{"id":264426,"date":"2008-09-05T13:44:02","date_gmt":"2008-09-05T13:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2008\/09\/05\/next-round-of-september-translations\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:29:52","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:29:52","slug":"next-round-of-september-translations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2008\/09\/05\/next-round-of-september-translations\/","title":{"rendered":"Next Round of September Translations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This isn&#8217;t a reflection on the start of the new school year, or the end of summer, or anything like that, but today&#8217;s capsules of forthcoming translations features three fairly bleak books . . .<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wwnorton.com\/catalog\/spring08\/032948.htm\"><em>What Can I Do When Everything&#8217;s On Fire?<\/em><\/a> by Antonio Lobo Antunes, translated from the Portuguese by Gregory Rabassa (W.W. Norton, $18.95, 9780393329483)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Along with <em>2666<\/em>, this was the other galley that I was thrilled to receive this past summer. Since reading <em>The Natural Order of Things<\/em> a number of years ago, I&#8217;ve read all of Antunes&#8217;s translated titles, with <em>Act of the Damned<\/em> being one of my all-time favorite titles. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bookforum.com\/inprint\/015_03\/2737\"><em>Bookforum<\/em><\/a> is the first place I&#8217;ve seen this new book reviewed, and although Craig Seligman has his reservations, it still sounds like a book definitely worth reading:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The style is poetic stream-of-consciousness, with voices melting and melding into one another. The principal narrator is Paulo Antunes Lima, son of the transvestite showgirl and prostitute Soraia (or Carlos, when he isn\u2019t in his blond wig) and the alcoholic teacher-turned-whore Judite\u2014in other words, a young man screwed from the start. At the novel\u2019s opening, he has been hospitalized in a condition of near catatonia, circumstances suggesting a debt to Benjy Compson, though Paulo is no idiot. And while Benjy\u2019s interior monologue at the beginning of <em>The Sound and the Fury<\/em> recalls the facts of his world as he remembers them, Paulo and the other narrators are constantly drifting into might-have-beens, making it hard to distinguish memory from fantasy. Dashes set off bits of dialogue (as in Joyce), and occasional italics signal a change of time or scene (as in Faulkner), but <em>What Can I Do When Everything\u2019s on Fire?,<\/em> unlike <em>Ulysses<\/em> and <em>The Sound and the Fury,<\/em> doesn\u2019t hotdog through a variety of styles. It\u2019s way too somber for that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sevenstories.com\/book\/?GCOI=58322100297780\"><em>Voice Over<\/em><\/a> by Celine Curiol, translated from the French by Sam Richard, introduction by Paul Auster (Seven Stories Press, $24.95, \t9781583228487)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Also reviewed in the new issue of <a href=\"http:\/\/bookforum.com\/inprint\/015_03\/2743\"><em>Bookforum<\/em>,<\/a> and also involving a transvestite, this seems like a good pairing with the Antunes. From the opening of the <a href=\"http:\/\/bookforum.com\/inprint\/015_03\/2743\"><em>Bookforum<\/em> review:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>C\u00e9line Curiol\u2019s English-language debut, <em>Voice Over,<\/em> is a thoroughly French affair. Like much of Samuel Beckett\u2019s work (the epigraph to this book is, quite appropriately, taken from <em>Molloy<\/em>), it chronicles, in relentless detail, an individual\u2019s battle with a host of ontological neuroses that threaten to overwhelm her. And like Beckett\u2019s worldview, Curiol\u2019s is unremittingly bleak.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.serbianclassics.com\/html\/blood.html\"><em>Bad Blood<\/em><\/a> by Borisav Stankovic, translated from the Serbian by Milo Yelesiyevich (Serbian Classics Press, $19.95, 9780967889344)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>After finding out about Serbian Classics Press thanks to a piece in Literary Saloon about Danilo Kis&#8217;s <em>Mansarda<\/em> (which <span class=\"caps\">SCP<\/span> also published recently, and which we will be reviewing in the near future), I corresponded a few times with Milo Yelesiyevich, the publisher of <span class=\"caps\">SCP<\/span> and the translator of this book. Milo was kind enough to send us a review copy, which was much appreciated&#8212;I had never heard of Stankovic, but the translator&#8217;s introduction is really intriguing. Despite the success of Stankovic&#8217;s musical play <em>Kostana<\/em>, Stankovic had a tough time getting <em>Bad Blood<\/em> published:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>So why did publishers unanimously reject <em>Bad Blood<\/em>?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Stankovic broke a number of taboos. His ambition was to reveal the full spectrum of a woman&#8217;s life, ranging from childhood adoration of her father through immature fantasies, marriage, childbirth, disappointment, infidelity, to the final devolution of marriage into a sado-masochistic partnership where only death can bring relief. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Stankovic&#8217;s own view of civilization is pessimistic and inclined to tragedy. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Considered the &#8220;first true modern psychological novel written in Serbian,&#8221; <em>Bad Blood<\/em> looks very interesting, and hopefully we&#8217;ll have a full review of this in the not-too-distant future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This isn&#8217;t a reflection on the start of the new school year, or the end of summer, or anything like that, but today&#8217;s capsules of forthcoming translations features three fairly bleak books . . . What Can I Do When Everything&#8217;s On Fire? by Antonio Lobo Antunes, translated from the Portuguese by Gregory Rabassa (W.W. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[9366,1836,1646],"class_list":["post-264426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-2008-translations","tag-cwp","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325576,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264426\/revisions\/325576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}