<\/p>\n
Tomb Song<\/em><\/a> by Juli\u00e1n Herbert, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney (Graywolf Press)<\/b><\/p>\n Moment Number One<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cTechnique, my boy,\u201d says a voice in my head. \u201cShuffle the technique.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To hell with it: in her youth, Mam\u00e1 was a beautiful half-breed Indian who had five husbands: a fabled pimp, a police officer riddled with bullet holes, a splendid goodfella, a suicidal musician, and a pathetic Humphrey Bogart impersonator. PERIOD<\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n But we\u2019ll start with a bit about Tomb Song<\/em>, one of the better works of international literature to come out so far in 2018. It\u2019s referred to as \u201cAn Incandescent<\/em> U.S. Debut\u201d on the press release, which normally would land it on my \u201cdo not read\u201d list, but I like the cover. And suspect this is a potential finalist for the National Book Award in Translation (more on that below).<\/p>\n Categorized as \u201cfiction,\u201d it\u2019s a book in which Juli\u00e1n Herbert writes about Juli\u00e1n Herbert writing about the death of his mother from leukemia. (And the death of his father as well.) It resides in that Ben Lerner, or Karl Ove Knausgaard, or maybe Geoff Dyer realm of being a \u201cnonfiction novel,\u201d in which truth and literary technique come together and create something else.<\/p>\n From a recent interview in the Paris Review<\/em>:<\/a><\/p>\n To me, this is a novel. A nonfictional novel, most of the time, though there are some fictional elements. But the protagonist\u2014my mother, Guadalupe\u2014was real. She was a prostitute, and she died of leukemia. Why does it matter if the particular events around her happened in this world or not?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I think novels are novels because of technique, not because the content is made up. I wrote Tomb Song<\/em> using a novelist\u2019s tools\u2014prolepsis and analepsis, digression, a plot twist that lasts three decades, plenty of characters. It\u2019s always been strange to me that some Spanish-language critics insist that Tomb Song<\/em> is a memoir and that my other book, The House of the Pain of Others<\/em>, is a novel. To me, that book is a mix of reportage and narrative history. But honestly, I don\u2019t lose sleep over this. I\u2019ve always written between genres.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n We\u2019re always hearing about what a headache the frontier is for the United States because of the drug trafficking. No one mentions how dangerous the United States frontier is for Mexicans because of the trafficking of arms. And, when the subject does come up, the neighboring attorney general points out: \u201cIt\u2019s not the same thing: the drugs are of illegal origin<\/em>, the arms aren\u2019t.\u201d As if there was a majestic logic in considering that in comparison with the destructive power of a marijuana joint, an AK-47 is just a child\u2019s toy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Back when it was announced that the National Book Foundation was bringing this back, I wrote a long post<\/a> about how great it was that Lisa Lucas (and her predecessor at the foundation, Harold Augenbraum, two of the most energetic, concerned people in the book world) made this happen, while also wringing my hands over what this would do to other existent translation awards (the BTBA<\/span>s in particular, which will be greatly overshadowed), and who exactly would able to afford to apply. (We also did a podcast that touched on this,<\/a> which has been getting a lot<\/em> of downloads.)<\/p>\n My primary concern was about all the backend fees for books that are finalists. From that first article:<\/p>\n All publishers submitting books for the National Book Awards must agree to:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Contribute $3,000 toward a promotional campaign if a submitted book becomes a Finalist ($750 for presses with income of under $10 million).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Inform authors of submitted books that, if selected as Finalists, they must be present at the National Book Awards Ceremony and at related events in New York City.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Inform authors that the Finalists Reading will be held at The New School on Tuesday, November 13, 2018.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Inform authors that the National Book Awards Ceremony will be held at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, November 14, 2018.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Cover all travel and accommodation costs for Finalists and provide them with a seat at the Awards Ceremony.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Purchase from the National Book Foundation, when appropriate, medallions to be affixed to the covers of Longlist, Finalist, and Winning books. The Foundation also will license the medallion image artwork for reproduction on the covers of Finalist and Winning books.