An online repository of the eclectic podcast
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| Bob Dylan |
Find on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
17.12.14
Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour Archive
Find on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
25.9.14
Susan Bernofsky on Robert Walser
An online podcast
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| Robert Walser |
In 1993 when Susan Bernofsky published her first book-length translation of Robert Walser, the author was little-known in English and virtually unread in the United States. By 2009, when Bernofsky’s translation of The Tanners signified that all of Walser’s novels were available in English for the first time, the release of that book was greeted with praise from publications as diverse as BookForum, Time Out New York, and the Los Angeles Times.
The rise of Walser in translation over the past two decades has been nothing short of stunning, and it is thanks in no small part to a group of fine translators, of whom Bernofsky has played a leading roll. Since her first publication of Walser in 1993 she has published two other books by him, with two more on the way, as well as a critical biography of the author. No less a reader than the Nobel-winning novelist and critic J.M. Coetzee—one of Walser’s great contemporary admirers—has praised Bernofsky’s translations for their “ingenuity” and “resourcefulness” in dealing with his wide vocabulary and highly precise prose.
Walser lived from 1878 to 1956, although it is widely believed that he gave up writing after 1933 when he committed himself to a sanatorium. In his time his writing received praise from the likes of Kafka, Musil, and Walter Benjamin, but after his death he fell into obscurity in Europe, and it was only in the 1960s and ‘70s that he began to be known again on that continent. Susan Sontag took up the cause of Walser in the U.S. in the 1980s, but wasn’t until the late ‘90s and the ‘00s, with the translation of a number of his major works, that he began to become known here.
Bernofsky has described Walser’s prose as walking “a fine line between the maudlin and the trivially playful,” going on to say that he “always manages to stay right in the middle, in that sweet spot where he achieves a sort of guileless profundity that takes the reader by surprise again and again.” The translation of such writing is difficult to say the least, and we are fortunate that Bernofsky has proven herself up to the challenge time and time again.
In addition to Walser, Bernofsky has translated German-language works from the renowned Japanese author Yoko Tawada, as well as Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse for The Modern Library, and others. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including ones from the PEN Translation Fund, the NEA, and the Lannan Foundation. [Read More]
Find Robert Walser on Amazon: US | UK
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
6.12.13
That Other Word: Episode 12
A free online podcast discussing literature and translation
An announcement from That Other Word:
That Other Word is a podcast run jointly by Daniel Medin (Center for Writers and Translators, Paris) and Scott Esposito (Center for the Art of Translation, San Francisco).
Each episode features a discussion between Daniel and Scott on recent noteworthy literature in translation, and then an in-depth interview with writers, translators, editors, and publishers. The podcast hopes to celebrate and explore various and under-appreciated aspects of translation, not only into and out of English, but other languages as well.
In their introduction to this episode, Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito explore two themes: storytelling and surreality. In the latter category are Orly Castel-Bloom’s Textile, a funny, unconventional portrait of contemporary Israel, and Mircea Cărtărescu’s Blinding, Book 1: The Left Wing, the first volume in a sweeping trilogy about Romania, memory, New Orleans, and butterflies. The hosts then give a nod to works by two great Spanish-language storytellers: the Guatemalan Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s The African Shore proves irresistible from the beginning, and the Spanish Marcos Giralt Torrente’s The End of Love is evidence that not all love stories are doomed to cliché.
Daniel Medin then speaks to Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the renowned Kenyan novelist, essayist, and playwright. Imprisoned by the Kenyan government in 1977 for his Gikuyu-language theatrical projects, Ngugi later argued powerfully for African literature in African (i.e. non- colonial) languages. Since then, he has published numerous works in Gikuyu and Swahili, in addition to a host of scholarly texts in English. Recently, he has turned to memoir, and these two volumes, Dreams in a Time of War and In the House of the Interpreter, form the basis of much of his conversation with Medin. The two also discuss at length Ngugi’s commitment to African languages, and touch on the forgotten tradition of pre-1950s African-language writing. Translation takes on increasing importance as a theme as well, particularly in the context of Ngugi’s self-translations. Near the end of the conversation, Ngugi shares some of his favorite contemporary African authors, and explains why it is easier to remember childhood than anything else.
