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The Delighted States
Having slept with a prostitute in Egypt, a young French novelist named Gustave Flaubert at last abandons sentimentality and begins to write. He influences the obscure French writer Édouard Dujardin, who is read by James Joyce on the train to Trieste, where he will teach English to the Italian novelist Italo Svevo. Back in Paris, Joyce asks Svevo to deliver a suitcase containing notes for Ulysses, a novel that will be viscerated by the expat Gertrude Stein, whose first published story is based on one by Flaubert.
This carousel of influence shows how translation and emigration lead to a new and true history of the novel. We devour novels in translation while believing that style does not translate. But the history of the novel is the history of style. The Delighted States attempts to solve this conundrum while mapping an imaginary country, a country of readers: the Delighted States.
This book is a provocation, a box of tricks, a bedside travel book; it is also a work of startling intelligence and originality from one of our finest young writers.
592 pages, Hardcover
First published October 25, 2007
10 people are currently reading
440 people want to read
About the author
Adam Thirlwell
36 books91 followersAdam Thirlwell was born in 1978 and grew up in North London. He is a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and assistant editor of Areté magazine.
His first novel, 'Politics', a love story with digressions, was published in 2003, and his second book, 'Miss Herbert: A Book of Novels, Romances & Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents & Accompanied by Maps, Portraits, Squiggles, Illustrations, & a Variety of Helpful Indexes', in 2007. 'Miss Herbert' won a 2008 Somerset Maugham Award. His third novel is 'The Escape' (2009).
In 2003, Adam Thirlwell was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty 'Best of Young British novelists'. He lives in Oxford.
His first novel, 'Politics', a love story with digressions, was published in 2003, and his second book, 'Miss Herbert: A Book of Novels, Romances & Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents & Accompanied by Maps, Portraits, Squiggles, Illustrations, & a Variety of Helpful Indexes', in 2007. 'Miss Herbert' won a 2008 Somerset Maugham Award. His third novel is 'The Escape' (2009).
In 2003, Adam Thirlwell was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty 'Best of Young British novelists'. He lives in Oxford.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
November 13, 2012
Miss Herbert: A book of novels, romances and their translators, containing ten languages, set on four continents and accompanied by maps, portraits, squiggles and illustrations—titled The Delighted States in the United States—is a digressive meditation on literary style, translation and avant-garde genealogy. The (English) title refers to Juliet Herbert, the English governess of Flaubert’s niece, Caroline. Her womanly charms were admired by Gustave—“at the table my eyes follow the gentle slope of her breast”—and she helped him complete an English translation of Madame Bovary, a “masterpiece” that was lost by Herbert when she returned to England. The book, Thirlwell states: “ . . . is my version of Nabokov’s ideal novel—which is not really a novel. It has recurring characters; with a theme, and variations; and this theme has its recurring motifs. It just has no plot, no fiction, and no finale. It is a description of a milky way, an aurora borealis.” Split into five “volumes” with a series of “books” separating each short “chapter” (essay), Thirlwell’s beautifully designed and visually stunning mini-tome is a charming ramble through Flaubert, Sterne, Nabokov, Joyce, Kafka, Gombrowicz and Proust, filled with marvellous and often contradictory musings on the problems of translation and retaining style, plus delicious literary trivia, as if Markson had written proper paragraphs. (My favourite morsel being that Nabokov delivered his 1937 lecture on style to Joyce and the Hungarian football team). Clearly, this book should be picked up and devoured by, more or less, everyone on my GR friend list, even if you find Thirlwell’s sentences a little too staccato. [This version also includes Thirlwell’s translation, from the original French, of Nabokov’s ‘Mademoiselle O’ and the original text, rather unnecessarily].
December 21, 2012
It's great to see someone addressing themselves at this kind of length to literary theory – although this is not really a book of ‘Theory’, but rather a long working-out of the author's feelings about style, what it is, and how well it can be translated. Thirlwell's survey takes in a fairly standard timeline of the European canon, tracing innovations in narrative voice more or less from Sterne to Nabokov, taking in Joyce and Kafka and Tolstoy and Gombrowicz on the way, and glorying in the random connections and coincidences which link them.
It's described by the author not as a long essay, but as a novel whose characters are works of literature. But it's not, it's definitely a long essay – although one of its central ideas is the notion that narrative coherence does not come from the plot, but rather by building up related themes.
Thirlwell has some good things to say about the universality of style, and he comes into his own when discussing translation – the impossibility of doing it perfectly, and yet the undeniable, perhaps troubling, fact that an author's style can come through even the most inept translation. A central thesis is this conviction that ‘an author's style is not identical to the language in which it takes form’, and the implications of this on the question of where, exactly this thing called ‘style’ resides, are fully explored.
In my view he's bang on in his dismantling of Nabokov's famously strict views on how translation should be done, and he's also sensitive to the dangers involved with modern translations of older works.
It is the problem that, oddly, many translations begin to sound like each other, consistently awkward, poised between the contemporary and the old-fashioned. And this creates the strange dialect in which many translations are written – a hybrid, impossible language.
And yet there is an irony here which got in the way of my enjoyment of the book. Simply, Thirlwell's own style resembles nothing more than the ‘translationese’ he mocks here. His prose can be admirably clear and lucid at its best – but at its worst, the careful explanations can start to seem a bit condescending. He has a habit of hopping to a new paragraph for each new thought explained in short, conjunction-led sentences:
But I am not so sure about this.
And I like this story.
But I am not so sure that Mallarmé was quite as clever as Joyce.
And so on. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't – personally I began to find it a bit grating.
But that is probably just griping. It's great to see someone prepared to write a work of such personal enthusiasm, and even better, perhaps, to see that publishers are prepared to put it out. It's full of great literary anecdotes and thoughtful reflections on what makes a great writer great, on a sentence-by-sentence level.
