{"id":285556,"date":"2011-06-13T16:31:59","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T16:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/06\/13\/lightning-by-jean-echenoz-read-this-next\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T16:23:47","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:23:47","slug":"lightning-by-jean-echenoz-read-this-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/06\/13\/lightning-by-jean-echenoz-read-this-next\/","title":{"rendered":""Lightning" by Jean Echenoz [Read This Next]"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week’s Read This Next<\/a> title is Lightning<\/em> by Jean Echenoz, a book that I truly love. Simply put, Echenoz’s charm + Tesla’s crazy genius = Incredibly Engaging Novel.<\/p>\n

Over the rest of the week, we’ll be posting a few things about Echenoz’s general career (his noir books, his transitional period, the Eccentric Genius suite), along with an piece about an interview I did with translator Linda Coverdale, and a full length review of the book. <\/p>\n

For now, check out the preview here,<\/a> and here’s the short intro to the book:<\/p>\n

\n

Echenoz has had an interesting and diverse career as a writer. His first few books\u2014_Cherokee_, Big Blondes<\/em>, Double Jeopardy<\/em>, Chopin\u2019s Move_\u2014are fun, noirish sort of novels. A few years back though, after _I\u2019m Gone<\/em> and Piano<\/em>, Echenoz embarked on a \u201csuite\u201d of three books about historical figures: Ravel<\/em> (about Maurice Ravel), Running<\/em> (about Emil Z\u00e1topek), and Lightning<\/em> (about Nikola Tesla).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

These three novels may signal a sort of new direction in terms of what Echenoz is writing about, but all three are infused with the typical Echenoz voice. And it\u2019s that signature voice that transforms the \u201cEccentric Genius Suite\u201d from a series of biographies or historical works into charming novels that lucidly depict the quirky lives these people led.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Over the past few years, Tesla has sort of come back into the public eye, especially thanks to Samatha Hunt\u2019s The Invention of Everything Else<\/em>. The reasons for this resurgence of interest are varied, ranging from the general strangeness of his person and the movie-like quality of his life, to the way that Tesla was one of the last pure inventors\u2014one who was destroyed by big business and his own inability to function in that world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Lightning<\/em> is a stunning novel that is captivating right from the start. In our advance preview, you can read about Gregor\/Tesla\u2019s birth, his early successes, his fall out with Edison (who always comes off as a bastard when you read about Tesla), and the start of the \u201cWar of Currents.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s Read This Next title is Lightning by Jean Echenoz, a book that I truly love. Simply put, Echenoz’s charm + Tesla’s crazy genius = Incredibly Engaging Novel. Over the rest of the week, we’ll be posting a few things about Echenoz’s general career (his noir books, his transitional period, the Eccentric Genius suite), […]<\/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":[3426,1206,40986,12546,40786,1646,29516],"class_list":["post-285556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-french-literature","tag-jean-echenoz","tag-lightning","tag-linda-coverdale","tag-read-this-next","tag-review","tag-the-new-press"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285556","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=285556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320646,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285556\/revisions\/320646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}