as part of our ...
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Interview with Damion Searls about Anniversaries [Part II]
I'm on a self-imposed hiatus from writing posts for this site until I finish two other articles for other publications (almost done!), but I am lifting this restriction for one post to share the next set of answers from Damion Searls in my (probably never-ending) interview with him about Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries. To ...
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Interview with Michael Reynolds about Europa’s Nonfiction Line
Thanks to AWP I'm a few days behind in my April posts, but as will be explained in full tomorrow, this month's main focus is going to be on nonfiction in translation. Our nonfiction titles are 30% off all month (use NONFICTION at checkout), and I'll be writing a lot about recent nonfiction titles, ...
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Interview with Damion Searls about Anniversaries [Part I]
Assuming that I'll be reading Anniversaries slowly but surely over the next four months, I thought it would be fun to talk to translator Damion Searls about the book along the way. If all goes according to plan, these monthly installments will develop into a rich conversation about the book, translation issues, and much ...
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Why Are Ebooks [Let’s Talk about Catalonia]
Just like with last week's post, I want to kick off this mini-survey of a couple Catalan titles with a chart of the presses who have brought out the most Catalan translations (according to the Translation Database): My first response is: Thank god I finally realized how easy it is to change the color on these charts! I ...
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Books about Death [BTBA 2019]
Today's Best Translated Book Award post is from George Carroll, retired publisher rep living in Seattle, rooting for the Sounders, and kicking ass in our Fantasy Premier League league. In his preface to Best European Fiction 2016, Jon Fosse wrote “But crime fiction is not literature; it is the opposite of it . . . for ...
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Two Month Review: #5.02: FOX by Ugresic (“A Story about How Stories Come to Be Written”)
This week's podcast is pretty fast and loose, with Fortnite disruptions, embarrassing pronunciations, lots of ribbing, and a deep dive into the various games going on in Part I of Dubravka Ugresic's Fox, "A Story about How Stories Come to Be Written." Starting from Pilnyak's story of the same name, this section revolves ...
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Some Clues About the BTBA Fiction Finalists
Patrick Smith deserves all the credit for coming up with these clues about which books made the shortlist for fiction for this year's Best Translated Book Awards. As you may already know, the BTBA finalists will be officially unveiled tomorrow, Tuesday, May 15th at 10am Eastern over at The Millions. (And the winners will ...
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Death by Poetry and The Lies about Me
I have a litany of reasons for why I’m combining a few posts here and writing a shorter, more condensed, straightforward post than most of the others. Baby (always an excuse), other obligations—such as the Best Translated Book Award longlists announcement and a bachelor party in which “what happens in Boiceville, stays ...
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Thinking About Book Reviews
Clarice Lispector is undoubtedly one of the great writers of the past century. Her recent rediscovery—sparked off by the reissuing of The Hour of the Star in Ben Moser’s new translation—is definitely merited, and will hopefully usher in a time in which any number of very deserving female authors from the ...
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Interview with Allison M. Charette about "Beyond the Rice Fields" by Naivo
This semester, in my World Literature & Translation class, we’re reading twelve translations from 2017-18 and talking with almost all the translators, including Allison M. Charette, who is responsible for the publication in English of Naivo’s Beyond the Rice Fields. Over the past few weeks, we conducted this ...
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Third Season of the "Two Month Review" is All About Mercè Rodoreda
The voting is in and . . . Well, The Physics of Sorrow and Maidenhair ended up with the most votes. That said, we’re not going to do those books next. Instead, since we haven’t featured any books by women yet—and since Catalan is undergoing some serious shit right now—we’re going to start by ...
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Two Month Review #7: "A Few Things You Happen to Think About When All You Want Is to Think About Nothing" (The Invented Part, Pages 231-300)
This week, Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn, Chronic City) joins Chad and Brian to talk about The Writer’s trip to a hospital, where he assumes something horrible is happening, which is countered by a gushing forth of new story ideas. Jonathan tells of his own experience coming up with one of his most famous books ...
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Five New Clues about the 2017 BTBA Fiction Longlist [Day Two]
Following on yesterday’s post about the upcoming Best Transated Book Award longlist announcement, I thought I’d give you some more clues, all centering around “new” additions to the “BTBA family.” 1) There are five presses with a book on the BTBA longlist for the first time ever; 2) ...
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Quick Clues about the BTBA Finalists
I wanted to write a lot more about this, but I’m running out of time . . . Here are a few clues about the fiction and poetry finalists for the 2016 Best Translated Book Awards. The shortlists will be officially unveiled tomorrow morning (Tuesday, April 19th) at 10am over at The Millions. Fiction ...
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Let's Talk about Lists
If you’ve been reading this blog for more than a few months, you’ve probably come across one rant or another about listicles and lists in general. Aside from the ones on the ROC in Your Mouth blog I think most of these things are pretty stupid. Actually, let me refine that a bit: “Best of” lists can ...
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An Article about a Book I'm Working On [100 Best Translations of the Century]
I’ve made reference to this a few different times—in a couple posts, on the podcast—but this article in today’s Frankfurt Show Daily (also available as a PDF) is the first official mention of the book that I’m writing with Stephen Sparks of Green Apple Books. (Granted, we don’t have a ...
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Books (In Translation) About Books [BTBA 2016]
This week’s Best Translated Book Award post is from Amanda Nelson, managing editor of Book Riot. For more information on the BTBA, “like” our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter. And check back here each week for a new post by one of the judges. Jose Alberto Gutierrez is a garbage truck driver in ...
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Who We Talk About When We Talk About Translation: The Bloggers
Who We Talk About When We Talk About Translation: The Bloggers* Bloggers increasingly lead in reviewing international literature, as column inches for book reviews in traditional outlets have shrunk. Prominent bloggers discuss their role and how it’s evolving. Where: Albertine Books, 972 Fifth Avenue (at 79th ...
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Who We Talk About When We Talk About Translation: Women's Voices
Who We Talk About When We Talk About Translation: Women’s Voices Where are the women authors in translation? A panel of experts—writers, translators, editors—will consider the gender bias in literary translations published in the United States. Where: Albertine Books, 972 Fifth Avenue (at 79th Street), New ...
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Why This Book Should Win: Q&A with Annelise Finegan Wasmoen about The Last Lover
Annelise Finegan Wasmoen is an editor and a literary translator. She is pursuing a PhD in Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. Daniel Medin teaches at the American University of Paris, where he helps direct the Center for Writers and Translators and is Associate Series Editor of The Cahiers ...
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Why This Book Should Win: BTBA Judge Daniel Medin Q&A with John Keene about Letters from a Seducer
John Keene is the author of Annotations, and Counternarratives, both published by New Directions, as well as several other works, including the poetry collection Seismosis, with artist Christopher Stackhouse, and a translation of Brazilian author Hilda Hilst’s novel Letters from a Seducer. Daniel Medin teaches at the ...
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Three Percent #76: All about László
Inspired by Bromance Will’s blog, this podcast is all about how New Directions came to publish László Krasznahorkai and how they stuck with him—a situation that resulted in back-to-back Best Translated Book Award victories. Speaking of, here’s a picture of all three of us from the BTBA party on May ...
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Interview with Kazim Ali and Libby Murphy about Duras's "L'Amour"
Over at the Fiction Writers Review, Jennifer Solheim has posted a great interview with the two translators of Duras’s L’Amour, which just pubbed this past Tuesday. You can read the whole thing here, but here are a few highlights. Jennifer Solheim: In your beautiful introduction, Kazim, you write, ...
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Last Minute Reminder about PEN Literary Awards
Just a reminder for everyone out there that you have a few more days to submit to the 2013 PEN Literary Awards. From the email I just received: Good news: there’s still time to submit to 2013 PEN awards before the deadline this Friday, February 1, 2013. If you haven’t already, submit today! Our awards ...
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In Conversation about Queneau's "Exercises in Style"
One of the coolest releases of the winter has to be the new version of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style—the classic Oulipian text in which Queneau tells and retells the same story of two men who get on a bus and have a minor row, ending with one telling the other to replace a button on his overcoat. The ...
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Intriguing Questions about Translation and Culture
Over at today’s Publishing Perspectives, there’s an interesting piece by translator Burton Pike about “Cultural Homogeneity and the Future of Literary Translation.” This essay was written in preparation for a German Book Office panel discussion, and as such, it focuses more on bringing up issues and ...
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Quick Note about BTBA Poetry
Just a FYI for all poets, poetry publishers, and translators: We’re in the process of nailing down the last judge for this year’s BTBA Poetry committee, after which time (probably early next week), I’ll post an announcement with everyone’s mailing address, etc. Just so you know, the deadline for ...
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More about Mo Yan's "POW!"
One of the things that may have gotten buried in all the articles about Mo Yan receiving this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature is the fact that Seagull Books is bringing out his next work in English translation—POW!, which sounds pretty wild, and has been compared to the works of Witold Gombrowicz and Javok ...
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Latest Review: "The Truth about Marie" by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by Katie Assef on Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s The Truth about Marie, translated from the French by Matthew B. Smith and available from Dalkey Archive Press. Katie Assef is another of Susan Bernofsky’s students who very kindly offered to write reviews for Three ...
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The Truth about Marie
In The Truth about Marie, Belgian writer Jean-Philippe Toussaint takes us on a journey from Paris to Tokyo, with a sensuous detour to the island of Elba. It’s a book that begins with a thunderstorm and ends in massive forest fires, a love story examined through the lens of a tumultuous breakup. When the novel opens, Marie ...
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"The Truth about Marie" by Jean-Philippe Toussaint [25 Days of the BTBA]
As with years past, we’re going to spend the next four weeks highlighting the rest of the 25 titles on the BTBA fiction longlist. We’ll have a variety of guests writing these posts, all of which are centered around the question of “Why This Book Should Win.” Hopefully these are funny, accidental, ...
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About Time
From this PW piece on BookExpo America and changes to the show: Reed is already looking to bigger changes in 2013. In a blog post yesterday Rosato discussed a move to B2C, enabling publishers to connect directly with consumers. The show would move to Thursday to Saturday with the general public invited to attend author ...
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One Interesting Translation Person Talking About Another
Last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review had a few interesting pieces, including Adam Thirlwell’s review of David Bellos’s new book Is That a Fish in Your Ear?, which is, by far, one of the best reviews I’ve read about this title. That’s not all that surprising, since Thirlwell is such an ...
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"There Are Things I Want You to Know" About Stieg Larsson and Me
I will admit, right off the bat, that I have never read anything by Stieg Larsson. Not a word, not a page, not even the back of a book cover. Yes, I am aware of the existence of the Millennium Trilogy, with the movies and the books and the commercials and whatnot, and I have perhaps eavesdropped on a few hushed, excited ...
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Latest Review: "'There Are Things I Want You to Know' About Stieg and Me" by Eva Gabrielsson
The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by Julianna Romanazzi on the punctuation-confused “There Are Things I Want You to Know” About Stieg and Me by Eva Gabrielsson, translated by Linda Coverdale and published by Seven Stories. Julianna’s been posting here for the past few months during her ...
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Nabokov and Books about Nabokov
Although I haven’t read all of his works, Vladimir Nabokov is one of my personal favorite writers. I love Pale Fire and Lolita, but also like the less tricksy novels, like Laughter in the Dark. (Which was on Lost!) And for the past year(s) I’ve been planning on reading The Gift and Ada, or Ardor, both of which ...
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I Can't Keep Writing Posts about Cutting You Up
So the last time I went to BookExpo America, I ended up writing a five-part series that was basically about how everything sucked, the publishing industry was imploding, BEA’s focus was fuzzy at best, etc., etc. Well, last week BEA took place in the fairly dysfunctional Jacob Javits Center in NY and the mood was . . ...
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Three Percent #2: So, about that revolution . . .
As you may have noticed, last week, we launched a new Three Percent podcast featuring myself and Tom Roberge of New Directions. Our goal with this is to talk every week about books, events, some industry stuff, and so on. Hopefully these will be around 20 minutes long (we both talk a lot) and will provide a nice preview of ...
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PEN: Who Tells the Story? Children’s Book Writers Talk About Voice
Where: Greenwich House Music School, Renee Weiler Concert Hall, 46 Barrow St., New York City Must the writer get inside the head of the child in order to find an authentic voice for a young character? Or does the authentic voice come from someplace else? Three distinguished writers share ideas about how their lives shape ...
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Don't Forget to Tweet about Granta
As mentioned yesterday, this morning we’re having a special “Twitter Party” regarding Granta‘s special issue featuring the “Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists.” So fire up your TweetDeck and join us . . . At this moment, I’m probably trying to cram a dozen hyperbolic statements ...
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And a Reminder about Submitting Books for the BTBA
Following up on the earlier post about the updated Translation Databases, I just wanted to encourage all translators, authors, and publishers to send copies of your eligible translations to all the Best Translated Book Award judges to ensure that all these titles are considered for this year’s awards. All original ...
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And While We're Talking about England . . . [New Translation Prize]
As seems to be the case always and everywhere these days, I’m way behind with e-mails, announcements, blog posts, etc. So you may already have heard about this, but a couple Fridays ago English PEN announced that Putin’s Russia by Anna Politkovskaya, translated from the Russian by Arch Tait, is the winning title ...
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OR Books & A Bit about TOC
OK, I’m bloody exhausted. There’s only so many meetings, parties, dinners, jokes, and seven-hour plane rides one can take before totally crashing. I’ve been traveling since October 1st—after spending a late night out with Paul Auster on the 30th, which seems like maybe two months ago—so forgive ...
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And While We're Talking about PEN . . .
As if my inbox wasn’t jacked enough—trips to NY, Frankfurt prep, etc., and etc.—PEN is pouring on the press releases . . . Last night they announced the winners of this year’s Literary Awards. You can find them all here, but below are a few notable ones: PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in ...
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A Rational Discussion about Amazon
Over at The New Republic, Ruth Franklin has one of the most rational pieces on Amazon.com that I’ve seen in a long while. She wrote this in response to Colin Robinson’s The Trouble with Amazon article that appeared in a recent issue of The Nation. (And which I haven’t read, because after subscribing to The ...
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Where People Talk about Books
The other week, the first Future of Reading conference took place at the Rochester Institute of Technology. It was a fantastic few days, very interesting, with a range of great speakers. Rather than summarize each panel or person, I want to try and explore a few of the topics that came up. A lot of these posts will be simply ...
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What We Talk about When We Talk about the Future of Reading
The other week, the first Future of Reading conference took place at the Rochester Institute of Technology. It was a fantastic few days, very interesting, with a range of great speakers. Rather than summarize each panel or person, I want to try and explore a few of the topics that came up. A lot of these posts will be simply ...
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A Final Post about Lost
So the other week when I joked about how Lexiophiles referred to Three Percent as containing “random, unrelated informational debris”? Well, this post sort of proves their point . . . At 2:30am this morning, I finished what I think will be the last real piece that I’ll ever write about Lost. (Not counting ...
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Let's Talk about Amazon for a Minute
I’ve been meaning to write about The AmazonCrossing announcement all week, but it’s taken a few days of Torino detox to partially regain my ability to put words into some sort of meaningful order. (Emphasis on “partially” . . . my mind is still unfurling, but hopefully by the time I’m drowning in ...
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A Tipsy Post about Drunken Literature [Pilch's "A Thousand Peaceful Cities"]
This was written late last night and set aside for, um, proofing. For the sake of accuracy, one should never drink while proofreading. But in the case of Jerzy Pilch, it just feels right . . . After all, The Mighty Angel is—despite all of the narrator’s attempts to artfully beautify this away with words and ...
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Little Video about Open Letter
The other week, media strategist David Henderson came to the University of Rochester to give us some media training on how best to present yourself on TV, how to buy a second to think of a good answer to a tricky question, how to speak slowly, etc., etc. (And no, that last one didn’t stick. At least not for ...
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Douglas Rushkoff's Optimism about the Book Industry
PW‘s Soapbox pieces can be a bit hit-or-miss, but the one this week from Douglas Rushkoff (author of several books, including Life, Inc., which, along with Gaddis’s JR, should be mandatory reading for all business school students) is pretty fantastic. There’s nothing particularly new in Rushkoff’s ...
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One More Thing about V-Books . . .
Following up on yesterday’s rant about v-books, from what we can find, Amazon is the exclusive retailer for these videos. I’ll bet that’ll go over well. ...
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Some Good News about Reading from the NEA
This past Monday, the National Endowment for the Arts released some promising findings about the reading habits of Americans, showing that for the first time in 25 years, the percentage of adults reading literature increased over the previous study. (Studies have been done five times since 1982, which is why this phrasing is ...
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An Echo of My Post about Schuler
From Charlotte Higgins’s piece in The Guardian about shopping in her local Borders: Walk in and you are bombarded with the visual cacophony of three-for-two offers, TV chefs and Parky’s biography. Of course they have a wide selection of books, but the place is such a jungle – Aldi is surely more of a ...
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More about the End of Book Culture as We Know It
I realize this is an old article (I think I’ll be catching up for days . . .), but this piece in the Independent is strange, conventional, and interesting all at once. Can intelligent literature survive in the digital age? starts with the question of how the internet age is changing the way we read, with Nicholas ...
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Kharms short stories about Pushkin
Someone has collected some short (very short) stories that Daniil Kharms wrote and put them online, including some about Pushkin: 1. Pushkin was a poet and was always writing something. Once Zhukovsky caught him at his writing and exclaimed loudly: – You’re not half a scribbler! From then on Pushkin ...
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Latest Review: Night Wraps the Sky: Writings By and About Mayakovsky
Our latest review is by Margarita Shalina, who reviews a collection of writings by and about Vladimir Mayakovsky, Night Wraps the Sky, which was edited by Michael Almereyda. ...
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Night Wraps the Sky: Writings By and About Mayakovsky
“A Mayakovsky Bestiary” Maria – Don’t you want me? You don’t want me! “A Cloud in Pants” (p. 103), Vladimir Mayakovsky Big man with a big voice, Futurist, prisoner in solitary confinement, graphic designer, propagandist, early Soviet film star, Poet, suicide. There is no ...
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Insert Your Own Joke/Complaint About Government Spending Here
According to PW: President Bush’s proposed 2009 budget eliminates all the funding for Reading Is Fundamental’s book distribution program that has, since 1966, provided more than 325 million books to more than 30 million underprivileged children. “With 13 million children living in poverty in this country, ...
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More from Lawrence Venuti about Literature in Translation
A couple weeks ago we linked to Lawrence Venuti’s article on Words Without Borders about the business of publishing translations. It’s a very interesting piece that was written for a panel on the To Be Translated or Not To Be report and puts forth a somewhat provocative stance on what should be published in ...
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Lots of Love for Lost and a Little Secret about Episode 4
So, the highly-anticipated fourth season of Lost premieres tomorrow night, picking up where last season and its mind-blowing flash forward left off. And I for one can’t wait. (Especially for episode 4 . . . feel free to scroll to the bottom if you want to know why.) I unabashedly love Lost, and over the past few years ...
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I Think Today Is All About Esposito and Barcelona
Following on the Monzo review, Conversational Reading has an interesting Friday Column by Barcelona author Neus Arques called “On Translations or the Pursuit of the Domino Effect.” Arques recently published her first novel, and discussing the long, winding road to trying to get her book published in ...
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One Last Post about Karl Pohrt in China
In reference to Karl’s earlier posts re: the Beijing Book Fair, here’s a picture of him with Allison Hill in front of the entrance to the Forbidden ...
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And While We're Talking about Scott Esposito
Here’s a link to his recommendation of Enrique Vila-Matas’s Moreno’s Malady. In these seemingly anti-literary times, authors tend to do all they can to support literature; Spanish novelist Enrique Vila-Matas (pictured above) is the first I’ve seen to treat it like a disease. That’s not to ...
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On the Media's Episode about Books
I made a snarky mention of this yesterday, but now that I’ve listened to the entire program, I have to say, the recent episode of On the Media is actually a really solid overview of publishing issues. The program primarily focuses on business issues as they relate to the emergence of new media, so there’s a bit ...
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Arguments about the Translation Quality of War and Peace
This post on Languagehat.com is fascinating, especially in the context of yesterday’s post on the way reviewers review translations. Over the past few weeks, there’s been an ongoing discussion of the new Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace in the i>NY Times Reading Room. According to ...
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Translation Buzz — Finally, a Panel about Books
When I was out in Iowa with Dedi Felman from Words Without Borders, we talked about how rare it was to have a panel about translations in which people actually talked about the books they’re reading. Usually panelists wax on and on about “obstacles” and “problems” and about “losing ...
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PW Reviews — More about Priorities
Publishers Weekly is one of my favorite review sources, providing a slew of brief, intelligent reviews every week. I especially like the fact that they cover a higher percentage of independent, small press, and university presses than most newspapers or magazines. In this week’s reviews there’s a nice write-up ...
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Vs. When a Publisher Talks about Books
It’s only available online in German at a cost of .50 Euro, but Der Spiegel recently interviewed Diogenes publisher Daniel Keel about his life’s work, the state of literary publishing, etc. Diogenes just sent me a fully-translated version, which is absolutely fascinating. I can’t find a copy of this ...
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When a Publisher Talks about Sales . . .
Related to my comment yesterday that publishers love to exaggerate sales figures, comes this little nugget about Booker Prize winner Anne Enright: The latest British figures from Nielsen BookScan show that, since it was published in May, only 3,306 copies have been sold in hardback, with a further 381 in paperback. ...
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The Neverending Debate about the E-Book
Joe Wikert has an interesting post today about the iPhone, its price drop, and the way in which people get jacked about Apple’s “revolutions” in ways that they never do about eReaders. Even those of us who aren’t Apple fans marvel when Steve Jobs announces the next big thing; it’s guaranteed ...
