Loosed in Translation discussion

Right now I'm reading the second book in the Your Face Tomorrow triology by Javier Marias. I've read a few others, and I find them quite challenging.

I thought this passage would be of interest. It's in translation (by Margaret Jull Costa), and one of the main themes of the triology is translation. This passage happens to be about the effect of living in translation, so to speak. (My words, not Marias's.)

"No, you are never what you are-not entirely, not exactly- when you're alone and living abroad and ceaselessly speaking a language not your own or not your first language. However prolonged the abscence and however unforeseeable its conclusion, because no time limit was set at the beginning or because that limit has become vague or unlikely to be met, and when there is no reason to think that its conclusion and your subsequent return home will one day arrive or hove into view (a return to a before that will not, meanwhile, have waited for you), and thus the word 'absence' loses meaning, depth and force with each hour that passes and that you pass far away from home-and then the expression 'far away' also loses meaning, depth, and force-the time of our absence accumulates gradually like a strange parenthesis that does not really count and which shelters us only as it might commutable, insubstantial ghosts, and for which, therefore, we need render an account to no one, not even to ourselves (not, at any rate, a detailed or complete account). To some degree you feel no responsibility for what you do or see, as if it all belonged to a provisional existence, parallel, alien, or borrowed, fictitious or almost dreamed-or, perhaps, merely theoretical, like my whole life, according to the unsigned report about me which I found in an old filing cabinet; as if everything could be relegated to the sphere of the purely imaginary and, of course, to the sphere of the involuntary; everything thrown into the bag of illusions and suspicions and hypotheses, and, even, of mere foolish dreams, about which, unusually, there has been almost permanent and universal consensus throught the centureies of which any memory remains, be it conjectural or historical, invented or true: dreams do not depend on the intentions of the dreamer, and the dreamer can never be blamed for the contents of his dreams."

Makes me want to pick this up now. I've read the 1st volume, Fever and Spear, back in April.

Pick it up, Ryan!

I think I will. I'll probably start this in a week or so.

i'm really interested in this idea of parenthetical time, i think he has really got something there.

i'm still in the middle of the book, ryan, if you start soon we can maybe chat as we go.

A readalong would be great, Patty. I'll let you know when I start.

I'm on to the 3rd book, Ryan. :)

I'm one-third into Dance and Dream myself. I'm both amused and annoyed at the prose style.

You hit a note with me, Ryan. I adore Javier Marias. Own most of his books. Alongside Orhan Pamuk, he is a favourite author.

I have picked up Fever and Spear a few times and can't get past a vague irritation with the writing style.

Suggestions?

My vexation with Your Face Tomorrow has been such that I have been closely following the publication of his next work:

http://www.amazon.com/While-Women-Sle...

Malcolm, I'm looking forward to that collection too. On the strength of the title story alone, which appeared in the New Yorker, I'd say Marias is a master teller of short stories.

My favorites by him will have to be Written Lives, All Souls, and Dark Back of Time, in that order. The first one is really a discovery. Particularly charming as a kind of "portraits of writers as portraits." Its pleasures are plentiful and cumulative.

As for 'Your Face Tomorrow: Fever, Spear, Dance, Dream, Poison, Shadow, and Farewell,' I'm at the "Dream" part and staying at it by sheer force of will. I feel I have to concentrate very hard or I get lost in the labyrinth. The only way I can probably get past it is by speed-reading it.

Btw, here are links to 3 of his stories available online, if you haven't checked them out already:

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/feat...

http://www.barcelonareview.com/15/e_j...

http://www.javiermarias.es/TRADUCCION...

Ryan, Thanks for the stories. Nice of you to provide the links.

11/15/2010: Well Known International Book Prize Announces Its Long List

Long list for fiction prize just announced? By whom? Well known?

Pulitzer? National Book Award for Fiction? Man Booker? Orange Prize? The Governor General of Canada's Award for Literature?

If you guessed any of these, you were wrong. At 100,000 Euro ($135,840 at today's exchange rate) prize the award is not to be sneezed at.

You lovers of translated literature already know the answer: The IMPAC Dublin prize, to which libraries from all over the world nominate a work of fiction in English (original language or translated). The long list was announced today for the 2011 award.

Why are we lovers of translated fiction excited?

Because of 15 previous winners, 7 have been translated works. Of the 162 works in the longlist for the 2011 award, 26% are translations.

It is worth looking at the seven translated winners because there are some favourite authors in there.