It's described by the author not as a long essay, but as a novel whose characters are works of literature. But it's not, it's definitely a long essay – although one of its central ideas is the notion that narrative coherence does not come from the plot, but rather by building up related themes.
Thirlwell has some good things to say about the universality of style, and he comes into his own when discussing translation – the impossibility of doing it perfectly, and yet the undeniable, perhaps troubling, fact that an author's style can come through even the most inept translation. A central thesis is this conviction that ‘an author's style is not identical to the language in which it takes form’, and the implications of this on the question of where, exactly this thing called ‘style’ resides, are fully explored.
In my view he's bang on in his dismantling of Nabokov's famously strict views on how translation should be done, and he's also sensitive to the dangers involved with modern translations of older works.
It is the problem that, oddly, many translations begin to sound like each other, consistently awkward, poised between the contemporary and the old-fashioned. And this creates the strange dialect in which many translations are written – a hybrid, impossible language.
And yet there is an irony here which got in the way of my enjoyment of the book. Simply, Thirlwell's own style resembles nothing more than the ‘translationese’ he mocks here. His prose can be admirably clear and lucid at its best – but at its worst, the careful explanations can start to seem a bit condescending. He has a habit of hopping to a new paragraph for each new thought explained in short, conjunction-led sentences:
But I am not so sure about this.
And I like this story.
But I am not so sure that Mallarmé was quite as clever as Joyce.
And so on. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't – personally I began to find it a bit grating.
But that is probably just griping. It's great to see someone prepared to write a work of such personal enthusiasm, and even better, perhaps, to see that publishers are prepared to put it out. It's full of great literary anecdotes and thoughtful reflections on what makes a great writer great, on a sentence-by-sentence level.
August 16, 2011
Volete scrivere un romanzo? Prima leggete questo.
Prima di iniziare a leggere quanto segue, dimenticatevi per un attimo quante stelline ho dato a questo libro. A prescindere dal fatto che possa essermi piaciuto o meno, è importante che vi renda edotti innanzitutto sulla sua funzione.
Per non farvela tanto lunga, direi che è la prova del nove per capire chi sa scrivere con cognizione di causa, e chi sa leggere.
Scorrendo le recensioni su “Mademoiselle O”(veramente poche a dire il vero), ho notato, con un certo divertimento, che quasi tutti i pareri negativi, a detta dei lettori, sono motivati dal fatto che questo non sia un romanzo. Dal fatto che sia noioso. Dal fatto che sia un’antologia di aneddoti (cosa vera solo in parte). Nessuno di coloro che l’ha giudicato deludente l’ha però definito con l’unica parola possibile: saggio.
E adesso, consentitemi una certa cattiveria. Se il lettore, anche qualora fosse stato tratto in inganno dal titolo, che tutto fa pensare tranne che a un saggio, non riesce ad accorgersi della natura del libro già dalla decima riga, e qualora se ne accorga ma non gli venga la parola, decida comunque di abbandonarlo perché noioso, beh, allora che posso dire! Che si limiti a leggere la Kinsella e Moccia.
Ecco perché ho parlato di prova del nove per i lettori.
Ma è anche una prova per gli autori.
Thirlwell, è sicuramente uno che ne sa. E su questo non v’è dubbio. Ma è soprattutto, cosa che traspare in tutte le pagine, un amante della letteratura. Della buona letteratura.
Mademoiselle O, è lungo quasi 500 pagine. Io, che sono una dilettante, cercherò di spiegarvi in quattro righe cos’è che Thirlwell si sforza di farci capire.
Partiamo da un esempio facile facile.
Tutti noi, sappiamo che dietro un film, c’è un lungo lavoro. Se poi si tratta di un gran film, c’è dietro un’opera d’arte congegnata nei minimi dettagli. Noi ovviamente, siamo solo i fruitori di un prodotto finito, le nostre impressioni sul film sono certe e forti e possiamo solo immaginare quanto lavoro ci sia voluto per riuscire a trasmettercele. E’ per questo che quando ci capita di vedere un backstage, o l’intervista al regista, spesso lo guardiamo con lo stesso interesse che abbiamo rivolto al film. Per rimirare l’arte nascosta dietro l’immagine. Per capire i “trucchi” di tanto splendore.
Thirlwell, fa la stessa cosa col romanzo. Ci racconta il backstage di titoli famosi e intramontabili. Ci spiega le intenzioni dello scrittore. E di quanto abbia penato per raggiungere un certo risultato.
Risultato, che Thirlwell chiama stile. Ma non inteso come composizione lessicale, ma come abito del romanzo. Non per niente lui stesso definisce lo stile come una “qualità di visione”. Da qui, l’ovvia conclusione che lo stile non sia soltanto il vestito con cui si confeziona la trama, ma diventi parte dei soggetti e sia allo stesso tempo anima del romanzo.
Ho parlato di ovvia conclusione. Ovvia mica tanto, se Thirlwell ci ha messo 500 pagine per riuscire a illustrarla. Ma sono 500 pagine indispensabili, anche se a prima vista possono sembrare confusionarie e caotiche.
Il giusto approccio a questo libro, è quello di pensare di ascoltare nell’auditorium della vostra città una lezione di e sulla letteratura, tenuta da uno studioso del settore. Una lezione di cui godere con spirito accademico. Evento, a cui farei partecipare, trascinandoli per i capelli se occorre, molti autori contemporanei, convinti ancora, e purtroppo aiutati dal consenso di molti lettori superficiali, che sia sufficiente sapere l’italiano e avere una buona trama per poter scrivere un libro che passi alla storia. Dietro un romanzo c’è molto altro.
Flaubert lo sapeva.
Gogol pure.
Cechov anche.
Balzac lo stesso.
Proust ugualmente.
Nabokov idem.
Tolstoj certamente.
