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The Translation of Dr. Apelles
Dr. Apelles, a translator of ancient texts, has made an unsettling a manuscript that has languished for years, written in a language that only he speaks. Moving back and forth between the scholar and his text, from a lone man in a labyrinthine archive to a pair of beautiful young Indian lovers in an unspoiled and snowy woodland, David Treuer weaves together two love stories. Enthralling and suspenseful, The Translation of Dr. Apelles dares to redefine the Native American novel.
315 pages, Paperback
First published August 22, 2006
18 people are currently reading
652 people want to read
About the author
David Treuer
14 books420 followersDavid Treuer is an Ojibwe Indian from Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the NEH, Bush Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He divides his time between his home on the Leech Lake Reservation and Minneapolis. He is the author of three novels and a book of criticism. His essays and stories have appeared in Esquire, TriQuarterly, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Lucky Peach, the LA Times, and Slate.com.
Treuer published his first novel, Little, in 1995. He received his PhD in anthropology and published his second novel, The Hiawatha, in 1999. His third novel The Translation of Dr Apelles and a book of criticism, Native American Fiction; A User's Manual appeared in 2006. The Translation of Dr Apelles was named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time Out, and City Pages. REZ LIFE is his newest book and is now out in paperback with Grove Press.
Treuer published his first novel, Little, in 1995. He received his PhD in anthropology and published his second novel, The Hiawatha, in 1999. His third novel The Translation of Dr Apelles and a book of criticism, Native American Fiction; A User's Manual appeared in 2006. The Translation of Dr Apelles was named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time Out, and City Pages. REZ LIFE is his newest book and is now out in paperback with Grove Press.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
September 5, 2019
This book is a story within a story—which I love. Beautifully written, both tales are compelling. Dr. Apelles is a translator who has found an old Indian story that is in a language that only he can read. His every day job is to sort books in an archive, where he is slowly falling in love with the beautiful Campaspe (once he can believe that someone like her could be interested in him!). This is complicated by his boss, who seems to have feelings for him, and a coworker, who is also interested in Campaspe. Dr. Apelles has a rather passive life, so the book describes the process where he stirred to action by the chance of love and the chance of having a life.
The other story is the translated text. It is about two different Indian children who are each the lone survivor of their family/clan/village, who are adopted into other families, and who fall in love themselves. Once again, the path to true love is riddled with competitors, kidnappers, attempted murder, and the whims of fate.
What I liked about this book was the lyrical writing. It was a pleasure to read each sentence. I liked Dr. Apelles' character, he was hardly the typical leading man, and it was a heartwarming story to read of his romance. I loved the translated story, lots of lore from old Indian tales. The story seemed to me to be part legend and part perhaps something that actually happened and was maybe handed down through oral tradition until it was written down?
Enjoyable, satisfying read.
The other story is the translated text. It is about two different Indian children who are each the lone survivor of their family/clan/village, who are adopted into other families, and who fall in love themselves. Once again, the path to true love is riddled with competitors, kidnappers, attempted murder, and the whims of fate.
What I liked about this book was the lyrical writing. It was a pleasure to read each sentence. I liked Dr. Apelles' character, he was hardly the typical leading man, and it was a heartwarming story to read of his romance. I loved the translated story, lots of lore from old Indian tales. The story seemed to me to be part legend and part perhaps something that actually happened and was maybe handed down through oral tradition until it was written down?
Enjoyable, satisfying read.
December 4, 2009
Started strong, ended poorly. Tedious, repetitive… I had to force myself to finish. The meta ending was a big disappointment.
December 4, 2017
The Translation of Dr. Apelles (2006) interleaves two stories: a semi-fantastical romance between two Indian youths apparently set in the nineteenth century, and a piece of sad semi-realism about a translator of Native American languages living a life of quiet desperation in a cold nameless modern city. At first, we are given to believe that the romance is an "authentic" Indian tale that the translator has found in an archive and is translating for us, even as his own life begins to echo the events of the old story. The clues mount, however, that Treuer is not telling a straightforward tale with a neat division between translation and commentary (the influence of Pale Fire is palpable).
