Before I get into the meat of this post\u2014which is basically just a bunch of quotes and a handful of observations\u2014I wanted to check back in on something from an earlier essay.<\/p>\n
Back in January, I wrote about<\/a> Le\u00efla Slimani\u2019s The Perfect Nanny<\/em> and basically assumed that it would be a best-seller. (There was also a lot of stuff about one-star reviews and how divided opinions about a popular book only fuels its sales.) Well, after a few weeks out in the world, I don\u2019t think<\/em> it\u2019s actually made a best-seller list . . . yet.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say that the book isn\u2019t doing well. According to Nieslen BookScan\u2014which people claim represents something like 75-80% of overall sales1<\/a><\/sup>\u2014the numbers for The Perfect Nanny<\/em> are at 27,399, with 2,427 sales just last week.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t want to waste half of tomorrow\u2019s post now, but to put this in perspective, Frankenstein in Baghdad<\/i>\u2014which I also wrote about<\/a> and thought would be a huge deal\u2014has \u201conly\u201d sold 2,689, with 326 last week. Still very good! We only have a couple books over our ten-year history that are above that, and I\u2019m certain you can guess what they are. I\u2019m going to write more in depth about this in my March Preview, so I\u2019ll save the details, but will leave off by saying that 27,399 is like 27 times more than what most literary translations tend to sell.<\/p>\n Although it may not be an official bestseller (yet), at $16 a pop, those nearly 28,000 sales generated $438,384 in revenue, which, if you apply a 50% discount on sales to Costco\/Amazon\/independents (a number that might actually be too low<\/i>) that\u2019s about $219,000. (Again, no spoilers, but that\u2019s a lot<\/em> more than what a normal literary translation earns. Especially for presses that have two key employees and no where near the marketing resources. $219,000 would be half\u2014or more\u2014of these presses annual budgets. We live in different spheres.)<\/p>\n Is that what Penguin Random House was hoping for though? I kind of doubt it. It\u2019ll be curious to see if they sign on the Slimani collection of stories and personal essays that was just presented to me by a new literary agent . . .<\/p>\n She was arrested and charged with supporting terrorism, not because of her novels but as a result of her affiliation, as an adviser, with a newspaper linked to the Kurdish movement that has since been shut down. She still faces a trial that could land her back in prison, and with that hanging over her, she has been living with her mother, sleeping late, not writing much and dealing with the new fame that her case has brought.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n According to Wikipedia, she was the Turkish representative of PEN<\/span> International\u2019s Writers in Prison Committee from 1998 to 2000. She also worked at CERN<\/span> as a particle physicist. Her novel The City in Crimson Cloak<\/em> about a Turkish woman in dire straits in Rio de Janeiro was published in 2007 by Soft Skull. (I remember reading this, and liking it, but that\u2019s about it. The passage of time sucks.)<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how she describes her own writing in that same New York Times<\/em> profile:<\/p>\n She describes her writing as \u201csublime language plus crude metaphors\u201d that has had only a limited appeal in Turkey, where readers tend to flock to realistic works steeped in Ottoman history or nostalgia, like the books of Orhan Pamuk, Turkey\u2019s Nobel-winning novelist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing realistic in my books,\u201d she said. \u201cI am a difficult writer.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Nowadays, millions of people\u2014at least notionally\u2014are educated to graduate levels, and one would\u2019ve expected this to inculcate them with a positive zest for challenging prose\u2014but this doesn\u2019t seem to be the case. When I get going in this vein, my 16-year-old son says: \u201cFace it, Dad, you\u2019re just an old man shaking your fist at the cloud.