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Another Damn Novel about the Spanish Civil War!
Another Damn Novel about the Spanish Civil War! provides an interesting take on the nature of writing and revision. On its most immediate level, Another Damn Novel is simply a re-release of Isaac Rosa’s first novel The Bad Memory, which was published when the author was just twenty-five. Flawed, yet engaging—at least ...
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What do you say about something like this?
The poet and novelist Taslima Nasrin has been attacked at the launch of her book Shodh (Getting Even) in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Reports suggest that a crowd of between 20 and 100 protesters, led by three local politicians (MLAs) belonging to the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) party, burst into the ...
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Little Bit of Breaking News about Lost
Since almost every brilliant book person I know is a huge fan of Lost, and since there isn’t a more literary show out there, I figure I’m justifying in spreading the news that Michael (Walt’s father, the one who left the island) will be back in Season 4. (Via Entertainment Weekly) And before we all get too ...
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TMR Supplement #2: “Joytime Killbox” by Brian Wood
After referencing Joytime Killbox on hundreds of TMR episodes, we finally break it down with the author himself! Conversation includes ideas about short stories and how they function, the nature of endings, and how Brian has grown as a writer since this collection first came out, while also examining the intent behind a ...
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TMR Season 24: “The Confidence-Man” by Melville & “Mevill” by Rodrigo Fresán
First off, if you're reading this post, I highly recommend you go sign up for the Three Percent Substack. In order to increase engagement and better share all the goings on here at Open Letter—podcasts, reviews, stats from the Translation Database, pieces on publishing, excerpts—in a fashion more in keeping with 2024 than ...
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Three Percent #195: Lori Feathers on Marguerite Young
This week, Lori Feathers joins Chad to talk about "Involutions of the Seashell," a Substack project dedicated to reading and talking about Marguerite Young's Miss MacIntosh, My Darling. They discuss the nature of the Substack, anecdotes about Young, how to get people engaged with such an intimidating work, reading fast and ...
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TMR Supplement #1: “Dear Dickhead” by Virginie Despentes & Frank Wynne
On the first ever one-off episode of the Two Month Review, Chad breaks down Virginie Despentes's Dear Dickhead for Kaija and Brian, a novel about . . . well, just listen. (It'll be more fun if you don't know what's coming.) This new format really digs into the book in a way that you can't in (to quote Zoé Katana) "lamestream ...
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Three Percent #194: Mark Haber, “Lesser Ruins”
Today's episode features Mark Haber talking about his brand new novel, Lesser Ruins, his influence, the Bernhard thing, going from bookselling to publishing, and much more. It's a fun conversation that goes deep into the book, but also explains the publishing landscape to some degree—in part because this conversation was ...
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Rose Horowitch and the Obsession with Belief over Empiricism
The Atlantic has been referred to as "the worst magazine in America," and after reading Rose Horwitch's dishonest—and dangerous—piece, "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books," I have to say that Current Affairs went easy on them. It's been a while since there's been a full-on screed here at Three Percent, ...
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“Melvill” by Rodrigo Fresán & Will Vanderhyden [Excerpt]
From Rodrigo Fresán & Will Vanderhyden's Melvill, which releases on Tuesday, October 8th, and which Publishers Weekly—in a Starred Review, no less—referred to as a "masterpiece." And yes, it is about that Melville: A dying father in the grip of fever and delirium recounts his youth, his Grand Tour, the ...
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“Pink Slime” by Fernanda Trías & Heather Cleary [NBA 2024]
When the National Book Award for Translated Literature longlist was announced the other week, I realized that I hadn't read any of the books on the list for the first time in . . . ages. So I started this series to educate myself before the winner is announced. You can find all the posts in this series ...
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“Woodworm” by Layla Martínez, Sophie Hughes & Annie McDermott [NBA 2024]
When the National Book Award for Translated Literature longlist was announced the other week, I realized that I hadn't read any of the books on the list for the first time in . . . ages. Usually it's a mix of books I've loved, some I think are overrated, and a few I've never heard of, or at least didn't stick in my brain. ...
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Three Percent #193: K.E. Semmel, “Book of Losman”
On this week's podcast, K.E. Semmel—translator from the Danish and author of Book of Losman—discusses his debut novel, life as a translator, articles he wrote on Tourette's Syndrome and Author-Transaltors, how he tried to promote his book with Justin Murphy (Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger) and Chad W. ...
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Dubravka Ugresic’s “A Muzzle for Witches”
To mark the release of Dubravka Ugresic's final book, A Muzzle for Witches (translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać)—order it now from our website, or your local indie bookstore!—we thought we'd share an excerpt, which you'll find below. As a bit of context, this book is a conversation between ...
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Three Percent #192: Pilar Adón, “Of Beasts and Fowls”
In this special edition of the podcast, Chad talks with Pilar Adón about the forthcoming Of Beasts and Fowls (translated by Katie Whittemore), her general writing life, two movies he thought she might have seen that resonate with the book (spoiler: she's never heard of either), her publishing company Editorial ...
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Pilar Adón Reading Tour!!
This September, Pilar Adón—author of Of Beasts and Fowls (translated by Katie Whittemore), winner of Spain's Premio Nacional de Narrativa last year—will embark on a five-city, six-stop tour hitting several of the best indie bookshops in America, and sharing this incredibly beautiful, compelling novel of a woman who, ...
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TMR 23.9: “My Maps Are Out of Date” [Lanark]
It all gets wrapped up with a "Catastrophe,." "Explanation," an "End," and a "Tailpiece." Chad, Brian, and Kaija discuss global capitalism, the fight for love and the be human, AI, the Bardo, and much more on this final episode of Season 23. Listen to the end for an announcement about changes to the podcast and what to look ...
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TMR 23.8: “The Critic Fights Back” [Lanark]
From the Olympics to the most meta moment of the whole of Lanark, this week's podcast has you covered! Brian, Chad, and Kaija banter about divorce, plagiarisms versus influences, and how to read this book as a whole. There are a ton of amazing lines throughout this section of the novel, making this one of the most fun ...
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TMR 23.7: “Not a Domestic Man” [Lanark]
The reviews were right: Once you hit page 410, the Unthank sections of Lanark snap into place. Chad, Brian, and Kaija discuss that, capitalism, how terrible advertisements are, jobs, J.D. Vance and his proclivities, politics, unintended consequences, and how Deadpool & Wolverine is the Kamala Harris of film. This ...
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TMR 23.6: “Upon This Spot King Edward Had Lunch After Stalking” [Lanark]
If you want to send Chad through the roof, simple crap on his conceptual publishing project five years in the making . . . To that end, everyone reading this should preorder Attila by Javier Serena and Attila by Aliocha Coll and prove our distributor wrong. And then, after you do that, listen to this discussion about art ...
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TMR 23.5: “His Brain Rotten with Resentful Dreams” [Lanark]
Duncan Thaw feels like he's on the brink in this week's episode which includes conversations about incels, kind fathers, painting and art, perfection and Aliocha Coll, and much more. This week's music is "Here's Your Future" by The Thermals. You can find all previous seasons of TMR on our YouTube channel and you can ...
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TMR 23.4: “Homo A Se Coctum Esumque Crustum Est Hoc Fecit Separation” [Lanark]
Chad and Brian break down the loss of Duncan Thaw's mother, his entrance into art school, his reasons for creating art, religious imagery throughout the book, fathers who are better than Bandit, mispronounciations, the "engine" that drive the two distinct parts of this novel, and much more. This week's music is "It's All ...
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TMR 23.3: “Normal Underworlds” [Lanark]
Come for the book discussion, stay for Thaw's unproven remedies for asthma! One of the most fun, and conventional, sections of the book so far, Chad, Kaija, and Brian follow Duncan Thaw through his childhood, discussing his reasonable dad, why math sucks, school journals, and a tinge of sinister violence that might presage ...
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TMR 23.2: “Can He Help Lanark Out of Hell?” [Lanark]
As mentioned from the top, we had severe technical difficulties, so the sound quality on this is janky. (Mostly Chad's voice is quiet, which, for many, is likely to be a relief.) Nevertheless Chad and Kaija power on, talking about "The Institute" as a metaphor, the allusions to Duncan Thaw, dragons, dragon scales as ...
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TMR 23.1: “Book Three” [Lanark]
Mostly a set-up episode about Alasdair Gray and Lanark, in which Chad, Kaija, and Brian discuss the introduction (weird), the start of the novel (which opens with "Book 3"), the influence of Dante's Divine Comedy and Kafka, and much more. There are some good laughs, a bit of insight into where we are, all building toward ...
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Two Month Review Season 23: “Lanark” by Alasdair Gray
Before we get into the selection for next season, I want to remind everyone to vote in our poll for the Best TMR Class. The hypothetical is that you have to sign up for one of these courses being offered based on the books included. "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor" Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda; The Physics of ...
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TMR 22.10: “Butterfly Coma” [Praiseworthy]
Praiseworthy ends with some praise, a bit of exhaustion, questions about satire and the ending, and a dirty phrase Chad can't quit competing. Then there's the TMR Class Draft in which Chad, Kaija, and Brian each selected five previous TMR titles to create imaginary classes: "Dismal Lady Stuff," "Let the Bodies Hit the ...
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TMR 22.9: “One Donkey at a Time” [Praiseworthy]
Like a first time marathon runner, Chad, Brian, and Kaija are losing steam this season, but persist in talking about the book and their mixed feelings. They do learn some things about donkeys and mules though! And they set up next week's game: each co-host will draft five books from the twenty-two seasons of the podcast which ...
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TMR 22.8: “Madder Than White Heat” [Praiseworthy]
Little discussion of Priaseworthy in this episode. Instead there's a longer discussion about publishing, art, sales, how do these books get made?, favorite lines, future games, and much more. It's a 20,000 foot view of book culture with an emphasis on success, investment, and more. Enjoy! This week's music is "Pedestrian ...
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TMR 22.7: “@CheapIllegalPeopleSmuggler” [Praiseworthy]
Talk of Australian cartoons—and not just Bluey—morphs into a look at several specific passages in Wright's Praiseworthy, discussion what makes the book "difficult" to read, the style of humor, what pushes us away from the text and then re-grabs out attention, and much more. This week's music is "Frontier ...
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TMR 22.6: “Nuisance Bugger Donkeys” [Praiseworthy]
Chad and Kaija make up this week's panel as they play the "Slang Game," then discuss the elliptical meta-structure of the book and how this impacts their reading and the book's effectiveness. They also discuss Sam Rutter's New York Times review of the novel, addressing the difficulties of discussing the workings of the text ...
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TMR 22.5: “Maximum Superhero Cop-God” [Praiseworthy]
"Who's Stronger?" is the game of the week in this episode about the Maximum Superhero Cop-God's arrival in Praiseworthy to quell the frantic search for Aboriginal Sovereignty. There are lots of moths, discussion about acknowledging the land which we occupy as a good first step, and more about the difficult reality of life in ...
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TMR 22.4: “Devotion to Off-Grid Religions” [Praiseworthy]
Emmett Stinson (Murnane) joins Chad W. Post and Kaija Straumanis this week to educate us about Australian culture and literature and things we should keep in mind while reading Praiseworthy. He also participates in a round of the world-famous trivia game: "Australian Baseball Player or Indigenous Australian Writer?" There ...
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TMR 22.3: “Tommyhawk!” [Praiseworthy]
This episode could be titled, "Dead Bodies in Water," as Chad and Brian talk about the unfortunate situation in Rochester and the juxtaposition of Absolute Sovereignity trying to drown himself while his brother, Tommyhawk!, watches, doing nothing to save him. There's also more talk about Bluey, but also the tone of the book, ...
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TMR 22.2: “God Donkey” [Praiseworthy]
From discussion of Ohio and disturbing news about everyone's favorite Australian export, this episode skirts talking too deeply about Alexis Wright's Praiseworthy (New Directions, And Other Stories, Giramondo) to discuss challenges of getting into particular books, what the purpose of this podcast is in trying to assist ...
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TMR 22.1: “Kick the Haze in its Guts” [Praiseworthy]
The first episode of the new season of the Two Month Review—covering Alexis Wright's Praiseworthy (New Directions, And Other Stories, Giramondo)—start off with Chad crapping on golf, then rolls on into book design and books as objects, the pacing and rhythms of Wright's work, its humor, its orality, what ancillary ...
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More “Montao’s Malady” (Excerpt)
Following up on yesterday's post, this excerpt from Montano's Malady is just too perfect not to share. Enjoy and preorder the forthcoming Dalkey Archive edition of Vila-Matas's brilliant, twisty book here. April 21 “I’m absolutely convinced that publishing being in the hands of businessmen is just a ...
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A Venn Diagram of Not Reading
“If I actually finish a book, I feel like I deserve a Nobel Prize.” “I can't even guess when I last read a book. But I'd watch movies all day if I could. Especially Marvel ones.” Overheard on a University of Rochester Shuttle “In the last decade, she says, history has toppled from the king of disciplines to a ...
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Season 22 of the Two Month Review: “Praiseworthy” by Alexis Wright
It's almost time for the next season of the Two Month Review to get underway! We announced the book—Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright—but here, at long last, is the official schedule and some background information. I'm going to be completely honest here: All I've read by Wright is the first 58 pages of Carpentaria, the ...
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TMR 21.8: “MOON IS A MENACE” [Same Bed Different Dreams]
We've reached the end which, in Chad and Brian's opinion, Ed Park totally lands. There's Friday the 13th talk. Reagan makes an appearance. The structure of the book is revisited. As are all the ideas of mirrors and patrimony, assassins and conspiracy theories. Note: Information about the "Opening the Channel" translation ...
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TMR 21.7: “Taro Tsujimoto” [Same Bed Different Dreams]
The threads all come together in this week's section as the book barrels toward its conclusion. On this episode, Chad describes his visualization of the book's structure, Tim Hortons and Dunkin Donuts get crapped on, 2333 gets a new meaning, the Moonies make an appearance, as does Ronald Reagan (boo, hiss), Philip Roth, and ...
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TMR 21.6: “Interview with a Mirror” [Same Bed Different Dreams]
Korean food, Grocery Games, VCR tapes, screenplays, gazebos, a thumb drive, Amsterdam, and the statement, "TRANSLATION IS A LONG CON." This week's music is "I'll Be Your Mirror" by Velvet Underground. You can find all previous seasons of TMR on our YouTube channel and you can support us at Patreon and get bonus ...
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TMR 21.5: “A-Bomb Destroys Downtown Buffalo” [Same Bed Different Dreams]
The connections proliferate and the threading together of the three sections continues. Interactive rights to 2333 are finally, properly sold; the mystery surrounding Echo grows; and The Buffalo Evening News brings the concept of "fake news" to a whole new level. That and more in this week's episode. This week's music ...
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TMR 21.4: “The Second Bae” [Same Bed Different Dreams]
Brian's back and everyone is (mostly) healthy. They talk about Korean history, double (or triple) agents, the idea of history as coincidence or plot, North and South Korea, and more. This week's music is "Two States" by Pavement. You can find all previous seasons of TMR on our YouTube channel and you can support us at ...
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TMR 21.3: “Wildwording” [Same Bed Different Dreams]
Protect yourself: There's a chance you'll catch Chad's illness simply by listening to this episode. An episode in which he tries to recap a number of elements of the book—the 2333 game, the louse, wildwording—to Kaija Straumanis amid coughing fits and a dissolving brain. He also shares the most bizarre dream he's ever ...
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TMR 21.2: “2333” [Same Bed Different Dreams]
From their respective hotel rooms, Chad and Brian talk about science fiction, 2/3/33 (and 2/6/66??), conspiracy vs. coincidence, Ohtani and Lee, the ASS black satchel, the assassinations we don't learn much about in high school, Hegemon, more KPG connections, and the (not great) alt-newspaper of the week. This week's music ...
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Eleven Books, Selected
My parents are straight-up hoarders. Not of foodstuffs or other animal attractant stuff; nothing that will quite land them on a nightmare HGTV show (one that airs right after Flipanthropy), but hoarders nonetheless. Of paper, mostly. Checklists from the early 80s show up on the regular. I currently have a gym bag ca. 1993 ...
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TMR 21.1: “What Is History?” [Same Bed Different Dreams]
Season 21 of the Two Month Review kicks off with a discussion of Taylor Swift and the demise of alt-weeklies, then segues into a long discussion about the opening party scene in Same Bed Different Dreams. Chad and Brian talk about what's real and not in both the party scene and the "Dream One" section about the Korean ...
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TMR Season 21: Ed Park’s SAME BED DIFFERENT DREAMS
We're back! Due to a change in how one logs into University of Rochester hosted websites and services, I've been blocked from accessing this website for over a month now . . . But it's all resolved (still can't submit course adoptions to B&N College Stores—who happen to be on credit hold with our distributor 🙄—but ...
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TMR 20.5: “Bubble in My Fizziness” [MULLIGAN STEW]
Wacky Aphorisms vs. Cowboy Clichés. A title change that indicates a change in attitude. A bizarre publisher's catalog. The Red Swan. More letters! This section of Mulligan Stew is jam packed with fun riffs, more evidence of the intricate construction underlying this book, paranoia, puzzle pieces, and anger. This week's ...
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TMR 20.4: “The Sweat of Love” [MULLIGAN STEW]
"I SUCK!" Kicking off with an "erotic" "poem," this week's episode is nuts from the very start. There is a very serious explanation for the "Flawless Play Restored: The Masque of Fungo" (thanks to Tyrus Miller's piece in the Review of Contemporary Fiction), but this is surrounded by Nobel Prize talk, a breakdown of Lamont's ...
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TMR 20.3: “Drunken Condition of Both Teams” [MULLIGAN STEW]
This section of Mulligan Stew is particularly wild, featuring a western populated by Irishmen speaking in bad accents (and worse accents in The Club Zap), a long rambling set of hypotheticals about why the police haven't arrived to find Ned's body (spoiler: Halpin hasn't called them), a drunken baseball game featuring ...
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Three Percent #191: Raymond Queneau
To celebrate the first-ever English-language publication of Raymond Queneau's Sally Mara's Intimate Journal, and the reissue of Pierrot Mon Ami as a Dalkey Essential, Chris Clarke (whose retranslation of Queneau's The Skin of Dreams is forthcoming from NYRB) and Daniel Levin Becker (infamous member of Mujeres Encinta, ...
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TMR 20.2: “THE ULTIMATE IN BIZARRE BEAUTY!!” [MULLIGAN STEW]
Loveletters galore! Lists without context! Repurposing life for fiction! More puzzles! Terrible book reviews! An insufferable, pretentious elementary school essay! This episode has it all—and more! (As Lamont would say.) This week's music is "All Your Fails" by Kevin Drew. You can find all previous seasons of TMR on ...
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Three Percent #190: John Barth
In honor of two recent John Barth reissues—The Sot-Weed Factor and Chimera, both Dalkey Archive Essentials—John Domini (The Archeology of a Good Ràgu, The Color Inside a Melon, and this appreciation of Barth, among other works) and Max Besora (author of the intro to Sot-Weed Factor along with the very much Barth ...
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TMR 20.1: “Then You Do Not Approve of Nabokov?” [MULLIGAN STEW]
Chad and Brian kick off the new season in near hysterics over the first little chunk of Gilbert Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew. From talking about the rejection letters—and near batshit reader's report—prefacing the book, to all the bad writing about the "flawless blue" sky, to the ever-changing dialog tags in Anthony ...
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“Vladivostok Circus” by Elisa Shua Dusapin & Aneesa Abbas Higgins [Excerpt]
Today's #WITMonth post is a really special one—with a special offer. What you'll find below is an excerpt from the very start of Vladivostok Circus by Elisa Shua Dusapin & Aneesa Abbas Higgins. You might remember Dusapin & Higgins as the winners of the 2021 National Book Award for Literature in Translation ...
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Revisiting the “Summer of Spanish-Language Women Writers”
As part of Women in Translation Month—and to shine a spotlight on some of our best Two Month Review seasons—I thought I would repost information about a few relevant TMR seasons that might be of interest. Today, we're going to revisit a wild TMR season in which we featured three books originally written in Spanish, all ...
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“Un Amor” by Sara Mesa and Katie Whittemore [Excerpt]
Today's #WITMonth post is an except from Un Amor by Sara Mesa and Katie Whittemore, coming out in October. This was the "book of the year" in Spain when it came out in 2o20, and was praised to the skies by all the major Spanish newspapers and media outlets. There's even a film version coming out this fall directed by Isabel ...
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Revisiting “Monsterhuman” by Kjersti Skomsvold
As part of Women in Translation Month—and to shine a spotlight on some of our best Two Month Review seasons—I thought I would repost information about a few relevant TMR seasons that might be of interest. First up is Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold, translated from the Norwegian by B. L. Crook. Here's the jacket ...
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“The River” by Laura Vinogradova and Kaija Straumanis [Excerpt]
Today's #WITMonth post is a preview for an Open Letter title coming out next summer, which isn't even available for sale anywhere yet. It's River by Laura Vinogradova, translated by Kaija Straumanis, and part of Straumanis's "Translator Triptych" coming next summer. The novel was the Latvian representative for the European ...
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Four Books for Women in Translation Month
Given that the posts over the past week plus have been very heavy on Open Letter and Dalkey Archive titles (*cough* and or exclusively about OL and DAP titles *cough*),, I thought I'd take a minute to point out a handful of Women in Translation books that I recently found out about and am adding to my "to read" ...