For one thing, his translator-hero is named Apelles, after the painter whose picture of Alexander the Great's mistress Campaspe was so lifelike that Alexander kept the portrait and gifted the living woman to Apelles, thus proving that art can both substitute for and change life. Similarly, the woman who will become Apelles's lover in Treuer's fiction is named what else but Campaspe. Apelles and Campaspe work in a somewhat science fictional archive for unread books, a tightly-controlled maximum-security prison for all those stories that will go unheard, a dystopian/utopian institution—probably borrowed from Saramago's Registry of All the Names—that threatens Apelles with the threat that his own story will never be told or read. Moreover, Treuer's narrative voice is itself never straightforward: it is a mobile, shifting, parodic one, now "doing" Hemingway, now the eighteenth-century novel, and now venturing upon philosophy.
Finally, as we read on, we eventually come to understand that Apelles's narrative is actually the novel we have been reading about him, effectively his "translation" of his own life into literature, while the Indian romance is only a slightly re-ethnicized variation on the ancient Greek pastoral romance Daphnis and Chloe : the two books—Apelle's manuscript and the old Greek novel—coupled and produced this novel when, at this novel's climax, they were confused and interleaved in the archive.
What can all this recursive Nabokovian metafiction mean? First of all, by elaborately retelling Daphnis and Chloe as if it were an enchanting magical-realist Native American historical novel, Treuer is, if I may use the vernacular, calling bullshit on the idea that anyone can ever encounter cultural authenticity in a work of fiction, which is the product of the individual imagination interacting with literary tradition and not the product of collective racial essences. Individual imagination is important because without it we would all, but especially those who have been and are stereotyped, be unable to articulate our singular experiences of the world and sensibilities in perceiving and expressing them:
Above all, Treuer rejects the idea of culture as a past that imprisons the present, the Faulknerian Gothic mode ("the past is not even past") that even more than pastoral has overwhelmingly influenced American writing about race in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, at least since Beloved (whose author mentored Treuer at Princeton). No, Treuer seems to say, an imaginative writer's relationship to the past may be a voluntary and creative one, and if it is a Gothic one, well, that too is the free exercise of the aesthetic imagination: "So it wasn't that his past haunts him. He haunts his past."
But Treuer's argument, like his Möbius strip of a novel, goes the other way too, as a vindication of any and all modes of fiction-making, so long as you do not confuse them with life: Dr. Apelles's use of Longus is a reminder that the novel is an older and more diverse form than we tend to realize when we imagine it is the product solely of the Protestant middle classes in the eighteenth century. Daphnis and Chloe comes out of the cross-cultural ferment of late antiquity in the eastern Mediterranean, a period denounced as decadently effeminate by Nietzsche, who scorned "Alexandrian man" as a mere proto-postmodern librarian rather than an originator of culture—something that Treuer, with his ambiguous archive of forgotten books, must have been aware of.
The Translation of Dr. Apelles is on the whole an ingenious and intricately written philosophical fiction that I recommend. I could criticize it, of course. Like all novels with obviously set structures—this one alternates predictably from the romantic story to the realistic one—it begins to feel confining, and Treuer's philosophizing becomes extravagantly explicit in the end. And like all fictions composed to illustrate ideas, the novel sometimes feels more clever than wise, more mechanical than alive, as its allegory develops; this flaw contradicts Treuer's seemingly Nabokovian doctrine that fiction must be a matter of living detail rather than ideology. Treuer overcompensates for having over-intellectualized his book with a few direct authorial statements that seem to line up with a very '00s-era New Sincerity; these are sentimental rather than affecting because they are insufficiently anchored to a narrative Treuer expects us, by the end, to believe in:
For one thing, his translator-hero is named Apelles, after the painter whose picture of Alexander the Great's mistress Campaspe was so lifelike that Alexander kept the portrait and gifted the living woman to Apelles, thus proving that art can both substitute for and change life. Similarly, the woman who will become Apelles's lover in Treuer's fiction is named what else but Campaspe. Apelles and Campaspe work in a somewhat science fictional archive for unread books, a tightly-controlled maximum-security prison for all those stories that will go unheard, a dystopian/utopian institution—probably borrowed from Saramago's Registry of All the Names—that threatens Apelles with the threat that his own story will never be told or read. Moreover, Treuer's narrative voice is itself never straightforward: it is a mobile, shifting, parodic one, now "doing" Hemingway, now the eighteenth-century novel, and now venturing upon philosophy.
Finally, as we read on, we eventually come to understand that Apelles's narrative is actually the novel we have been reading about him, effectively his "translation" of his own life into literature, while the Indian romance is only a slightly re-ethnicized variation on the ancient Greek pastoral romance Daphnis and Chloe : the two books—Apelle's manuscript and the old Greek novel—coupled and produced this novel when, at this novel's climax, they were confused and interleaved in the archive.