Podcast
Listen to Episode 12 on That Other Word website.Links
The American University of Paris: Center for Writers and TranslatorsCenter for Writers and Translators: Facebook
Center for Writers and Translators: Twitter
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
29.9.13
That Other Word: Episode 11
A free online podcast discussing literature and translation
An announcement from That Other Word:
That Other Word is a podcast run jointly by Daniel Medin (Center for Writers and Translators, Paris) and Scott Esposito (Center for the Art of Translation, San Francisco).
Each episode features a discussion between Daniel and Scott on recent noteworthy literature in translation, and then an in-depth interview with writers, translators, editors, and publishers. The podcast hopes to celebrate and explore various and under-appreciated aspects of translation, not only into and out of English, but other languages as well.
Hosts Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito return after a summer of reading full of praise for a characteristically broad range of texts. First, they delight over Robert Walser’s A Schoolboy’s Diary and Other Stories, a newly-translated collection which features several original illustrations by Walser’s brother, and a long-awaited selected poems in English from an under-appreciated Italian poet, Patrizia Cavalli’s My Poems Won’t Change the World, translated by “a host of luminaries.” Jáchym Topol’s The Devil’s Workshop provides a dose of clever Eastern European gallows humor, and Giocomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone proves, at over 2500 pages, to be a brilliant addition to one’s nightstand. Finally, the hosts express their deep admiration and gratitude for a house favorite, László Krasznahorkai’s Seiobo There Below, which represents a culmination of thirty years of the author’s work.
In the second half of the episode, Scott Esposito speaks to Will Evans, publisher and founder of Deep Vellum Press in Dallas, Texas. Their lively conversation opens with the story of how Deep Vellum got its “cheeky and irreverent” name and a discussion of Texas’ thriving literary and cultural scene. Evans speaks in detail about his decision to found a press, his close collaboration with Chad Post of Open Letter Books, and the historical, financial, and intellectual considerations in becoming a publisher of literature in translation. After waxing enthusiastic about his favorite presses and authors, Evans lays out Deep Vellum’s inaugural catalogue. Reflecting his profound commitment to equal gender representation among his authors, Evans introduces Anne Garréta, the politically radical Oulipian whose novel Sphinx is a genderless love story; Sergio Pitol, the great Mexican novelist whose Trilogy of Memory Deep Vellum will bring into English; Mikhail Shishkin, who is of particular interest to Evans due to his background in Russian, and whose short stories should appeal to anyone who loved Maidenhair; and Carmen Boullosa, another Mexican writer whose novel Texas supports Evan’s abiding wish to explore Texas’ relationship with its southern neighbor.
Podcast
Listen to Episode 11 on That Other Word website.Links
The American University of Paris: Center for Writers and TranslatorsCenter for Writers and Translators: Facebook
Center for Writers and Translators: Twitter
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
17.4.13
That Other Word: Episode 10
A free online podcast discussing literature and translation
An announcement from That Other Word:
That Other Word is a podcast run jointly by Daniel Medin (Center for Writers and Translators, Paris) and Scott Esposito (Center for the Art of Translation, San Francisco).
Each episode features a discussion between Daniel and Scott on recent noteworthy literature in translation, and then an in-depth interview with writers, translators, editors, and publishers. The podcast hopes to celebrate and explore various and under-appreciated aspects of translation, not only into and out of English, but other languages as well.
