{"id":278896,"date":"2010-07-07T15:42:36","date_gmt":"2010-07-07T15:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2010\/07\/07\/summer-fall-previews\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:57:40","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:57:40","slug":"summer-fall-previews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2010\/07\/07\/summer-fall-previews\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer\/Fall Previews"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the best literary blogs out there has be The Millions.<\/a> Consistently good features. Excellent writing. Interesting aesthetic taste. Et cetera.<\/p>\n

As proof, here’s a link to their Great 2010 Book Preview<\/a> column that highlights a lot of interesting books coming out this summer and beyond. And although these aren’t necessarily translations, I thought I’d share the ones that I find most intriguing. And maybe sometime later this month we’ll put together a list of forthcoming translations of interest:<\/p>\n

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The Four Fingers of Death<\/em> by Rick Moody: The Four Fingers of Death is a 700 page supercollider. It brings together the various interests Rick Moody has explored in his eight previous books: metafiction, domestic drama, satire, the entertainment industry, and the Way We Live Now\u2026er, tomorrow. The framing tale, set in the year 2025 (yes, man is still alive), concerns Montese Crandall, a self-involved writer-type who will be familiar to readers of Moody\u2019s short stories. The longer, framed section is a Vonnegut-inspired sci-fi romp. Gradually, one imagines, the two converge. Mutual illumination ensues. (Garth)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The Return<\/em> and The Insufferable Gaucho<\/em> by Roberto Bola\u00f1o: The frenzy of posthumous Bola\u00f1o publication continues. The Return (July) is a new volume of short stories. And The Insufferable Gaucho (August) \u2014 more stories, plus two essays \u2014 was apparently the last book Bola\u00f1o delivered to a publisher. And we hear there\u2019s more \u201cnew\u201d Bola\u00f1o to come in 2011. (Max)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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I Curse the River of Time<\/em> by Per Petterson: Petterson has been on the road to international literary stardom for a few years now and that means his new novels get translated into English with relative alacrity. The book won the Norwegian Brage prize and, according to a \u201csample translation\u201d on Petterson\u2019s agent\u2019s website, it begins: \u201cI did not realize that my mother had left. There was too much going on in my own life. We had not spoken for a month, or even longer, which I guess was not that unusual, in 1989, when you consider the things that went on around us back then, but it felt unusual.\u201d (Max)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Encounter<\/em> by Milan Kundera: Fans of Milan Kundera\u2019s previous essays on the power of art (particularly that of the novel), memory, mortality, and human nature can look forward to Encounter, his newest collection, which was released in France in 2009 and will land in the English-speaking world in August. Kundera\u2019s devotion to modernism is a particular focus here, with reflections both critical and personal on the work of established masters \u2013 Francis Bacon, Leo Janacek, Garcia Marquez, Dostoevsky, and Fellini \u2013 as well as homages to those he considers unsung, including Anatole France, Curzio, Malaparte, and Celine. (Both the Malaparte and Celine sections apparently hone in on episodes involving dogs \u2013 the dignified way in which animals face death, in contrast to human posturing and vanity \u2013 which I especially look forward to). In a review last year, Trevor Cribben Merrill described Encounter as \u201ca self-portrait of the artist as an old man [\u2026]the most personal of Kundera\u2019s essays.\u201d (Sonya)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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C<\/em> by Tom McCarthy: One of Tom McCarthy\u2019s many roles in addition to novelist includes acting as the General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society, who in their first manifesto declared: \u201cour very bodies are no more than vehicles carrying us ineluctably towards death\u201d and that \u201cthe construction of mankind\u2019s sole chance of survival lies in its ability, as yet unsynthesised, to die in new, imaginative ways.\u201d In keeping with these moribund tendencies, McCarthy returns with his second third novel, C, which in general terms deals with technology and mourning. In McCarthy\u2019s own words, \u201cC is about the age of the wireless: the roar of transmission, signals flung from towering masts, global reaches crackling out of earphones. And empire. And insects. And incest.\u201d Simultaneously a bildungsroman and an anti-realist period novel, C follows the life of Serge Carrefax, the son of a man who runs a school for the blind, who grows up to become a WWI<\/span> radio operator for reconnaissance planes, is imprisoned by the Germans, and escapes. The book jacket designer, Peter Mendelsund, claims that if MacCarthy\u2019s first novel, Remainder<\/em>, recalls Beckett then C<\/em> reads like Joyce. McCarthy says that if Remainder<\/em> is his French novel, then C<\/em> is his German. If one can judge a book by its cover and anticipatory buzz, C<\/em> will be one to remember. (Anne)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The Box: Tales from the Darkroom<\/em> by Gunter Grass: The publisher\u2019s description of this one lays out its unique premise: \u201cIn an audacious literary experiment, G\u00fcnter Grass writes in the voices of his eight children as they record memories of their childhoods, of growing up, of their father, who was always at work on a new book, always at the margins of their lives.\u201d It\u2019s another journey into autobiography for Grass, whose Peeling the Onion<\/em> set off a furor in Germany and elsewhere with its revelation that Grass had been a member of the Waffen-SS during World War II. (Max)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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My Prizes<\/em> by Thomas Bernhard: This collection of essays was originally published in 1980 but never in the U.S. The book will be a balm to those worked up by literary prizes and the teapot tempests they tend to foment. Bernhard\u2019s focus here is the myriad prizes he collected and his bemused, sardonic reaction to them. The book seems likely to stand as an irreverent footnote at the intersection of 20th century literary history and 20th century publishing culture. A review of the German edition of the book suggests: \u201cAlthough it\u2019s a barrel of laughs, it\u2019s also a serious book about what drove Bernhard to become the writer he eventually turned out to be.\u201d (Max)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sorry for quoting so much . . . There’s just so many interesting books coming out over the next few months. And check out the whole list, I’m sure other people (people who like Jonathan Franzen for instance) will get excited about other titles. <\/p>\n