What can all this recursive Nabokovian metafiction mean? First of all, by elaborately retelling Daphnis and Chloe as if it were an enchanting magical-realist Native American historical novel, Treuer is, if I may use the vernacular, calling bullshit on the idea that anyone can ever encounter cultural authenticity in a work of fiction, which is the product of the individual imagination interacting with literary tradition and not the product of collective racial essences. Individual imagination is important because without it we would all, but especially those who have been and are stereotyped, be unable to articulate our singular experiences of the world and sensibilities in perceiving and expressing them:
What language could he use for himself that had not become part of those stories about his people, the sad ones and the funny ones and the ones about the ways and days of the past. What could he say that would exist on its own, that represented only him and his life?Treuer is moreover accusing a largely white or at least non-Indian readership and publishing industry of wishing to consign Native Americans to the genre of the pastoral, seeing them as forever wed to some simplistically redemptive idea of nature that is itself traditionally European. In this connection, Apelles reflects on what he sees as cultural pandering by other Indian writers: "The writers are only too glad to tell anecdotes or give the audience small cultural pearls."
Above all, Treuer rejects the idea of culture as a past that imprisons the present, the Faulknerian Gothic mode ("the past is not even past") that even more than pastoral has overwhelmingly influenced American writing about race in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, at least since Beloved (whose author mentored Treuer at Princeton). No, Treuer seems to say, an imaginative writer's relationship to the past may be a voluntary and creative one, and if it is a Gothic one, well, that too is the free exercise of the aesthetic imagination: "So it wasn't that his past haunts him. He haunts his past."
But Treuer's argument, like his Möbius strip of a novel, goes the other way too, as a vindication of any and all modes of fiction-making, so long as you do not confuse them with life: Dr. Apelles's use of Longus is a reminder that the novel is an older and more diverse form than we tend to realize when we imagine it is the product solely of the Protestant middle classes in the eighteenth century. Daphnis and Chloe comes out of the cross-cultural ferment of late antiquity in the eastern Mediterranean, a period denounced as decadently effeminate by Nietzsche, who scorned "Alexandrian man" as a mere proto-postmodern librarian rather than an originator of culture—something that Treuer, with his ambiguous archive of forgotten books, must have been aware of.
The Translation of Dr. Apelles is on the whole an ingenious and intricately written philosophical fiction that I recommend. I could criticize it, of course. Like all novels with obviously set structures—this one alternates predictably from the romantic story to the realistic one—it begins to feel confining, and Treuer's philosophizing becomes extravagantly explicit in the end. And like all fictions composed to illustrate ideas, the novel sometimes feels more clever than wise, more mechanical than alive, as its allegory develops; this flaw contradicts Treuer's seemingly Nabokovian doctrine that fiction must be a matter of living detail rather than ideology. Treuer overcompensates for having over-intellectualized his book with a few direct authorial statements that seem to line up with a very '00s-era New Sincerity; these are sentimental rather than affecting because they are insufficiently anchored to a narrative Treuer expects us, by the end, to believe in:
…the imagination can produce more than illusion…it does not matter whether the illusion is true or not because the imagination can create both pleasure and happiness, too. someday.The novel's flaws are negligible, though, because they do not really detract from its main interest, which is Treuer's compelling argument and his admirably and amusingly various styles of developing it in narrative, as if conducting a master class in the possibilities of contemporary American prose.
March 7, 2017
An intriguing book, with two interwoven stories -- one of a modern Native American translator, and the other of the very old manuscript he is translating. The story of the translator was at times repetitive and even boring, but the story that he was translating was very pleasurable to read. I wish I could say that I understand the ins and outs and the circular nature of the two. Perhaps it is enough to say that, as the narrator advises, one could start over and read it again after reaching the end. I know that I could turn it over in my mind in various ways.
January 4, 2021
Two love stories in one, the past and the present entwined. Very different than many books I have read. I loved it!
April 24, 2007
I'm not really sure what I was doing when I picked this book out... But somehow I managed to completely overlook the fact that it's about Native Americans, and was completely surprised when I saw the cover before cracking it open on the train...
So is it any good? Yes! But more likely than not, his next book will be completely phenominal and blow this one away. While it was enjoyable to read, you can tell that he worked at writing it. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not fantastic for the flow, either.