Prompted by the forthcoming publication of Italo Calvino’s Letters 1941-1985, hosts Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito embark on a discussion of literary lives and letters. They touch upon the marvelous correspondences of Thomas Bernhard and William Gaddis, and look forward to the lectures collected in Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature. Reiner Stach’s Kafka: The Years of Insight, technically the final volume in a biographical trilogy, represents a welcome addition to English-language Kafka scholarship. Curzio Malaparte’s The Skin, a grotesque and haunting semi-autobiographical tale of the Second World War, returns after many years out of print. The introduction closes with a plea from the hosts to Anglophone publishers not to ignore biographies produced elsewhere: Michel Winock’s Flaubert and Madame de Staël, among many others, they argue, deserve a broader readership.
Daniel Medin is then joined by Esther Kinsky, a poet and translator from Polish, Russian, and English into German. Her speciality is Polish literature from the First World War to the 1960’s, and she offers wonderful introductions to some of her favorite writers of that period, including Zygmunt Haupt, who lived in the United States and continued to write in Polish even though his own children did not speak the language, Wiesław Myśliwski, whose Stone Upon Stone recently appeared in English, and Joanna Bator, whose poetic works Kinsky is currently translating. During their conversation, Kinsky and Medin discuss the lives and work of these writers, consider what has kept Eastern European (and particularly Hungarian) poetry and fiction so robust, and discuss the revival of reportage as a genre in Poland. Esther Kinsky also shares an enchanting story about what prompted her to become a translator, muses on the relationship between translating and writing, and mentions her own newest book of prose, whose German title (Fremdsprechen) she roughly translates as “talking something into foreignness.”
Podcast
Listen to Episode 10 on That Other Word website.Links
The American University of Paris: Center for Writers and TranslatorsCenter for Writers and Translators: Facebook
Center for Writers and Translators: Twitter
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
- That Other Word: Free Literature Podcast
- That Other Word: Episode 7
- That Other Word: Episode 8
- That Other Word: Episode 9
- Praise for The Cahiers Series
- László Krasznahorkai and Max Neumann, Animalinside
- Sylph Editions at Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011
- George Craig, Writing Beckett's Letters
12.4.13
That Other Word: Episode 9
A free online podcast discussing literature and translation
An announcement from That Other Word:
That Other Word is a podcast run jointly by Daniel Medin (Center for Writers and Translators, Paris) and Scott Esposito (Center for the Art of Translation, San Francisco).
Each episode features a discussion between Daniel and Scott on recent noteworthy literature in translation, and then an in-depth interview with writers, translators, editors, and publishers. The podcast hopes to celebrate and explore various and under-appreciated aspects of translation, not only into and out of English, but other languages as well.
At the beginning of this episode, our own Daniel Medin and the Center for the Art of Translation’s Scott Esposito are happy, along with the rest of the Anglosphere, to be rediscovering Nikolai Leskov’s The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories, newly translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. They also look forward to a recent success from the Netherlands that’s been making waves abroad, Arnon Grunberg’s Tirza, and take an anecdote-filled trip through modernity in Roberto Calasso’s La Folie Baudelaire. They continue to be impressed by Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love, the second volume in a hugely ambitious series that describes (albeit amid a number of digressions) how the author fell in love with his wife.
Scott Esposito then sits down with Ethan Nosowsky, a former Editor-at-Large at Graywolf Press who has recently been named Editorial Director at McSweeney’s. Nosowsky discusses his early career and several of his experiences with editing translations at Graywolf, most notably with regard to Daniel Sada’s Almost Never. He talks not only about seeking out great Mexican writers and getting to know Sada’s work, but also about the working relationship he developed with translator Katherine Silver as she produced the English version. He muses on what makes a manuscript in general attractive to him as an editor and explains McSweeney’s innovative publishing model. In conclusion, Nosowsky enthuses about the latest issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly, which has been described as a long game of “translation telephone,” and resolves to pursue more literature from China.