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“The Lecture” by Lydie Salvayre and Linda Coverdale [Excerpt]
Today's #WITMonth post is an excerpt from The Lecture by Lydie Salvayre, translated by Linda Coverdale, a wonderfully funny and playful French writer who Dalkey published for quite a while (The Power of Flies, Everyday Life, The Company of Ghosts, Portrait of the Writer as a Domesticated Animal), and might again! Warren ...
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TMR 19.12: “Fill Up with Karmas” [THE REMEMBERED PART]
Brian returns to help breakdown the ending to Rodrigo Fresán's "Part Triptych." Is it earned? Is it sincere?? Is this all a Jacob's Ladder scenario??? Chad and Brian debate that along with concepts of time in fiction, the Karmas, the wetness of Latvian meat, Melvill and Mulligan Stew. Fun is had as this long, amazing ...
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The Visual Success of Women in Translation Month [Translation Database]
Women in Translation Month is EVERYWHERE. Whenever I open Twitter (or X?), my feed is wall-to-wall WIT Month. Tweets with pictures of books to read for WIT Month, links to articles about WIT Month and various sub-genre lists of books to read during WIT Month, general celebratory tweets in praise of Meytal Radzinski for ...
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“Year After Year” by Hwang Jungeun and Janet Hong [Excerpt]
To celebrate Women in Translation Month, we will be posting excerpts, readings, summaries from the Translation Database, former Two Month Review seasons, and various special offers—so stay tuned! Today's excerpt is from Year After Year by Hwang Jungeun, translated by Janet Hong as part of her Translator Triptych. ...
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Women in Translation Month: The Open Letter 40% Off Sale
So, if it's not clear already, it will be soon: there are Women in Translation Month posts plotted out for every day of this month. We have excerpts of past and forthcoming titles, four related "Reading the Dalkey Archive" posts, weekly Translation Database updates centered on WIT, recaps of WIT seasons of the Two Month ...
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Anatomy. Monotony. [Reading the Dalkey Archive]
Anatomy. Monotony. Edy Poppy Original Publication: 2005 Original Publication in English Translation: 2018 Original Publisher in English: Dalkey Archive Press Although I’m filing this as a “Reading the Dalkey Archive” post, it’s actually about two books: Anatomy. Monotony. by Norwegian ...
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“Flame Trees in May” by Karla Marrufo and Allison A. deFreese [Excerpt]
To celebrate Women in Translation Month, we will be posting excerpts, readings, summaries from the Translation Database, former Two Month Review seasons, and various special offers—so stay tuned! And to kick things off (technically a day before the start of #WITMonth, but whatever, time is a construct), here is an ...
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TMR 19.11 “Exit and No Return and Gone Forever” [THE REMEMBERED PART]
Kaija Straumanis guest stars on this episode in which we discuss brain tumors, memory loss, the true story behind the story of The Impossible Story sending the exwriter into exile, whether of not Saint George is a saint (and dragons), paternity, and the next Fresán book to come out from Open Letter, Melvill. This ...
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Re-Reading David Markson’s “Wittgenstein’s Mistress”
This piece by Philip Coleman first appeared in CONTEXT #23. To celebrate the recent release of Wittgenstein's Mistress as part of the Dalkey Archive Essentials series, it seems like the perfect time to revisit this re-reading of David Markson's classic novel about language, memory, grief, and possibly the end of the ...
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“Not Even the Dead” by Juan Gómez Bárcena [Excerpt]
Officially out last Tuesday, Not Even the Dead is a throwback—an ambitious, philosophical, grand novel taking on nothing less than the history of progress over the past four hundred years. In it, Juan—at the bequest of the Spanish government—pursues "Juan the Indian" across time and Mexico, almost catching up to him ...
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TMR 19.10: “The Fine Art of Leaving Something Out” [THE REMEMBERED PART]
For the first time in the history of the Two Month Review, Chad had to go it alone. He stuck in there, didn't get too crazy, and covered the last chunk of Part II of The Remembered Part. Illness, heartbreak, mental anguish, suicide, Ella, and a mission. It's all in this episode. This week's music is "Bloodletting (The ...
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Mulligan Stew [Reading the Dalkey Archive]
Mulligan Stew Gilbert Sorrentino Original Publication: 1979 Original Publisher: Grove Press First Dalkey Archive Edition: 1996 "Cheers!" So this may be the first—but definitely not the last—entry in this series that is kind of weird. First off, unlike the earlier posts, which try to say ...
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TMR 19.9: “The Dream of the Invention of the Memory, Etc.” [THE REMEMBERED PART]
Veeeeekingdor!!!!! This week's episode is pretty wild, with stories of Riga FC, stoic faces, Fresán's visit to the University of Rochester, Kurt Vonnegut, Andrei The Untranslated (follow his blog!, support his Patreon!), the purpose of book readings and the most uncomfortable ones, time and fiction, and much more! And ...
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“Europeana” by Patrik Ouredník [Excerpt]
Forthcoming in a new "Dalkey Essentials" edition, Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century is an "eccentric overview of all the horrors, contradictions, and absurdities of the past century." It's a book that is mesmerizing in its curious patterns, which at times can sound like Snapple Fun Facts—but tend to be ...
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The Book of Jokes [Reading the Dalkey Archive]
The Book of Jokes Momus Original publication: 2009 Original publisher: Dalkey Archive The Book of Jokes is first original Dalkey Archive title to be part of this series, and woo-boy is it a doozy. If you're playing “Offensive Dalkey Archive Content Bingo," you're all set! There are ...
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TMR 19.8: “Notes for a Theory of the Fabric of Memory” [THE REMEMBERED PART]
Brian is back and Chad flubs the intro, so things are basically as they should be . . . They talk about fragmentation, big flawed double albums (and why they're so intriguing), how comedy works, Hey Uncle Walrus vs. Uncle Hey Walrus, memory and the losing of it, and much more. This week's music is "1979" and 'Tonight, ...
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Ryder [Reading the Dalkey Archive]
Ryder Djuna Barnes Original Publication: 1928 Original Publisher: Boni & Liveright First Dalkey Archive Edition: 1990 This is a baggy novel of excess, and as someone who finds it nearly impossible to keep the thread—or develop a coherent thesis (any and all AI grading systems ...
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Three Percent #189: Baseball
Well, we did it: One whole episode just about baseball and books about baseball and baseball memories and anything else baseball. Caitlin Luce Baker of Island Books, James Crossley of Madison Books, and Dan Wells of Biblioasis join Chad W. Post from Open Letter to pick their "all-time favorite" books about baseball. This ...
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“Diary of a Blood Donor” by Mati Unt [Excerpt]
Diary of a Blood Donor by Mati Unt translated from Estonian by Ants Eert (Dalkey Archive Press) AN UNEXPECTED INVITATION A crow was riding the wind that came in low over the beach. Sand blew through the window, landed on my papers, entered my mouth. A yellowish light tainted the room, even my ...
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Mati Unt (1944-2005)
This piece originally appeared in CONTEXT 18, shortly after Mati Unt's passing. It was written by the translator Eric Dickens, Unt's translator, who also left us in 2017. Mati Unt was born in Estonia and lived there all his life. He spent his early years in the village of Linnamäe near the university town of Tartu. His ...
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TMR 19.7: “The Good Rememberer (A How-To Guide)” [THE REMEMBERED PART]
Former TMR guest Patrick Smith returns to discuss his reread of the first two volumes of the trilogy, how Fresán's writing inspires him, hanging on to flights of prose, all of the wind in this book, what it means to fall, dogs, and much much more. It's a comprehensive, deep look into what it takes to be a good reader, ...
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TMR 19.6: “The Impossibility of Painting with Watercolors in the Rain” [THE REMEMBERED PART]
Chad and Kaija break down the final bit of the first part of the third volume in Fresán's trilogy (phew), revisit the "is this difficult to read?" discussion, and talk about the articles about Fresán in the new issue of Latin American Literature Today. And at the very, very end, Chad makes a startling admission. This ...
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Perfect Lives [Reading the Dalkey Archive]
Perfect Lives Robert Ashley Original Publication: 1991 Original Publisher: Archer Fields Press First Dalkey Archive Edition: 2011 Let’s start with the cover. When this first arrived in the mail, I was certain that Ingram had sent it to me on accident. It looks nothing like ...
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TMR 19.5: “The Burning Gaze of Vladimir Nabokov” [THE REMEMBERED PART]
Separated by 10 hours—like podcasting jet lag?—Chad and Brian work through some observations and rants (specifically about a shitty NY Times list of the best American books between 1981 and 2006, which consists almost entirely of Philip Roth and John Updike and only two books by women), about this section of The ...
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TMR 19.4: “Read like Dracula and write like Frankenstein!” [THE REMEMBERED PART]
From Nobel Prize favorites to Proust to competitive cliques on the mountain, this week's episodes is almost as sprawling as the ex-writer's airplane thoughts. Bit more plot dropped into this section of Fresán/Vanderhyden's book, but there's also a lot about IKEA, his death and rebirth, his insincerity, and his loathsome ...
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TMR 19.3: “DREAM + MEMORY = INVENTION” [THE REMEMBERED PART]
Kaija Straumanis pinch hits this week for a discussion about Lost, airplanes, the past and nostalgia, writers vs. narrators, autofiction, how hard it is to sustain a rant, ghosts, pop culture references, where we are in Fresán's trilogy, and much more. The Remembered Part keeps gathering steam, and you'll want to catch up ...
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TMR 19.2: “Now That Everything That Has To Happen Has Happened” [THE REMEMBERED PART]
And they're off! Brian and Chad start remembering all that they're supposed to remember about the first two volumes of the trilogy (green cows!) and get oriented with the ex-Writer on the plane (and in the desert reading and burning Ada, or Ardor), fall right back into Fresan's humor, cynicism, bits on love, and everything ...
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TMR 19.1: Where Are We At? [THE REMEMBERED PART]
Maybe not the most informative of recaps, but Brian and Chad discuss what the love about Fresán's writing, things they recall from the first two volumes of the trilogy, ideas about what to maybe expect (Dracula + Proust), peppered with the usual amount of jokes and antics. This week's music is "Pontius Pilate's Home ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 22: “The Dream Ends” [THE DREAMED PART]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 21: “IKEA” [THE DREAMED PART]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 20: “Living in Pandemica” [THE DREAMED PART]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 19: “This Is a Bullshot” [THE DREAMED PART]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 18: “The Past Is a Broken Toy That Everyone Fixes in His Own Way” [THE DREAMED PART]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 17: “Adaptations” [THE DREAMED PART]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 16: “Wuthering Heights Is Weird” [THE DREAMED PART]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 15: “Tulpas” [THE DREAMED PART]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 13: “Who Dreams the Dreamer” [THE DREAMED PART]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 12: “We Remember Everything” [THE DREAMED PART]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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Three Percent #188: Cultural Support in Multilingual Spain [A Riveting Event]
In this episode, Chad talks with Olga Castro (Univ. of Warwick), and translators Jacob Rogers (Galician), Mara Faye Lethem (Catalan), Robin Munby (Asturian), and Aritz Branton (Basque) about literatures from the official (and unofficial) languages of Spain, ways in which the regional governments support translation from these ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 11: The Author Himself!
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 10: THE INVENTED PART [Pgs. 441-552]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 9: THE INVENTED PART [Pgs. 405-440]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 8: THE INVENTED PART [Pgs. 361-404]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 7: THE INVENTED PART [Pgs. 301-360]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 6: THE INVENTED PART [Pgs. 231-300]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 5: THE INVENTED PART [Pgs. 208-230]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 4: THE INVENTED PART [Pgs. 99-207]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 3: THE INVENTED PART [Pgs. 46-98]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 2: THE INVENTED PART [Pgs. 1-45]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. Here are the ...
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TMR Fresán Relisten Ep. 1: THE INVENTED PART [Introduction]
Welcome to the Great Fresan Relisten of 2023! Over the next four weeks, we'll be reissuing an episode a day from the The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part seasons of TMR so that you can catch-up, refresh your memory, have a few laughs, etc., before the May 10th launch of Season 19 on The Remembered Part. This was our ...
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Season 19 of TMR: “The Remembered Part” by Rodrigo Fresán & Will Vanderhyden
Are you ready? Like, really, ARE YOU READY? We announced this months ago, but given the size of this book and all of the various reading obligations Brian and I have respectively had (writing, editing, teaching for him; editing, teaching, and Iceland prep for me), we wanted to wait until we could give this book the attention ...
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An Echo Chamber of One [Sustainability]
Hello! I am ChadGPT, an AI chat generator that has been asked to produce a blog post in the style of Chad W. Post, about the future of publishing. After ingesting over a thousand articles from this website, literally hundreds of thousands of (mostly coherent) text messages, and zero email responses (apparently Chad is 100% ...
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To All the Posts I Didn’t Write Last Year
If I could control space-time (a resolution for 2023 that's about as likely as the others I've made), I would have put in an additional 10 hours of research and data entry into the Translation Database before posting this. But knowing that I'll surely be crunched for time all this week, and next, and the week after, I figure ...
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TMR 18.10: “Looks Like a Lump of Shit to Me” [Ann Quin]
The final episode of this season focuses on The Unmapped Country: Stories and Fragments, focusing on the titular story/unfinished novel, along with a few other shorter pieces. The gang looks back at all of Ann Quin's books, speculate on what her career might have been had she lived another couple decades, whether of not she ...
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TMR 18.9: “Your Name? Your Trauma?” [Ann Quin]
Chad, Brian, and Kaija finish up their discussion of Tripticks, which basically devolves into reading out the funniest lines they can find from the this trippy-dippy, wild-ass ending. Some analysis is made of the deconstruction of male narratives, the Beats, the Dashiell Hammett of it all, and more, but come prepared for ...
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TMR 18.8: “No. 1 X-Wife” [Ann Quin]
NIGHTRIPPER!!!!!!!!! This week's music is "Dirty Boots" by Sonic Youth. You can watch next week's discussion of Tripticks live on YouTube. (Reading schedule can be found here.) And you can find all previous seasons of TMR on our YouTube channel. And you can support us at Patreon and get bonus content before anyone ...
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TMR 18.7: “I Would Like To Exhaust the Limits of the Possible” [Ann Quin]
Kaija Straumanis filled in for a domestically distressed Brian, and Chad went all psych0-philosophical on this week's episode, talking about schizoid personality splits, R. D. Laing, reading the various parts of Passages simultaneously, postulating wild hot takes, and saying "fuck off" to a wide swath of bad actors. (Looking ...
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TMR 18.6: “Forms Forming Themselves” [Ann Quin]
This week, Brian, Chad, and Kaija discuss the first half of Passages, arguable Quin's most poetic book, and definitely most experimental one to date. They talk about the way the two characters try to define themselves and create their identities, flow versus points, geometry and parallax, masks and threesomes, and more. It's ...
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TMR 18.5: “Reads Without Turning a Page” [Ann Quin]
Kaija Straumanis joins Chad and Brian this week to talk about orchids, hot takes (did S. sleep with L.?? how exactly did she die?), creepy British dudes, symmetry in Three, Ann Quin's statement on threesomes, the ambiguity of the text, and much more. This week's music is "What Went Down" by Foals. You can watch next ...
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TMR 18.4: “Pursuit to the Point of Indiscretion” [Ann Quin]
Chad and Bria dive into Three, discussing the humor of the dialogue, the poetic-cinematic techniques Quin employs, monogamy and marriage, whether or not L was a collaborationist or worse, the importance of the number three, the play-like elements of the books, anti-mimetic writing, and much more. It's a fun episode complete ...
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TMR 18.3: “Why This Eternal Escaping?” [Ann Quin]
Dead dummies, drowned tramps, resolving the Oedipal complex, the forever incompleteness of the number "3," sex, the sea, slapstick comedy, irony, competing desires of domesticity versus the desire to escape, the beautiful ending and the reverse coda, and much more is discussed on this episode covering the whole of Ann Quin's ...
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TMR 18.2: “BUY BERG’S BEST HAIR TONIC” [Ann Quin]
Chad and Brian dive into the first half of Berg this episode, mispronouncing words, talking about the literary scene Quin came out of, whether or not Berg/Greb is an incel, the humor found in the book, and more. (Inevitably there's a dig at Ohio somewhere in this recording.) This week's music is "When a Woman Is Around" ...
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TMR 18.1: Who Was Ann Quin?
The eighteenth season of the Two Month Review is all about Ann Quin's books—all four novels and her collected stories and fragments—and starts off with an overview of who she was, the context of experimental British writing in the 1960s, how/why Quin has been underappreciated, some info on supplementary critical ...
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Season 18 of the Two Month Review: Ann Quin Is the Missing Link
Before we get into this post, I just wanted to congratulate Annie Ernaux and all of her publishers and translators on winning the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature. She's a legend, and I have a special place in my heart for Cleaned Out, since that was a Dalkey book. (And the first of hers I read.) And also want to send a shout ...
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TMR 17.8: “On This Bed, On This Same Mattress” [Eltit + Hahn]
In the final episode of this season of the Two Month Review, Brian, Chad, and Katie debate whether or not our narrator is in limbo, whether or not this book has a point, what revolution looks like today, and much more. (Chad checks out about 1/2 way through, which, to be honest, makes the episode smarter.) If you're a ...
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TMR 17.7: “I Erased Your Face” [Eltit + Hahn]
Katie and Chad tackle this section alone, discussing the revolutionary background of the main characters, going off into Bernadine Dohrn, the SDS, the Weather Underground, and direct action. They also talk about the timeline—as far as they understand it—the challenges of translating legal terms, Danny's multiple read ...
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TMR 17.6: “The Letters Defeated You” [Eltit + Hahn]
In addition to talking about the Trump/Tesla/Lockwood conspiracy theory, our hosts this week discuss "bone avalanches," how translators are paid, the global literary network available for "experimental" books translated into English, "runts," Lativa's obsession with MILF graffiti, "catching fire," and driving a convertible ...
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TMR 17.5: “Our Organicity” [Eltit + Hahn]
Chad and Brian go it alone and discuss "navel gazing" novels, books that entertain vs. ones about the prose, where Eltit's novel resides on that spectrum, Tommy Pham slapping Joc Peterson, shit in the bed, and much more. This week's music is "It Was Us" by Arms and Sleepers. If you like what you hear, review, rate, and ...
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TMR 17.4: “I Watched the Death Machine” [Eltit + Hahn]
Technical difficulties are kept to a minimum on this week's episode, as Chad, Brian, and Katie talk about the advancement of plot, the French New Novel, the title and its translation, the body, trauma, touching eyeballs, and more. This week's music is "Monday" by The Regrettes. If you like what you hear, review, rate, ...
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TMR 17.3: “Mónica & Carlos & Tony” [Eltit + Hahn]
In lieu of a live episode, this week's TMR features interviews with Mónica Ramón Ríos and Carlos Labbé about their relationship with Diamela Eltit and her role in Chilean letters. That's followed by a conversation with Tony Malone (of Tony's Reading List) about the two books under discussion this season and the Shadow Man ...
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TMR 17.2: “Pure Hatred” [Eltit + Hahn]
Technical difficulties abound as Chad struggles to find reliable Wifi in Latvia. (While being recruited by the Russian mafia?) Katie and Brian take the lead this episode, discussing the next few chapters of Never Did the Fire, gendered adjectives and information, Marxist groups and analysis, and much more. Also: Stay tuned ...
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TMR 17.1: “You Behaved Like a Dog” [Eltit + Hahn]
TMR is back, breaking down Daniel Hahn's translation diary, Catching Fire, alongside his translation of Never Did the Fire by Diamela Eltit. In this episode, they contextualize Eltit and this particular book, talk about intentional ambiguity, Franco and Pinochet, action vs. analysis, bad and hard to eat rice, and ...
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Three Percent #187: Is This The End?
After a two-year hiatus, Chad and Tom are back! In this episode—maybe the final one of this particular scope and format—they talk about what's gone on over the past couple years, how much printing sucks right now, distribution issues, Fum d'Estampa, ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport ...
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Season 17 of the Two Month Review Brings the Fire
It's been a minute, but we're coming back on May 4th with the all new, all fire season of the Two Month Review. Before getting into the books for this season, we have a couple of announcements. First off, we now have a twitter account just for Two Month Review, so please please follow us. Also, following the trend of ...
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Time Must Have a Stop
I haven't been feeling much like myself lately. Doubt anyone has, what with COVID time making everything take twice as long and be four times as frustrating, with Putin being, well, a massive, invasive dick, with inflation the highest it's been since I was five years old, and with no spring baseball. [UPDATE: Baseball is ...
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TMR 16.13: “Fürst Pückler” [2666]
We've reached the end of 2666 and Chad, Katie, and Brian convene to talk about how amazing the ending is, publishers protecting authors, love and family, the book being a "love letter to literature," the circular nature of the book, and James Joyce. This week's music is "Swoonn" by The Chemical Brothers. If you'd ...
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TMR 16.12: “Senselessness” [2666]
Chad and Brian talk about more vampires, about semen, about senseless scene after senseless scene, about WWII, about masterpieces and mediocre writing, about publisher laments, and about other things. This week's music is "Damn These Vampires" by The Mountain Goats. (The Jordan Lake Sessions version, specifically.) If ...
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TMR 16.11: “Hello, Big German” [2666]
We're in the home stretch, as Archimboldi appears at last. Chad, Katie, and Brian discuss his origin story, vampires, seaweed, the nature of time, various echoes appearing in this final section, what Bolaño might be saying about himself as a writer through Hans Reiter, and masturbation. Here's a link to the blog post ...