Dr. Apelles is a lonely, bachelor translator (fantastic name for a translator, by the way, so evocative: Tu t'appelles comment?), and the novel alternates between the story of his life and the story he's working on translating, from an Indian language that, somehow, he grew up speaking but is now the only person who knows it. And then at the end it gets meta. Kind of unneccesarily. But don't let that stop you.
He passes the square outside the archives. They have jazz concerts there during the summer, which makes about as much sense as talking with your mouth closed or having sex with your clothes on -- the beauty of the thing destroyed by the very act.
One thing I really liked about the book is the way Apelles's identity as an Indian is articulated. He hates telling people about it, because he knows they'll have never met one any more, and he hates being weighed down by the history of it -- he feels like when somebody knows he's an Indian, he's forced to exist in the past rather than the future/present.
Did I mention that Dr. Apelles works at a book depository? And his boss's name is Mrs. Millefeuille? (1000 sheets!)
So is it any good? Yes! But more likely than not, his next book will be completely phenominal and blow this one away. While it was enjoyable to read, you can tell that he worked at writing it. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not fantastic for the flow, either.
Dr. Apelles is a lonely, bachelor translator (fantastic name for a translator, by the way, so evocative: Tu t'appelles comment?), and the novel alternates between the story of his life and the story he's working on translating, from an Indian language that, somehow, he grew up speaking but is now the only person who knows it. And then at the end it gets meta. Kind of unneccesarily. But don't let that stop you.
He passes the square outside the archives. They have jazz concerts there during the summer, which makes about as much sense as talking with your mouth closed or having sex with your clothes on -- the beauty of the thing destroyed by the very act.
One thing I really liked about the book is the way Apelles's identity as an Indian is articulated. He hates telling people about it, because he knows they'll have never met one any more, and he hates being weighed down by the history of it -- he feels like when somebody knows he's an Indian, he's forced to exist in the past rather than the future/present.
Did I mention that Dr. Apelles works at a book depository? And his boss's name is Mrs. Millefeuille? (1000 sheets!)
January 7, 2008
This novel tries to be a metatextual tale as it is about a Native American scholar who realizes he has never fallen in love himself as he translates a manuscript, a love story, written in a Native American language only he can understand. As he translates, the reader follows the story of the two young lovers and their many trials(fictional? historical? we are never told, though their story is told in a straightforward, folktale-like manner); but the reader also follows the story of the translator as he falls in love and simultaneously pursues his work, which is terribly difficult to make interesting, even in popular novels like A.S. Byatt's Possession. Sitting in a library poring over manuscripts and papers may be fascinating to the scholar caught up in the thralls of research: but to the observer it is just a sedentary activity that is about as thrilling as watching a TV infomercial on a snow day. Treuer doesn't quite have the chops to make Apelles' story a page-turner, and the novel at times seems like a formal exercise in literary theory, becoming at one point (for me, anyway) so slow that I found myself flipping forward to find out what was going on with the lovers in the translation. I admit I don't have much patience with novels that play on the trope of literary study and the life of the mind---Borges is the only author whose work on these themes have been able to engage me---but a love story should sweep the reader off of his/her feet, should engage his/her passion as well as the intellect. This novel doesn't do that.
July 22, 2019
The language in this book is absolutely beautiful. Having read non-fiction by Treuer, I was surprised at how differently he writes fiction. Different form for different functions, perhaps. In any case, it was the writing that I most enjoyed - the words chosen and how they are put together.
As for the story itself . . . I tend to enjoy books that take place primarily in a character's head - it's like experiencing someone else's inner life, which isn't really possible outside of books. The interwoven story of the young Indian couple living in the treaty era was less interesting for me (but apparently the opposite was true for some other readers, so something for everyone, I suppose). In any case, after about three quarters of the book, the main story just gets very abstract and sort of folds in on itself; I'm not entirely sure how, in the author's mind, it actually ends. But it was definitely worth reading, and it held my attention all the way through.
P.S. (2019) I just saw an overview of this book that compared it to Calvino, and something clicked. Yes! The last third of this book felt very much like If on a Winter's Night a Traveller. Very different story, but the same kind of feeling.
As for the story itself . . . I tend to enjoy books that take place primarily in a character's head - it's like experiencing someone else's inner life, which isn't really possible outside of books. The interwoven story of the young Indian couple living in the treaty era was less interesting for me (but apparently the opposite was true for some other readers, so something for everyone, I suppose). In any case, after about three quarters of the book, the main story just gets very abstract and sort of folds in on itself; I'm not entirely sure how, in the author's mind, it actually ends. But it was definitely worth reading, and it held my attention all the way through.