The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker
(Dutch), translated by David Colmer; Vintage UK, Archipelago Books, US

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
(Norwegian), translated by Anne Born; Vintage, UK, Picador, US

This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun
(Moroccan) translated by Linda Coverdale; Penguin, US and UK

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
(Turkish) translated by Erdag M. Göknar; Everyman, US, Faber and Faber, UK

Atomised by Michel Houellebecq
(French), translated by Frank Wynne; Vintage US and UK

The Land of Green Plums by Herta Müller
(Romanian), translated from German by Michael Hofmann; Picador US and UK

A Heart So White by Javier Marías
(Spanish), translated by Margaret Jull Costa; New Directions, US, Vintage, UK

How many of you don't have at least one favourite work/author is this list?

Final question for now. How many of you have less than every title? OK, the forfeit - remedy immediately by purchasing the missing title.

They are all worth reading. Not all are to everybody's taste. But that could never be. Nor should be.

I haven't read anything from this list! But I own "Out Stealing Horses" & "A Heart So White" so will know soon the full impact of an IMPAC.

Wow, great passage. I love the labyrinthine structure of that sentence, and how it lulls you into almost not caring what it's saying haha. Thanks, Patty.

Marias is on my to-read list mainly because I've heard him compared to WG Sebald, and I love Sebald (gonna create a thread for him after I post this, actually). If you've read Sebald, do you see the resemblance between the two authors?

Do you think the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy is a good place to start for Marias, or is there a better entry point?

Haven't read Sebald in a while and only know a little of Marias, but I don't really see a resemblance. As you can see Marias has these great, long, serpentine sentences (I'm a sucker for repetition), and the academic (there's a better word for it) feel is offset by the beauty and musicality of the writing. For me, Sebald's style doesn't really make an impresion because everything is overwhelmed by that profound sense of melancholy and loss. But as I said, it's been years since I've read him, so perhaps I'd change my mind.

For me, Sebald's melancholy is tempered by the rhythmic/hypnotic/meditative quality of the writing. Because he dwells in the melancholy with out exagerating it, he stays with it so much that it turns and becomes something else, something bearable. I don't find Sebald depressing, which is weird considering his subjects, but I can totally understand your point as well, since I felt like that when I read my first Sebald.

Jimmy, other Marias lovers will have their suggestions, but I suggest All Souls. It reads like drinking milk. The added advantage is that the book has an afterlife which Marias separately writes about. But we will get to that should you choose to start here.

Javier Marias has been known to remark that he is amazed that his work translates so well into English, and, his view, reads better in English than in Spanish.

Marias is similar to Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, in that he has a deep, deep love of English literature, particularly the likes of Laurence Sterne. For me, it strongly comes across in his writing.

I personally would not strain to find similarities between Sebald and Marias. I hasten to add that my reading of Sebald has not given me a taste yet for his writings.

I suggest: approach Marias in his own right, avoid the trilogy as a starting point, and go from there.

Thanks Malcolm! I won't compare them when I actually read Marias. I just asked because I was curious, but I wouldn't want someone who writes like Sebald anyway, when I can just read Sebald straight up. It's a good thing that he's different.

Another good entry point is Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico. It's very short, some 50 pages, but very Marian in subject (translation!) and style.

I don't know where you should start, but I started with Dark Back of Time, which is part of the "afterlife" of All Souls that Malcolm mentions above. It was an insane and incredible reading experience, very disorienting, like being dropped into a country where you don't know the language or customs and trying to peice things together as you go along. I would NOT recommend starting there. (although it was a very rewarding experience in some ways, for me.)

oh and I do see a similarity between Sebald and Marias. Partly, it's exactly what you said about the Marias passage that I posted, that they both "lulls you into almost not caring what it's saying." Also, they both have this strange dual displacement of language and place, and they both write their protagonists as observers of the world more than as participants in it (I think, although others may disagree, and I've only read two sebald novels.)

Unless it is an awful place to start, I'm gonna start with A Heart So White, because it's the only one available at my local used bookstore. Hope it's good!

A Heart so White is an excellent place to start with Javier Marias. It's actually the book that really first brought him international fame (particularly in Germany). This book, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, was also the winner of the Impac prize in 1997

I started it but then put it down. The style reminded me too much of Thomas Bernhard, without the humor. Maybe I was just in the wrong mood. I definitely intend to pick it up again and give it another go.

Oh, there is humour. Try the scene where the protagonist deliberately mistranslates the words of a thinly disguised Margaret Thatcher at a meeting with another world leader, achieving a flirtatious exchange with the other translator.

Or if you want to try something different of his to start, 'Un hombre sentimental', which I think is 'A man of feeling' in English, is very short and very charming.