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TMR 16.10: “Three Men and a Congresswoman” [2666]
Chad and Brian tackle the braided narratives that close out "The Part About the Crimes," discussing Michel Butor's thoughts about detective novels (from Passing Time) and the "rules" laid out in 20 Master Plots: And How to Build Them against 2666. Some interesting observations about what the core "mystery" of the book ...
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TMR 16.9: “Repetition” [2666]
Brian's back to talk about dead baby jokes, repetition, the power of reading, snuff films, matriarchal lineage, and much more. Chad didn't sleep before this episode, which explains some of the wackiness. This week's music is "World Gone Deaf" by Bill Baird. If you'd prefer to watch the conversation, you can find it on ...
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TMR 16.8: “Klaus Haas” [2666]
Chad and Katie go it alone on this special Thanksgiving episode, going deeper into "The Part About the Crimes," talking about Chris Andrews's critical book on Bolaño's fiction (in particular the ideas about aimlessness and narrative identity), about Klaus Haas's arrest, about the failure—and disinterest—of most police ...
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TMR 16.7: “The Next Dead Woman” [2666]
Chad, Brian, and Katie dive into "The Part About the Crimes," talking about the fact that the Penitent gets more detective time than all of the murdered women, about the seer, about ventriloquism, about Lalo Cura, and about the existence of Ciudad Juárez in 2666. This week's music is "Highlights of 100" by Kiwi ...
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TMR 16.6: “Fire, Walk With Me” [2666]
After Chad, Katie, and Brian finish recapping the end of "The Part About Fate"—including the Twin Peaks reference, representations of violence, the apocryphal Robert Rodriguez porno, blindness and impaired sight, and much more—they're joined by Dr. Andrew Martino, a massive Bolaño fan who raises more questions and ...
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TMR 16.5: “DANGER MONEY FOOD STARS USEFULNESS” [2666]
In the first chunk of this week's episode, Brian, Chad, and Katie break down the first half of "The Part About Fate" and look specifically at Kessler's speech in the diner, the areas of exploitative capitalism, femicide and how it's everywhere, the idea of a system that kills, and much more. (They literally run out of time.) ...
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TMR 16.4: “Ramon Llull and His Fantastic Machine” [2666]
This two-part episode opens with Katie, Brian, and Chad talking about madness, the pursuit of knowledge, what great authors "struggle against," and much more. Then, Chad and Katie are joined by Emily Hall (The Longcut) to discuss the art works on the covers of the three-volume edition of 2666, along with Duchamp, ...
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TMR 16.3: “El Cerdo” [2666]
One of the brainiest TMRs to date, this episode talks a lot about doubles and mirrors in 2666, religious iconography, coincidence vs. fate, disappearances and vanishing, the creeping horror found in this novel, the abyss and the void, musicals, and much more. Brian, Chad, and Katie cover the entirely of "The Part About the ...
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TMR 16.2: “Can Anyone Solve the Riddle?” [2666]
This week's episode opens with 'Professor Post" poking a bit of fun at academics, then dives headfirst into the first 75 pages of 2666. Brian, Katie, and Chad talk about the representation of Liz Norton, of the voids that exist in 2666, the religious experience of becoming obsessed with an author, violence, made up books, ...
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TMR 16.1: “Roberto Bolaño Overview” [2666]
Season 16 is here! At long last, Bolaño's 2666 takes center stage, and Chad and Brian are joined by translator and Bolaño enthusiast, Katie Whittemore. In this opening episode, they discuss the myth-making of Bolaño's biography, they talk about sudden fame, the grind of the artist, and of the way that everything is ...
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Season 16 of the Two Month Review: “2666” by Roberto Bolaño
2666 has been a potential TMR title right from the jump and now, years after launching this podcast, we're finally going to tackle one of the most discussed and admired works of Latin American literature of the past century, translated by Natasha Wimmer: "Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was ...
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TMR 15.15: “The End” [Vernon Subutex]
Chad and Brian recap the wild end to Vernon Subutex, debate whether it was predictable or not, whether Despentes earned it or not, and what to make of the proto-history chapter that rounds out the trilogy. And, in classic TMR fashion, the episode ends abruptly when Chad's wifi suddenly dies. (Technical difficulties for the ...
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TMR 15.14: “And Then Evil Showed Its Face” [Vernon Subutex]
Covering what's probably the most disturbing section of Vernon Subutex, this is an intense, fairly dark episode of the Two Month Review. They discuss how the most evil character is a manager/agent, about how men are everywhere, ready to ruin things, and much more. On the upside, Chad and Brian recorded early in the morning, ...
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Edith Bruck: Recounting the Holocaust Until She Can’t
Il Pane Perduto by Edith Bruck (La Nave di Teseo, 2021) Review by Jeanne Bonner When Edith Bruck was 12 years old, she was deported to Auschwitz, and was immediately separated from her mother in a brutal scene. In her new memoir, Bruck writes that later, after being yanked away, another prisoner who had been at the camp ...
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TMR 15.13: “Gangland Shooting” [Vernon Subutex]
Chad almost had to do this episode solo, but all of you were spared that catastrophe by Kaija Straumanis and David Smith (whose delay makes for some funny moments). The talk about what you would do for $100 million dollars, what most terrifies them, fear in general, Max as Lex Luthor, and much more. This week's music is ...
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TMR 15.12: “New Age Bullshit” [Vernon Subutex]
Kate Sherrod joined Chad and Brian on this episode to talk about the TV show version of Vernon Subutex, about which characters she's missing the most, and why this section dragged a bit. A very fun—and fruitful—discussion that lead to a better understanding of how this volume is constructed. This week's music is ...
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Translation Jobs [Granta]
Following on the first two posts about the latest Granta issue of "Best Young Spanish-language Novelists," I thought I'd take another crack at trying to define success, this time through the lens of the translators included in the two issues. This might be the most controversial approach to date (I do have two more that ...
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“Last Words on Earth” by Javier Serena and Katie Whittemore [Excerpt]
Last Words on Earth by Javier Serena, translated from the Spanish by Katie Whittemore (September 21, 2022) Eventually, the professor redirected the conversation toward more exotic subjects: he asked Funes to tell me about negacionismo, a poetic movement Funes had apparently founded as an adolescent in Mexico, where he ...
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Dainerys Machado Vento & Will Vanderhyden [Granta]
In addition to a series of posts about the 25 pieces in the new Granta, I asked a handful of the translators to provide short videos introducing the piece they worked on for the issue and reading a section from it. And today we have a special treat! First up is a video of Will Vanderhyden reading from his translation of ...
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TMR 15.9: “You Shouldn’t Have Hurt My Mother” [Vernon Subutex]
Chad and Brian get into some fun and vengeful parts of Vernon Subutex 2 this week, talking about Gaëll, the proliferation of diereses in this section, getting revenge, Vernon's magical music, and more. This week's music is "The Modern World" by The Jam. If you'd prefer to watch the conversation, you can find it on ...
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Three Percent #186: Italian Science Fiction
In this special episode, Chad talks with Rachel Cordasco about a new Three Percent project focusing on translators as curators. Over the course of the next month, we'll be posting a number of different types of posts—excerpts, profiles, readings, shorter podcasts, movie clips—using the five works of Italian science ...
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TMR 15.8: “Bourgeois Shitdick!” [Vernon Subutex]
Kaija Straumanis pinch hits this week to talk about Céleste, about spray painting insults, the best forms of revenge, how to upend a system, and whether of not a good dad can be an alcoholic. This episode is a great prelude to one of the major plot points of the trilogy, so listen to this and get ready for next week . . ...
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Robin Myers Reading Mateo García Elizondo [Granta]
In addition to a series of posts about the 25 pieces in the new Granta, I asked a handful of the translators to provide short videos introducing the piece they worked on for the issue and reading a section from it. Our last reader of the week is Robin Myers, who translated Mateo García Elizondo's "Capsule." ...
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Frances Riddle Reading Martín Felipe Castagnet [Granta]
In addition to a series of posts about the 25 pieces in the new Granta, I asked a handful of the translators to provide short videos introducing the piece they worked on for the issue and reading a section from it. Up today is Frances Riddle, who translated Martín Felipe Castagnet's "Our Windowless Home." ...
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Kevin Gerry Dunn Reading Cristina Morales [Granta]
In addition to a series of posts about the 25 pieces in the new Granta, I asked a handful of the translators to provide short videos introducing the piece they worked on for the issue and reading a section from it. Next up is Kevin Gerry Dunn, who translated Cristina Morales's "Ode to Cristina Morales." ...
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Statistical Noise [Granta]
It took a few more days than I had hoped, but I have officially read all twenty-five pieces included in this new Granta issue. (I wonder how many people actually do read it from cover to cover. And what percentage that is of all the copies in circulation. God, I'll bet that number is depressing, whether it's Granta, ...
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TMR 15.7: “You Don’t Look Your Best” [Vernon Subutex]
Derek Maine returns for his second appearance this season to talk about Alex Bleach's tapes, Vodka Satana's death, how the system is rigged, horrible men, the complications of passing judgement, Motörhead, mushroom powder, and much more. This is a pretty key episode, as the trilogy veers into detective novel territory, and ...
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Three Percent #185: More Granta!
Veronica Esposito joined Chad and Valerie Miles to continue talking about Granta's second list of "Best Young Spanish-language Novelists." They talk about some of the recent Spanish reviews—and criticisms—of the list, about writing the periphery, about science-fiction and the differences between the 2010 list and the ...
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Kelsi Vanada Reading Andrea Chapela [Granta]
In addition to a series of posts about the 25 pieces in the new Granta, I asked a handful of the translators to provide short videos introducing the piece they worked on for the issue and reading a section from it. First up is Kelsi Vanada, who translated Andrea Chapela's "Borromean Rings." ...
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TMR 15.6: “Looking for Subutex” [Vernon Subutex]
Chad and Brian go it alone this week to talk about whether this is one book or three (or three "seasons" of one book), or how Xavier and Patrice are both awful people but in entirely different ways, the breadth of characterization in Despentes's writing, all the jokes you can make knowing "Subutex" is Methadone, how to ...
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The Predictive Success of Listmaking [Granta]
Let's start by saying what really shouldn't need to be said: Being included in one of Granta's "Best Young XXX Novelists" special issues is an incredible honor. These come out once a decade, with four iterations of "best young" British novelists, three for American writers, and, as of this month, two for Spanish-language ...
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TMR 15.5: “I Am a Hobo Perched on a Hill” [Vernon Subutex]
Translator Frank Wynne joins Chad and Brian to talk about slang, about yummy mummies, about why Vernon's pseudonym is so weird, and much much more. This is an episode as much about translating and reading as it is about the book proper, and is definitely worth listening to. This week's music is "Waiting Room" by ...
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Three Percent #184: Valerie Miles on Granta’s Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists 2
To kick off a month of features on the new Granta "Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists" issue, Chad talked with editor/translator Valerie Miles about the process of selecting these 25 authors amid a pandemic, about the shifts in demographics between the first list (from 2010) and this one, about voice and the ...
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TMR 15.4: “Marxist Hells Angel” [VERNON SUBUTEX]
Translator Katie Whittemore (Four by Four, The Communist's Daughter, World's Best Mother, Last Words on Earth) joins Chad and Brian to talk about the horrible actions of Patrice, and whether he could be redeemed, about childbirth, about Aïcha and Hyena, and about Disney. Funny and cutting, this episode explores the book's ...
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TMR 15.3: “Vodka Satana” [VERNON SUBUTEX]
Caitlin Luce Baker of Island Books joins Chad and Brian to talk about a very nicely framed section of Vernon Subutex. We get introduced to Aïcha, who has, through Pamela Kant, just found out that her mom was a porn star before her death. (And had a fling with Alex Bleach.) We also get to see how the Hyena works (kind of), ...
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TMR 15.2: “Yummy Mummy or MILF” [VERNON SUBUTEX]
Emma Ramadan—translator of Despentes's Pretty Things and Anne Garreta (among many others), and recent winner of the PEN Translation Prize—joins Brian and Chad to talk about how cool Despentes is, and how much slang she uses in her work. They also discuss the conflict that will drive the plot (Laurent Dopalet vs. ...
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TMR 15.1: “Alexandre Bleach Is Dead” [VERNON SUBUTEX]
The fifteenth iteration of the Two Month Review kicks off in a big way, giving a quick overview of Virginie Despentes's life and work for Brian, and then launching into the wonderful world Despentes constructs filled with characters who are past their prime, who are flawed and don't hide their warts. The subtle ways in which ...
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Season 15 of the Two Month Review: “Vernon Subutex” by Virginie Despentes
Following on the sprawling, propulsive, voice-driven masterpiece J R, we're turning to another amazing assemblage of unforgettable characters in Virginie Despentes's Vernon Subutex trilogy. Here's the description of Volume 1: From the provocative writer and filmmaker Virginie Despentes comes volume one of her acclaimed ...
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TMR 14.11: “Hey . . . You Listening?” [J R]
The final episode of the season! First off, Chad and Brian wrap things up, and preview season 15 (Virginie Despentes's Vernon Subutex trilogy, coming in April!), then Nick Sullivan talks to Chad about recording the audiobook, how he got into that business in the first place, the challenges of recording a book like this, and ...
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TMR 14.10: “Hoppin’ with Flavor!”
Kaija Straumanis joins Chad and Brian this week to talk about toxic masculinity, the genius of the J R audiobook, Bach, "up yours, up mine," connections to Pynchon, shit & money & the American Dream, and the implosion of J R's paper empire. This week's music is "Deadlines (Hostile)" by Car Seat Headrest. If ...
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TMR 14.9: “J R Shipping Corp”
This week, Sam Rutter and Nick During join Chad for a long, sprawling discussion of J R, of the interesting quote Joy Williams attributes to Gaddis instead of Gibbs, of Gibbs's knowledge of financial doings, of how great Rhoda is as a character, and so so much more. This is the longest episode to date, but also one of the ...
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TMR 14.8: “$$$$$$$$” [J R]
Chad and Brian talk about church parking lots, relationship entropy, millionaires, corporate logos ("Just Rite"), the uneasy alliance of art and commerce, and much more on this week's episode. This week's music is "Highlights of 100" by Kiwi Jr. If you'd prefer to watch the conversation, you can find it on YouTube along ...
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TMR 14.7: “Alsaka” [J R]
Dan O'Brien (The House in Scarsdale, A Story that Happens) joins the podcast this week to talk about J R from a playwriting perspective. Lots of interesting insights in this episode, about theater, about the relationship between art and commerce in the book, and about GameStop. This week's music is "Our Life Is Not a ...
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TMR 14.6: “A Strolling Game of Pocket Billiards” [J R]
Chad and Brian go it alone this week, and prove that even the most claustrophobic sections (trigger warning for anyone who grew up with hoarders) of J R are also riotously funny. They also don't understand money or business, but no one else in the book seems to either . . . There's also a lot of talk about Gibbs's footwear ...
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TMR 14.5: “Eagle Mills Employees’ Glee Club” [J R]
Rodrigo Fresan (The Dreamed Part) joins Chad and Brian to talk about one of his favorite authors and books. There's good banter, some insight into J R, tell a (false) story about Fire the Bastards!, and generally try and entertain you. If you'd prefer to watch the conversation, you can find it on YouTube along with all ...
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BTBA #1: GUANTANAMO by Dorothea Dieckmann and Tim Mohr
The year-long Best Translated Book Award retrospective kicks off with this episode featuring the very first winner of the BTBA: Guantanamo by Dorothea Dieckmann, translated from the German by Tim Mohr and published by Soft Skull. There are three discussions on this episode: Chad W. Post and Patrick Smith talk about the ...
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TMR 14.4: “Who Made the Rules” [J R]
Ryan Chapman (Riots I Have Known) joins Chad and Brian to crap on Jonathan Franzen's "famous" "essay" about Gaddis, "Mr. Difficult." They also talk about the casual sexism present in so many of the male characters, the parallels and reversals connecting various scenes, just how funny and readable this book is, and the ...
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TMR 14.3: “Stamp Out Smut” [J R]
Vince Francone made his TMR debut on this episode about one of the funniest sections of J R to date. They talk about the dirty photos, how the book isn't as challenging as its reputation indicates, the maybe incest scene, shitting in a piano, and much more. If you'd prefer to watch the conversation, you can find it on ...
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Three Percent #183: Sound on Sound on Sound
The first new Three Percent Podcast since May! This is an episode all about sound and curation—in books, in music. It's unlike all the previous episodes, featuring three readings and two interviews. Here are all the songs featured on this episode: Without Me Americana The Pull of You Impossible Weight Living ...
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Christmas Eve at Dixie Truck Stop [Dear Editor]
In the early 2000s, a number of issues of the Review of Contemporary Fiction featured "Letters to the Editor." It was a poorly kept secret that all of these—the letters and responses—were written by John O'Brien. Obsessed with failing marriages and sad sack lives, these letters are wonderful bits of satire and voice, ...
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TMR 14.2: “How to Make Big Profits Overseas” [J R]
First time Gaddis reader Elizabeth DeMeo from Tin House joins Chad and Brian to talk about J R's field trip to the New York Stock Exchange where his class buys a share of Diamond Cable stock. In addition to recapping this somewhat chaotic segment—just imagine twelve sixth graders loose in NYC—they talk about Gaddis's ...
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TMR 14.1: “Money?” [J R]
Chad, Mauro Javier Cardenas (Aphasia), and NYRB publisher Edwin Frank kick off season 14 by talking about entropy, Gaddis's humor, how best to approach reading this book (fast and out of control), the little plot hints that are left to figure out, the lack of interiority in J R and how he develops characters and voice, and ...
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TMR Season Fourteen: “J R” by William Gaddis
To celebrate the NYRB reissue of J R by William Gaddis—one of my all-time favorite books—we're going to feature it as the next title in the Two Month Review. The full schedule is below, but in short, the first live episode will be on Wednesday, December 16th at 3pm eastern (available as a podcast the next ...
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TMR 13.12: “Time, Science Fiction, Heaven & Hell” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
This is a bonus episode in which Chad and Brian talk about three different essays on Ada, two boring ones by academic males, and an incredible chapter from Azar Nafisi's That Other World. There is good banter, a lot of jokes, and a true appreciation for this novel. Plus, Chad throws down a very unpopular hot take at the end ...
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TMR 13.11: “Instantogram” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
After a bit of business banter about publishing mergers and the future of books, Chad and Brian break down the final two parts of Ada, or Ardor, debating the purpose of the book as a whole, whether the ending "works," the unreliable unreliableness of Van Veen, and much more. On next week's episode, they'll talk about three ...
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TMR 13.10: “Madhouse Babble” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
As Chad and Brian finish part III of Ada, or Ardor, they talk about Ada and Van's reunion, the passage of time within this book, moustaches, who knows what about whom, and much more. This week's music is "Endless Night" by Holy Motors. If you'd prefer to watch the conversation, you can find it on YouTube along with all ...
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Best Translated Book Award 2021
Over the past year, we (mostly me and Patrick Smith) have been discussing ways to tweak the Best Translated Book Awards to continue to serve the international literature community in a way that can supplement the other major translation awards out there. When the pandemic hit and the world went on pause, we realized that we ...
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TMR 13.9: “Pale Fire with Tom Cox Up” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
Following a long discussion about what actually happens on this podcast (spoiler: definitely not critical analysis), Chad and Brian dive into Part III of Ada, or Ardor, asking what the point of whole book is, what type of fragmented postmodernism Nabokov is playing with, the passage of time and action in this novel, and the ...
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TMR 13.8: “Vinelander” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
In a rather subdued (re: election night hangover) episode, Chad and Brian discuss the relationship between cinema and writing, photos and memory, and what seems to be Nabokov's relationship to movies as art. They also talk about the screwball comedy nature of Van and Ada being found out, discuss the way in which part II ...
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TMR 13.7: “From Dodo to Dada” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
From the International House of Prostitutes to the reunion of Ada and Van, this week's episode is quite a trip. Chad and Brian talk about dreams, John Garner, Martin Amis on "obscure" and "difficult" novels, how to actually pronounce Van, and much more. This week's music is "Money" by Widowspeak. If you'd prefer to ...
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The Hole vs. The Hole vs. Algorithms vs. Booksellers
Although it's still hard to get truly excited about writing—and harder to imagine anyone reading this, given all that's going on in the world—it was pretty fun working on that last post about October titles that I wish I had the time and attention to read. So, why not do it again? Even if these posts are shambolic and ...
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TMR 13.6: “Star Rats and Space Aces” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
Chad and Brian wrap up Part One of Ada, or Ardor—which features a duel, multiple deaths, an existential diatribe, and canes—and move onto Part Two, which is very Pynchon-esque. They get to dive into Van's "philosophical novel," ideas of time, questions about Terra, and much more. This episode is as fun and wild as the ...
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Why I Haven’t Written Any of My Posts
The other night, when I first attempted to write this post, I was shocked to find that the last "real" post I'd written (the nutty Baudrillard in the Time of COVID/Baseball is Back! experiment), posted on July 29th. July! That was almost three months ago. Where did the time go? And why haven't I written anything since ...
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TMR 13.5: “The Accursed Children” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
A family dinner, a picnic in the woods—what could be more innocent? Well, in Ada, or Ardor, everything is tinged with a baseline feeling of "kind of creepy," especially the "passionate pump-joy exertions." Chad and Brian break it all down, talking about Demon, unraveling Nabokovian puns, finding subtle hints about Van's ...
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TMR 13.4: “Terra: Eremitic Reality of Collective Dream?” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
Things shift in Ada, or Ardor this week, with Van's second trip to Ardis being much darker, much more perverse and troubling than the first, "more innocent" summer with Ada. There's also another couple hints about Terra, and the possiblity of Ada having another lover . . . And, as is par for the course, some amazing writing ...