P.S. (2019) I just saw an overview of this book that compared it to Calvino, and something clicked. Yes! The last third of this book felt very much like If on a Winter's Night a Traveller. Very different story, but the same kind of feeling.
May 15, 2008
I discovered David Treuer through an essay he wrote for Slate, which led me to another he wrote for the Los Angeles Times. Both are beautiful intellectual expressions: succinct thought, harmonious language. The second essay touches on Dr. Appelles, and made me eager to read the novel.
I was captivated by both stories in Dr. Appelles - the folk tale and the modern love story. I found both wonderfully imaginative and captivating.
Dr. Appelles is a smart book, so the intellectual evaluations are not misplaced; however, it is also a lovely conveyance of a place - the heart of a man who has never loved and earnestly tries to - and needs to be felt more than analyzed. To paraphrase St. Exupery, what is essential is invisible to the mind; it must be felt with the heart.
I was captivated by both stories in Dr. Appelles - the folk tale and the modern love story. I found both wonderfully imaginative and captivating.
Dr. Appelles is a smart book, so the intellectual evaluations are not misplaced; however, it is also a lovely conveyance of a place - the heart of a man who has never loved and earnestly tries to - and needs to be felt more than analyzed. To paraphrase St. Exupery, what is essential is invisible to the mind; it must be felt with the heart.
September 12, 2019
3.5 stars
It's a unique look at being Native American in the modern American world. Through two parallel storylines, Treuer examines the traditional, old version of native stories contrasted & compared with the version of a modern man's story. Treuer's work also weaves in questions about stories, books, histories, our inner lives, & our outer lives. I think I found it especially intriguing because dd has always been interested in Native American life & we have spent many hours over the years at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (& a few other places too), which provides a glimpse not only of history but also of modern life. Treuer's book fit neatly with all the exhibits I've seen & read about; Treuer is well-placed to muse on some of these topics as he is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota.
Worth reading.
It's a unique look at being Native American in the modern American world. Through two parallel storylines, Treuer examines the traditional, old version of native stories contrasted & compared with the version of a modern man's story. Treuer's work also weaves in questions about stories, books, histories, our inner lives, & our outer lives. I think I found it especially intriguing because dd has always been interested in Native American life & we have spent many hours over the years at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (& a few other places too), which provides a glimpse not only of history but also of modern life. Treuer's book fit neatly with all the exhibits I've seen & read about; Treuer is well-placed to muse on some of these topics as he is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota.
Worth reading.
May 22, 2008
Fascinating in an understated sort of way. I'm enjoying Dr. Appelles' own experience of translating the story and his self-revelations even more than the story he's translating of the tale of colonial-era Native Americans.
As the story goes on it, so little happens and in a less engaging way than at first, so I abandoned it.
As the story goes on it, so little happens and in a less engaging way than at first, so I abandoned it.
March 11, 2021
I recently recorded a podcast episode on how to read this book, rather than what I found between the covers. It has two parts:
1: https://anchor.fm/dashboard/episode/e...
2: https://anchor.fm/dashboard/episode/e...
I'd be really interested in your reactions!
1: https://anchor.fm/dashboard/episode/e...
2: https://anchor.fm/dashboard/episode/e...
I'd be really interested in your reactions!
February 17, 2009
The book is definitely written in an interesting style and presents some interesting points but is overall very good. It presents a different portrait than that of a "typical" American Indian.
October 8, 2010
Again, unfortunately, need a new category of "didn't bother to finish". More internal monolog interspered with historic native american fable.
December 24, 2022
This book is kinda unique for me!! The novel consist of 2 story about love story (spins two love stories at the same time!!!). The main story about a person named Dr. Apelles (a Native American translator of Native American literature, and the other side about the life and fated love stories of a young boy and girl, named Bimaadiz and Eta about tribal life.
As the novel begin tells the reader about how Bimaadiz and Eta found and raised by loving families-strangers who become temporary guides on their journeys. And the next chapter about Dr. Apelles, he just realized for the first time (at the age of 43) that he has never before been in love so he begins a love affair with a fellow book classifier, Campaspe, also we come to understand that Apelles’s narrative is actually the novel we have been reading about him, effectively his “translation” of his own life into literature.
