Benjamin Moser talks about finding a somewhat old library of English books and how he began to change his opinion of translating world authors into English.
In recent years we have seen writers outside English become global phenomena: Elena Ferrante, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Haruki Murakami. But such a literary life, the popularity owed to translation, began to seem a little fake to me. And when I read Mizumura I found myself agreeing that, strictly speaking, literary universality does not exist. The books I loved were, after all, about something, not everything. But even in practical and commercial terms, the prominence of English created more losers than winners, favoring, like so many other forms of globalization, a handful of instantly recognizable and inoffensive brands.
…
Translation — not the thing but the unquestioned emphasis on its virtue — started to feel to me like another philistinism masquerading as worldliness.
By worldliness, Moser means people travel the world–or read from around the world–and they start to think they own the place.
Micah Mattix discusses the essay in the latest Prufrock email, saying maybe readers or literary opinion makers should lighten up a bit. “A healthy curiosity is a virtue, of course, but there is nothing wrong with enjoying a work on its own.”
Above, a clip from Buster Keaton’s “The General,” one of the funniest, most creative, and genuinely terrifying movies ever made. No CGI there. Keaton put himself into real peril with those stunts. That was his business.
(By the way, if you’re a Democrat, you’re not allowed to laugh at this. He’s playing a Confederate railroader, and THAT’S NOT FUNNY!)
Anyway, I posted the clip because I feel kind of like Keaton’s character right now. Run ragged, just barely surviving. The comparison’s absurd of course. I’m in no real peril. But I do feel ragged as I run. Or waddle. Come to think of it, Fatty Arbuckle would make a better comparison. But I don’t know his work.
The translation jobs keep coming. This is reason for thanksgiving. There are retired guys out there who don’t know what to do with their time. I weep for their meaningless lives. Me, I wonder where I’ll find the hours for all I have to do.
I’ve got a cold, on top of it. I’m pretty sure it’s not Covid, because I retain my exquisite connoisseur’s palate. (Unless it’s the new Omigosh variant, but it seems too soon for that.) I generally get a cold every winter, and sometimes it lasts me the whole season. Last year, probably because of the Levitical sanitation measures, I got no cold at all. But I have one now. And it’s making me tired.
But someone on the translating team in Norway has Covid (mild, I’m told, thank the Lord), so I must do my part and put my shoulder to the wheel. The shows must go on. And, I must not forget, I get paid for this.
But things keep popping up to steal my valuable time. Had to do the whole mortgage refinancing signature dance all over again today, for some reason I don’t quite understand. Some t not crossed the last time, I guess. A prescription to pick up. Bill-paying day, with an associated cash flow problem. And I need to find a new internet service provider before the end of the month.
I really need a valet. Jeeves would handle all this stuff, freeing my time up for translation and witty repartee. And he’d no doubt have a secret concoction whose ingredients would include honey, lemon, turmeric and Bombay gin, to make me feel better.
I could have been a great financial success, I’m pretty sure, if only I’d been born rich.
A quiet, inoffensive man parks his car by a lake, reads a letter from his brother, and shoots himself to death, leaving a letter confessing to a series of murders. The suicide’s ex-wife tells the police her former husband was driven to kill himself by his brother Randolph, who’s a psychopath.
Years ago, retired FBI agent Sean Kruger had a chance to kill Bishop, the worst serial killer he ever encountered, but let him live and be arrested. The man went on to make his bullied brother his scapegoat, and to murder a string of innocent people. Kruger feels personally responsible for every victim.
So now he’ll be coming out of retirement and going after Bishop again. This time he’s not going to let him go. Especially after Bishop proves to have terrorist ties. And even more so after Bishop threatens Kruger’s family.
In terms of storytelling, I found The Imposter’s Trail (third in a series) a pretty compelling entry in the Thomas Harris “stare into the abyss” school of psychological thrillers.
I personally do not like stories where we get to share victims’ last minutes with them. I prefer to be shown the bodies and let my imagination do the rest. But your tastes may vary.
One real weakness in the book was plain proofreading. “Slight of hand” for “sleight of hand.” Infelicities like “Retreating further back.” Using “conscious” instead of “conscience.” The manuscript would have benefited from a good proofreader.
The Imposter’s Trail was a little dark for my tastes, but you might like it better. Cautions for intense situations, but the language wasn’t too bad.
Busy. I am busy. Busy like the bees, and the beavers, and any number of industrious, alliterative animal life forms.
I posted the video above (recorded in Denmark) because I was on a long road trip over Thanksgiving, and I told the story thought to be behind this ballad. I’ve mentioned it here before. “Sir Patrick Spens” is thought to be (loosely) based (with a shipwreck thrown in) on historical events surrounding the death of Queen Margaret of Scotland. Known in Scotland as Margaret, Maid of Norway. And in Norway as Margaret, Maid of Scotland.
She was the last royal heir of the Scottish Canmore dynasty. Her mother, who had already died, was a Scottish princess married to King Erik II of Norway. When all the rest of the Canmores were gone, Margaret became presumptive heir. At 7 years old, she was betrothed to Prince Edward of England (later Edward II) and sent home to assume the throne. But she took sick on the voyage and died in the Orkneys.
The struggle for the throne that followed is the actual background for the “Braveheart” story, but it wasn’t cinematic enough for the screenwriters. So they invented that scene where Edward I hangs the Scottish chieftains, an event that never happened.
Poor Margaret lived on in song and story, the Maid of Norway (or Scotland). Elevated by that “Camelot” instinct we all bear within us, the sense that if some hero (or heroine) of the past had only lived, everything would have been all right. A shadow of Eden, perhaps.
Anyway, I took a long ride over Thanksgiving, and we had a very nice family celebration. Especially nice after last year’s isolation. I came home with leftovers, which is nothing to sneeze at, at today’s prices.
And I came back to work a-waiting. For the moment it seems to be pouring in, and I can translate as much as I can handle.
And that was a little frustrating too, because I had a pile of jobs to do that I’d put off over the holiday. Doing my laundry. Talking to Customer Service at the grocery store about why my gas rewards card isn’t working. Calling my health insurance company to find out why a medication they’d always paid for was suddenly refused (this got straightened out, and required a visit to the store for a refund). Something more that has to be done on my mortgage refinance, for some reason. And now I learn that my internet provider is withdrawing service, so I’ll have to find a new one of those.
Not to mention the Sverdrup Society work I haven’t had a chance to look at for weeks.
Thank you for your time. I must return to my workbench now.
[This novel was published in 2014, so its title should not be understood to have anything to do with the current pandemic.]
A trend I have deplored more than once is the emulation of “action movies” in thriller novels. Action movies (and more so now that we have CGI) have traditionally incorporated greater implausibilities than action books. Because movie action happens so fast – not giving us time to think about things – and we actually see the implausible happening before us. Reading is a slower, more thoughtful process, so writers have always, in the past, had to work a little harder to maintain the reader’s confidence.
Not anymore, though. Nowadays, more and more frequently, action novels are just as implausible as movies. Such is the case, in my opinion, with Sean Black’s Lockdown, first in a series.
Ryan Lock is a private security expert working for a major pharmaceutical company. Animal rights activists have been protesting their practice of animal testing, which culminated in a few of them digging up the company president’s recently deceased wife and dumping her body on a street. Then the company met with the protest leaders. Surprisingly, they announced that they would be ending animal testing immediately.
Then someone is murdered, and everything turns into chaos. There’s a kidnapping, and Ryan Lock is on the case; he stays on the case even after getting fired from his job. Soon it will be impossible to tell friends from enemies, and a terrorist wild card will be added to the deck.
It seemed to me Lockdown followed the action film template too closely. Switch was followed by switchback so regularly that it got to be pretty predictable. And not very believable.
But the thing that really annoyed me about Lockdown was the villain – an over the top, Ming the Merciless type motivated by nothing more than pure grandiosity. I didn’t believe in him, either.
Also, the formatting was awful. Paragraphs and line endings bore no relation to my page layout. Which is annoying.
However, if you’re looking for popcorn reading that doesn’t get too political, Lockdown will keep you interested.
Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence · OCP Session Choir
Advent season begins today, so I’ll share my favorite advent hymn first. If you know this hymn, it may be the oldest song you know. The words come from the Liturgy of St. James, which is a Syrian rite linked to St. James the Less. Remember our brothers and sisters in the Syrian church, who have persevered in the faith for centuries, as you sing this hymn today.
The recording above has only three of these verses.
1 Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand; ponder nothing earthly-minded, for with blessing in his hand, Christ our God to earth descendeth, our full homage to demand.
2 King of kings, yet born of Mary, as of old on earth he stood; Lord of lords, in human vesture, in the body and the blood, he will give to all the faithful his own self for heav’nly food.
In over 50 tweets, Doom shares his story of clearing out a man’s house and finding his life in photos. If you get to a tweet that reads, “I closed the last album and sat for a long time on the closet floor, resting my head back against the wall,” that’s not the end of the thread. Select the link to view more replies to see the rest of it.
My girls would love to watch endless varieties of good holiday rom-coms, but multiple factors work against them. We don’t have a TV service to feed us the Hallmark Channel or network broadcasting (also the reason we don’t catch the full Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade). We don’t have Netflix anymore. And, fundamentally, “good holiday rom-coms” are as common as good, ugly Christmas sweaters. They call them “ugly” for legit reasons, so to find good ones you have to take up a particular mindset.