\u201d Yet I don\u2019t regard myself as opposed to the new media technologies in any way at all\u2014nor do I view them as \u201cbad,\u201d let alone as cultural panopathogens. I\u2019ve no doubt that human intelligence will continue to be pretty much the same as it has heretofore\u2014but the particular form of intelligence associated with book-learning (and all that this entails) is undoubtedly on the wane, with the \u201cextended mind\u201d of the smart phone increasingly replacing our own memories, and the hive-mindedness of the web usurping our notions of the canonical. I shan\u2019t belabor the point, but it\u2019s worth thinking about the impact of the so-called tyranny of film on contemporary cinema: the length of shots have become shorter and shorter, while the editing technique of cross-cutting between them in order to compel viewers\u2019 attention has become ubiquitous. Arguably, this is similar to the concentration in the literary realm on \u201cpage-turners\u201d with characters that are \u201crelatable\u201d\u2014both narrative mediums are looking for ways to make their consumers\u2019 experience more facile.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Yep. Totally on board. Props to Literary Hub for publishing this! (And this is a good reminder that I really need to get to Shark<\/em> and Phone.<\/em>)<\/p>\n Self\u2019s general view jibes with my old-man outlook on life and literature, where books that are \u201cchallenging\u201d because they force you to think different are ignored, labeled as \u201cnot for everyone,\u201d and fiscally dismissed in favor of books with \u201crelatable characters\u201d that you don\u2019t have to think too hard to read.<\/p>\n I get palpably excited thinking about books that are \u201cdifficult,\u201d titles that require attention and puzzling out. Books that employ language and techniques that defy the expected, the familiar\u2014those are my jam.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For all these reasons, The Stone Building and Other Place<\/em>,<\/a> Erdo\u011fan\u2019s latest book to appear in English, seemed like it would be right up my alley. And I think, under different circumstances, in a different time and place, with a different set of eyes and internal questions, I really would like this. Lots of other people do.<\/a> As happy as I am to champion Erdo\u011fan as a human being and activist, the language in this book really didn\u2019t work for me.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Instead of being intrigued and sucked into a politically charged world of words, I was left questioning everything that I was reading, trying to figure out whether it was the original or the translation that wasn\u2019t working for me, or if it was just me. (Probably the last one.)<\/p>\n First admissions first: I read a portion of this book when it was being pitched to publishers. I knew of Erdo\u011fan from The City in Crimson Cloak<\/em>, but received the submission before her arrest, before the New York Times<\/em> article, before any of that. Not that it would\u2019ve changed my opinion per se, but it would\u2019ve created a much different context in which to read this book.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the opening of that sample:<\/p>\n The facts are obvious, contradictory, blunt\u2026 He likes to speak loud. I leave the facts, stacked like huge stones, for those who busy themselves with grave matters. I\u2019m only interested in the murmur among them. Indistinct, addictive\u2026Searching through heaps of stones, I\u2019m after a handful of truths \u2013 or what used to be called so\u2014these days it doesn\u2019t have a name. After a flash of light, if I could delve deeper and deeper and manage to reach the bottom and return\u2014I\u2019m after the handful of sand, the song of the sand that slips through my fingers. \u201cThose who speak of the shadow, speak the truth.\u201d Truth speaks through shadows. Today, I will talk about the stone building, which language shies away from. Gives it a wide berth. Looks at it behind the words. It was built long before I was born. If we don\u2019t count the basement, it is five stories tall. There is a staircase at its entrance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Everyone\u2019s first draft needs work. If there\u2019s a thesis to this post, that\u2019s it. That and that a great translation generally has a great editor to go along with a great author and great translator. It takes a team to make a great book. Or whatever other cliche you\u2019d like to throw in there.<\/p>\n That said, this sample has a number of indicators that it would be a lot of work.<\/em> That\u2019s not necessarily bad, but without getting into gory specifics, I just want to say that for a tiny press that\u2019s already punching above its weight, signing on a translation that\u2019s going to require all<\/em> the editing hours is a dangerous idea. Sometimes you get a winner, most times you fall behind schedule and see your sales slump. Not to mention, for as stat-centric and economics-informed as I am, I am also aware that there is such a thing as office morale. A really frustrating book\/author\/translator can totally fuck up the vibe. To put it in real talk.