Who says Americans don’t love
literature in translation? The jam-packed events surrounding
the PEN World Voices Festival last month suggest
that editors will be scrambling to find the next José
Manuel Prieto or Adam Zagajewski faster than
one can say cross-cultural-post-national-poly-lingual-extravaganza.
Billed as “a confluence of remarkable writers from more
than 45 countries,” the campaign was created as part
of an effort to raise American awareness of the “breadth
of literary talent available beyond our national and
linguistic borders.” According to PEN, translations
account for less than three percent of all literary
books published annually in the United States. Depressed
yet? The week’s events addressed the “combination of
historical circumstances and market forces that keep
most of the world’s literatures from being published
in English,” despite the fact that an estimated 80%
of the world’s population does not speak English.
One of the many highlights of
the festival was a literary “variety show” presented
by the monthly books and culture magazine The Believer,
which kicked off with Jonathan Ames’ (Wake
Up, Sir!) madcap demonstration of a Chewbacca-like
language he and his friends invented in their youth.
Not to be outdone, Salvador Plascencia, a budding
author from Guadalajara, Mexico, sent the crowd into
snickers with a presentation of a series of illustrations
depicting “endangered L.A. gang signs” with deadpan
explanations of the origins of each hand gesture. A
host of authors hailing from Nigeria to Japan to Germany
took part in a discussion on the rules of “cross-cultural
appropriation,” moderated by Rick Moody. While
Chimamanda Adichie (Purple Hibiscus) and
Tsitsi Dangarembga (Nervous Conditions)
- from Nigeria and Zimbabwe respectively - cautioned
about the need for sensitivity when adopting the voice
of another nation or gender in one’s writing, Minae
Mizumura (A Real Novel) addressed the practical
matter of considering whether or not one’s work will
be accepted at home and abroad while engaging in the
creative process. There are choices to be made, Salman
Rushdie pointed out. Is it “ghee” or “clarified
butter?” German author Katja Lange-Müller, who
has not yet been published in English (see below), concluded
that, at a table with so many intelligent people, everyone
is right on some level.
Call
Him "The Postman"
So joked Rushdie when he addressed
his categorization as a post-national and, basically,
post-everything-under-the-sun author at another reading
dedicated to writers who “test the limits of nationalist
definitions of literature.” Rushdie shared the stage
with seven other authors, including Yoko Tawada (The
Bridegroom was a Dog) - born and raised in Tokyo
and educated at the University of Hamburg - who switched
between Japanese and German with the speed and finesse
of a bullet train. Mouths watered as Viennese writer
Lilian Faschinger read an ode to Austrian pastries
as a metaphor for national sentimentality. Francisco
Goldman, who drew much applause for his reading
from his latest novel, The Divine Husband, written
in English, (Atlantic Monthly Press), threw an
extra wrench into the issue of identity and nationalism
when he introduced himself as having been born in Miami
International Airport. Siberian author Yuri Rytkheu
shared his writing about the Chukotka of Siberia
from his recently-translated-into-English novel A
Dream in Polar Fog (Archipelago) and stole
the show with the following (paraphrased) joke about
the problem of translation:
Two Jews are standing on a corner
and the first one says, “You know, I don't know what's
so great about that Caruso guy. I've heard him
sing and, to be honest, I wasn't that impressed.” The
second one says, “But he's Caruso, world-renowned tenor,
how could you not like him? Did you hear him in a concert?”
To which the first guy replies, “No, but my friend Shapiro
did and he sang the whole thing back to me.”
Still
Lost In Translation?
Throughout the week, Words
Without Borders hosted live on-line discussions
focusing on translation matters. Though it’s difficult
to deny that the dearth of good translators is a major
hindrance to the acquisition of foreign titles, Esther
Allen, chair of the PEN Translation Committee and
co-director of the festival, asked rhetorically, “How
many multimillion dollar advances are paid out each
year for a book that exists only as a two-page proposal
or a paragraph scribbled on the back of a napkin?” She
added, “Publishers are constantly paying money for books
they haven't read, so to claim that this is a major
obstacle to publishing translations strikes me as somewhat
disingenuous.” Alane Mason, Norton Senior
Editor and founding editor of WWB, has a fine solution
to the problem: “What we need is for every author who
gets a big advance to make a big donation to WWB, to
support translation and promotion of wonderful foreign
writers!”
From the “banned voices” celebrated
at KGB Bar to Eliot Weinberger’s riveting
sociopolitical commentary to Hanif Kureishi’s
comments on eroticism and organized religion to German
author Uwe Timm’s revealing words about his brother
- who served and died as a member of the feared SS Death’s
Head group during World War II in his latest book, In
My Brother’s Shadow (FSG) - the inaugural festival
encompased the serious to the sublime and will surely
be back in some reincarnation or another next year.
While many of the authors in
attendance are already published in English or at least
well-known in the US, East Berlin-born Katja Lange-Müller,
praised for her “extraordinary precision of language
and wild sense of humor,” has yet to make the leap across
the Atlantic. Her latest collection of short stories,
The Ducks, The Women, and The Truth, “takes the reader
into the excitement and flamboyance of the details of
our lives” running the gamut from zoo animals to baseball,
and from South American beaches to the streets of Berlin.
But in all of her stories, the people who live in these
places play the leading role. Lange-Müller worked as
a typesetter and as a nurse’s aid in psychiatric institutions
before 1984, when she escaped to West Berlin where she
was able to pursue her writing. Winner of the Ingeborg
Bachmann Award, and the Alfred Döblin Award
among other prizes, she is also known for her earlier
novel, The Last Ones, which is the story of a woman
and three men on the fringes of society in 1970s East
Berlin. The quartet works for a private printer, and,
through them, she tells the story of endings: the end
of a professional group, of an old technology, and of
a social class against the backdrop of a “fantastic
subversive operation” in this “masterpiece of laconic
humor and linguistic precision.” Rights to her books
have been sold to Wereldbibliotheek (Holland)
and to Amphora (Russia). Contact Iris Brandt
at Kiepenheuer & Witsch (Germany).