As the novel begin tells the reader about how Bimaadiz and Eta found and raised by loving families-strangers who become temporary guides on their journeys. And the next chapter about Dr. Apelles, he just realized for the first time (at the age of 43) that he has never before been in love so he begins a love affair with a fellow book classifier, Campaspe, also we come to understand that Apelles’s narrative is actually the novel we have been reading about him, effectively his “translation” of his own life into literature.
January 25, 2021
A mystery romance. Sweet story but also one of a man integrating his beloved cultural heritage into his modern life. Author is Ojibwe from northern Minnesota and a teacher of creative writing. This book is a beautiful expression of his heritage. The book within the book is the beautiful loving portrayal of a Native American family from the past. This book would be my choice for a book club and for inclusion on a high school reading list.
June 5, 2020
A delightful find as I was ruthlessly boxing up my beloved books to donate to the library in preparation of our move. A fascinating love story and favorable description of Native American life back in the 19th century. A wonderful read.
November 5, 2022
Oh wow I loved this - Ancient Greek meets modern Ojibwe and philosophical in all the best ways. The ending was just a touch too precious for me - but still one of the coldest things I’ve read recently.
September 28, 2023
Beautifully written, though the classical references went above my head at times but when looked into they added such beautiful layers to the story. I enjoyed the mirror of the translated story to apelles midlife crisis and self actualization. It'll probably be even better on the reread.
August 2, 2017
Breathtaking
December 6, 2017
Loved it! Sure, there were times when the story dragged a bit, but so does life sometimes. The author really made me care about these characters and it will be a long time before I forget them.
December 11, 2017
More like 3.5. I'm so...enchantedly confused.
April 19, 2018
very slow start, but i really liked this book by the end.
March 17, 2019
a first-rate palimpsest :)
Read
April 22, 2020I didn't like Dr Apelles' side but oh well
Read
November 20, 2023How nice to read a book about Native American people that’s about love and art, not tragedy
February 8, 2024
so genius in my opinion. i didn’t expect to love this as much as i did.
October 14, 2007
An Ojibwe translator and linguist who lives in a city that feels a lot like Minneapolis finds an old manuscript that only he can decipher. Two love stories entwine in this beautifully constructed novel that gives postmodernism a good name. Written by, yes, an Ojibwe author, this is a lovely, lovely novel.
Addendum: I read Monty's review, which linked to an interview w/ Treuer, who says the book takes place in an East Coast city. So much for my ability to tell one cold region from another. Hey, I'm a southerner, severe winters whether in Boston or Milwaukee are too cold for me.
Apelles was a 5th century Greek painter who was very famous in his own time and, thanks to Pliny's History, his prowess intrigued the great Renaissance artists, although none of his paintings survived. Pliny made famous the legend that Alexander the Great gave Apelles his slave/lover Campaspe, a model for one of Apelles' best known works, Venus Rising from the Sea, which centuries later inspired Botticelli. Campaspe became synonymous with "mistress." The English poet John Lyly wrote a play by that name in 1584 and also the poem that begins "Cupid and my Campaspe play'd/At cards for kisses—Cupid paid." In 1651 Pedro Calderón de la Barca also wrote a play on the Campaspe story, "Darlo todo y no dar nada."
Truer says in the aforementioned interview, "Apelles’ life is a lot like my own, except that I found love, thank you very much, and I was wise enough to grab it when it came my way. So, I’m much luckier than Apelles, and probably much happier for more of my life, too. He’s a quirky guy, I just love him. I would love to spend time with him."
It's a multilayered novel that engages the reader in play, circles of meaning, imagination. There are hints of Borges, Calvino, Saramago. Treuer says of Apelles, "Part of his dilemma is that he feels like he’s got no language for himself, in that how he feels he really is, he can’t communicate. So translation is a metaphor for love. How do you translate your inner-self into a language that so someone else outside of you can understand, and nothing’s lost in translation? And it’s also a metaphor for culture. He falls outside of what people take as an 'authentic Indian,' so he’s got no way to express himself. He hasn’t communicated this to anybody, and it’s painful for him."
Addendum: I read Monty's review, which linked to an interview w/ Treuer, who says the book takes place in an East Coast city. So much for my ability to tell one cold region from another. Hey, I'm a southerner, severe winters whether in Boston or Milwaukee are too cold for me.