Diderot altrettanto.
E come loro molti altri (ma comunque pochi rispetto alla quantità di scrittori esistenti).
Che poi è anche il motivo per cui i loro scritti, resistono all’evoluzione del tempo e dei costumi in qualità di classici, irrinunciabili e intramontabili. Una grande lezione, per chi la sa cogliere.
Prima di iniziare a leggere quanto segue, dimenticatevi per un attimo quante stelline ho dato a questo libro. A prescindere dal fatto che possa essermi piaciuto o meno, è importante che vi renda edotti innanzitutto sulla sua funzione.
Per non farvela tanto lunga, direi che è la prova del nove per capire chi sa scrivere con cognizione di causa, e chi sa leggere.
Scorrendo le recensioni su “Mademoiselle O”(veramente poche a dire il vero), ho notato, con un certo divertimento, che quasi tutti i pareri negativi, a detta dei lettori, sono motivati dal fatto che questo non sia un romanzo. Dal fatto che sia noioso. Dal fatto che sia un’antologia di aneddoti (cosa vera solo in parte). Nessuno di coloro che l’ha giudicato deludente l’ha però definito con l’unica parola possibile: saggio.
E adesso, consentitemi una certa cattiveria. Se il lettore, anche qualora fosse stato tratto in inganno dal titolo, che tutto fa pensare tranne che a un saggio, non riesce ad accorgersi della natura del libro già dalla decima riga, e qualora se ne accorga ma non gli venga la parola, decida comunque di abbandonarlo perché noioso, beh, allora che posso dire! Che si limiti a leggere la Kinsella e Moccia.
Ecco perché ho parlato di prova del nove per i lettori.
Ma è anche una prova per gli autori.
Thirlwell, è sicuramente uno che ne sa. E su questo non v’è dubbio. Ma è soprattutto, cosa che traspare in tutte le pagine, un amante della letteratura. Della buona letteratura.
Mademoiselle O, è lungo quasi 500 pagine. Io, che sono una dilettante, cercherò di spiegarvi in quattro righe cos’è che Thirlwell si sforza di farci capire.
Partiamo da un esempio facile facile.
Tutti noi, sappiamo che dietro un film, c’è un lungo lavoro. Se poi si tratta di un gran film, c’è dietro un’opera d’arte congegnata nei minimi dettagli. Noi ovviamente, siamo solo i fruitori di un prodotto finito, le nostre impressioni sul film sono certe e forti e possiamo solo immaginare quanto lavoro ci sia voluto per riuscire a trasmettercele. E’ per questo che quando ci capita di vedere un backstage, o l’intervista al regista, spesso lo guardiamo con lo stesso interesse che abbiamo rivolto al film. Per rimirare l’arte nascosta dietro l’immagine. Per capire i “trucchi” di tanto splendore.
Thirlwell, fa la stessa cosa col romanzo. Ci racconta il backstage di titoli famosi e intramontabili. Ci spiega le intenzioni dello scrittore. E di quanto abbia penato per raggiungere un certo risultato.
Risultato, che Thirlwell chiama stile. Ma non inteso come composizione lessicale, ma come abito del romanzo. Non per niente lui stesso definisce lo stile come una “qualità di visione”. Da qui, l’ovvia conclusione che lo stile non sia soltanto il vestito con cui si confeziona la trama, ma diventi parte dei soggetti e sia allo stesso tempo anima del romanzo.
Ho parlato di ovvia conclusione. Ovvia mica tanto, se Thirlwell ci ha messo 500 pagine per riuscire a illustrarla. Ma sono 500 pagine indispensabili, anche se a prima vista possono sembrare confusionarie e caotiche.
Il giusto approccio a questo libro, è quello di pensare di ascoltare nell’auditorium della vostra città una lezione di e sulla letteratura, tenuta da uno studioso del settore. Una lezione di cui godere con spirito accademico. Evento, a cui farei partecipare, trascinandoli per i capelli se occorre, molti autori contemporanei, convinti ancora, e purtroppo aiutati dal consenso di molti lettori superficiali, che sia sufficiente sapere l’italiano e avere una buona trama per poter scrivere un libro che passi alla storia. Dietro un romanzo c’è molto altro.
Flaubert lo sapeva.
Gogol pure.
Cechov anche.
Balzac lo stesso.
Proust ugualmente.
Nabokov idem.
Tolstoj certamente.
Diderot altrettanto.
E come loro molti altri (ma comunque pochi rispetto alla quantità di scrittori esistenti).
Che poi è anche il motivo per cui i loro scritti, resistono all’evoluzione del tempo e dei costumi in qualità di classici, irrinunciabili e intramontabili. Una grande lezione, per chi la sa cogliere.
March 9, 2010
I liked this book so much that I'm reading it again. Thirlwell's ideas about translation are wonderful. AND, there's a bonus Nabokov short story hanging out in the back of the book which he translated, so you get to see him put his convictions to the test, sort of--and an interesting choice, because Nabokov was rabid about his translations.
And part of the book is written using a flourish--as in a pen scribble/swirl--a la Tristram Shandy. I now have a deep love for anyone who uses a scribble to help make a somewhat complicated point about how to properly translate a literary work. The chapters are roughly 1.5 pages long, so it's perfect for lunchtime reading, and honestly the perfect construction/pacing for an entire book that's a meditation on translation, tone, and authorship. You never get bogged down.
AND YOU GET TO READ A PASSAGE OF FINNEGAN'S WAKE IN FRENCH.
Yes. Fuck Yes.
Most certainly a book for language nerds everywhere--but it's also a book for anyone who wonders about translated works or translation in general. Even though it sounds like a pedantic bunch of academese, it's really one big long ode to awesome books/authors, and why you should read them no matter what.