Podcast
Listen to Episode 9 on That Other Word website.Links
The American University of Paris: Center for Writers and TranslatorsCenter for Writers and Translators: Facebook
Center for Writers and Translators: Twitter
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
- That Other Word: Free Literature Podcast
- That Other Word: Episode 2
- That Other Word: Episode 3
- That Other Word: Episode 4
- That Other Word: Episode 5
- That Other Word: Episode 6
- That Other Word: Episode 7
- That Other Word: Episode 8
- Praise for The Cahiers Series
- László Krasznahorkai and Max Neumann, Animalinside
- Sylph Editions at Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011
- George Craig, Writing Beckett's Letters
28.1.13
That Other Word: Episode 8
A free online podcast discussing literature and translation
An announcement from That Other Word:
That Other Word is a podcast run jointly by Daniel Medin (Center for Writers and Translators, Paris) and Scott Esposito (Center for the Art of Translation, San Francisco).
Each episode features a discussion between Daniel and Scott on recent noteworthy literature in translation, and then an in-depth interview with writers, translators, editors, and publishers. The podcast hopes to celebrate and explore various and under-appreciated aspects of translation, not only into and out of English, but other languages as well.
Hosts Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito return in the new year enthralled by the “absolutely insane” game of literary telephone in the latest issue of McSweeney’s, in which texts are translated in and out of English and by, among others, J.M. Coetzee, Enrique Vila-Matas, and Lydia Davis. They look forward to games of a slightly different nature in several forthcoming Oulipian works: the 65th anniversary edition of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style; Georges Perec’s La Boutique Obscure, the dream journal that inspired much of his fiction; and Scott Esposito’s own The End of Oulipo?, a critical examination of the movement co-written with Lauren Elkin. Pierre Michon’s The Eleven promises to be one of the author’s best since his widely-respected Small Lives; Yasutaka Tsutsui’s Paprika is story of clinical dream-invaders from one of Japan’s premier science fiction writers. Daniel Medin also announces the launch of the eighteenth volume in The Cahiers Series, Elfriede Jelinek’s Her Not All Her, next month at the Goethe-Institut in Paris.
Nick Barley is the director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the largest and perhaps best-known literary festival in the world. He gives a lively account of Edinburgh’s literary heritage and the influence it still exerts on the atmosphere of the festival, and testifies to the continuing importance of such festivals for both authors and readers. He explains the origins of 2012’s International Writers Conference, at which authors from around the world were asked questions about the relationship between art and politics and the future of the novel. He reflects on the surprising appetite last year’s audiences showed for translation-related events, and shares several of his own favorite works, of both Scottish and foreign origin, from 2012.
Podcast
Listen to Episode 8 on That Other Word website.Links
The American University of Paris: Center for Writers and TranslatorsCenter for Writers and Translators: Facebook
Center for Writers and Translators: Twitter
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
- That Other Word: Free Literature Podcast
- That Other Word: Episode 2
- That Other Word: Episode 3
- That Other Word: Episode 4
- That Other Word: Episode 5
- That Other Word: Episode 6
- That Other Word: Episode 7
- Praise for The Cahiers Series
- László Krasznahorkai and Max Neumann, Animalinside
- Sylph Editions at Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011
- George Craig, Writing Beckett's Letters
2.12.12
That Other Word: Episode 7
A free online podcast discussing literature and translation
An announcement from That Other Word:
That Other Word is a podcast run jointly by Daniel Medin (Center for Writers and Translators, Paris) and Scott Esposito (Center for the Art of Translation, San Francisco).
Each episode features a discussion between Daniel and Scott on recent noteworthy literature in translation, and then an in-depth interview with writers, translators, editors, and publishers. The podcast hopes to celebrate and explore various and under-appreciated aspects of translation, not only into and out of English, but other languages as well.
This month, hosts Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito begin by talking about books they haven’t read, but are eager to: the young Mexican novelist Juan Pablo Villalobos’ Down the Rabbit Hole, which continues to attract praise from all corners; and two works by Marie Chaix, The Laurels of Lake Constance and the forthcoming Silences, or a Woman’s Life, both of which have been translated by Chaix’s husband, the American Oulipian Harry Mathews. Daniel Medin enthuses about two stories in the latest issue of Granta, The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists: Daniel Galera’s dynamic “Aponea” and Michel Laub’s “Animals,” which Adam Thirlwell calls a “matryoshka feat.” Continuing along in the Portuguese vein, Scott Esposito introduces Mia Couto’s The Tuner of Silences, a recently-translated novel from a fascinating Mozambican writer.