Apelles was a 5th century Greek painter who was very famous in his own time and, thanks to Pliny's History, his prowess intrigued the great Renaissance artists, although none of his paintings survived. Pliny made famous the legend that Alexander the Great gave Apelles his slave/lover Campaspe, a model for one of Apelles' best known works, Venus Rising from the Sea, which centuries later inspired Botticelli. Campaspe became synonymous with "mistress." The English poet John Lyly wrote a play by that name in 1584 and also the poem that begins "Cupid and my Campaspe play'd/At cards for kisses—Cupid paid." In 1651 Pedro Calderón de la Barca also wrote a play on the Campaspe story, "Darlo todo y no dar nada."
Truer says in the aforementioned interview, "Apelles’ life is a lot like my own, except that I found love, thank you very much, and I was wise enough to grab it when it came my way. So, I’m much luckier than Apelles, and probably much happier for more of my life, too. He’s a quirky guy, I just love him. I would love to spend time with him."
It's a multilayered novel that engages the reader in play, circles of meaning, imagination. There are hints of Borges, Calvino, Saramago. Treuer says of Apelles, "Part of his dilemma is that he feels like he’s got no language for himself, in that how he feels he really is, he can’t communicate. So translation is a metaphor for love. How do you translate your inner-self into a language that so someone else outside of you can understand, and nothing’s lost in translation? And it’s also a metaphor for culture. He falls outside of what people take as an 'authentic Indian,' so he’s got no way to express himself. He hasn’t communicated this to anybody, and it’s painful for him."
December 17, 2014
This confusing novel follows Dr. Apelles as he is working on an important translation. During the day, he works at a book cataloging company, where books are sent to be stored away forever. His other life includes translations in his native language of Ojibwe. Throughout the book, Dr. Apelles recalls childhood memories and falls in love. A secondary story takes place underneath, which details two teenage Indians who were abandoned at birth and eventually fall in love. In the end, the book turns out to be his translation. This novel gets very confusing as time goes on, because the book is a giant circle, only making sense if you consider it as a giant loop.
“Stories are meant to be heard and are meant to be read. And translations, no matter what the subject, are like stories in that regard, only more so. Twice the effort has been put into a translated document than has been put into the original: it has to be created in the first place, and then it has to be recreated.” 24
“We could do something or not do something and it wouldn’t matter because it would have no perceptible effect on the world. What we feel is freedom. And what we feel is also oblivion.” 25
“Because, for stories, the sky is made of the endless dome of readers and freckled with constellations of the kindly and curious.” 31
“After all, when confronted with death we mourn the past, but when confronted with silence we mourn the present and the future as well.” 167
“Hope is merely the attempt to introduce to the future some past happiness, an attempt to change the ending – with different characters and new surroundings – of some sad little episode of the past. And the terrible prospect and most difficult task is to create, from scratch, some unforeseen, some future happiness that has no hold in the soil of our years.” 267
“Stories are meant to be heard and are meant to be read. And translations, no matter what the subject, are like stories in that regard, only more so. Twice the effort has been put into a translated document than has been put into the original: it has to be created in the first place, and then it has to be recreated.” 24
“We could do something or not do something and it wouldn’t matter because it would have no perceptible effect on the world. What we feel is freedom. And what we feel is also oblivion.” 25
“Because, for stories, the sky is made of the endless dome of readers and freckled with constellations of the kindly and curious.” 31
“After all, when confronted with death we mourn the past, but when confronted with silence we mourn the present and the future as well.” 167
“Hope is merely the attempt to introduce to the future some past happiness, an attempt to change the ending – with different characters and new surroundings – of some sad little episode of the past. And the terrible prospect and most difficult task is to create, from scratch, some unforeseen, some future happiness that has no hold in the soil of our years.” 267
May 25, 2007
this is one of the most beautiful and understated books that i've ever read that is, at the same time, so fiercely postmodern in its agenda and conception of itself. this is a wonderful demonstration of all the promise of the most avant-garde of innovations and literary self-awareness but without any of the clinical coldness that usually comes with the territory. a real achievement, especially from such a young author. possibly even more important than all this is the fact that he has gone a very long way toward completely recreating the idea of a "native american" artform. the native author writes about a native man who does not, due to the events of his life, identify with the native -- and thereby gets around almost all of the conflicts that have become the trite hallmarks of so much contemporary native artwork. the author gets to write about all the things that he wants to transmit about his culture, people and traditions without having to tread the same old ground of "identity" and "self-image". this allows a beautifully-written book about the greater topic of simply being human to resound with and be enriched by native themes in a very organic, believable way.
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