And part of the book is written using a flourish--as in a pen scribble/swirl--a la Tristram Shandy. I now have a deep love for anyone who uses a scribble to help make a somewhat complicated point about how to properly translate a literary work. The chapters are roughly 1.5 pages long, so it's perfect for lunchtime reading, and honestly the perfect construction/pacing for an entire book that's a meditation on translation, tone, and authorship. You never get bogged down.
AND YOU GET TO READ A PASSAGE OF FINNEGAN'S WAKE IN FRENCH.
Yes. Fuck Yes.
Most certainly a book for language nerds everywhere--but it's also a book for anyone who wonders about translated works or translation in general. Even though it sounds like a pedantic bunch of academese, it's really one big long ode to awesome books/authors, and why you should read them no matter what.
December 4, 2010
OK, so this is a pretty haphazard, random, seemingly disorganized ramble through traditions of international literature, issues of translation, of style, of aesthetics, of sentimentality. It's as if the reader is at a bar with Thirlwell and he's holding court, shooting shit with an air of playful knowledge.
Some people might criticize this sort of Sternian disregard for linearity, but to be honest, I like drinking, I like bars, I like shooting the shit, and I like Adam. (Doesn't hurt that I'm a big fan of most of the authors he keeps going back to--Sterne, Gombrowicz, Hrabal, Nabokov, Flaubert, Schulz, Svevo, etc.)
In the end, The Delighted States is a pretty fun book that's packed both with ideas and interesting moments of literary history. It's not a perfect book, but even its imperfections are pretty fun.
Some people might criticize this sort of Sternian disregard for linearity, but to be honest, I like drinking, I like bars, I like shooting the shit, and I like Adam. (Doesn't hurt that I'm a big fan of most of the authors he keeps going back to--Sterne, Gombrowicz, Hrabal, Nabokov, Flaubert, Schulz, Svevo, etc.)
In the end, The Delighted States is a pretty fun book that's packed both with ideas and interesting moments of literary history. It's not a perfect book, but even its imperfections are pretty fun.
August 8, 2013
While discussing possible subjects for my senior honors thesis with Professor Alfred David, my school's department chair at the time, I mentioned that I might like to explore the role of the uncanny in Kafka's works. Professor David responded that, although he didn't disagree that the topic could make for an interesting thesis, he noted that unless I could read German, he recommended that I avoid works not originally written in English. Until that moment, it hadn't explicitly occurred to me what when I read Kafka in English, I wasn't really reading Kafka so much as I was reading Willa and Edwin Muir's translation of Kafka. Since then, I've been hyperaware of this fact when I read anything that's been translated from another language.
As such, I found Adam Thirlwell's book, The Delighted States, to be fascinating--although it is primarily a book about style, with translation (as a potential corrupter of style) being of secondary importance. He discusses numerous authors and their works in a way that brings those authors vividly to life. He spends quite a bit of time on Flaubert, the father of the "harmonious sentence," then draws a line to James Joyce, the ultimate twentieth-century stylist, before working seamlessly through the lives and work of Laurence Sterne, Tolstoy, Saul Bellow, Chekhov, Kafka, Witold Gombrowicz, Pushkin, and, finally, Nabokov.
There's a dizzying amount of material in this book, with themes interweaving effortlessly from author to author. Sometimes Thirlwell will backtrack to revisit certain topics or authors, and occasionally brings in other writers (such as Diderot, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Italo Svevo, Maupassant, Bruno Schulz, Stendhal) who are less central to his argument in order to help him make his points. This is the kind of book I see myself revisiting again and again. His critical interest in Kafka and Nabokov (two of my favorites) makes this work shine for me. Plus, it is a gorgeously designed book (by one Suzanne Dean). Everything from the typeface and look of the volume and book openers to the inventive use of archival title pages and photos of authors creates a book that is significantly more beautiful as a physical object. Reading this book on an e-reader would lose a lot of the book's aesthetic value in my opinion (and aesthetics is something Thirlwell ponders very seriously in the book). If you have an interest in any of the authors mentioned above, or a more general interest in novelistic style, I recommend this book very highly.
As such, I found Adam Thirlwell's book, The Delighted States, to be fascinating--although it is primarily a book about style, with translation (as a potential corrupter of style) being of secondary importance. He discusses numerous authors and their works in a way that brings those authors vividly to life. He spends quite a bit of time on Flaubert, the father of the "harmonious sentence," then draws a line to James Joyce, the ultimate twentieth-century stylist, before working seamlessly through the lives and work of Laurence Sterne, Tolstoy, Saul Bellow, Chekhov, Kafka, Witold Gombrowicz, Pushkin, and, finally, Nabokov.
There's a dizzying amount of material in this book, with themes interweaving effortlessly from author to author. Sometimes Thirlwell will backtrack to revisit certain topics or authors, and occasionally brings in other writers (such as Diderot, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Italo Svevo, Maupassant, Bruno Schulz, Stendhal) who are less central to his argument in order to help him make his points. This is the kind of book I see myself revisiting again and again. His critical interest in Kafka and Nabokov (two of my favorites) makes this work shine for me. Plus, it is a gorgeously designed book (by one Suzanne Dean). Everything from the typeface and look of the volume and book openers to the inventive use of archival title pages and photos of authors creates a book that is significantly more beautiful as a physical object. Reading this book on an e-reader would lose a lot of the book's aesthetic value in my opinion (and aesthetics is something Thirlwell ponders very seriously in the book). If you have an interest in any of the authors mentioned above, or a more general interest in novelistic style, I recommend this book very highly.
October 2, 2024
Schön geschrieben, dies das bla bla bla - warum aber, existiert dieses Buch überhaupt?