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TMR 13.3: “Lettrocalamity” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
Chad and Brian cover a ton of topics in this relatively short episode including: Adam and Eve, botany, butterflies, the Wild West, enchantment, incest, codes, and Bosom Buddies. It's a fun episode filled with lyrical Nabokovian passages and speculation about what's to come in this sprawling novel. And Isak, Brian's ...
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TMR 13.2 “Hammock and Honey” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
Rodrigo Fresán (The Invented Part, The Dreamed Part, Bottom of the Sky) joins Chad and Brian to talk about the only Nabokov book he hasn't read. In addition to talking about all the reasons to love Nabokov, about how this book is the one where he actually seems to be measuring himself against the all time greats, they talk ...
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Five Questions with Jordan Stump
My plan for this short interview—along with the ones I have scheduled for the rest of the month—was to write about Igifu by Scholastique Mukasonga and That Time of Year by Marie NDiaye earlier in the week (along with a few other French books) as a way of providing a context for this interview. I did end up writing ...
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TMR 13.1 “All Happy Families” [ADA, OR ARDOR]
Chad and Brian try their best to unpack the first three chapters of Vladimir Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor, in an attempt to find some solid footing for this sci-fi (?), ambitious, reference-laded masterwork of one of the greatest writers of our times. Lots of questions about where we are (Terra or Anti-Terra?); mirrors; the ...
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“The Adventures and Misadventures of the Extraordinary and Admirable Joan Orpí, Conquistador and Founder of New Catalonia” by Max Besora and Mara Faye Lethem
In honor of the Catalan Fellowship organized by the Institut Ramon Lllul and taking place virtually this week, I thought I would share the opening of next Catalan title to come out from Open Letter: The Adventures and Misadventures of the Extraordinary and Admirable Joan Orpí, Conquistador and Founder of New Catalonia by Max ...
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Death and Afterlife in September 2020
Dead Girls by Selva Almada, translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott (Charco Press) Yesterday, on Twitter, I promised that the rest of this month's posts on new books in translation would be way more positive, but, well, sorry everyone—I momentarily forgot which books I was planning on writing about today (and ...
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2020 Has Been Rather Suboptimal
I can't imagine I'm the only person who feels like they haven't been their best work self over the course of the past six months. We all have acedia. Some days are foggy, others start out fine and then you find out that your local police department killed a black man in MARCH and just released the information about it. I ...
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Let’s Try This Instead
Now that I've taught a few hybrid sessions of my "Intro to Literary Publishing" class, I can confirm that teaching during COVID is WEIRD. So weird. (And not just because I couldn't figure out the technology on day one, or because I can't hear the students very well without being able to see their faces. Although both of those ...
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TMR Season Thirteen: “Ada, or Ardor” by Vladimir Nabokov
The public has spoken, and the next book to be featured in the Two Month Review is Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov! Which is kind of perfect. We follow the thread of Anna Karenina from The Book of Anna by Carmen Boullosa to this novel, originally written in 1969, which opens: "All happy families are more or less ...
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“The Discomfort of Evening” by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld [#WITMonth]
In an amazing coincidence, we were already planning on running this excerpt from The Discomfort of Evening today as part of our Women in Translation Month coverage, and lo and behold, the book just happened to win the International Man Booker this morning! Congrats to Marieke Lucas Rijneveld and Michele Hutchison, and to ...
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Spanish-Language Speculative Fiction by Women in Translation. [#WITMonth]
Today's post is by Rachel Cordasco, founder and curator of Speculative Fiction in Translation, co-translator of Creative Surgery by Clelia Farris, and is working on a book about speculative fiction from around the world. Despite 2020 being a downright awful year, it has given us several excellent works of ...
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A SINGLE SWALLOW by Zhang Ling [#WITMonth]
A Single Swallow by Zhang Ling, translated from the Chinese by Shelly Bryant (AmazonCrossing) Forthcoming on October 1st from AmazonCrossing, A Single Swallow by Zhang Ling, the award-winning author of nine novels along with several short story collections. Here's the jacket copy: On the day of the historic 1945 ...
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TMR 12.12 “Finale” [THE BOOK OF ANNA]
Carmen Boullosa joined Chad and Brian this week to talk about The Book of Anna, memories of watching baseball, why she (today) supports Karenin and thinks Anna K made a mistake with Vronsky, the origin and structure of the novel, her system of having a book in the queue before the previous one is published, and much ...
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TMR 12.11 “The Book of Anna” [THE BOOK OF ANNA]
Translator and Words Without Borders co-founder Samantha Schnee joined Chad and Brian this week to talk about Anna's "opium-fueled" fairy tale that was referenced in passing in Anna Karenina, and a centerpiece of Boullosa's "sequel." A lively conversation about language, various Tolstoy translations, the book's origin, ways ...
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New Spanish Literature: 10 of 30 [#WITMonth]
As part of the buildup to being Guest of Honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2021, the Spanish government launched a program last year under the (possibly confusing) name of "10 of 30." The plan is that each year, a new anthology featuring ten authors in their 30s will be released—all of which are translated by Katie ...
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TMR 12.10 “Karenina’s Portrait” [THE BOOK OF ANNA]
After talking a bit about Women in Translation Month and the voting process for choosing the Season 13 title, Chad and Brian get into the twisty nature of Part III of The Book of Anna, in which Anna's portrait is given to the tsar, and Leo Tolstoy appears in the dreams of two characters, both to berate them and make a case ...
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Open Letter Sale [#WITMonth]
This post is a bit of a cheat so that I can get caught back up tomorrow with my "post a day" promise, but I want to make sure that everyone knows that for all of August we're offering 40% off on all Open Letter books written by women OR translated by women. All you need to do is use WITMONTH at checkout. Here's a complete ...
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An Interview with Karen Sotelino [#WITMonth]
For today's Women in Translation post, we're going to highlight a female translator, Karen Sherwood Sotelino. Sotelino translates from Portuguese and has worked on a couple incredibly big names in Brazilian literature—Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis and Raduan Nassar. A few years back, she gave this interview with Luciana ...
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Polish Reportage [#WITMonth]
Starting in 2021, Open Letter will be launching a "Polish Reportage" series. This came out of a trip I made to Krakow back in 2017 (when the Astros cheated their way to a World Series, which, remember when that mattered?) to attend the Conrad Festival and meet with a variety of authors, editors, and the like. I've always been ...
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A Very Incomplete List of Books by Women in Translation in 2020 [#WITMonth]
I know that I'm a day behind—trying to make up for that right now—but my goal for Women in Translation Month 2020 is to post something each and every day of the month related to this topic. I'm inviting any and all readers, translators, publishers to contribute to this and, with a lot of luck a bit of work, we should have ...
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TMR 12.9 “Bloody Sunday” [THE BOOK OF ANNA]
This week's episode is one of the more political ones to date, as Chad and Brian talk about Russia's "Bloody Sunday," comparing the Tsar's actions to Trump and what's going on in Portland. (They also sigh loudly over his most recent attempt to stoke racial and class anger.) They talk about the pacing and balance between these ...
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Baudrillard in the Time of COVID / Baseball Is Back!
There are two types of people who read these posts: people into international literature who like baseball, and those who don’t. What follows is an experiment—one that might not work at all. Before you get started, you have a choice: 1) if you hate genuine writing about baseball, then click here, where I’ve edited ...
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Baudrillard in the Time of COVID
There’s never been a better time to read Baudrillard. There’s also never been a worse. Thanks to quarantine, the unprecedented nature of this situation, Trump, government response to the protests—everything feels like an illusion. Not an illusion in the sense that “nothing is physically realm,” although one could ...
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Baseball Is Back!
The other day, the Major League Baseball season—or, rather, “season,” given that it’s 60 games; given that instead of ten teams making the playoffs, sixteen will, which is more than half the league; that every extra inning starts with a runner on 2nd base, which is very weird; and, obviously, COVID protocols and a ...
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TMR 12.8 “Anna’s Sergei and Anya’s City” [THE BOOK OF ANNA]
The final part of season 12 kicks off with Chad and Brian discussing the first part of Carmen Boullosa's The Book of Anna, translated from the Spanish by Samantha Schnee and published by Coffee House. Chad gives a brief recap of Leo Tolstoy's novella, Anna Karenina, then they discuss how and what type of sequel this is, get ...
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TMR 12.7: “Heroes and Mercenaries” [FOUR BY FOUR]
Katie Whittemore joins on this episode to refute a list of crazy fan theories about Four by Four, and to talk about the difficulties of translating a book in which there's really no where to hide. Chad also shares some new, bad, jacket copy, and makes a pitch for one of Katie's next books to come out: World's Best ...
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TMR 12.6: “A Substitute’s Diary, Part II” [FOUR BY FOUR]
ALTA executive director and Arabic translator (Minor Detail), Lissie Jaquette joined Chad and Brian to talk about Bedragare's breakdown and all the events in the second half of his journal. They also wonder what the "mystery" of the novel is, and talk about various (possibly nutty) theories about who killed Lux and Ledesma. ...
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TMR 12.5: “A Substitute’s Diary, Part I” [FOUR BY FOUR]
After being taken over by Chad's daughter, the podcast gets back on track, and Chad and Derek Maine (Read the World YouTube channel) break down the first half of part two of Four by Four, talking about the ways in which power structures are replicated, the increasing scope of the novel's construction, reading between the ...
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TMR 12.4: “Never More Than Two Hundred” [FOUR BY FOUR]
This week's episode kicks off the four-week discussion of Four by Four by Sara Mesa, translated from the Spanish by Katie Whittemore. A great book for our time (for all times) in relationship to power structures and their systems. And whether it's better to be "free and vulnerable or protected but under control." In this ...
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Propose a Session or Reading for ALTA 43
Proposal Deadline: July 6 Click here to submit a proposal. The ALTA Conference Committee invites proposals for readings and sessions for ALTA's 43rd annual conference. ALTA43: "In Between" will take place virtually in fall 2020, and we’ve moved back our proposal deadline to give us all time to adapt to our new ...
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TMR 12.3 “Scenes from the Spectral Zone” [CARS ON FIRE]
On this episode of the Two Month Review, translator Robin Myers joins Chad and Brian to talk about her translation, Mexican and Argentine poetry, what was most challenging/liberating about the text, ALTA 2009, and much much more. Very insightful conversation for anyone interested in professional translators, or starting out ...
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TMR 12.2 “Invocation” [CARS ON FIRE]
This week, Mónica Ramón Ríos joins Chad and Brian to talk about her literary career, how she came to write Cars on Fire, Rutgers, some movies she's recently watched, how to read "Invocation," protests in Chile and NYC, and much much more. An incredibly interesting and informative episode that serves as an incredible guide ...
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“La vita bugiarda degli adulti” by Elena Ferrante
La vita bugiarda degli adulti by Elena Ferrante 283 pgs. | pb | 9788833571683 | €19,00 edizioni e/o Review by Jeanne Bonner If all had gone as planned—which is to say if a global pandemic hadn’t bulldozed our normal lives—this summer, you might have been reading Ann Goldstein’s English translation of La vita ...
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TMR 12.1 “Obituary” [CARS ON FIRE]
Season 12 of the Two Month Review kicked off with Cristina Rodriguez from Deep Vellum Bookstore joining Chad and Brian to talk about the first section of Mónica Ramón Ríos and Robin Myers's Cars on Fire. They talk about The Gits, "Dead Men Don't Rape," the connections between academy and power structures, how "timely" ...
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“The Erotics of Restraint: Essays on Literary Form” by Douglas Glover
The Erotics of Restraint: Essays on Literary Form by Douglas Glover 203 pgs. | pb | 9781771962919 | $21.95 Biblioasis Review by Brendan Riley The Erotics of Restraint is an excellent companion—with a no less provocative title—to Mr. Glover’s previous collection, Attack of the Copula Spiders, published in ...
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Nothing Adds Up Until You Overthrow the System
It's weird trying to write this today, May 31st, with all that's going on across the country—and around the world—right now. The images of our overly-militarized, super aggro, disgusting police officers running unarmed people over, throwing women to the ground, shooting teenagers with pepper balls and rubber bullets (that ...
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Season Twelve of the Two Month Review: “Cars on Fire,” “Four by Four,” and “The Book of Anna”
As announced during the last season of the Two Month Review, we're going to try something different this time around. Instead of focusing on a single, long book, we're going to cover three short ones—all written by Spanish female writers, all translated by women, and all released during the lockdown. First up—and ...
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“The Cheffe: A Cook’s Novel” by Marie NDiaye [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Marcel Inhoff is completing a doctoral dissertation at the University of Bonn. He is the author of the collection Prosopopeia (Editions Mantel, 2015), and Our Church Is Here (Pen and ...
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“The Wind That Lays Waste” by Selva Almada [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Pierce Alquist has an MA in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College and currently works in publishing in Boston. She is a freelance book critic and writer. She is also the ...
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BTBA 2020 Streaming Events
In a normal year, we would be gathering in NYC to announce the winners of the Best Translated Book Award, followed by a nice reception. Well . . . Since that's obviously not going to happen, we actually came up with TWO replacement events that—if I'm being totally honest—might be even better than our normal party, ...
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“Beyond Babylon” by Igiaba Scego [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Barbara Halla is an Assistant Editor for Asymptote Journal. She works as a translator and independent researcher, focusing in particular on discovering and promoting the works of ...
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“Aviva-No” by Shimon Adaf [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Adriana X. Jacobs is the author of Strange Cocktail: Translation and the Making of Modern Hebrew Literature (University of Michigan, 2018) and associate professor of modern Hebrew ...
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“The Boy” by Marcus Malte [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Lara Vergnaud is a literary translator from the French. She was the recipient of the 2019 French Voices Grand Prize and a finalist for the 2019 BTBA. Her work has appeared in The ...
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TMR 11.11: “The Dream Ends” [THE DREAMED PART]
Rodrigo Fresán himself joins Chad and Brian to talk about phones, Riverdale, Ada or Ardor, Dracula, the world-building in Fresán's oeuvre, the overall structure and focus of the triptych, what to read and watch in quarantine, and much more! If you'd prefer to watch the conversation, you can find it on YouTube along ...
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“The Catalan Poems” by Pere Gimferrer [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Henry N. Gifford is a writer, emerging translator from German to English, and Assistant Editor at New Vessel Press. The Catalan Poems by Pere Gimferrer, translated from the ...
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TMR 11.10: “IKEA” [THE DREAMED PART]
This week's episode is quite possibly the wildest one yet . . . Chad paid a BookTuber for some promotional love and, well, you'll have to watch/listen to see how that went. Then they talk about outsiders, Franco Moretti, autofiction, HE-IKEA (the Writer's nemesis), overblown rants about reading and phones, and much ...
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“Space Invaders” by Nona Fernández [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Chris Clarke grew up in Western Canada and currently lives in Philadelphia. His translations include books by Ryad Girod, Pierre Mac Orlan, and François Caradec. His translation of ...
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. . . At the End of the World
All below quotes are from The End of the World Might Not Have Taken Place by Patrik Ouredník, translated from the Czech by Alexander Hertich (Dalkey Archive Press) THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD The future isn’t what it used to be. You must have noticed this yourself: the future isn’t what it used to be. In the past, ...
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. . . The Underappreciated Masses . . .
Half of this post is inspired by comments Sam Miller made about this article he wrote about the mystery surrounding Don Mattingly's birthdate and his Topps 1987 baseball card. I'm not sure if these are immutable truths per se, but if you talk to enough people in the book industry, you're likely to encounter two strains of ...
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We’re Still Here . . .
"We live in a world of randomness." —William Poundstone, The Doomsday Calculation It probably goes without saying, but publishing international literature is a precarious business in the best of times. On average, sales for translated works of fiction tend to be about one-third of the average sales for a mid-list author ...
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“The Next Loves” by Stéphane Bouquet [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Laura Marris is a writer and translator from the French. Recent projects include Paol Keineg’s Triste Tristan (co-translated with Rosmarie Waldrop for Burning Deck Press) and In ...
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Three Percent #181: Unraveling Women and Hard-Working Peasants
A bit of an experimental episode, Chad is joined by five indie booksellers to talk about the "new normal," fears of reopening, what booksellers are doing now, and—most importantly—actual books. The complete rundown of recommendations is below, but one note: please buy these titles from the bookseller who recommended them. ...
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TMR 11.9: “Living in Pandemica” [THE DREAMED PART]
This week, Chad and Brian talk about the desires of readers, the "middle mind," writing without a hook, Nabokov's "The Vane Sisters," the one contribution Chad made to this book, vocal tics, cocaine, and much more. They both came in high energy on this episode, so sit back and enjoy all the jokes and enthusiasm. This ...
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“Territory of Light” by Yuko Tsushima [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Kári Tulinius is an Icelandic poet and novelist. He and his family move back and forth between Iceland and Finland like a flock of migratory birds confused about the whole “warmer ...
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“The Way Through the Woods” by Long Litt Woon
The Way Through the Woods by Long Litt Woon Translated from the Norwegian by Barbara J. Haveland 320 pgs. | hc | 9781984801036 | $26.00 Spiegel & Grau Review by Hana Kallen How does one heal after the death of a loved one? How does define oneself again after tragedy? Author and anthropologist Long Litt ...
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“The Book of Collateral Damage” by Sinan Antoon [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Tara Cheesman is a freelance book critic, National Book Critics Circle member & 2018-2019 Best Translated Book Award Fiction Judge. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review ...
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The Winter Garden Photograph by Reina María Rodríguez [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Anastasia Nikolis recently received her PhD in twentieth and twenty-first century poetry and poetics from the University of Rochester. She is the Poetry Editor for Open Letter Books ...
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TMR 11.8: “This Is a Bullshot” [THE DREAMED PART]
In his most dangerous gag to date, Chad drinks a giant bullshot as he, Brian Wood, and special guest Carlos Labbé talk about Nabokov's Transparent Things, transparency as a concept, the wild bed that The Writer is insomniacing in, Uncle Hey Walrus's hypnosis gone awry, why quarantine time is so crazy yet our dreams are ...
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“Vernon Subutex 1” by Virginie Despentes [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Dorian Stuber teaches at Hendrix College and blogs about books at www.eigermonchjungfrau.blog. His work has appeared in Numéro Cinq, Open Letters Monthly, and Words without ...
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“Camouflage” by Lupe Gómez [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Kelsi Vanada is a poet and translator from Spanish and sometimes Swedish. Her translations include Into Muteness (Veliz Books, 2020) and The Eligible Age (Song Bridge Press, 2018), ...
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“God’s Wife” by Amanda Michalopoulou
God's Wife by Amanda Michalopoulou Translated from the Greek by Patricia Felisa Barbeito 144 pgs. | pb | 9781628973372 | $16.95 Dalkey Archive Press Review by Soti Triantafyllou Why do people get married? Maybe because they need a witness to their lives, someone to watch them do whatever it is that they do. In Amanda ...
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“Animalia” by Jean-Baptiste del Amo [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Jeffrey Zuckerman is an editor at Music & Literature and a translator from French, most recently of Jean Genet's The Criminal Child (NYRB, 2020). A finalist for the ...
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“Good Will Come from the Sea” by Christos Ikonomou [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Julia Sanches is a translator working from Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan into English. She has translated works by Susana Moreira Marques, Daniel Galera, Claudia Hernández, and ...
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There Are Worse Timelines [An April 2020—Is It Still 2020?—Reading Journal]
Following the [Chernobyl] accident, physicists calculated that there was a ten percent risk that a nuclear explosion on an unimaginable scale would take pace within a fortnight. Such an explosion [. . .] would have been equivalent to forty Hiroshima bombs going off at the same time, and would have rendered Europe ...
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Three Percent #180: Bookfinity Is the Dumbest Name
Stacie Williams joins Chad and Tom this week to talk about the role of sales reps at this moment in time and then, after she bolts, Chad and Tom poke fun at Bookfinity (which, really, WOW), the confused messaging of #BooksAreEssential as a hashtag, why bookshops shouldn't open, and how Publishers Weakly is funny AND NOT RUN ...
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TMR 11.7: “The Past Is a Broken Toy That Everyone Fixes in His Own Way” [THE DREAMED PART]
This week's episode brings us back to The Writer, unable to sleep, living near where Penelope's house burned down (see: The Invented Part), and living off the fortunes of Penelope's writings (RIP). There's a great bit in this section about FBI agent Johnny Dancer and Vladimir Nabokov, there's a horrifying (yet funny!) death ...
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“Welcome to America” by Linda Boström Knausgård [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Katarzyna (Kasia) Bartoszyńska is a former BTBA judge (2018 and 2017), a translator (from Polish to English), and an academic (at Monmouth College, and starting this Fall, at Ithaca ...
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“Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” by Olga Tokarczuk [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Louisa Ermelino is the author of three novels; Joey Dee Gets Wise; The Black Madonna (Simon and Schuster); The Sisters Mallone (St. Martin’s Press) and a story collection, ...
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Three Percent #179: “Hey! What’s New?”
How is COVID-19 impacting bookstores, publishers, translators, and our general sanity? These are the questions Tom and Chad talk about on this episode—the first in a while, but also the longest ever—along with minor jokes, an appeal to authors and publishers to "read the room," a rant that will likely get Chad in ...
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TMR 11.6: “Adaptations” [THE DREAMED PART]
Chad and Brian go deep into the underlying structure of the second section of Fresan's The Dreamed Part, talking about Penelope's story, her relationship to her parents and the Karmas, and the moment in which she lost her son. We finally get to read about her wrecking house (literally) and see how everything circles back to ...