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n For presses that are doing well for themselves\u2014Graywolf, New Directions, Europa\u2014this is likely to be less of a concern. (And for other nonprofits with functioning boards, they could probably raise the money if it was a big issue.) But for a lot of other presses, these extra thousands could be prohibitive, leading to questions of who this award is really for.<\/p>\n BUT<\/span>! When the actual details came out, almost all of those extra fees were eliminated for translation presses. From the updated National Book Award website:<\/p>\n Contribute toward a promotional campaign if a submitted book becomes a Finalist. For presses with income of $10 million or above, a contribution of $3,000; under $10 million, a contribution of $750; and for presses with income under $1 million, the fee is waived. (So this went from $750 to $0.)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Inform authors that the National Book Awards Ceremony will be held at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday, November 14, 2018. If the publisher attends, it is the expectation that they will provide a seat for their Finalist (discounted tickets are available for small, nonprofit, and\/or university presses) (Still not sure what the cost actually is, but the fact that we don\u2019t all have to pay Big Five rates is reassuring.)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Cover all travel and accommodation costs for Finalists (the Foundation will provide travel support for Finalists in the Translated Literature category). (Even if the NBF<\/span> only covers part of this, it\u2019s still a big help.)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n So there you go! Even though a Twitter conversation established that Lisa Lucas never read anything I ever wrote on the subject, and was only aware of the BookRiot piece<\/a> (which is basically a 1:1 rewrite of everything I said), I\u2019d like to think that maybe Three Percent did a bit of good by remarking on all of this and making the economics of translation publishing a bit more transparent.<\/p>\n (Which is bullshit. The only time anyone reads or responds to any of these posts is when they\u2019re offended. A near weekly occurrence, and something that\u2019s really getting me down and making it hard to fully enjoy writing these. This is how self-censorship happens. Although, to be honest, since it seems that no one actually reads these, I should feel way more liberated!)<\/p>\n This last point must refer to me. I prefer to imagine Mam\u00e1\u2014drunk and sniveling\u2014singing to the sham lights of La Habana than to see her as I do today: bald, silent, yellow, breathing with greater difficulty than a chick raffled off at a charity event. For over a week now, my mother has been, biochemically speaking, incapable of crying. The ideology of pain is the most fraudulent of all. It would be more honest to say that, since she fell ill with leukemia, my mother\u2019s political thought can be expressed only through a microscope.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIf you want to move in with that frigging bitch, fine: do it. But she\u2019ll make your life hell. And you\u2019re abandoning me, the person who\u2019s taken so much shit to get you this far. If you\u2019ve already made up your mind, go ahead. But you\u2019re not my son anymore, you bastard, you\u2019re nothing but a mad dog.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In my family, it\u2019s fine to utter any kind of curse (frigging, bastard, screw, idiot), but obscenities (prick, ass, fart, whore-monger) are prohibited. Although it\u2019s a bit late in the day for me to offer a clear explanation of the difference between the two categories, I can easily intuit which new words belong in one hemisphere and which in the other. The universal term my siblings and I employ to substitute impolite expressions is This.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n With Among Strange Victims<\/em>, I started the process in British English and then, when Coffee House Press decided to publish it, I had to rethink certain passages. I remember that the expletive \u201cbloody\u201d (my translation of pinche<\/em>) was considered too British when it came to editing, and there was a suggestion of replacing it with \u201cdamn.\u201d But the problem was, I\u2019d already used \u201cdamn\u201d in other contexts, and wanted something more specific for that very Mexican term. Anyway, after a great deal of thought, I decided on \u201cfrigging,\u201d which seems to fit neatly between the two cultures: Daniel liked it too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Really curious to know if that\u2019s the same situation here. I personally have never heard anyone say If there really isn\u2019t a satisfactory match for pinche<\/em> (assuming that\u2019s the original in this book as it was in Among Strange Victims<\/em>), it would be bold\u2014and cool\u2014to just leave it. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if a significant number of readers had come across pinche<\/em> before, or could at least glean it\u2019s swear-status from context. Which brings me to my last translation-related observation\/question:<\/p>\n (Scrawneebly<\/em> is a word M\u00f3nica and I invented to refer to cowards: a mixture of scrawny and feeble. We stand facing each other, arms akimbo, in superhero pose, and recite in unison, \u201cAnd did you really think I was scrawneebly?