<\/p>\n Casting aside all the formatting quirks that drive me crazy (re: ellipses and em-dashes), here are a few questions that jump out at me:<\/p>\n 1. How does the \u201cHe\u201d who likes to \u201cspeak loud\u201d (is that accurate? does that mean that he\u2019s a loud talker or someone imposing his viewpoint?) relate to the sentences before and after?<\/p>\n 2. \u201cStacked like huge stones, for those who busy themselves with grave matters\u201d might unintentionally imply grave markers. Is that intentional?<\/p>\n 3. \u201cI\u2019m only interested in the murmur among them.\u201d Is the \u201cthem\u201d the stones, the facts, or something else? This murmur contrasts with \u201cspeak loud,\u201d which I suppose is nice, if the pronouns were more logically consistent.<\/p>\n 4. Next sentence has an agreement problem \u201cafter a handful of truths . . . these days it<\/em> doesn\u2019t have a name.\u201d<\/p>\n 5. I can\u2019t make sense of \u201cAfter a flash of light, if I could delve deeper and deeper and manage to reach the bottom and return\u2014I\u2019m after the handful of sand, the song of the sand that slips through my fingers.\u201d The \u201cafter a flash of light\u201d seems disconnected from the rest of the sentence, mostly because of the \u201cif\u201d that follows it. What is the \u201csong of the sand\u201d?<\/p>\n 6. Skipping ahead, the first sentence from the next paragraph is \u201cOne must write with flesh, with the naked, vulnerable flesh under the skin.\u201d And I\u2019m out.<\/p>\n (This is more or less how one of our weekly translation workshops\u2014which we refer to as \u201cPl\u00fcb\u201d for reasons I\u2019ll only explain in person\u2014tends to go. Lots of questions for the translator to either explain away or think about during revisions. A live-action reader-response experience of the text.)<\/p>\n The translations that win me over are the ones that have a sort of confidence. The prose is assured in its word choices, syntax, voice. It could all be bullshit, but it\u2019s bullshit that I, as a reader, can believe in. Every draft has its problems. Every book has a sentence or two that you stumble over. But if you\u2019re reading a book where every sentence raises a new question? That\u2019s not pleasant. Once your trust has eroded, even the most basic of sentences feels like it\u2019s possibly not quite right. The voice goes all wobbly. Everything feels forced and stilted. The book stops working.<\/p>\n Back in 2005, Words Without Borders<\/em> published a translation of Erdo\u011fan\u2019s story \u201cWooden Birds,\u201d and in 2008 they ran \u201cThe Prisoner.\u201d Both of these are included in The Stone Building and Other Stories<\/em>, but these versions were translated by different translators.<\/p>\n I discovered these right around the time that I decided that I was going to read The Stone Building<\/em> for this series of articles. I didn\u2019t read them until after I had finished reading this City Lights translation, but after I finished the new book\u2014and the original sample\u2014I felt like I had to go back and see how these compared.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the first paragraph of the WWB<\/span><\/em> version of \u201cThe Prisoner\u201d:<\/p>\n She woke up long before the alarm. As though wanting to make sure the night was over, she blinked for a while in the dawn. She\u2019d slept a total of three hours, but the night, full of tossing and turning, and full of realistic dreams, dreams far more painful than reality, had seemed to last forever. An endless waiting\u20264<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here\u2019s the City Lights version:<\/p>\n She woke up long before the alarm went off. As if checking to make sure the night was over, she opened and closed her eyes a few times in the humid, pre-dawn twilight. She had slept for a total of three hours, and the night \u2014 full of tossing and turning, and dreams burdened with an intense realism, much more painful than reality itself \u2014 had felt like it dragged on endlessly. A sense of waiting with no beginning and no end . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Comparing translations is a dangerous game\u2014you always want parts of one and not the other. \u201cBlinking\u201d over \u201copened and closed her eyes a few times,\u201d especially if you\u2019re adding \u201chumid.\u201d But \u201cdragged on endlessly\u201d is much more alive on the page (in a cliched way, granted) than \u201cseemed to last forever.\u201d And is \u201cwent off\u201d even necessary in relation to the alarm going off? \u201cShe woke up long before the alarm\u201d is probably enough. Although that decision must be made in relation to the rest of the paragraph. What is the voice? What is the style? Is she the type to say that her dreams were \u201cburdened with an intense realism\u201d or is she more of a \u201cmy dreams were more painful than reality\u201d sort of character?