Remaking Notre Dame Cathedral: “Newly released plans for reconstruction of the Notre Dame Cathedral will incorporate what some describe as a ‘politically correct Disneyland,’ reports the Telegraph. Christophe Rousselot, the director-general of the Notre Dame Foundation, says the intent is to make the cathedral and Christianity accessible for those not raised in a Christian society.”
Willa Cather wrote, “I think even stupid people like to puzzle over a book. A slight element of mystery is a great asset.”
Adam B. Coleman asks, “To the people who would insinuate that I am being used by white conservatives or that I express ‘right’ leaning viewpoints for white acceptance, I have a question: Would you say this to a black liberal?”
Movies in China: “One of the last vestiges of free speech in Hong Kong is now gone. The result is self-censorship by filmmakers who now have to question what might run afoul of the new rules and increased scrutiny by financiers and distributors who now must consider that very same question.”
From “Snow Day” by Billy Collins In a while, I will put on some boots and step out like someone walking in water, and the dog will porpoise through the drifts, and I will shake a laden branch sending a cold shower down on us both.
Photo: Southampton Theater, Montauk Highway, Southhampton, New York. 1989. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
“An Early Spring,” by the American primitive artist Grandma Moses (1860-1961). We had curtains printed with this pattern in our house when I was growing up.
It isn’t often I actually have a busy day. But this was one, at least by my sedentary standards.
However, it was a good day. I’m still slightly elevated in the wake of Atlantic Crossing winning the Emmy award. You can expect me to mention it, ever so casually, for the next few years. Or at least until the next Emmy win. Shoot, I could conceivably be marginally associated with an Oscar someday.
The first big job today, after my obligatory run to the gym, was baking pumpkin pie. Last year, for reasons too obvious to mention, my family did not gather for Thanksgiving. And so I made no pies, because it’ silly to bake two pies for my sole use. But this year – it was just decided – some of us are getting together. So I made my pies. The best pumpkin pie in the world, I say with all due modesty.
I baked them, and I shamelessly sampled one. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had any for two years, but it seemed to me especially good. So the first job was a success.
The second job was paying my bills, which is usually a Thursday job, according to my personal liturgical calendar. But garbage men must adjust on Thanksgiving, and so must I. Thanks be to God, my social security deposit had cleared yesterday. So I was in good shape for writing the checks. (Not sure when I’ll get paid for my new client’s job.)
Then I had to do some minimal housecleaning. Not because the place is mostly immaculate and just needs a touch-up (ha ha). Rather, because someone was coming by on business, and my home was such a magpie’s nest that a few things had to be moved around so there’d be one flat place where documents could be laid down.
The aforementioned business was refinancing my mortgage. It’s a good time to do it, and I found out I could save about a C-note a month without extending my payment schedule much. In times like these, it seemed prudent.
So the notary showed up at last, and he shepherded me through about 67 signatures. Some of them required dates, and the dates have to be entered in a particular format. Nevertheless I made it through, and now the deal is done and I have that accomplishment to savor. Almost as if I’d been productive. A penny saved is a penny earned, as Franklin said (or is rumored to have said). So that’s as if I earned $1200 next year.
If you discount inflation.
I still have some preparation to do for Thanksgiving, but I’m feeling good about the day. And in that spirit, I shall enhance your life. I shall enhance it by sharing my mother’s pumpkin pie recipe, which ought to make your own life at least $1200 better:
MY MOTHER’S PUMPKIN PIE RECIPE
1. Look at the recipe on the can of pumpkin pie filling (I found Festal this year! That’s the brand we had when I was a kid! Haven’t seen it for years).
2. Follow that recipe precisely, with only two changes:
3. First change: Use 7 eggs instead of 3.
4. Second change: Pour it into two deep dish pie tins instead of one.
5. You’ll end up with two mild, custardy pumpkin pies that even people who don’t like pumpkin pie will like.
6. That’s it. Remember to be thankful for Lars Walker’s generosity. Checks and bank transfers will not be refused.
Years ago, Marvin Olasky wrote of his thankfulness for God’s work in his Austin, Texas church and World magazine. He included this anecdote from the Puritans.
The Puritans liked to tell dramatic shipwreck stories concerning thanksgiving in all circumstances. One vivid tale described John Avery and Thomas Thacher clinging to a rock when their boat was shipwrecked. It appeared that the next wave would sweep them away, and Avery, according to Thacher, said, “We know not what the pleasure of God is; I fear we have been too unmindful of former deliverances.”
Neglecting to acknowledge God’s kind provision, attributing it to circumstance or hard work, is common to most of us. Let’s be mindful of Him bought us and saved us for Himself. May He “keep us in his grace, and guide us when perplexed, and free us from all ills of this world in the next.”