\u201d)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Again, not that there\u2019s anything wrong with MacSweeney\u2019s solution. It just stood out to me, and I\u2019m again curious about the thought process and other possibilities.<\/p>\n We occasionally had breakfast with other Latin American poets, who seemed deeply self-satisfied with their own genius. [. . .] The best poets were, naturally, from Cuba and Chile. But when it came to conversation, nothing doing: they would have had to send them over with built-in subtitles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Since it\u2019s never too early to speculate, based on my pre-existing knowledge of these judges and the eligible books, here are five that I expect to see on the longlist:<\/p>\n Emissary<\/em> by Yoko Tawada, translated from the Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani (New Directions) (I\u2019m assuming this is eligible even though Bernofsky translates Tawada\u2019s German works)<\/p>\n Armand V<\/em> or T Singer<\/em> by Dag Solstad, translated from the Norwegian by Steven T. Murray and Tiina Nunnally, respectively (New Directions)<\/p>\n My Struggle: Book Six<\/em> by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Martin Aiken (Archipelago Books)<\/p>\n Tomb Song<\/em> by Juli\u00e1n Herbert, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney (Graywolf Press)<\/p>\n Blue Self-Portrait<\/em> by Noemi Lefebvre, translated from the French by Sophie Lewis (Transit Books)<\/p>\n One question: Is it OK to lobby for your own books? Given how small the translation world is, I know four of the five of the people on this committee, which makes me uncomfortable. I\u2019m desperate for our books\u2014and our website, and Open Letter as a whole, and myself personally\u2014to get some national respect, to be considered to be \u201ccool\u201d or \u201cnecessary,\u201d but prefer that it happens because people read the work itself<\/em> and respond to quality. As you surely know, I suck at generating favorable vibes for myself or our press and its programs. It\u2019s a curse I struggle with all the time in ways that I don\u2019t want to share, and that you wouldn\u2019t want to experience. But if I were a good publisher, maybe I could do that extra bit of Oscar-esque soft-diplomacy that creates a warm context within which these judges would more likely appreciate our submissions . . .<\/p>\n There are four books of ours that I think deserve to be longlisted: Fox<\/em> by Dubravka Ugresic, The Bottom of the Sky<\/em> by Rodrigo Fres\u00e1n, Her Mother\u2019s Mother\u2019s Mother and Her Daughters<\/em> by Maria Jos\u00e9 Silveira, and The Endless Summer<\/em> by Madame Nielsen. If one of those makes the longlist, I\u2019ll be ecstatic.<\/p>\n As a child, I wanted to be a scientist or a doctor. A man in a white coat. But all too soon I discovered my lack of aptitude: it took me years to accept the roundness of the earth. In public, I faked it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (BTW<\/span>, the review that went along with the Chicago Review of Books<\/em> headline is totally reasonable, and Empty Set<\/em> is totally reasonable as a book as well. It\u2019s not Joyce or anything\u2014which that headline implies\u2014but it\u2019s good.)<\/p>\n So what I decided is that I should go back and change all<\/em> of my previous posts to reflect this sort of \u201cclickbait\u201d mentality. Hell, I wrote an article once about how no one reads articles, they just glance at the headline, who\u2019s tweeting it, and then click \u201cheart\u201d and\/or \u201creshare.\u201d It\u2019s a complete inefficiency to write long, voice-driven posts that shoot for nuance and call-backs and embedded jokes, but I\u2019d get way way more readers if these posts have BuzzFeed-inspired titles like: \u201c9 Moments That Make \u2018Tomb Song\u2019 the Frontrunner for the National Book Award in Translation,\u201d or \u201cHow \u2018Empty Set\u2019 Revolutionized the Marketing of Translations,\u201d or \u201c10 Paths to Obscure Books That Will Make You Say \u2018Wow\u2019,\u201d or \u201cReaders Born in the 1970s Will Recognize These Vargas Llosa Classics,\u201d or \u201c15 Ways Books About Chess Can Rewire Your Brain\u2014And Make You Smarter!\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s the new Three Percent policy: sell-out when you can. Rochester is lonely enough, there\u2019s no honor in spending four hours a weekend writing shit that no one ever clicks on.<\/p>\n All of a sudden \u00c9mil Cioran\u2019s little books on antipersonal development for adolescents come to mind. The one, for example, in which insomnia reveals to him the most profound sense of the trouble with existence: it impelled him toward unlimited spite: walking to the shoreline and throwing stones at some poor seagulls. Jeez, what a punk.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n
\n\u201cfrigging\u201d before, and would never think of it as a substitute for any swear. It does help maintain the confusion between the categories of \u201ccurses\u201d and \u201cobscenities\u201d (bastard and screw are allowed but fart isn\u2019t?), but it stands out to me, especially when his mother says it, and against the larger backdrop of characters who say \u201cfucking\u201d and do a lot of cocaine and opioids.<\/p>\n