June 28, 2008
Entertaining, engagingly playful book of literary criticism, a homage to the art of the novel via a digressive, witty discussion about style, translation, romance and realism, the citizenship of writers, and what ever else cross references with the above. Thirlwell seems exceptionally well-read for someone just now turning 30. With a 25 year head start I'm perhaps a thousand books behind him. Some of which he writes about I will never read but his doing so broadens my understanding of the literary landscape. Others that he writes of he has nudged me to add to my list. Not a bad service. He is also whip-smart and stylistically and substantively sure-footed. This is a tricky dance he pulls off here and it could easily have been tedious or precociously annoying. I bought this book on impulse because many of the writers and works treated here also got the attention of Clive James in his brilliant Cultural Amnesia. Could be an interesting companion piece I thought. It wasn't that in the end but Thirlwell shares with James an interest in the art of writing that is infectious. He writes clearly and with an easy-going flair that makes this a fine read for anyone interested in the novel, however scarred by college literature classes they might be. Impressive. By the way, please don’t be put off by the long—26 words, three ampsersands, and eight commas—and rather silly sub-title (Thirlwell’s only misstep but a trivial if prominent one.)
October 18, 2013
Updated 10-17-13 to four stars (from three), because four years later, I am still thinking about this book.
Original review:
Kind of like an extended essay that one would write for English class. The main idea is that novelists’ styles are influenced by what came before them, but that sometimes language barriers and imperfect translations make the influences more like the eddies of turbulent flow than the direct line “point a to point b” of laminar flow. (I had to add some engineering to this review, because the book was otherwise utterly liberal-artsy.) Overall I enjoyed reading it, although I often felt I did not know where Thirlwell was going with the whole thing. Perhaps if he had used my engineering thesis statement above, I would have been more on-board. Instead I had to just go with the flow. Nearly all the novelists and books that he uses as examples I had not read, but a few of them I am adding to my reading list now—namely Vladimir Nabokov and Laurence Stern and J. Borges.
Original review:
Kind of like an extended essay that one would write for English class. The main idea is that novelists’ styles are influenced by what came before them, but that sometimes language barriers and imperfect translations make the influences more like the eddies of turbulent flow than the direct line “point a to point b” of laminar flow. (I had to add some engineering to this review, because the book was otherwise utterly liberal-artsy.) Overall I enjoyed reading it, although I often felt I did not know where Thirlwell was going with the whole thing. Perhaps if he had used my engineering thesis statement above, I would have been more on-board. Instead I had to just go with the flow. Nearly all the novelists and books that he uses as examples I had not read, but a few of them I am adding to my reading list now—namely Vladimir Nabokov and Laurence Stern and J. Borges.
August 24, 2023
An entertaining look at style in fiction from Cervantes to Hrabal, with an emphasis on writers whose style is at least partially derived from Laurence Sterne. There is also a small book about literary translation woven in, focused on the question, How and to what extent is style reproducible in other languages?
The author’s voice really makes this book. Also the way the author wanders in an organized manner, making his own trail as he goes. I often did not (at least fully) agree with Thirlwell, but I found his ideas thought-provoking although, increasingly, repetitive.
The author’s voice really makes this book. Also the way the author wanders in an organized manner, making his own trail as he goes. I often did not (at least fully) agree with Thirlwell, but I found his ideas thought-provoking although, increasingly, repetitive.
February 17, 2014
a masterpiece of literature analysis looking at style (conclusion is that style is international, even translatable from originally written languages, character is banal, flukes and coincidences happen, at times happily, but are just that, exile and immigration make a difference and at times very detrimental to the artist due to lack of support and isolation.
thirlwell shows off his knowledge of english, french, czech?, and some russian, reading and comparing translations and originals, and translations of translations , for ex nabokov's autobio from russian into english into french back into russain back into english. thirlwell looks at 19th and 20th century writers: sterne, diderot, borges, saul bellow, gombrowicz, kafka, jane austen, tolstoy, a pushkin, james joyce, cervantes, chekov, samuel johnson, dujardin, daniel prince, sgertrude stein, and many maore.
has lots of pics, sterne's and others squiggles, maps, title page reproductions, index of themes and motifs, index of real life (a bit of an inside joke, you'll see), index of chronology, index of squiggles, AND the short story/novella he translated from the french by nabokov, "mademoiselle O"
can be read over and over, probably a must for any serious fiction readers for their reference.
thirlwell shows off his knowledge of english, french, czech?, and some russian, reading and comparing translations and originals, and translations of translations , for ex nabokov's autobio from russian into english into french back into russain back into english. thirlwell looks at 19th and 20th century writers: sterne, diderot, borges, saul bellow, gombrowicz, kafka, jane austen, tolstoy, a pushkin, james joyce, cervantes, chekov, samuel johnson, dujardin, daniel prince, sgertrude stein, and many maore.
has lots of pics, sterne's and others squiggles, maps, title page reproductions, index of themes and motifs, index of real life (a bit of an inside joke, you'll see), index of chronology, index of squiggles, AND the short story/novella he translated from the french by nabokov, "mademoiselle O"
can be read over and over, probably a must for any serious fiction readers for their reference.
January 30, 2009
I'm half-way through this delightful exploration of European fiction. On the evidence of this book, Thirlwell seems to be one of those exceptionally lucky and intelligent young men who have discovered their métier – and I'd be completely jealous of him if this book wasn't so much fun to read. His mapping of the modern novel reminds me (sometimes) of Milan Kundera's essays, but Thirlwell's obviously having more fun.
He's also fortunate in his publisher, which has created a book that is something of a typographic adventure. If you flip the book over and turn it around you can start it again, except this time it's Thrilwell's translation of Mademoiselle O, a story by Nabokov. So far: five stars, if only for moving directly from Laurence Sterne to Saul Steinberg – an entirely logical progression, as it turns out.