<\/p>\n Regardless, the first sentence of the next paragraph was the one that lost me: Neither \u201cFor hours she had lain like a chained ghost with her knees pulled up to her belly, afraid to move, pricking up her ears at the slightest noise\u201d or \u201cFor hours, she\u2019d lain like a chained ghost, ears pricking up at the slightest sound, afraid to budge, knees bent to her chest\u201d did enough to overcome the incongruity (for me) of a \u201cchained ghost.\u201d<\/p>\n Let\u2019s move on.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here\u2019s the opening of the Words Without Borders<\/em> version of \u201cWooden Birds,\u201d by far<\/em> my favorite piece in The Stone Buildings and Other Places<\/em>:<\/p>\n The door of the room was opened suddenly and a redhead burst in. Dijana\u2019s voice, breathless and impatient, was heard. \u201cCome on now, Felicita! Shall we be waiting for you all day? Get that big arse of yours out of bed. You\u2019re dead inside, woman, dead.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The door was shut as quickly as it was opened; the antiseptic smell of the hospital corridor, Dijana\u2019s shrill voice and superficial but hurtful mocking remained outside.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Filiz, whom the lung patients called \u201cFelicita\u201d (\u201chappiness\u201d), was in reality an extremely pessimistic, reserved, and embittered person.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Dijana is so<\/em> British. Not just \u201carse\u201d but \u201cshall we be waiting.\u201d At least it\u2019s a consistent voice though. I can envision a redheaded Brit talking like that. I\u2019m not sure about \u201csuperficial but hurtful mocking.\u201d Seems like it\u2019s explaining too much to the reader.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the City Lights version:<\/p>\n The door opened suddenly, and a bright red head peeked in. Dijana\u2019s breathless, impatient voice rang out:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cHurry up, Felicita! Do we have to wait for you all day? Get your fat ass out of that bed. I swear, you\u2019re like the walking dead!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The door closed as quickly as it had opened, shutting out the hospital corridor\u2019s smell of disinfectant, Dijana\u2019s shrill voice, and her offhand, stinging sarcasm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Filiz, of \u201cFelicita\u201d as she was called with distinct irony by the lung patients \u2014 was an extremely gloomy, withdrawn, and wounded person.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Again, so much to mix and match. The City Lights version, though occasionally too explanatory in these more realistic stories, does a better job with the actions<\/em> in this section. The \u201cdoor opened suddenly\u201d is condensed and functional. \u201cThe door closed as quickly as it had opened\u201d is another plus, and one that I want to pause on for a second.<\/p>\n Active verbs are always a problem with the young translators I work with. They\u2019re much more likely to initially opt for \u201cthe door was closed\u201d instead of \u201cthe door closed.\u201d Scratch it up to a quirk of languages, of English, of trying to capture every word. Regardless, it\u2019s the sort of thing that sets translators apart. It\u2019s also something that I suspect City Lights edited into this translation.<\/p>\n Dijana\u2019s voice in the City Lights version isn\u2019t quite as distinctive as the WWB<\/span><\/em> one, but it\u2019s fine. Although given the seemingly omnipresent show, I would avoid phrases like \u201cwalking dead,\u201d but that\u2019s just me. \u201cHurry up, Felicita\u201d is a bit nondescript as well, but in this case, I\u2019m willing to go along with the idea that Dijana\u2019s voice will be developed later in the story. If this was being Pl\u00fcbbed, it would\u2019ve received only a few comments. Reading it, it feels workshopped already.5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n \u201cThe Stone Building\u201d is what I really want to talk about. If it weren\u2019t for the jacket copy, which told me that \u201cthese tales culminate in a soaring novella whose \u2018stone building\u2019 echoes with a chorus of voices of those held captive within its walls,\u201d I would have had almost no idea what this half of the book is all about.<\/p>\n (Worth noting that this is reiterated in the World Literature Today<\/em> review<\/a> that states:<\/p>\n The titular work, \u201cThe Stone Building,\u201d is the longest story in the collection and probably the most representative of the writer\u2019s use of magical realism. While the protagonist, A., reappears in these chapters as a character who has suffered torture and imprisonment, it is the impressions, the ambience, that define these intertwining stories. Particularly, the theme of betrayal and symbols like the wind and the presence of labyrinths and cyclical time give the story its distinctive dreamlike tone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n OK. Sure. The connection between her use of \u201cmagical realism\u201d [sorry, had to gag] and the rest of that paragraph is tenuous at best.)<\/p>\n Back to my general theme: People will love \u201cThe Stone Building.\u201d Because I was already questioning the text itself, these lines left me confused and somewhat irritated:<\/p>\n I will now defer my laughter and take you to the stone building.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Defer my laughter. Defer it.<\/p>\n I loved somebody once. He left his eyes with me. Since he had no one else to leave them with. Love.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n There\u2019s an overblown tone to this piece that probably won\u2019t come through in these snippets, but which is exhausting to read. The closest comparison I can think of is an undergrad\u2019s journal entries that they write while high. Every line is dripping with meaning.<\/em><\/p>\n Then, I recognized your voice, my own voice coming from you. How strange! What frightened me most was that you might cry, beg, collapse. You did none of these. As if death were some kind of literary gesture\u2014an overly dramatic ending held in reserve. But you stood fast, in the middle of a sentence whose dawn would never arrive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n But wait. That\u2019s not the paragraph in the final book.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s that same passage in the finished copy:<\/p>\n Then, I recognized your voice, my own voice coming from you. How strange! What frightened me most was that you might cry, beg, collapse. You did none of these. As if death were some kind of overly dramatic end \u2014 a literary device kept on reserve for me.<\/b> But you stood fast, suspended<\/b> in the middle of a sentence where the dawn never arrives.<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Note 1: Remember that tossaway comment above about young translators needing to make their verbs more active? See: \u201cwhose dawn would never arrive\u201d versus \u201cwhere the dawn never arrives.\u201d That\u2019s so editorial.<\/p>\n Note 2: The flip-flopping of \u201cliterary\u201d and \u201cdramatic\u201d is interesting. I don\u2019t know that it solves the core problem of this bit for me (what is a literary device kept on reserve? Where is it kept? Why is it on reserve?), but it is trying to do something.6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n The facts are obvious, contradictory, coarse . . . And blaring.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n The \u201che likes to speak loud\u201d line has been replaced by \u201cand blaring.\u201d Which clearly refers back to the facts and sets up something concrete and alarming. So much better.<\/p>\n I leave the facts, like a mound of giant stones, to those who busy themselves with important matters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n By getting rid of \u201cgrave matters\u201d the graveyard aspect of this is gone. That solves a certain number of questions for me as a reader.<\/p>\n What interests me is the murmur among them. Indistinct, obsessive . . . Digging through the rock pile of facts, I\u2019m after a handful of truths \u2014 or what used to be called that, these days it doesn\u2019t have a name.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n I like that in this version we have \u201crock pile of facts\u201d versus \u201cheaps of stones,\u201d which is ambiguous and nondescript. But what about that \u201cflash of light, if\u201d??<\/p>\n Lured on by a flickering light, what if I were to dive deeper and deeper, if I could reach the bottom and make it back \u2014 I\u2019m after a handful of sand, the song of the sand that slips through my fingers and disappears.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Well, that clarified a lot. Even the song of the sand! By simply adding \u201cand disappears\u201d to that sentence, the song of the sand goes from some weird mythical thing that exists on its own to the song of the sand that slips through my fingers and disappears.<\/em> Emphasizing \u201csand that slips\u201d instead of \u201csong of sand\u201d is a huge advancement.<\/p>\n