And over at The Second Pass<\/a> there’s a mini-supplement with a few titles that caught my eye:<\/p>\n

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How to Read the Air<\/em> by Dinaw Mengestu (October 14): Mengestu\u2019s first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears<\/em>, was one of the best debuts of recent years. This sophomore effort concerns Ethiopian immigrants to the U.S. and their son, who recreates a road trip his parents took before he was born.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The Instructions<\/em> by Adam Levin (November 1): Levin\u2019s debut novel runs to more than 900 pages, and chronicles four days in the life of Gurion Maccabee, a 10-year-old with a messiah complex. The publisher (McSweeney\u2019s) says the novel combines \u201cthe crackling voice of Philip Roth with the encyclopedic mind of David Foster Wallace.\u201d So, no pressure or anything.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Skippy Dies<\/em> by Paul Murray (August 31): Published as a box set of three books in the UK, Murray\u2019s latest comes to the U.S. as one big volume (nearly 700 pages). Speaking of high expectations, the promotional copy compares the fictional boarding school at the center of this adolescent murder mystery to Harry Potter\u2019s Hogwarts School and Enfield Tennis Academy in Infinite Jest.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe<\/em> by Charles Yu (September 7): The theme of parents and children continues. Sarah Weinman has already raved about Yu\u2019s first novel, saying: \u201cYu\u2019s literary pyrotechnics come in a marvelously entertaining and accessible package, featuring a reluctant, time machine-operating hero on a continual quest to discover what really happened to his missing father, a mysterious book possibly answering all, and a computer with the most idiosyncratic personality since HAL<\/span> or Deep Thought.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the best literary blogs out there has be The Millions. Consistently good features. Excellent writing. Interesting aesthetic taste. Et cetera. As proof, here’s a link to their Great 2010 Book Preview column that highlights a lot of interesting books coming out this summer and beyond. And although these aren’t necessarily translations, I thought […]<\/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":[1646,33686,3536,33696],"class_list":["post-278896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-review","tag-summer-fall-book-preview","tag-the-millions","tag-the-second-pass"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278896","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=278896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312736,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278896\/revisions\/312736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}