Scott Esposito then speaks to Stephen Henighan, a novelist, critic, and translator from Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. Since 2006, Henighan has been general editor for the International Translation Series at the Canadian-based press Biblioasis. He talks about immigrant experiences in Canada and his own “deeply-rooted rootlessness,” the Canadian relationship to English and translation, and the challenges of procuring and producing translations for the Canadian market. He discusses Mia Couto’s “rural modernism,” his literary influences, and why the author travels well, despite being essentially “untranslatable.” Finally, Henighan tells the comical and haphazard story of how he came to learn Romanian, and describes the process of translating and trying to publish Mihail Sebastian’s The Accident.
Podcast
Listen to Episode 7 on That Other Word website.Links
The American University of Paris: Center for Writers and TranslatorsCenter for Writers and Translators: Facebook
Center for Writers and Translators: Twitter
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
- That Other Word: Free Literature Podcast
- That Other Word: Episode 2
- That Other Word: Episode 3
- That Other Word: Episode 4
- That Other Word: Episode 5
- That Other Word: Episode 6
- Praise for The Cahiers Series
- László Krasznahorkai and Max Neumann, Animalinside
- Sylph Editions at Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011
- George Craig, Writing Beckett's Letters
13.7.12
Nina Power on Protest and Alain Badiou
Radio Free Everybody talks to philosopher and activist Nina Power
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| Nina Power |
Matt Callahan: Ok, that’s sufficient. Well then, let’s go right into this, the first question that I wanted to ask you is how do you distinguish philosophy from science, art and politics?Also at A Piece of Monologue:
Nina Power: Ok, well I think, well the way you pose the question is obviously very Badiouian, in the sense that these are his distinctions, although you missed out love. [Laughs]
Matt Callahan: That’s true.
Nina Power: But yeah, in that sense I would say to Badiou when he says that philosophy in a sense is empty, and actually what distinguishes philosophy is not it’s particular subject matter or its content, but its function in the way that it sort of weaves all these other disciplines and talks about them in a certain kind of meta-way. You know, that it can hold together certain kinds of abstractions or truths that are generated by these other disciplines, but it doesn’t generate any truths of its own. So in a way, for me, philosophy is not a particular method or a particular set of questions as you might be taught as an undergraduate, you know, let’s say it’s all these different ways of thinking about ethics or politics or epistemology or metaphysics or something like that. I think it seems to be more humble or more interesting to say that philosophy has no content of its own, it generates no questions that are specific to it, but it can, nevertheless, have this sort of capturing or compossibilizing function, you know, that it can draw things out of other disciplines.
Matt Callahan: How does that relate to Marx’s famous statement that philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point however it is to change it? Is Badiou’s use of the term or what you are referring to as the Badiouian view of philosophy related to that?
Nina Power: You can’t force something, you can’t say, well alright, we’ve got to stop thinking, let’s just do something, ok, without knowing what you’re doing. Obviously there’s lots of kind of wasted action, if you like, there’s no sense in wasting time either, thinking through problems that are irrelevant, but at the same time it’s also, you’ve got to know what you are doing, you’ve got to understand enough of the situation in order to be able to act. When Badiou talks about the event and there are lots of questions that follow from this but it’s about saying something happened that you may not be able to exactly describe in the political situation but what truth might be is your fidelity to whatever’s happened. So, let’s say you’re involved in a political action and something is revealed about the relationship between the state and the way in which, people figured in this state and you see something and you don’t know what to call it, you see something that seems to you true, but isn’t what the state generally tells you is true and you hold true to this so you think about the way in which immigrants are excluded from the way in which the state figures itself or a certain way of seeing the world differently in terms of how you can organise it or maybe without money or something and you hold true to that.