He's also fortunate in his publisher, which has created a book that is something of a typographic adventure. If you flip the book over and turn it around you can start it again, except this time it's Thrilwell's translation of Mademoiselle O, a story by Nabokov. So far: five stars, if only for moving directly from Laurence Sterne to Saul Steinberg – an entirely logical progression, as it turns out.
September 21, 2010
Written in an incredibly pompous and condescending tone that would perhaps be forgivable if he had anything original or interesting to say, but his ideas are generally simplistic, his opinions often misguided, and his style is, at best, clunky and mannered. Nabokov he ain't, although one gets the feeling that he'd like to be, if only he could muster the vocabulary. On the other hand, he does have excellent taste; all of the writers that he discusses are well worthy reading, and the book is at its best when Thrilwell confines himself to repeating interesting anecdotes about said writers, of which he's gathered an impressive store.
October 13, 2023
Picked up on a vague whim because Thirlwell's got a new book out and, checking his back catalogue, this one on the nature of fiction, literary style, and translation appealed more. And because he's roughly the same age as me and met with major critical success irritatingly young
His own style, in this, is frankly a little annoying. And not just because I'm envious. Chantilly smug in its conversational intrusiveness and insistence that this is "a novel" rather than a (very long) essay. Or possibly series of essays.
But somehow it still worked. For me. Mostly.
And yes, those last two paragraphs (and, indeed, this one) were (and are) in part a parody of that style. Not the literal parentheses, perhaps. But the structural ones. And short sentences when the authorial voice kicks in. And did I mention the chatty smugness?
Yet this wide-ranging (linguistically and geographically, if not culturally or in terms of gender) overview of some of the greats (and lesser-knowns) of (relatively modern) Western literature was still eye-opening. Fresh perspectives (for me) on a whole bunch.
And, after all, "The only duty, for a novelist, or a poet, or a novelistpoet, is to be interesting."
I *still* don't get the appeal of Nabokov, though. Even though he should be right up my street.
His own style, in this, is frankly a little annoying. And not just because I'm envious. Chantilly smug in its conversational intrusiveness and insistence that this is "a novel" rather than a (very long) essay. Or possibly series of essays.
But somehow it still worked. For me. Mostly.
And yes, those last two paragraphs (and, indeed, this one) were (and are) in part a parody of that style. Not the literal parentheses, perhaps. But the structural ones. And short sentences when the authorial voice kicks in. And did I mention the chatty smugness?
Yet this wide-ranging (linguistically and geographically, if not culturally or in terms of gender) overview of some of the greats (and lesser-knowns) of (relatively modern) Western literature was still eye-opening. Fresh perspectives (for me) on a whole bunch.
And, after all, "The only duty, for a novelist, or a poet, or a novelistpoet, is to be interesting."
I *still* don't get the appeal of Nabokov, though. Even though he should be right up my street.
November 6, 2019
I have never more thoroughly enjoyed a book as I have The Delighted States, which has served as introduction to translation studies and comparative literature more generally. It is definitely now my favorite nonfiction book and on the short list of books overall.
December 30, 2017
Outlandish, fascinating study of narrative modes.
May 14, 2018
this book was right up my alley. a lengthy meditation on the relationships between writers, their writings, and the possible value of a bad translation.
October 11, 2014
“The Delighted States: A Book of Novels, Romances, & Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents, & Accompanied by Maps, Portraits, Squiggles, Illustrations, & a Variety of Helpful Indexes” by Adam Thirwell (2007) not only has an outrageously long title but is a book of surprises and insight. It is a treatise on writing, reading, and translating novels, and how writers from all over the world influenced each other over great distances and time.
The lives, thoughts, and writing techniques of famous writers such as Sterne, Flaubert, Austen, Tolstoy, Joyce, and Nabokov, and not-as-famous writers such as Denis Diderot, Bohumil Hrabal, and Witold Gombrowicz are documented, using diaries, letters, interviews, and excerpts from their works. Thirwell shows how these writers, starting with Sterne and Flaubert, brought ways of experiencing reality not usually seen in novels and turned these modes of consciousness into new ways of writing.
One can look at almost any page and find a gem.
“Digression, for Sterne, was a feature of real life,” Thirwell wrote. “Everyone, in Sterne’s vision, is evasive, unsure of what was meaningful in a life, and what was meaningless. A life’s plot so often escaped the person who was living it.”
About Social Realism: “Good novelists have nothing to do with slogans.”
The role of chance in life, Thirwell pointed out, is a prominent feature of “War and Peace.” “One definition of being human, in Tolstoy’s opinion, is to be incapable of predicting the future.”
The importance of detail in a novel can’t be overemphasized: “The main criterion for making a story seem more truthful than another is the precision of its detail.”
Ultimately the book is a brilliant elucidation as to what literary style is. And the definition of literary style is wider than what most readers and writers think.
“A style, in the end, is a list of such methods by which a novelist achieves various effects. As such, it can seem endless.
“In fact, it can become something which is finally not linguistic at all. For the way in which a novelist represents a life depends on what a novelist thinks is there in a life to be represented. A style is therefore as much a quirk of emotion, or of theological belief, as it is a quirk of language.”
For Gustave Flaubert, style is “no longer just the literal sound of the sentences, the individual precision of words. It is also the way in which these sentences are arranged, the talent for melodically framing cliches.”
Marcel Proust revealed a succinct and penetrating definition of style in a newspaper interview in 1913: Style “has nothing to do with the embellishment, as some people think, it’s not even a matter of technique, it’s – like colour for a painter – a quality of vision, the revelation of the particular universe each of us sees, and that other people don’t see.”
Throughout in the book, Thirwell reiterates Proust’s idea that style is a quality of vision (which is more than just seeing), and that a talented translator can render much of this vision into another language.
When we accept that style in a book or play or screenplay is more than technique and that style is the vision of the artist, we can understand why “War and Peace” is considered one of the world’s great novels – what an immense vision painstakingly rendered. That can be said also of “Ulysses,” whose vision is concentrated on one day, but that day is painted with rich and amazing detail.
