Zadignose’s
Comments
(group member since May 19, 2013)
Zadignose’s
comments
from the The DD Book Collective group.
Showing 1-20 of 37
축하 합니다!
Yes, today I will celebrate March 23rd, which in Korea is June 4th. Let's all down a shot of Pepsi-and-Sesame-oil!
Pip, move The Golden Ass to the front of your cue now. Get your Ass in gear!Samsa, por qué no Queneau? Read Zazie in the Metro sometime yesterday. Ten minutes ago is too late!
Chinook, read Candide A.S.A.P. It's time to throw some cold water on that sunny optimism of yours. Also, work on your Lacrosse, your skills are deteriorating quickly.
Me, carry on, you're doing fine.
Optional Liar, just get out of here. Nobody likes you, and frankly you're fucking up the group.
She must be a super-user
Yup!
Only one book has been shelved as "sideways"=
The Hidden Family
Popular Sideways Books
Only one book has been shelved as "bashed"
The House That Berry Built
Popular Bashed Books
Only one book has been shelved as "symptomatic"
Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria
Popular Symptomatic Books
Only ZERO books have been shelved as "pick-up-your-parrots-and-monkeys-w". But there is a shelf! (Why won't she use it!?)
A Potentially Glorious Shelf
"Goddamn godfather cocktails!"As I came to the fourth step from the bottom, I stumbled and lurched forward, falling in such a way that my feet remained a meter above my head as I struck the granite floor with a crack.
Awkward.
I could have gotten up on my own. But I wasn't in the mood. I waited. Then I performed a pushup, pumping with my arms.
"Tada!" I announced triumphantly. The folks waiting for the subway might have been entertained. But I doubt it. They're so fucking jaded nowadays.
I lay my face on the cold floor again. Then I rolled, then folded, and brought my body down in a crumpled heap. I'd lost eight thousand dollars that evening. I was beyond caring.
The threshold of misery. Yup! Wise words, those.
It has been suggested somewhere, sometime, by someone, that a novel should be written titled "Don't get me..." and then I forget the rest.Thus: write your novel here.
However, since novel writing is NEVER a collaborative process, you are responsible for your own goblins. Anyone else may come in and steal your ideas, modify, or destroy them, or merely offer an alternative. You may revise your own as well. When you're done, you will have a novel, I will have a novel, everyone will have novels, and there will be goblins all over the place. These are strict rules even if they don't make any sense, and even if I don't quite understand them myself.
Begin.
Aargh, every time I look back at either text, I find something to gripe about. Why, in the Stingray version, is there a contrast between daybreak approaching and it being warm in the room (which by the way, is clearly heated by traditional Korean underfloor "ondol" heating). And why is it a matter of sleeping late and being lazy to still be asleep at daybreak? And how did approaching daybreak become "The sun had risen long ago?"... unless there's a time elipsis... well, anyway, the Stingray looks more palatable (and bland... and characterless) than whackadoodle Thornback Fish.
Haha!
I'm not going to bother to read this book, but anyway, the following to samples seem to be translations of the same text (published alternately under the titles "Stingray," and "The Thornback Fish). What can one make of the fact that two different translators would produce these disparate versions? How much latitude is reasonable in translation? I know that Korean is *very* distant from English in terms of grammar, diction, idiom, etc., but still there must be one translator who is adding details never expressed in the original, or one who is omitting many details to create a retold version. WTH?
Stingray:
It was early morning. Snowflakes, white as goose feathers, danced in the air before piling up everywhere.
Although daybreak was approaching, it was still warm in the room. That's why I always slept late on snowy mornings. I could barely hear my mother breathing from the other side of the bed I shared with her. It was as if the falling snow had muffled the sound of her breath.
The room was as quiet as the bottom of a deep sea. And this tranquility, where even time had seemingly stopped, was seducing me into an early morning's sweet sleep.
The sun had risen long before, but the room was still dim. This was because of the snow's magic, something that also gave the villagers an excuse to sleep to their hearts' content.
The Thornback Fish:
Dawn that morning brought snow, like a billion trillion fatted feathers of geese, falling in spiraling waves. The break of day found the room still warm and me lying on the mat beside mother, so quietly, so calmly, pressing my back towards the melting warmth rising up from the floor. I held my eyes shut as I lay there, not wanting to move, inviting the melting glow beneath me to continue welding my butt and hips ever more firmly to the spot where I lay. Mother, like myself, lacked the guts to simply spring up from the mat without hesitation. For on those mornings when the snow would come, it was my habit to sleep on like this, late into the morning, even after the sun had risen. Sometimes her tiny, ever so gentle, movements echoed from the other side of the blanket as her steady, serene breathing, continued on as the only sound rising in the quiet stillness embracing us, while my every breath continued drawing in those many unified scents swirling in the heated air of our low-ceilinged house. Everything that made up our lives seemed now to be creating that delicate fatigue wrapped all around me, as the falling snow went on quietly muffling the sounds of our every breath. We had been enveloped in an invincible cocoon that now stood protecting us against the ragings of the storm, the sounds of which were all pervasive far, far away.
The room lay calm, as if under the sea. The early dawn, foggy as an evening, the tranquility inside the room, where even time seemed pausing, together created a relaxing aphrodisiac, urging me to sleep on. Even though dawn seems like the appropriate expression to use, mother would probably have simply said that this was nothing more than a moment of illusional magic brought on by the cloudy morning. The inside of the room still remained only faintly lit though the sun had probably risen some time before. Contrary to their usual behavior, on those mornings when the snow would come, every one of the villagers, on the pretext of just such illusional magic, dared to have shame enough to sleep so late that their noses would have to be twisted to awaken them. That aphrodisiac, that tranquility, was a happiness beyond calmness of relaxation of laziness. For this was a special moment, bringing me feelings of utter peacefulness, the smaller and larger bones inside my body untying their firm and hardened chain of connection, each scattering asunder, one by one.
------------------------
Now, I would guess that both are bad translations. The first, I imagine, may be rather truncated, but it does seem to be a form of English. The second, unless the translator is just tripping out and rhapsodizing on his/her own initiative, seems to be a too literal translation hobbled by diction errors and a total lack of competence in English idiom (or perhaps there's an effort to retain the Koreanness or exoticism by using literally translated idioms that come across rather awkwardly in English).
Randomly placed commas are as found, and I don't really want to know what this kid is doing taking aphrodisiacs while in bed with his mom, but I suppose the translator meant soporific or tranquilizer. Fused butts and scattered bones don't sound quite as relaxing to my ear as they may have been intended.
Hey, you could just write the book, then it'll be a legit entry.
And you can tell the world (which is listening) which book fails the YOU test too.(On The Road fails the ME test).
I thought that might get a goat or three, but I'll admit to knowing who Julia Child is/was.I'm hungry.
Who's that, Martha Stewart's Grandma?
Anyway, we solved a very important philosophical question.
Whereas the group has so far been held to very strict rules of discipline and censorship, with the purpose of keeping a clear focus to our discussion, I, the top-potato, have recently been informed--by my brain--that the members of some groups enjoy an occasional "off-topic" chat. Thus this sub-forum is engendered.You are welcome, within limits, to speak freely and unreservedly, about various off-topic topics.
ONE RULE: ABSOLUTELY NO ON-TOPIC DISCUSSION WILL BE TOLERATED!!! YOU MAY BE BANDED IF YOU SPEAK ON-TOPIC WITHIN THE OFF-TOPIC FOLDER.
Please proceed until otherwise notified or disciplined.
New word! My vocabulary has tripled!