Matt Callahan: I was asking it more, you might say, rhetorically it seems that Badiou is responding to a number of different contradictions. One of which is the original critique of philosophy as such by in Marx’s thesis on Feurbach and on the other hand, he was referring to the fact that all through the 20th century he talks about the destitution of philosophy, referring to Heidegger’s The End of Philosophy of 1969, where he’s offering over philosophy to science on the one hand, and the poet on the other. I mean you can look as these figures as just philosophers or whatever name you want to give them, but there’s really a question of well, does philosophy really have a role at all?
Nina Power: Yeah, I mean this is why the emptiness of philosophy’s really important. So, with ontology, Badiou basically hands over ontological questions concerning multiplicity and so on to mathematics. He says, look, I mean why is philosophy still trying to answer these with this useless language, that mathematics does far better? And that’s to say, well if we can pass that over to mathematics then philosophy has more time, if you like, to think about how we combine events, how we discuss subjects, so what are the subjects of these events? So, instead of spending all of our time coming up with yet another ontology you actually try to think much more about precisely the more practical questions. So what are the truths that are generated in these other areas, in politics, in love, you know, and what philosophy do to put them together to think through different kinds of subjects: the faithful subjects, the loyal subjects, the loving subject, the scientific subject, the collective subject. So in that way, I think he’s paring down philosophy, so although there’s something rather grandiose about Badiou’s system, I think at the end of the day it’s actually really minimal in a certain sense and quite humble, oddly.
Matt Callahan: The last few years, renewed inquiry into what Badiou called the communist hypothesis and really whether or not this was just because of the financial crisis. Is this only amongst philosophers and what does it have to do with communist parties and so on and so forth?
Nina Power: Well, I guess that I think the communist hypothesis idea and the return of it was actually floated before the economic crisis so I don’t think it was really responding to that just chronologically. But, I think there is something slightly problematic about it for me because it retains this kind of idealist element. I think on the one hand it’s very brave how people want to be talking about communism again-”have we left enough time after the horrors etc.” But, I think that it’s a very interesting kind of project, let’s say there’s this idea of invariance so that certain kinds of movements and certain kinds of political situations retain or maintain a kind of similarity that you can point to across the ages. Say, this is where in the Paris commune, May ’68, there’s something similar about that kind of… [Read More]
27.6.12
That Other Word: Episode 4
A free online podcast discussing literature and translation
An announcement from That Other Word:
That Other Word is a podcast run jointly by Daniel Medin (Center for Writers and Translators, Paris) and Scott Esposito (Center for the Art of Translation, San Francisco).
Each episode features a discussion between Daniel and Scott on recent noteworthy literature in translation, and then an in-depth interview with writers, translators, editors, and publishers. The podcast hopes to celebrate and explore various and under-appreciated aspects of translation, not only into and out of English, but other languages as well.
This episode’s opening conversation celebrates literature from Eastern Europe: Daniel Medin, speaking from Book Expo America in New York City, is impressed with Mikhail Shishkin’s forthcoming novel Maidenhair, and Scott Esposito loves Marek Bieńczyk’s genre-bending Transparency. They hope that Julius Margolin’s memoir from the Gulag, Voyage au pays des Ze-Ka will make its way into English soon, and in the meantime they enjoy the biting humor of Éric Chevillard’s Prehistoric Times and Demolishing Nisard. Finally, Contemporary Georgian Fiction, the latest in Dalkey Archive Press’ series of regional anthologies, provides a welcome introduction to writing from an often-overlooked country.
Daniel Medin then speaks to Antoine Jaccottet, who founded the Paris-based press Le Bruit du Temps in 2008 and has since brought out an admirable collection of works in translation, collected works, memoirs, poetry, and philosophy. He has stated that the press’s mission is to publish, if possible, “constellations of books rather than books in isolation. A bit like a musical season: we establish projects around an author (Browning), a book (The Tempest), a theme.” He speaks about the publishing program of Le Bruit du Temps, the importance of translation, Robert Browning, Isaac Babel, Julius Margolin, Virginia Woolf, Zbigniew Herbert, and Osip Mandelstam. The conversation concludes with a bilingual reading: Medin recites Gabriel Levin’s poem “In Alexandria” in the original English, and Jaccottet reads the beautiful French translation by Emmanuel Moses.
Podcast
Listen to Episode 4 on That Other Word website.Links
The American University of Paris: Center for Writers and TranslatorsCenter for Writers and Translators: Facebook
Center for Writers and Translators: Twitter
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
Simon Critchley discusses The Faith of the Faithless
Simon Critchley featured on PRI's Smiley/West
Verso have posted an audio recording of Simon Critchley's recent appearance on the Smiley & West radio show. Critchley discussed his new book, The Faith of the Faithless, and was joined in conversation by Cornel West and Tavis Smiley. [Listen] Also at A Piece of Monologue:23.5.12
That Other Word: Episode 3
A free online podcast discussing literature and translation
An announcement from That Other Word:
That Other Word is a podcast run jointly by Daniel Medin (Center for Writers and Translators, Paris) and Scott Esposito (Center for the Art of Translation, San Francisco).
Each episode features a discussion between Daniel and Scott on recent noteworthy literature in translation, and then an in-depth interview with writers, translators, editors, and publishers. The podcast hopes to celebrate and explore various and under-appreciated aspects of translation, not only into and out of English, but other languages as well.
In this rather German conversation, Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito discuss the melancholy and pleasure in the most recent collection of W.G. Sebald’s poetry to appear in English, Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems 1964-2001. History is a found object in Sebald, and also in December, a wintry advent calendar of thirty-nine short stories by Alexander Kluge and thirty-nine photographs by Gerhard Richter. Robert Walser’s The Walk may induce laughing out loud at the wilderness, and the thirtieth anniversary of Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop’s Autonauts of the Cosmoroute should inspire some very leisurely drives from Paris to Marseilles.
In the second half of the episode, Scott Esposito interviews Benjamin Moser, author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector. Moser has recently re-translated Lispector’s last novel, The Hour of the Star, and is currently editing a series of four of her earlier works for New Directions (Near to the Wild Heart, A Breath of Life, Agua Viva, and The Passion According to G.H.). He talks about falling in love with Lispector, his missionary urge to promote her work, The Hour of the Star’s stylistic strangeness and surprising pathos, and why online grammar forums make the work of translation less lonely.
Episode 4 will be released 19 June and features an interview and reading with Antoine Jaccottet, the founder and editor of the French press Le Bruit du Temps. Enjoy!
Podcast
Listen to Episode 3 on That Other Word website.Links
The American University of Paris: Center for Writers and TranslatorsCenter for Writers and Translators: Facebook
Center for Writers and Translators: Twitter
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
- That Other Word: Free Literature Podcast
- That Other Word: Episode 2
- Praise for The Cahiers Series
- László Krasznahorkai and Max Neumann, Animalinside
- Sylph Editions at Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011
- Clarice Lispector: New Translations
- Clarice Lispector: Cult Hero
- Tom McCarthy on Gerhard Richter
- Gerhard Richter: Panorama
- George Craig, Writing Beckett's Letters
21.4.12
That Other Word: Episode 2
A free online podcast discussing literature and translation
An announcement from That Other Word:
That Other Word is a podcast run jointly by Daniel Medin (Center for Writers and Translators, Paris) and Scott Esposito (Center for the Art of Translation, San Francisco).
Each episode features a discussion between Daniel and Scott on recent noteworthy literature in translation, and then an in-depth interview with writers, translators, editors, and publishers. The podcast hopes to celebrate and explore various and under-appreciated aspects of translation, not only into and out of English, but other languages as well.