Widening the scope of style even further, we can say that style can relate to novels, short stories, essays, poems, paintings, sculpture, music, candle-making, modes of speech, the clothes we wear – and the lives we live. All these styles are manifestations of the quality of our consciousness.
For those who write or read, “The Delighted States” offers ways of experiencing fiction that are broader and richer and, when you think about it, the book offers the same enhanced ways to experience life.
The lives, thoughts, and writing techniques of famous writers such as Sterne, Flaubert, Austen, Tolstoy, Joyce, and Nabokov, and not-as-famous writers such as Denis Diderot, Bohumil Hrabal, and Witold Gombrowicz are documented, using diaries, letters, interviews, and excerpts from their works. Thirwell shows how these writers, starting with Sterne and Flaubert, brought ways of experiencing reality not usually seen in novels and turned these modes of consciousness into new ways of writing.
One can look at almost any page and find a gem.
“Digression, for Sterne, was a feature of real life,” Thirwell wrote. “Everyone, in Sterne’s vision, is evasive, unsure of what was meaningful in a life, and what was meaningless. A life’s plot so often escaped the person who was living it.”
About Social Realism: “Good novelists have nothing to do with slogans.”
The role of chance in life, Thirwell pointed out, is a prominent feature of “War and Peace.” “One definition of being human, in Tolstoy’s opinion, is to be incapable of predicting the future.”
The importance of detail in a novel can’t be overemphasized: “The main criterion for making a story seem more truthful than another is the precision of its detail.”
Ultimately the book is a brilliant elucidation as to what literary style is. And the definition of literary style is wider than what most readers and writers think.
“A style, in the end, is a list of such methods by which a novelist achieves various effects. As such, it can seem endless.
“In fact, it can become something which is finally not linguistic at all. For the way in which a novelist represents a life depends on what a novelist thinks is there in a life to be represented. A style is therefore as much a quirk of emotion, or of theological belief, as it is a quirk of language.”
For Gustave Flaubert, style is “no longer just the literal sound of the sentences, the individual precision of words. It is also the way in which these sentences are arranged, the talent for melodically framing cliches.”
Marcel Proust revealed a succinct and penetrating definition of style in a newspaper interview in 1913: Style “has nothing to do with the embellishment, as some people think, it’s not even a matter of technique, it’s – like colour for a painter – a quality of vision, the revelation of the particular universe each of us sees, and that other people don’t see.”
Throughout in the book, Thirwell reiterates Proust’s idea that style is a quality of vision (which is more than just seeing), and that a talented translator can render much of this vision into another language.
When we accept that style in a book or play or screenplay is more than technique and that style is the vision of the artist, we can understand why “War and Peace” is considered one of the world’s great novels – what an immense vision painstakingly rendered. That can be said also of “Ulysses,” whose vision is concentrated on one day, but that day is painted with rich and amazing detail.
Widening the scope of style even further, we can say that style can relate to novels, short stories, essays, poems, paintings, sculpture, music, candle-making, modes of speech, the clothes we wear – and the lives we live. All these styles are manifestations of the quality of our consciousness.
For those who write or read, “The Delighted States” offers ways of experiencing fiction that are broader and richer and, when you think about it, the book offers the same enhanced ways to experience life.
July 31, 2017
"La vita reale non è utopia: è il suo opposto. Ma siccome è l'opposto dell'utopia, è anche utopica. E' piena di progetti che non si realizzeranno affatto. La vita reale è fatta di libri di diete, orari, agende, brochure di viaggio, riviste di arredamento d'interni. E' sempre speranzosa.
La vita reale, perciò, è come un sogno. Qualsiasi cosa ordinaria e banale [...] contiene il germe della trasfigurazione" (p. 280)
C'è una categoria di libri che io adoro particolarmente, che proprio mi entusiasmano: i libri per partire. Li chiamo così. Son quei libri che mentre li leggi parti letteralmente in mille direzioni. Ti partono le curiosità, i desideri, partiresti anche tu, fisicamente, per visitare luoghi o vedere anche solo un profilo di una strada. Sono quei libri che mentre ti tengono lì, ti spingono a andare oltre. Sono quei libri che mentre vai avanti torni indietro e ti appunti un titolo, un autore, oppure dal divano, di domenica, apri il catalogo della biblioteca per vedere se proprio quel titolo ce l'hai. Sono quei libri che ti spingono a legami che non sono lì dentro ma li trovi dentro di te, nelle tue esperienze.
Questo libro di Adam Thirlwell è così. Mi ha incuriosito oltre ogni limite, mi ha dato letture alternative di letture che avevo già fatto e che ora ho voglia di rifare. Mi ha lasciato in eredità il desiderio di approfondire mille cose. Ecco, per come sono fatta io, non posso chiedere di più a una lettura, non posso chiedere di più a un libro.
Leggere avendo costantemente il sorriso sulle labbra è un privilegio. Come è un privilegio sentire costante il solletico al cervello, sentire mettersi in moto la curiosità. Mi emozionano le emozioni, ma mi emoziona moltissimo l'intelligenza e qui ce n'è a pacchi.
Poi, per finire, mi ha confermato una cosa che ho sempre pensato. Proust era un grande umorista, chi lo pensa un palloso non ha capito niente e non se lo merita.
La vita reale, perciò, è come un sogno. Qualsiasi cosa ordinaria e banale [...] contiene il germe della trasfigurazione" (p. 280)
C'è una categoria di libri che io adoro particolarmente, che proprio mi entusiasmano: i libri per partire. Li chiamo così. Son quei libri che mentre li leggi parti letteralmente in mille direzioni. Ti partono le curiosità, i desideri, partiresti anche tu, fisicamente, per visitare luoghi o vedere anche solo un profilo di una strada. Sono quei libri che mentre ti tengono lì, ti spingono a andare oltre. Sono quei libri che mentre vai avanti torni indietro e ti appunti un titolo, un autore, oppure dal divano, di domenica, apri il catalogo della biblioteca per vedere se proprio quel titolo ce l'hai. Sono quei libri che ti spingono a legami che non sono lì dentro ma li trovi dentro di te, nelle tue esperienze.