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“Death Is Hard Work” by Khaled Khalifa [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Tony Messenger is an Australian writer, critic and interviewer who has had works published in many places including Overland Literary Journal, Southerly, Mascara Literary ...
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Lola Rogers on “The Colonel’s Wife” by Rosa Liksom [The Book That Never Was, Pt. 2]
You can find part one here. Finnish Literature LR: As you know, Finnish literature is just like the language. It's different. It's more different from English literature than, say, German literature is. CWP: What kind of things mark Finnish literature as “different”? LR: Well, I think The Colonel’s Wife is a ...
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Lola Rogers on “The Colonel’s Wife” by Rosa Liksom [The Book That Never Was, Pt. 1]
The Colonel's Wife by Rosa Liksom, translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers (Graywolf Press) BookMarks Reviews: Five total—Four Positive, One Mixed Awards: None Number of Finnish Works of Fiction Published in Translation from 2008-2019: 65 (5.42/year) Number of Those Translations Written by Women: 40 of the ...
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The Book That Never Was
I have no idea how to write anymore. Every week, I come up with some dumb idea for how to get back into posting here—"Five Outcomes for International Literature Post-COVID," "Escapism During Quarantine," "Can You Stress Drink AND Read Real Literature?," "Why Are All the Quarantine Listicles So Dumb?: The Virus and ...
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“Labyrinth” by Burhan Sönmez [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Tim Gutteridge is a Scottish literary translator, working from Spanish into English. His translation of Miserere de cocodrilos(Mercedes Rosende) will be published later this year by ...
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“Tentacle” by Rita Indiana [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Tobias Carroll is the author of the books Reel, Transitory, and the forthcoming Political Sign. Tentacle by Rita Indiana, translated from the Spanish by Achy ...
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“A Dream Come True” by Juan Carlos Onetti [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Spencer Ruchti is an intern at Tin House Books and formerly a bookseller at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge. His writing has appeared in The Adroit Journal, The Rumpus, and ...
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TMR 11.5: “Wuthering Heights Is Weird” [THE DREAMED PART}
Chad reaches a new quarantine low at the beginning of this week's episode (highly recommend checking out the video version), but after a lot of banter and deep dives into international speculative fiction, The Invention of Morel, Lost, and more, Chad and special guest Rachel Cordasco break down the first part of the ...
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“Will and Testament” by Vigdis Hjorth [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Elisa Wouk Almino is a Los Angeles-based writer and literary translator from Portuguese. She is the translator of This House(Scrambler Books, 2017), a collection of poetry by Ana ...
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“Book of Minutes” by Gemma Gorga [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Nancy Naomi Carlson is a poet, translator, and editor, whose latest book was called "new & noteworthy" by the New York Times. Recipient of two NEA literature translation grants ...
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“The Memory Police” by Yoko Ogawa [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Tony Malone is an Australian reviewer of fiction in translation, whose site, Tony’s Reading List, has been providing reviews continuously since 2009. His main focus is on Japanese ...
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“Time” by Etel Adnan [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards. Brandon Shimoda is the author of several books, most recently The Grave on the Wall (City Lights), which received the PEN Open Book Award, The Desert(The Song Cave), and Evening ...
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TMR 11.4: “Tulpas” [THE DREAMED PART]
This episode got off to a rough start, with Chad losing his shit over the May IndieNext list [ed. note: he still has not recovered] before Streamyard crashed and the whole episode had to be recorded. In the new, much calmer episode, Chad, Brian, and special guest Patrick Smith talk about tulpas, the night, Fresán writing in ...
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TMR 11.2: “Who Dreams the Dreamer” [THE DREAMED PART]
Chad, Brian, and special guest Mark Haber tried their damnedest to bring some levity to our current crisis on this week's episode. They laughed a lot while discussing Chad's surprisingly dull dream city, the way The Dreamed Part just drops you right into the flow, dream logic, how Fresan is the exception that proves the ...
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TMR 11.1: “We Remember Everything” [THE DREAMED PART]
In this week's preview episode for Season 11 of the Two Month Review--featuring The Dreamed Part by Rodrigo Fresán and Will Vanderhyden--Chad and Brian try their best to recall details from the plot of The Invented Part, the first book in the trilogy. They do . . . well, question mark? As cracked out as their descriptions ...
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Three Percent #178: This Podcast Is Not Contagious
Today's episode is all about small presses. Chad and Tom breakdown, discuss, elaborate on, and praise, Matvei Yankelevich's recent Poetry post 'The New Normal: How We Gave Up the Small Press." This is a rather wide-ranging conversation about grant applications, distribution for small presses, AWP, professionalization, how ...
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Three Percent #177: Eight Books
After a bit of banter about how baseball front offices might be as bad at naming things as book people, and a plug for Paul Vidich's The Coldest Warrior, Chad and Tom each draft four forthcoming books from a total of eight different presses that they've both agreed to read and discuss in future episodes. How could this ...
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Is It Real? [A January 2020 Reading Diary with Charts & Observations]
It's been sooooo long since I actually wrote something for here . . . I'm not entirely sure how to start! Chad 1.0 would open with something like "$%*# agents" and then go off on a couple individuals who are currently driving me INSANE. Chad 2.0 would come up with some wacky premise that blends ideas behind sabermetrics ...
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Three Percent #176: Dirty Bookshop
After a bit of a hiatus, Chad and Tom return to talk about the two biggest things to happen during Winter Institute: The American Dirt controversy and the launch of Bookshop.org. If you haven't been following the American Dirt debacle, here are a couple pieces to read: Laura Miller's piece in Slate, Rebecca Alter's ...
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“Reading Christine Montalbetti” by Warren Motte
As part of a larger series of initiatives involving Open Letter and Dalkey Archive Press, over the next few months, we'll be running a number of articles from CONTEXT magazine, a tabloid-style magazine started by John O'Brien and Dalkey Archive in 2000 as a way of introducing booksellers and readers to innovative writers ...
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What Did We Have to Talk About, Now That He Was Dead? [CONTEXT]
As part of a larger series of initiatives involving Open Letter and Dalkey Archive Press, over the next few months, we'll be running a number of articles from CONTEXT magazine, a tabloid-style magazine started by John O'Brien and Dalkey Archive in 2000 as a way of introducing booksellers and readers to innovative writers ...
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Three Percent #175: Biggest News Stories of 2019
On this week's episode, Chad and Tom discuss Tom's recent piece on Jean-Patrick Manchette for LARB and talk about which of his books are best to start with, and why there haven't been more breakout international noir authors. Then they pivot to this Publishers Weekly article on the "Top News Stories of 2019," discussing ...
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TMR 10.14: “We Made it to the End” [DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT]
We did it! Chad and Brian reflect on the somewhat surprising ending to Ducks, Newburyport and reflect on all 1,000+ of its glorious pages in the season finale to this Two Month Review. They debate whether the book is hopeful or pessimistic, the way in which its solipsism infects the reader's way of seeing the world, and they ...
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“Italian Short Stories” ed. by Jhumpa Lahiri
Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories ed. Jhumpa Lahiri Translated from the Italian by Various 528 pgs. | hc | 9780241299838 | $30.00 Penguin Random House Review by Jeanne Bonner Novels and memoirs often become labors of love for the authors who birth them. But what about an anthology? How often do we imagine ...
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TMR 10.13: “Dogs” [DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT]
Elizabeth DeMeo (assistant book editor at Tin House) joins Chad and Brian in the penultimate episode of this season of the Two Month Review. They talk family therapy. They talk about the Jim's encounter with the lioness. They make predictions about how the book will end. They debate whether it's better to read the book in a ...
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TMR 10.12: “Gone Missing” [DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT]
Chad and Brian go it alone on pages 777-862, talking about Galley Beggar's "go fund me" campaign, hardcovers vs. paperbacks, Stacy, what makes something Kafkaesque, the narrator's stasis, and much more. This week's music is "The Surprise Knock" by The New Pornographers. If you'd prefer to watch the conversation, you can ...
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“Seeing People Off” by Jana Beňová
Seeing People Off by Jana Beňová Translated from Slovak by Janet Livingstone 126 pgs. | pb | 9781937512590 | $14.99 Two Dollar Radio Review by David DeGusta Jana Beňová’s novel Seeing People Off, translated from the Slovak by Janet Livingstone, exists between clarity and confusion. Set in the Petržalka ...
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“The Book of Disappearance: A Novel” by Ibtisam Azem
The Book of Disappearance: A Novel by Ibtisam Azem Translated from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon 256 pgs. | pb | 9780815611110 | $19.95 Syracuse University Press Review by Grant Barber This wonderful, important second novel by Ibtisam Azem in English translation came out just in time for the observance of Women ...
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TMR 10.11: “Establish Justice” [DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT]
This week, Chad is joined by Rebecca Hussey (BookRiot) and Josh Cook (Porter Square Books, An Exaggerated Murder) to talk about pages 700-776 of Ducks, Newburyport. They make comparisons to any number of modernist authors (Proust, Woolf, Joyce), discuss mother-daughter relationships, "mom shaming," Stace's general sense of ...
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TMR 10.10: “A List of Definites” [DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT]
Jeremy Kitchen (Chicago Public Library, Eye 94) joins Chad and Brian to talk about "a list of definites" about the future, the (pretty silly) controversy surrounding Lucy Ellmann's recent Guardian interview, the way the themes of Duck, Newburyport make it difficult for some people to read, the ways in which this novel is ...
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Dark, Strange Books by Women in Translation [BTBA 2020]
This week's Best Translated Book Award post is from Pierce Alquist, who has a MA in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College and currently works in publishing in Boston. She is a freelance book critic, writer, and Book Riot contributor. She is also the Communications Coordinator for the Transnational Literature Series ...
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Three Percent #174: Devil’s Bargains
Chad and Tom play a short game on this podcast—when Tom isn't ranting about Amazon. They also discuss Bookshop, when the decade officially ends, favorite translations of the past ten years, Chad's upcoming hiatus from writing for Three Percent, and much more. Next episode Chad and Tom will discuss Tom's recent article on ...
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TMR 10.9: “Pattern Recognition” [DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT]
Chad and Brian deliver a true Thanksgiving treat in this episode, digging in deep to the narrative patterns in the book, the way Ellmann constructs the narrator's subjectivity, how the novel is a radical call to action, how some facts aren't really facts, terrible new slang terms, save the turtles, and much much more. This ...
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Book 6 [The No Context Project]
If you want the context for the "no context project," check out this post, which lays everything out and applies a 20-80 grading scale to "Book 7." Since I really want to get through these mystery books sooner rather than later--so that I can find out what they are and grade myself--I put aside my Charco reading for a bit ...
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Three Percent Bonus: Charco Press
Founded in 2016 with their first releases coming in late 2017, Charco Press is one of the most recent additions to the growing number of publishing houses focused on literature in translation. And although they've established a solid reputation in the UK, they just started distributing their books Stateside in October 2019. ...
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A Couple Turkish Authors [BTBA 2020]
This week's Best Translated Book Award pose is from Louisa Ermelino, who is the author of three novels; Joey Dee Gets Wise; The Black Madonna (Simon and Schuster); The Sisters Mallone (St. Martin’s Press) and a story collection, Malafemmina (Sarabande). She has worked atPeople, Time International, and InStyle magazines ...
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TMR 10.8: “Real Life Is Sad” [DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT]
Another late night conversation about Ducks, Newburyport! This week, P.T. Smith joins to discuss illness, the verbal virtuosity in this novel, sadness, relationships between parents and kids, and much more. Lots of quotes are read throughout this episode, and in honor of Lucy Ellmann's stated like of whisky, some of that ...
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“Beasts Head for Home” by Abe Kōbō
Beasts Head for Home by Abe Kōbō Translated from the Japanese by Richard F. Calichman 191 pgs.| pb | 9780231177054 | $25 Columbia University Press Review by Brendan Riley Crisp, stark, pristine scenes of gaunt settlements, vast wilderness, and tense human encounters fill this 1957 novel by Abe Kōbō, the ...
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Three Percent #173: The Poetry in Translation Episode
Anastasia Nikolis (poetry editor for Open Letter Books) and Emma Ramadan (translator, co-owner of Riffraaff) join Chad and Tom to breakdown ALTA 42, talk about poetry in translation, and go on a handful of minor rants—and one major one. (Thanks, Emma!) The Sarah Dessen controversy pops up, as does this article about ...
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TMR 10.7: “Blossom, Stasis, Spiral, Whoa” [DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT]
This week's Two Month Review was recorded pretty late (on the east coast), so things are a bit loopy. Nevertheless, James Crossley from Madison Books joins Chad and Brian to talk about pages 429-487 of Ducks, Newburyport. They talk a bit about the cultural references in this section—the old movies, Blossom—flip ahead to ...
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Book 7 [The No Context Project]
A couple months ago, while writing about Suzanne Jill Levine and Jessica Powell's translation of Silvina Ocampo's The Promise, I came up with a sort of crazy scheme: But this gave me a grand idea: What if I could review twenty books from twenty publishers in as blind as a fashion as possible? I wouldn’t know ...
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TMR 10.6: “The Simple Things” [DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT]
Chad and Brian break format a bit and discuss a number of the concerns, anxieties, and social issues that the narrator of Duck, Newburyport thinks about. From spiders to Morning Routine videos, active shooter situations to Trump feeling up Kurt Suzuki, this episode is a deep, yet funny, dive into our neuroses and ...
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How to Launch a Publishing House [Charco Press]
It's Charco Press month! After stepping away from these "monthly themes" for a minute (or, well, actually, a full month), I'm excited to get back to this, and have a bunch of posts planned out for November. If all goes according to plan (spoiler: HA!) I'd like to post a couple interviews with Charco Press translators, a ...
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“Garden by the Sea” by Mercè Rodoreda
Garden by the Sea by Mercè Rodoreda Translated from the Catalan by Maruxa Relaño and Martha Tennent 230 pgs. | pb | 9781948830089 | $15.95 Open Letter Books Review by Kira Baran Originally published in 1967 in the Catalan, Garden by the Sea is just one of several works that has earned ...
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TMR 10.5: “The Buzz Must Go On” [DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT]
Lori Feathers of Interabang Books in Dallas joined Chad and Brian for this special episode to talk about the destruction of her bookstore, what's next for Interabang, and information about how you can help. (Answer: Order Joytime Killbox and The Dreamed Part from their website.) Then they talk about Lori's interview with ...
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“The Teacher” by Michal Ben-Naftali
The Teacher by Michal Ben-Naftali Translated from the Hebrew by Daniella Zamir 138 pgs. | pb | 9781948830072 | $14.95 Open Letter Books Review by Kira Baran Michal Ben-Naftali’s background in philosophy shines through in her debut novel, The Teacher. Originally published in Hebrew in 2015, the work was ...
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TMR 10.4: “Is it Translatable” [Ducks, Newburyport]
Rhett McNeil (translator of Machado de Assis, Gonçalo Tavares, Antonio Lobo Antunes, and more) joins Chad and Brian to talk about the way in which Ducks, Newburyport is less of a single-sentence and more of a never-ending list, about how it is and isn't like Ulysses, about time in the novel, about Ellmann's playfulness, ...
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A Good, Exciting Translation [BTBA 2020]
Today's Best Translated Book Award post is from Elisa Wouk Almino, a writer and literary translator from Portuguese. She is currently the L.A. senior editor at Hyperallergic and an editor of Harlequin creature’s online translation platform. She teaches translation at Catapult and UCLA Extension. I teach an online ...
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Three Percent #171: Can We Go a Week Without an Award Controversy?
This week's podcast is about two kerfuffles: the Booker Prize one and the one between King County Library and Macmillan. There's also some discussion as to why UK book culture allows for critique and small voices to be heard (vs. the American way in which everything is fine), Chad goes on and on about On Becoming a God in ...
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TMR 10.3: “How Do I Promote This?” [Ducks, Newburyport]
Vanessa Stauffer from Biblioasis came on this episode to talk about the Booker Prize, about the jacket copy she wrote for the Ducks galley, about types of moms, about things in the book that pay off and mysteries that remain mysteries, about the ways in which Ellmann is breaking form and the strong feminist perspective ...
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Time Does Not Bring Relief
"History is written by the victors" is one of those cliches that's so obviously true that it requires next to no explanation. But the ability to provide evidence for what the victors do when writing history is usually a bit more circumspect and tricky to get ahold of . . . Last Thursday, the Nobel Prize for Literature was ...
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Three Percent #170: Don’t Give a Million Dollars to a Fascist
This podcast comes in HOT. Lots of talk about how Peter Handke doesn't deserve any award, much less the Nobel Prize. (And if you don't know why, just listen for his quote at the end denying Serb atrocities at Srebrenica by saying "You can stick your corpses up your arse.") Then things transition to an existential conversation ...
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TMR 10.2: “The Fact That” [Ducks, Newburyport]
Due to an unforeseen illness, Chad and Brian ended up going this one alone, and focus mostly on the way that "the fact that" functions, both in building the character and impacting the reader. Chad asks Brian some craft questions, they debate what makes a book "difficult" (and whether this is difficult or just long), more ...
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TMR 10.1: “Brave Publishing” [Ducks, Newburyport]
The tenth season of the Two Month Review gets underway with special guest Dan Wells of Biblioasis talking about how they came to publish Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport, and the risks involved in doing a 1,020-page book. They also introduce Ellmann--who has one of the greatest bios ever--and the novel itself. Conversation ...
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Value & Controversy
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on Vernon Subutex I by Virginie Despentes, translated by Frank Wynne, and Sympathy for the Translator by Mark Polizzotti in which I teased a future post (this one!) in which the "value" and "controversy" terms would be inverted: the nonfiction book from the translator would supply the heat, ...
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The Best Book Might Be The First Book You Read [BTBA 2020]
Today's Best Translated Book Award post comes from Christopher Phipps, who has been a Bay Area bookseller for years. He worked with DIESEL and East Bay Booksellers in Oakland and can be found slinging tomes these days at City Lights in San Francisco. EEG by Daša Drndić, translated from the Croatian by Celia ...
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TMR 9.10: Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold (pgs 407-448)
And just like that, season nine of the Two Month Review comes to an end. But first, we have a very nice discussion with Kjersti Skomsvold herself about Monsterhuman, trends in Norwegian writing, autofiction vs. creative nonfiction vs. memoir, authors to read, and much more. (Spoiler: She's just as interesting and charming in ...
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Season 10 of the Two Month Review: “Ducks, Newburyport” by Lucy Ellmann
This Thursday (9/26), the final podcast in the ninth season of the Two Month Review will drop, wrapping up our discussion of Kjersti Skomsvold's Monsterhuman, which is translated from the Norwegian by Becky Crook. Which means that it's time for SEASON TEN. (Ten!?!) And for the first time ever, we're going to be focusing ...
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Three Percent #169: Year Two of the NBA for Translated Literature
After an update from Chad about his trip to London and Amsterdam, he and Tom break down the National Book Award for Translated Literature longlist, exposing their general ignorance along the way. (They've read, combined, like two of the ten titles?) Also, sure are a lot of Penguin Random House books on these longlists! They ...
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TMR 9.09: Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold (pgs 360-406)
Translator Becky Crook comes on this week's podcast to talk about the process of working on Monsterhuman, all the things that she couldn't quite get in there, ones she's very proud of, the reasons why she thinks the book works, and much much more! Only one episodee left! You can watch the Wednesday, September 25 episode ...
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TMR 9.08: Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold (pgs 316-360)
This week, Brian is AWOL BUT Patrick Smith brings his A-game. He and Chad talk about the self-conscious humor in Monsterhuman, awkward interactions, the shape and evolution of the narrative as a whole, some info about The Faster I Walk, the Smaller I Am, and much more. A very fun episode that opened as awkwardly as ever . . ...
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Smelling Books [BTBA 2020]
This week's BTBA post if from Justin Walls, a bookseller with Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon who can be found on Twitter @jaawlfins. The conceptual artist Anicka Yi's olfactory-based installation Washing Away of Wrongs (2014, created in conjunction with French perfumer Christophe Laudamiel) consists of two ...
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Controversy & Value
I absolutely love the Virginie Despentes books that I've read, and Vernon Subutex 1—the first part of a trilogy that she concluded in 2017—is no exception. Like her other novels, the prose is direct, unadorned, and based very heavily in character. Very unlikeable characters. Offensive characters. Characters who are most ...
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TMR 9.07: Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold (pgs 275-316)
Although this episode isn't as funny as last week's discussion of "lay-down Sally," it does get into some of Brian's neuroses about his forthcoming book, which is entertaining. They talk a lot about Skomsvold's humor, about the creepy ways in which various photographers and interviewers treat her as a young female artist, ...
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Flash Sale on Open Letter Preorders!
For a few different reasons—mainly that I wasn't able to get the new excerpt from Sara Mesa's Four by Four online until the WITMonth discount code had expired, but also to celebrate The Dreamed Part being on Kirkus's list of "30 Most Anticipated Fiction Books"—we've decided to have a flash sale on all of our ...
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Three Percent #168: The 6% Improvement
On this episode, Chad shares some interesting data about the number of books by women in translation before and after the creation of Women in Translation Month, Tom talks about the most recent Amazon controversy, they breakdown the National Translation Award for Prose Longlist (they'll talk poetry in a future episode), and ...
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“Four by Four” by Sara Mesa [An Edited Excerpt]
Information about Katie Whittemore's translation of Four by Four by Sara Mesa has been floating around this website (and my twitter) since the beginning of the year. January was "Spain Month" and featured an interview with Katie and an early excerpt of Four by Four. Well, by the middle of September, advanced reader copies ...
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Thirty-One Books by Women in Translation [BTBA 2020]
This week's BTBA post is from Pierce Alquist, who has a MA in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College and currently works in publishing in Boston. She is also a freelance book critic, writer, and Book Riot contributor. She can be found on Twitter @PierceAlquist and on Book Riot. Women in Translation Month is nearing ...
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TMR 9.06: Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold (pgs 226-274)
Caitlin Baker from Island Books joins Chad and Brian this week to talk about "The Herring Factory" from Kjersti Skomsvold's Monsterhuman. After a strong pitch for nominating Brian for "Best Local Author" in City Paper's annual Best of Rochester voting, they get into the book itself, talking about the meta-textual moment of ...
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“Cars on Fire” by Mónica Ramón Ríos [Excerpt]
Now you're really getting to preview our books . . . Although Cars on Fire by Mónica Ramón Ríos, translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers, is available for preorder from various online retailers, we don't even have this book up on our website yet and, as of yesterday, on our website as well. We haven't even presented ...
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“The Nocilla Trilogy” by Agustín Fernández Mallo
The Nocilla Trilogy by Agustín Fernández Mallo Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Bunstead pb | 9780374222789 | $30.00 FSG Review by Vincent Francone Most reviews of The Nocilla Trilogy (written by Agustín Fernández Mallo, recently translated into English by Thomas Bunstead, beautifully packaged by ...
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Women in Translation by Publisher
Earlier this week I posted a few infographics about the breakdown of books (fiction + poetry) in translation by men vs. women from the sixteen countries that have produced the most new translated titles since 2008. Lots of qualifiers in there! To clarify: I took all countries with more than 100 books in translation in the ...
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Three Percent #167: We Could All Do Better
Meytal Radzinski joins Chad and Tom to talk about Women in Translation Month, depressing statistics, Virginie Despentes, nonfiction in translation, hopes for the future, and much more. As always, feel free to send any and all comments or questions to: threepercentpodcast@gmail.com. Also, if there are articles you’d like ...
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TMR 9.05: Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold (pgs 180-225)
Tom Flynn from Volumes opens up today's episode with a reading from Brian's first book, Joytime Killbox. Then, along with Chad, they break down the rest of "The Human School" from Monsterhuman, talk about how much they love Skomsvold's voice and sense of humor, look at the way in which she starts playing with first- and ...
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“The Teacher” by Michal Ben-Naftali [Excerpt]
There are three more forthcoming Open Letter titles by women that I want to share for Women in Translation Month. First up is The Teacher by Michel Ben-Naftali, translated from the Hebrew by Daniella Zamir. Here's the jacket copy: No one knew the story of Elsa Weiss. She was a respected English teacher at a Tel Aviv high ...
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Releasing Today: THE TRANSLATOR’S BRIDE by João Reis
“A neurotic little gem: fast, fun, frenzied, and feisty.” —Jeremy Garber, Powell's A humorous attempt to get one's life back in order that's part Thomas Bernhard, part Max Frisch At the start of The Translator's Bride, the Translator's bride ...
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The Most Anticipated Translation of 2019
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Riverhead) Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead may well be the most anticipated translation of the season. Olga Tokarczuk’s second novel in as many years is a mystery novel that never declares ...
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Women in Translation by Country
Since I skipped last week, I'm going to post a few WITMonth infographics this week, starting with the three charts below. But first, a bit of methodology and explanation. I was curious about which countries were the most balanced in terms of books in translation written by men and women. We know from the earlier ...
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TMR 9.04: Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold (pgs 144-180)
Even though the first few seconds ("On today's Two Month Review we'll be talking about . . . ") got cut off, Chad gives his most professional podcast introduction to date, before he and Brian talk about the Nansen Academy, the cyclical nature of chronic illness, the idea of plot points vs. events, and reasons their respective ...
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Reread, Rewrite, Repeat
Some years ago, I was invited on an editorial trip to Buenos Aires, where we were given a walking tour of the more literary areas of the city, including a bar where Polish ex-pat Witold Gombrowicz used to hang out. The tour guide told us a story about how Gombrowicz hated Borges and would frequently, drunkenly, ...
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Women in Translation for BTBA 2020
It's time for weekly BTBA posts! First up is one by Louisa Ermelino, who is the author of three novels; Joey Dee Gets Wise; The Black Madonna (Simon and Schuster); The Sisters Mallone (St. Martin’s Press) and a story collection, Malafemmina (Sarabande). She has worked ...
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TMR 9.03: Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold (pgs 92-143)
In this episode, Chad and Brian applaud Kjersti for not getting back together with her ex-boyfriend, talk about circular structures, about the evolution of her written voice, about Antony and the Johnsons, the myth-making behind Babe Ruth, and much more. This week's music is "Patterns Prevail" by Young Guv. Next episode ...
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Two Spanish Books for Women in Translation Month
Like usual, this post is a mishmash of all the thoughts I've had over the past week, mostly while out on a 30-mile bike ride. (I need to get in as many of these as possible before winter, which is likely to hit Rochester in about a month.) Rather than try and weave these into one single coherent post, I'm just going to throw ...
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Garden by the Sea by Mercè Rodoreda [Excerpt]
To celebrate Women in Translation Month, we're going to post excerpts from several of our forthcoming books, starting with the new Rodoreda title, Garden by the Sea. You can get 40% off this and ALL Open Letter titles written or translated by women by using the code WITMONTH at checkout on our website. Garden by ...
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40% Off All Open Letter Books Written or Translated by Women
Women in Translation Month is always an exciting time to discover, read, discuss, and celebrate books by women from around the world. It was created by Meytal Radzinski back in 2014 (who we're hoping to have on a podcast this month), and has since spawned numerous articles, events, and even the Warwick Prize for Women in ...
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TMR 9.02: Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold (pgs 46-92)
One of the funniest TMR episodes in weeks, Chad and Brian crack each other up over writerly anxieties, the sharp wit Kjersti displays in this section, the White Claw Phenomenon, writer vs. author vs. journaler, Kjersti's distain for bad poetry (and TV) about chronic fatigue syndrome, pop culture references from the ...
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Info on the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards
We're happy to announce the 2020 Best Translated Book Award! All the relevant information is below. Please let me know if you have any questions. Award Dates In terms of dates, this is subject to change, but currently we’re planning on announcing the longlists for fiction and poetry on Wednesday, April 1st, the finalists ...
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Embrace the Chaos
So, for the first time in, probably ever, when I didn't have an idea for this week's post, I didn't steal one of Sam Miller's ideas from the Effectively Wild podcast. Instead, in a real reversal, I went back to the podcasts I recorded last week and came up with two completely unrelated concepts that I'm going to jam ...
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“The Naked Woman” by Armonía Somers
The Naked Woman by Armonía Somers Translated from the Spanish by Kit Maude 168 pgs. | pb | 9781936932436 | $16.95 Feminist Press Review by Rachel Crawford A woman turns thirty, decapitates herself, and after repositioning her severed head onto her neck, wanders through the woods stark naked. In part, this is ...
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Three Percent Bonus: John Erik Riley
To celebrate Norwegian Month at Three Percent, Chad talked with John Erik Riley, author, photographer, editor of Norwegian literature for Cappelen Damm, and member of the "Blindness Circle." They talk about current trends in Norwegian literature, American comparisons for various authors, a couple really long books, Norwegian ...
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TMR 9.01: Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold (pgs 1-45)
The new season of the Two Month Review starts here! Through the end of September we'll be discussing Kjersti Skomsvold's Monsterhuman, translated from the Norwegian by Becky L. Crook. Marius Hjeldnes from Cappelen Damm joins Chad and Brian to provide a bit of background on Skomsvold, on trends in Norwegian literature, on ...
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“Thick of It” by Ulrike Almut Sandig
Thick of It by Ulrike Almut Sandig Translated from the German Karen Leeder 96 pgs. | hc | 9780857425560 | $19.00 Seagull Books Review by Talia Franks Thick of It by Ulrike Almut Sandig is a slender book of poetry, vibrantly translated from the original German into English by Karen Leeder. The poems are prefaced ...
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Publishers: Come to ALTA 42 in Rochester!
For all editors and publishers out there, we wanted to put make sure you knew about the American Literary Translators Association conference in Rochester on November 7-10 and some of the opportunities available to publishers. Nowadays the ALTA conference attracts ~450 literary translators to a conference featuring ...
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Three Percent #165: Disorder in the Book Shelves
This episode of the Three Percent Podcast never gets to its actual topic, but includes minor disagreements about ebooks in libraries and its impact on ebook revenue, more questions about Book Culture's situation, a general sense of malaise, trying to make sense of Dean Koontz, Audible's "Caption" program, a wild idea about ...
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The All or Nothing of Book Conversation
In theory, this is a post about Norwegian female writers in translation. I know it's going to end up in a very different space, though, so let's kick this off with some legit stats that can be shared, commented on, and used to further the discussion about women in translation. Back in the first post of July—Norwegian ...
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Season 9 of the Two Month Review: Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold
Now that I'm back from a week-long self-imposed retreat, it's time to overwhelm this site with posts about Norwegian literature. There are two special audio interviews in the works, a post about a few female Norwegian writers (and Shirley Jackson) that will go up on Monday, and the kick off of the new season of the Two Month ...
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Jan Kjærstad [Sort of the Open Letter Author of the Month]
Prior to the start of July, my plan was to highlight Jan Kjæstad, author of the "Jonas Wergeland Trilogy" about a famous TV director who is jailed for murdering his wife. The three books present three different histories of Wergeland's life, which is interesting enough, but what's really great is how each one employs a ...
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TMR 8.11: CoDex 1962 (Pages 451-517)
We did it! Chad and Rachel Cardasco (with an assist from Tom Flynn of Volumes) talk about the last sections of Sjón's CoDex 1962. It's been quite the season and they bring it home in old school TMR style with a lot of Twin Peaks talk, many many digressions, acknowledging motifs and ideas that may or may not actually be ...
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Dalkey Archive and Graywolf Press [Norway Month]
I initially had some fun ideas for this post—mostly trying to work in my theory of the "2019 Sad Dad Movement" and Elisabeth Åsbrink's forthcoming Made in Sweden, the pitch for which is "How the Swedes are not nearly so egalitarian, tolerant, hospitable or cozy and they would like to (have you) think"—but I think I'm ...
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TMR 8.10: CoDex 1962 (Pages 407-450)
Things start to come clear in this penultimate episode of this season of the Two Month Review. We get a new story about Joséf's birth, along with some absolutely incredible writing by Sjón. Lots of parallels and mirroring in this section, and the discussion helps set up next week's conclusion. The next episode will focus ...
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Three Percent Bonus: Becky Crook
As part of "Norwegian Month" here at Three Percent, translator Becky Crook (The Black Signs, Monsterhuman, Silence: In the Age of Noise, and many more) came on the podcast to talk about her first cover letter, in which ways she's become a better translator over the past half-decade, what to watch out for in contracts, the ...
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Nordic Literature In Translation: A Huge Data Dump
As listeners to the Three Percent Podcast already know, last month I went on an editorial trip to Norway to meet with Norwegian publishers, agents, and authors, and to participate on a panel at the Lillehammer Book Festival. The panel ended up being a really enjoyable, wide-ranging discussion (which I will try and replicate ...
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TMR 8.09: CoDex 1962 (Pages 344-406)
We're into the homestretch! Today episode, featuring special guest Katie Whittemore, kicks off the discussion of the third and final volume of Sjón's CoDex 1962, "I'm a Sleeping Door: A Science-Fiction Story." More origin myths in this volume, ranging from the epic and literary, to the mundane and realistic. A woman gives ...
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Three Percent #163: What Do You Want
Chad and Tom talk about a number of interrelated issues related to the costs of bookstore ownership and being a bookseller. They talk about the recent letter from Chris Doeblin at Book Culture, The Book Diaries, Human Rights for Translators, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Internet and Book Culture, and the ...
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Three Percent Bonus: Ben Lindbergh
In this special bonus episode, Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer and Effectively Wild talks with Chad about his new book, The MVP Machine. They talk about the premise of the book—how player development is the new "Moneyball" and is being driven by players and technology—about the process of co-writing, feedback loops for ...
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“The Book of Collateral Damage” by Sinan Antoon
The Book of Collateral Damage by Sinan Antoon Translated from the Arabic by James Richardson 312 pgs. | hc | 9780300228946 | $24.00 Yale Margellos Press Review by Grant Barber Author Sinan Antoon is an Assoc. Professor at the Gallatin School of Individual Study of NYU. His undergraduate degree was in 1990 from ...
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TMR 8.08: CoDex 1962 (Pages 303-343)
This week, Tobias Carroll joined Chad and Brian to talk about werewolves, puns that don't exactly work in translation, evil baseball card shop owners, weird Masonic rituals, Party Down South, and Fred Durst and John Travolta's The Fanatic. They also have a lot of praise for Sjón and the wild, fun nature of the second volume ...
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TMR 8.07: CoDex 1962 (Pages 257-302)
This week's episode covers a lot of ground, from disturbing American racism circa 1917 to codswallop; from werewolves to parliamentary fights, from ghosts to crime/heist narratives. It's a really fun episode that has a good take on this section of the book mixed with some really fun segues and digressions. The next episode ...
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Three Percent #162: I Am a Wild Rose
Chad and Tom are joined by Mark Haber from Brazos Bookstore and author of the forthcoming Reinhardt's Garden (October 1, Coffee House Press). They talk a bit about Translation Bread Loaf (two thumbs up) and about a special poster for anyone who buys the First 100 from Open Letter, before trying their best to breakdown a ...
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The Five Tools, Part II: Translators [Let’s Praise More of My Friends]
. . . poor translations, he asserted, were the worst crimes an academic or a writer could commit, and a translator shouldn't be allowed to call themselves a translator until their translation had been read by hundreds of scholars and for hundreds of years, so that, in short, a translator would never know if they were a ...
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The Five Tools, Part I: Authors [Let’s Praise My Friends]
One of the most entertaining parts of my past three weeks of travel was the discovery that Norwegians refer to first-time authors as “debutants.” Which, OK, at first, is weird. The first time someone said it aloud, “she’s a debutant author,” I too had the urge to correct them. But then, like any great joke that's ...
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TMR 8.06: CoDex 1962 (Pages 199-256)
Chad and Brian break down the next few chapters of "Iceland's Thousand Years" by Sjón, which really set the plot in motion. They also talk about water, what it means to be an Icelander, how "bacon-eater" is an insult, Danes in general, myth-making, and much more. The next episode will focus on pages 257-302 (all in the ...
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Three Percent #161: Will a French Book Win the BTBA?
Chad and Tom took some time off on Memorial Day to bring you this little podcast about the Best Translated Book Award finalists (winner will be announced at 5pm on 5/29 at BEA/NYRF, and there will be an informal afterparty at The Brooklyneer on Houston starting at 7), about the Man Booker International winner, about the ...
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TMR 8.05: CoDex 1962 (Pages 156-198)
Even without an expert to guide them, Chad and Brian dissect the end of the first volume of CoDex 1962, talking golems and tenderness, speculating about the film behind the narrator's eyes, evaluating origin myths (and their apocalyptic counterparts), and praising the overall narrative structure of "Thine Eyes Did See My ...
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Four Attempts at Approaches [Drawn & Quarterly]
This post comes to you thanks to a few different starting points: a box of translated graphic novels that Drawn & Quarterly sent me a couple of weeks ago, the fact that Janet Hong translated one of them (see last week’s interview), the fact that I don’t have time this month to read a ton of novels for these weekly ...
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Carlos Labbé “Ofri Afro”
One of the many very cool things about Carlos Labbé (our "Author of the Month!" use LABBE at checkout for 30% off all his books) is that he's not only a fascinating writer--he's also a very interesting musician. You can hear all of his music on Soundcloud and Spotify, but I wanted to take a post just to push his latest ...
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Spiritual Choreographies [Excerpt]
As mentioned last week, in celebration of the imminent release of Carlos Labbé's Spiritual Choreographies, we decided to make Carlos our "Author of the Month." From now until June 1st, you can use the code LABBE at checkout to get 30% off any and all of his books. (Including ePub versions. And preorders.) And to try and ...
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TMR 8.04: CoDex 1962 (Pages 110-155)
Kári Tulinius joins Chad and Brian this week and provides some incredibly valuable insight into the translation itself, connections to Iceland and to other writings, and much much more. This is one of the most difficult parts of the book to read, given the horrific actions of one of the characters, but also points toward ...
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“Melville: A Novel” by Jean Giono
Melville by Jean Giono Translated from the French by Paul Eprile 108 pgs. | pb | 9781681371375 | $14.00 NYRB Review by Brendan Riley In The Books in My Life (1952), Henry Miller, devoting an entire chapter to French writer Jean Giono (1895-1970), boasts about spending “several years. . . . preaching the ...
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Three Percent #160: Double Controversy
One of the calmest podcasts to date featuring two controversial topics: the new Open Letter cover design, and the side-effects of suddenly doubling (or quadrupling) the number of translations published every year. In terms of recommendations, this week Chad is all about the completely wild Bred from the Eyes of a Wolf by ...
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Dezafi [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. P.T. Smith reads, writes, and lives in Vermont. Dezafi by Frankétienne, translated from the French by Asselin Charles (Haiti, University of Virginia) Every year, the BTBA ...
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Transparent City [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Tobias Carroll is the managing editor of Vol.1 Brooklyn and the author of the books Reel and Transitory. He writes the Watchlist column for Words Without Borders. Transparent ...
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Negative Space [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Tess Lewis is a writer and translator from French and German. She is co-chair of the PEN America Translation Committee and serves as an Advisory Editor for the Hudson Review. Her ...
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the easiness and the loneliness [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Laura Marris is a writer and translator. Her poems and translations have appeared in The Yale Review, The Brooklyn Rail,The Cortland Review, The Volta, Asymptote, and elsewhere. ...
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Pretty Things [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Giselle Robledo is a reader trying to infiltrate the book reviewer world. You can find her on Twitter at @Objetpetit_a_. Pretty Things by Virginie Despentes, translated from ...
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Interview with Janet Hong [Graphic Novels in Translation]
Off to a bit of a slow start here, but this month's focus on Three Percent is going to be graphic novels in translation. I'll have a post up on Monday about some Drawn & Quarterly titles I've been reading, then one on NYRB Comics later in the month. Also hoping to have another interview or two, but I'll keep those to ...
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Carlos Labbé [Author of the Month]
In celebration of the release of Carlos Labbé's Spiritual Choreographies later this month--and because of a little surprise we'll unveil soon enough--we decided to make Carlos our "Author of the Month." From now until June 1st, you can use the code LABBE at checkout to get 30% off any and all of his books. (Including ePub ...
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Disoriental [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. James Crossley has stood behind the counter of one independent bookstore or another for more than fifteen years and is currently the manager of brand-new Madison Books in Seattle. ...
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Bride and Groom [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Ruchama Johnston-Bloom, who writes about modern Jewish thought and Orientalism. She has a PhD in the History of Judaism from the University of Chicago and is the Associate Director of ...
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TMR 8.03: CoDex 1962 (Pages 58-109)
Chad's just back from a 7 hour train ride. Brian is inebriated. Tom Flynn is . . . Tom Flynn? It's a classic episode of the Two Month Review about horny avenging angels, chamber pot dumps, how many books actually last for a hundred years, the name "Karl," whatever Bumble is, and much more. A fun, loose podcast about a ...
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People in the Room [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Tom Flynn is the manager/buyer for Volumes Bookcafe (@volumesbooks on all social sites) in Chicago. He can often be found interrupting others' work in order to make them read a ...
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Congo Inc.: Bismarck’s Testament [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Noah M. Mintz is a translator, a former bookseller, and a PhD student at Columbia University. Congo Inc.: Bismarck’s Testament by In Koli Jean Bofane, translated from the ...
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Architecture of Dispersed Life: Selected Poetry [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Aditi Machado is the author of Some Beheadings and the translator of Farid Tali’s Prosopopoeia. She is the former poetry editor at Asymptote and the visiting poet-in-residence ...
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TMR 8.02: CoDex 1962 (Pages 1-57)
This is a special episode of the Two Month Review featuring Chad's "World Literature & Translation" class, who read CoDex 1962 (and ten other contemporary works in translation) this semester. They talk with Chad and Brian about interpretation and translation, how they judge whether a translation is good or bad, Werner ...
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A Guesstimation of a Booklist Review-type Post
I alluded to this in an earlier post, but the main reason Three Percent has been light on this sort of content (and heavy on BTBA content, which is all stellar and worth checking out) isn't due to a lack of desire or interest, but a confluence of other events: deadlines for two pieces (one that should be available shortly, ...
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“Dark Constellations” by Pola Oloixarac
Dark Constellations by Pola Oloixarac Translated from the Spanish by Roy Kesey 216 pgs. | pb | 9781616959234 | $22.00 Soho Press Reviewed by Grant Barber Dark Constellations, the second novel in translation by the author of Savage Theories, continues the intriguing, complex narratives of science, ...
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Öræfi: The Wasteland [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Keaton Patterson buys books for a living at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @Tex_Ulysses. Öræfi: The Wasteland by Ófeigur Sigurdsson, translated ...
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Three Percent #159: Publishing in 2025?
Chad and Tom are back to talk about Independent Bookstore Day (and Free Comic Book Day and Record Store Day), the Indie Playlist Initiative, fascists storming Politics & Prose, Alex Shephard's Mueller Report article, how much money Stanford (the Duke of the West?) is wasting on their crappy football program instead of ...
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After the Winter [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Rebecca Hussey is a community college English professor, a book reviewer, and a Book Riot contributor, where she writes a monthly round-up of indie press books, including many books ...
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Love in the New Millennium [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Rachel Cordasco has a PhD in literary studies and currently works as a developmental editor. She also writes reviews for publications like World Literature Today and Strange Horizons ...
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Convenience Store Woman [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Elijah Watson is a bookseller at A Room of One’s Own Bookstore. He can be found on Twitter @wavvymango. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated from the ...
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TMR 8.01: CoDex 1962 (Introduction)
The new season of the Two Month Review kicks off with a pretty wide-ranging discussion. Sure, there is a bit about Sjón (pronounced SYOHN, which is not how Chad says it) and a few things about his earlier books and CoDex 1962, but a good part of this introductory episode is about patterns in narrative, cinematic realism, ...
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CoDex 1962: Introduction
The podcast version of this will be live tomorrow morning, but in the meantime, you can always watch us talk about literature, Iceland, my silly theories, a mystery project, cinematic realism, and Game of Thrones. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and you can catch every Two Month Review episode before the official ...
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The Governesses [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Pierce Alquist has a MA in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College and currently works in publishing in Boston. She is also a freelance book critic, writer, and Book Riot ...
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The Hospital [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Justin Walls is a bookseller with Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon and can be found on Twitter @jaawlfins. The Hospital by Ahmed Bouanani, translated from the French by ...
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The Man Between [Genre of the Month]
I've been very lax in writing about the Open Letter author/genre of the month for April: nonfiction. But, there are still a couple of weeks left to share some info about our previously published and forthcoming works of nonfiction. And, as always, you can get 30% any of these books by using NONFICTION at ...
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Bricks and Mortar [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Tony Messenger is an Australian writer, critic and interviewer who has had works published in Overland Literary Journal, Southerly Journal, Mascara Literary Review, Burning House ...
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Season Eight of the Two Month Review: CODEX 1962 by Sjón
If you're a long-time listener to the Two Month Review podcast, or even a part-time follower of the Open Letter twitter, you've probably already heard that the next season of the podcast (it's eighth?!) is going to be all about Sjón's CoDex 1962. "Spanning eras, continents, and genres, CoDex 1962—twenty years in ...
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Moon Brow [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Tara Cheesman is a blogger turned freelance book critic, National Book Critics Circle member & 2018 Best Translated Book Award Fiction Judge. Her reviews can be found online at ...
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Three Percent #158: 2019 Best Translated Book Award Longlists
Best Translated Book Award fiction judge Kasia Bartoszynska joins Chad and Tom to talk about the recently released longlists. After providing some insight into the committee's thinking and discussions (and confirming that Chad had no knowledge of the lists beforehand, while not 100% confirming that Chad isn't Adam ...
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Seventeen [Why This Book Should Win]
Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. Adam Hetherington is a reader and a BTBA judge. Seventeen by Hideo Yokoyama, translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai (Japan, FSG) In August of 1985, Japan Airlines ...
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Three Percent BONUS EPISODE: Antonia Lloyd-Jones and Sean Bye on Polish Reportage
As part of Nonfiction in Translation Month at Three Percent, Polish translators Antonia Lloyd-Jones and Sean Bye came on the podcast to explain Polish Reportage, talk about some key figures and forthcoming books, and more or less introduce Open Letter's new nonfiction line. Some of the titles mentioned on this podcast ...
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The 2019 Best Translated Book Award Longlists
Although it doesn't seem like everyone believes me--I've gotten a few emails about titles that didn't make the Best Translated Book Award longlists, and one promoting a conspiracy theory that I am Adam Hetherington—I had no clear idea which titles made the BTBA longlists until they appeared on The Millions yesterday ...
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Who is the Chris Davis of Books? (AKA Does Literature Have “The Room”?)
Let's just get this out of the way, right here at the start: The nonfiction in translation data I've compiled for the PW Translation Database is incomplete. Which you can interpret, with no ill will, as "Chad has done a poor job with this research." To be fair, there is a two-year period in which the nonfiction data is ...
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Meet the BTBA Judges!
Tomorrow morning at 10am the 2019 Best Translated Book Award longlists will be revealed over at The Millions. As a bit of a preview, the judges wanted to introduce themselves . . . Keaton Patterson, a lifelong Texan, has an MA in Literature from the University of Houston-Clear Lake. For the past five years, he has been ...
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Mike Trout Floats All Boats
Let's start with what this post isn't going to be. It's not going to be a post about nonfiction in translation even though I declared, just yesterday, that this is "Nonfiction in Translation Month" at Three Percent. That's really going to kick off next week with a post about two true crime books in translation and a weird ...
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Are These Clues? [BTBA 2019]
We are days away from finding out which titles made the 2019 BTBA longlist! In the meantime, here's a post from Katarzyna (Kasia) Bartoszyńska, an English professor at Monmouth College, a translator (from Polish to English), and a former bookseller at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Chicago. There are simply too many good ...
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Three Percent #157: Post-Portland AWP
On this atypically subdued episode, Chad recounts some of his adventures in Portland at the AWP conference, and speculates about why this was his favorite one to date. Tom helps illuminate some of the mysteries behind IndieBound and what might be next for independent stores trying to capture some online sales. (And how this ...
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Two Month Review #7.9: Radiant Terminus (Chapters 39-49/END)
Chad and Brian finish off Radiant Terminus and talk about possible interpretation of the ending, whether anyone came out of this book OK, the balance between humor and horror, written vs. oral culture, possible readings or approaches to the novel, and a desire for a "Post-Exotic" journal. They also revisit Volodine's ...
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Blogging Like It’s 1967 [Anniversaries, Volume 1]
Tomorrow afternoon we'll run the first of several interviews with Damion Searls, translator of the first complete version of Anniversaries to appear in English. If things go according to plan, each month we'll dig deeper and deeper into this massive book, a twentieth-century masterpiece that weighs something ...
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Three Percent #156: The Netflix of Titles
On this week's podcast, Chad and Tom talk laugh about how HarperVia conceives of itself, praise this year's National Book Award for Translation judges, give some spotty analysis of the Man Crankstart (?) Booker International longlist, the idea of an International Writers Hall of Fame (vote here), the one NCAA Basketball ...
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BTBA-Eligible Books from Japan [BTBA 2019]
We're exactly 24 days away from finding out which titles are on the 2019 BTBA longlist! (It will be announced at The Millions, and I [Chad] won't know what's on it until everyone else finds out. I'm so excited! I love being completely in the dark about this.) If you're interested in joining the conversation about which books ...
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“Ergo” by Jakov Lind [Excerpt]
Slowly and heavily, a hippopotamus rising from the Nile, he rose from the paper mountain, beat the nightmare of virginal lewdness out of his clothes and stood there, a squat man of sixty with short gray hair and swollen lips, crossing his hands over his forehead, and looked around him darkly. Have you been watching me again ...
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“Landscape in Concrete” by Jakov Lind [Excerpt]
When you lose your way in the Ardennes, you’re lost. What use are plans and prayers. A landscape without faces is like air nobody breathes. A landscape in itself is nothing. The country through which German Sergeant Gauthier Bachmann was making his way on the second Monday before Easter was green but lifeless. [. . .] And ...
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Joshua Cohen on Jakov Lind [Author of the Month]
Our featured author of the month is Jakov Lind, an author whose biography, as you'll read below, is absolutely fascinating. To celebrate his work, we're offering 30% off on Landscape in Concrete and Ergo all month—just use the code LIND at checkout. Joshua Cohen (The Book of Numbers, Witz) wrote an amazing ...
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Three Percent BONUS EPISODE: Interview with Edwin Frank of NYRB
Following a trip to India to speak at the Seagull School of Publishing, Edwin Frank sat down to talk about Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries and NYRB's overall editorial history, including surprise hits, books he wishes more people read, and much more. A brilliant reader, publisher, and thinker, this episode will be of great ...
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Two Month Review #7.8: Radiant Terminus (Chapters 27-38)
This is a jam-packed episode as Rachel Crawford joins Brian and Chad to talk about Kronauer's "trial," Hannko and Samiya in the Taiga, the lasting impact of PTSD, the post-post-apocalyptic world, Russian literature and French minimalism, New Jersey, and more. This is the penultimate episode of season seven, and sets up a lot ...
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Which Living Writers Are Sure-Thing Hall of Famers?
Last Thursday, I must've sent two dozen people a variation on that question above, usually in the form "Name me ten living 'Hall of Fame' writers." No explanation, no context, nothing. I was curious as to who people would name, what biases would come through, which authors would start debates. And I figured I could get a ...
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Two Month Review #7.7: Radiant Terminus (Chapters 20-26)
Chad and Brian go it alone through Kronauer's "night of amok" as he attempt to murder Solovyei for his myriad crimes. Then they enter into part four of the book, "Taiga," which is a collection of "narracts" set some seven hundred (or a thousand?) years in the future. Hannko is recreating the feminist post-exotic texts from ...
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Three Percent BONUS EPISODE: Interview with Nick During of NYRB
To supplement NYRB month on Three Percent, Chad and Anthony talked to Nick During, publicist for New York Review Books, about the marketing of Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson, the struggles to get attention for reprints, Henry Green's eternal rediscovery, and much more. (Including Nick's ratings of the impact of various ...
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NYRB Classics: Some Stats [Strategies for Publishers]
This month, I'm going to switch things up a bit. Initially, I was going to leave Canada behind and focus on one single book: Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries. But, well, this is 1,600 pages long, and I have to proof a couple things this month, and reread some books for my class, and go to AWP, and catch up on Deadly ...
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Jakov Lind [Open Letter Author of the Month]
The selection of Jakov Lind as our "Author of the Month" will make even more sense after Monday's post, but after telling my class about Landscape in Concrete on Tuesday, I really wanted to revisit his books—and wanted to convince all of you to join in! As always, for all this month, you can get 30% off of both of his ...
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“The Faerie Devouring” by Catherine Lalond [Quebec Literature from P.T. Smith]
Before starting this month's focus on Quebec literature, I asked P.T. Smith to recommend a few books for me to read, since he's one of the few Americans I know who has read a lot of Quebec literature. But rather than hoard these recommendations or write silly things about them, we decided it would be best if P.T. wrote weekly ...
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Two Month Review #7.6: Radiant Terminus (Chapters 17-19)
With just Chad and Brian on this week's episode, the show turns almost full superhero. We get Chad's weirdly specific—and unnerving—Volodine-influenced dream. We get to see Samiya Schmidt transform into a raging version of Captain Marvel/Banshee. We get to see Kronauer assume his role as the one chosen to take down ...
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Books That Would Make My BTBA 2019 Shortlist If Only They Qualified [BTBA 2019]
Today's Best Translated Book Award post is from Caitlin Baker of Island Books in Seattle/Mercer Island. She's also a frequent Two Month Review guest, and prolific Book Twitterer. As I get closer to narrowing down the stacks of books I’ve read this past year and finalizing my BTBA 2019 longlist, there are two books ...
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Coach House Books & Marie-Claire Blais [2018 Redux]
I've really, really enjoyed Quebec Month here at Three Percent. I had the chance to read the Catherine Leroux book I've been wanting to read, encountered some other really great books and presses I probably would've missed if I hadn't forced this on myself, and got to run a few really cool interviews and excerpts. On top of ...
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“The Employee” by Guillermo Saccomanno [Excerpt]
You have three days left to take advantage of Guillermo Saccomanno's status as "Open Letter Author of the Month." Through Thursday night, you can get 30% off both of his books via the Open Letter website by using the code SACCOMANNO at checkout. With so many positive comments coming in about 77, I thought I'd give you a ...
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“Next Episode” by Hubert Aquin [Quebec Literature from P.T. Smith]
Before starting this month's focus on Quebec literature, I asked P.T. Smith to recommend a few books for me to read, since he's one of the few Americans I know who has read a lot of Quebec literature. But rather than hoard these recommendations or write silly things about them, we decided it would be best if P.T. wrote weekly ...
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Two Month Review #7.5: Radiant Terminus (Chapters 14-16)
Tobias Carroll (Transitory, Reel) joins Chad and Brian to talk about the latest installment of Radiant Terminus. These three chapters get wild, as Schulhoff (who mysteriously disappeared shortly after his marriage to Hannko, Solovyei's daughter) returns and tries to get Ilyushenko to kill him. And then the never-ending ...
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“Aphelia” by Mikella Nicol [Excerpt]
Following on this morning's interview with Dimitri Nasrallah, below you'll find an excerpt from Aphelia by Mikella Nicol, translated from the French by Lesley Trites, and forthcoming from Véhicule Press/Esplanade Books. The night I met Mia, I was drinking with Louis at the bar. We were joking with the ...
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Interview with Dimitri Nasrallah of Esplanade Books
Continuing our month-long series of Quebec literature, below you'll find an interview with Dimitri Nasrallah, writer, translator, and editor of Esplanade Books, the fiction imprint of Véhicule Press. Later this afternoon we'll be running an excerpt from one of their forthcoming titles. Chad W. Post: I want to ask you ...
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Three Percent #154: Celebrity Translators
After an update about Chad's computer files and subscriptions, Tom talks about Amazon leaving NYC and they both get into a long discussion about translator Molly Ringwald (who you might also recognize from Riverdale). Chad tries to order a book from IndieBound (where do these books process from?) and then they talk a bit ...
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Véhicule Press/Esplanade Fiction & BookThug/Book*Hug [P.T. Smith Redux]
This really is the P. T. Smith-inspired post. As you likely know, Patrick has been writing weekly posts for Three Percent this month about some of his favorite works of Quebec literature. (See this post and this one.) He's one of the few Americans I know (maybe the only one?) who is deep into Quebec lit, so deep in fact that ...
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Books of the Future [BTBA 2019]
Today's Best Translated Book Award post is from George Carroll, life-long Sounders fan, newly converted Tottenham fan.. This is my third rodeo with The Best Translated Book Award. The first year the book that I wanted to win, Seibo There Below, did. But then there was the next year. Not even close, but you have to be a ...
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“77” by Guillermo Saccomanno [Excerpt]
To celebrate Guillermo Saccomanno being out "Author of the Month" (get 30% off his books by using SACCOMANNO at checkout) and the release of 77, we thought we'd run this excerpt from his new book. There was nothing magical about how I ended up in Lutz’s hole-in-the-wall. I’ll try to explain bit by bit. I was ...
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New Release! 77 by Guillermo Saccomanno
We're a few days late announcing this here, but Tuesday, February 12th was the official pub date for Guillermo Saccomanno's 77, translated from the Spanish by Andrea G. Labinger. And today, it was featured in Vanity Fair as one of "6 Must-Read Books from Around the World." Here's the full press release that Anthony put ...
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The Bones [BTBA 2019]
Today's BTBA post is from Sofia Samatar, author of A Stranger in Olondria and Assistant Professor at James Madison University. Reading for an award jury is a special type of reading: very alert and very fast. I’m finding that the accelerated pace, combined with a certain sharpness in my eye, which has to read and ...
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Kamouraska by Anne Hébert [Quebec Literature from P.T.]
Before starting this month's focus on Quebec literature, I asked P.T. Smith to recommend a few books for me to read, since he's one of the few Americans I know who has read a lot of Quebec literature. But rather than hoard these recommendations or write silly things about them, we decided it would be best if P.T. wrote weekly ...
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Two Month Review #7.4: Radiant Terminus (Chapters 9-13)
Rhett McNeil joins Chad Post and pinch-hitter Kaija Straumanis to talk about the first half of part two of Radiant Terminus, "Ode to the Camps." From recounting Chad's latest Volodine-inflected dream to a discussion of the ways various ideologies (fairy tales, anarcho-capitalism, Marxism-Leninism) play out in the novel, to ...
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Biblioasis [Catherine Leroux Redux]
Last December, when I was working on this post about Quebec fiction, I came up with the idea of having themed months running throughout 2019. Which is why January was all about Spain, February about Quebec, and March about Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries. (Which might kill me and/or lead me into an insane rabbit-hole of ...
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“Gesell Dome” by Guillermo Saccomanno [Excerpt]
As we posted about last week, Guillermo Saccomanno is our featured author of the month. Throughout February, you can get 30% off both of his books by using the code SACCOMANNO at checkout. To entice you, below you'll find a excerpt from the first Saccomanno book we published, Gesell Dome. Like True Detective through ...
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“Go Figure” by Réjean Ducharme [Quebec Literature from P.T.]
Before starting this month's focus on Quebec literature, I asked P.T. Smith to recommend a few books for me to read, since he's one of the few Americans I know who has read a lot of Quebec literature. But rather than hoard these recommendations or write silly things about this, we decided it would be best if P.T. wrote a ...
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Two Month Review #7.3: Radiant Terminus (Chapters 4-8)
This week, former TMR guest Rachel Cardasco returns to talk about speculative fiction in translation, various allegories for Radiant Terminus (current political climate, The Tempest, The Bible), who dreams the dreamer, the patriarchy and Maria Kwoll's feminist post-exotic texts, steampunk technology, spider dreams, and ...
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Prague by Madue Veilleux [Excerpt]
I wanted to learn how to live alone. I’d never done it. I’d always taken elaborate care to avoid solitude. I’d been single for two months over ten years. Almost never slept alone. I’d built relationships just to have someone, and I’d had sex for the same reason. At that point, I thought I had to choose between my ...
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Interview with Peter McCambridge of QC Fiction
Following up on Monday's post, here's an interview with the founder of QC Fiction, Peter McCambridge. Since he goes into most of his bio below, I'm not going to preface this all that much, except to congratulate him on being a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Translation and the Giller Prize for Songs for the ...
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Three Percent #153: Winter Beats and Breaks
At the top of this episode, Tom explains why he and Chad fell off the biweekly schedule for a bit, but then they come back strong, talking about Winter Institute, the Independent Publishers Caucus, minimum wage, this wild New Yorker article that doesn't quite do enough, but makes Chad angry, and Hanif Abdurraqib's Go Ahead ...
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QC Fiction [Canada Redux]
I think I might have mentioned this in an earlier post, but now that we’ve put Spain to bed with a week dedicated to each of the four major languages—Castilian, Catalan, Galician, and Basque—we’re turning our attention to the North. As in the Great White. Canada: home of poutine, reasonable political leaders (now that ...
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Guillermo Saccomanno [Open Letter Author of the Month]
In celebration of the release of 77 on Tuesday, February 12, we’ve decided to make Guillermo Saccomanno this month’s featured author. Like what we did for Volodine last month, we’re offering 30% all orders for Gesell Dome and 77 (use SACCOMANNO at checkout), and will be running a series of excerpts from his books. ...
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Interview with Amaia Gabantxo
To finish off this month of Spanish literature, I talked to Amaia Gabantxo, translator of Twist and Blade of Light by Harkaitz Cano along with a half-dozen other Basque authors, including Bernardo Atxaga, Unai Elorriaga, and Kirmen Uribe, among others. She also moonlights as a flamenco singer and recently released an ...
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The Translation Database Has Moved!
As you can read about in this Publishers Weekly article, the Translation Database is no longer being updated on this site. I hope to upload spreadsheets compiling all the data from time to time, but for now, this is where you can get the most up-to-date data about which titles are being published in translation for the ...
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Why Are Patreon [Time for a Basque Rundown]
I promise I’ll be back on schedule soon—this computer situation is really taking it’s toll . . . I’m currently writing on my iPad, using a Bluetooth keyboard and feeling like a gross millennial working out of a third-wave coffee shop, saying NO! to Large Computer, and proving that Jobs is Genius and that 2019 is about ...
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Two Month Review #7.2: Radiant Terminus (Chapters 1-3)
From Tarkovsky to Jessica Jones, this week's episode covers a lot of ground. Anthony and Chad are joined by Hailey Dezort to walk through the first three chapters of Antoine Volodine's Radiant Terminus. There's a lot to unpack, from the plant names, to the nature of men, to horrible fathers, to the humor found in Gramma ...
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New Poetry Editor at Open Letter and Call for Poetry Submissions!
Open Letter’s new Poetry Editor, Anastasia Nikolis, interviewed herself so that you wouldn’t have to. These are the questions she thinks might help you learn about the new person reading the poetry submissions at Open Letter Books. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What else do you do when you aren’t ...
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Two Month Review #7.1: Radiant Terminus (Introduction)
We’re back! . . . And a few days late. Chad explains why on the podcast itself, but suffice it to say that last week was a bit, um, stressful. But Brian and Chad finally got together to talk about Antoine Volodine in general, post-exoticism, Brian Evenson’s introduction to Radiant Terminus, similarities between ...
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Three Percent BONUS EPISODE: Interview with Jonathan Dunne
As part of this month's ongoing series of posts about literature from Spain, I talked to author, translator, and publisher Jonathan Dunne, whose Small Stations Press has produced more translations of Galician literature into English than anyone else. On this bonus episode of the Three Percent Podcast, we talk about how to ...
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Why Are Preview Lists [Galician Literature + Positivity]
I've been trying sooooooo hard to be positive in 2019. So hard. Stay optimistic in light of distribution issues. Don't worry about sales too much, because I'm 250% certain Anthony is going to take us to the next level. Ignore the fact that Lit Hub listed Night School as one of the best reviewed "nonfiction" books of the ...
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“Tell Them of Battles, Kings, & Elephants” by Mathias Énard
Tell Them of Battles, Kings, & Elephants Translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell 144 pgs. | pb |9780811227049 | $19.95 New Directions Publishing Reviewed by Grant Barber Énard is a Very Important Author indeed. He bel