In this episode, Scott Esposito eagerly anticipates the Dirty War in Sergio Chejfec’s The Planets, and Daniel Medin shares a delightful description of a freeloader from Nescio’s Amsterdam Stories. They discuss Daniel Sada’s Almost Never and the general robustness of contemporary Mexican fiction, attempt to explain why reading Can Xue’s Vertical Motion is like running downhill in the dark, then hesitate over whether to call Daniel Levin Becker’s Many Subtle Channels a memoir or a work of criticism, but agree that it is about Oulipo and very candid.
Daniel Medin then speaks to Petra Hardt, head of the rights department at Suhrkamp Verlag and author of Rights: Buying. Protecting. Selling. Suhrkamp is one of the most prestigious presses in Germany and in Europe, and since its founding in 1950 has published not only many of the greatest German-language writers of the twentieth century — among them Paul Celan, Theodor W. Adorno, and Thomas Bernhard — but foreign authors as well, including Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust, and Julio Cortázar. In a series of wonderfully engaging anecdotes, Petra describes her work in rights and foreign rights, how that work is changing in the digital age, and why her book is intended for new presses in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
That Other Word is available on iTunes (along with the Center for the Art of Translation’s other audio programs) here. Episode 1 has gone over very well and we’re hoping to reach even more listeners this time. We’ll be promoting the podcast throughout this next week via Facebook and Twitter, and we hope you’ll help us spread the word. (And in return, just give us a shout if you’d like us to help spread the word about other related projects!)
In the meantime, happy listening, and stay tuned for episode 3, airing next month and featuring an interview with Benjamin Moser, translator and author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector.
Podcast
Listen to Episode 2 on That Other Word website.Links
The American University of Paris: Center for Writers and TranslatorsCenter for Writers and Translators: Facebook
Center for Writers and Translators: Twitter
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
4.4.12
That Other Word: Free Literature Podcast
A new online podcast promoting literature and translation
An announcement from That Other Word:
That Other Word is a podcast run jointly by Daniel Medin (Center for Writers and Translators, Paris) and Scott Esposito (Center for the Art of Translation, San Francisco).
Each episode features a discussion between Daniel and Scott on recent noteworthy literature in translation, and then an in-depth interview with writers, translators, editors, and publishers. The podcast hopes to celebrate and explore various and under-appreciated aspects of translation, not only into and out of English, but other languages as well.
In this first episode, the two hosts chat about the accidental poetry and reasonable plausibility of César Aira’s Varamo, the miraculous strangeness of László Krasznahorkai’s Satantango, and the hopping city at the heart of Robert Walser’s Berlin Stories. They also mention recent and upcoming events at their respective centers, including the CWT’s publication of the latest in The Cahiers Series, A Labour of Moles by Ivan Vladislavić, and the upcoming visit of Jay Rubin and J. Philip Gabriel, translators of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84, at the CAT.
Afterward, Scott Esposito is joined by Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review and former senior editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. They discuss editing the English version of Jean-Christophe Valtat’s 03 (translated by Mitzi Angel), procuring the rights to Roberto Bolaño’s works and editing Natasha Wimmer’s translations, failure and what separates translation from other kinds of writing, ‘living with books’, and why The Paris Review publishes what it does. The conversation concludes with Edouard Levé, touching on his aphoristic influences, his humor, his suicide, and his book Autoportrait, which Stein has recently translated from the French.
We're hoping to make That Other Word available on iTunes soon; in the meantime, we invite you to listen to the first episode on either our site or on the CAT's.
Episode 2, which will go live from 17 April, includes an interview by Daniel Medin with Petra Hardt, director of foreign rights at Suhrkamp Verlag.
Podcast
Listen to Episode 1 on That Other Word website.Links
The American University of Paris: Center for Writers and TranslatorsCenter for Writers and Translators: Facebook
Center for Writers and Translators: Twitter
Also at A Piece of Monologue:
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