Questo libro di Adam Thirlwell è così. Mi ha incuriosito oltre ogni limite, mi ha dato letture alternative di letture che avevo già fatto e che ora ho voglia di rifare. Mi ha lasciato in eredità il desiderio di approfondire mille cose. Ecco, per come sono fatta io, non posso chiedere di più a una lettura, non posso chiedere di più a un libro.
Leggere avendo costantemente il sorriso sulle labbra è un privilegio. Come è un privilegio sentire costante il solletico al cervello, sentire mettersi in moto la curiosità. Mi emozionano le emozioni, ma mi emoziona moltissimo l'intelligenza e qui ce n'è a pacchi.
Poi, per finire, mi ha confermato una cosa che ho sempre pensato. Proust era un grande umorista, chi lo pensa un palloso non ha capito niente e non se lo merita.
Read
November 27, 2015A meandering excursion in search of the evolution of style. Thirwell's sympathies lie with Flaubert and Maupassant, and those influenced by them: writers who create a puzzle with fiction, whose readers will promise not to sink into the narrative, but remain outside, perusing the work through the lens of the intellectual. He relates his anecdotes with sympathy and humor, he doesn't hector like some of the more earnest critics, or browbeat, like Bloom tends to do.
My favorite bits are the difficulties in translation, highlighting where cultures do not quite overlap, and the sympathetic exploration of experiments in style. Pluses are lovely bits I hadn't know, like Diderot wrote fan fiction for Tristram Shandy, and James Joyce was inspired to write Ulysses after reading an experimental novel by a French aesthete, who was friends with Malormee. I love the cross-pollinizing of personalities and ideas.
Thirwell does tend toward judgments as though they were self-evident, but the rest of the work is a delighted state.
My favorite bits are the difficulties in translation, highlighting where cultures do not quite overlap, and the sympathetic exploration of experiments in style. Pluses are lovely bits I hadn't know, like Diderot wrote fan fiction for Tristram Shandy, and James Joyce was inspired to write Ulysses after reading an experimental novel by a French aesthete, who was friends with Malormee. I love the cross-pollinizing of personalities and ideas.
Thirwell does tend toward judgments as though they were self-evident, but the rest of the work is a delighted state.
December 20, 2011
See my full review here: http://isak.typepad.com/isak/2011/12/...
Thirlwell is concerned not so much with what is lost in translation, but what is found: the peculiar magic of a writer's style communicating itself to readers even through the mediating work of the translator. He contradicts the familiar ethos that you can't really -get- a novel if you do not read it in its original language. Instead, Thirlwell puts forward his belief in literature's multiplicities: it is not one thing, and it never was. The majesty of the novel survives misinterpretation. At the same time -- and this is the tension that spans the 500+ pages of The Delighted States -- the novel's "uncanny specificity" is essential.
Thirlwell is concerned not so much with what is lost in translation, but what is found: the peculiar magic of a writer's style communicating itself to readers even through the mediating work of the translator. He contradicts the familiar ethos that you can't really -get- a novel if you do not read it in its original language. Instead, Thirlwell puts forward his belief in literature's multiplicities: it is not one thing, and it never was. The majesty of the novel survives misinterpretation. At the same time -- and this is the tension that spans the 500+ pages of The Delighted States -- the novel's "uncanny specificity" is essential.
August 27, 2014
I liked this book. I found the author's style enjoyable and his criticial insights were often original and striking. But I didn't finish it. This probably says more about me (and my time of life) than it does about the book, though, and I would recommend it to anyone with a serious enthusiast's or professional's interest in the art of fiction, and particularly the problems of translating auctorial style from one language to another. I don't believe it can be done; Thirlwell does, and he was beginning to convince me, too; but in the end the matter didn't seem important enough to keep me reading.
October 17, 2021
Speaking personally I have consistently said of this book that I couldn’t tell you the half of what it says but I just love the reading of it. The style, the voice... unfortunately, at some point I Very coherently relayed more than half of what I had read to a colleague. Possibly wrongly but definitely coherently. I wish there had been more female characters, happily there are many in the acknowledgements and, of course, Miss Herbert herself. I wish I had found it earlier, I regret none of the time spent on it.
April 12, 2021
A fascinating subject matter, well in line with my interests, tracking the genealogy of various modernist literary ideas as they are translated from one language to the other. Unfortunately, the writing is so vague and meandering that I frequently got lost in the argument (and compared it unfavorably to Le Ton Beau de Marot). There were some points of interest, specifically about writers I had some familiarity of, but passages on writers unfamiliar to me were baffling.
June 12, 2012
A good reference book on key inflection points where the style of the novel evolved into new directions. There are also interesting revelations on how much is lost in translation when a book starts off in one language and ends up in another and is often translated off another translation.
I found it engaging enough to read at the cottage.
I found it engaging enough to read at the cottage.
November 14, 2007
An inventive and beautifully produced tour of European literature, with an emphasis on the modernist and avant-garde, told in a chummy (sometimes annoyingly so) voice. Full review here:
http://theasylum.wordpress.com/2007/1...
http://theasylum.wordpress.com/2007/1...
May 30, 2008
Undescribable treatise on many writers, ostensibly about translation but so much more. Witty, smart, fun.
September 11, 2008
Read more Nabokov
January 16, 2011
This is literary criticism at its best, specifically focusing on style and translation and whether the twain shall meet.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews