Reading Books I Hate for 2010

I hate New Year Resolutions. How many do we actually keep? According to a 3,000-person survey by Brit psychologist Richard Wiseman, 88% of all resolutions end in failure. And who, I ask you, needs more reason to feel guilty? Not me. So, forget about running a marathon, giving up my secret stash of Kellogg Poptarts, calling my brother more than once a month, I am taking up just one resolution for 2010: I’m going to read a book I think I’ll hate (or that I’m afraid of) in 2010. In this I’m following Laura Winter, who writes in Salon.com:

We all have our little biases, and far be it from me to suggest that people force themselves to read books they don't like, but sometimes that's all these preferences are -- prejudices. Getting out of your rut can lead to unexpected and exhilarating rewards. I once had "ironclad" rules against novels about stage magicians or rabbis in Prague (you'd be surprised how many of these there are), but if I'd stuck to that, I'd have missed one of my favorite books from the 2000s, Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay."

Who can argue with that? And even though I consider myself a lover of literature, I admit an aversion of some genres. Included in my list is any novel that takes place in the American West (I couldn’t even watch “Lonesome Dove,” much less read it), memoirs longer than an essay, German novelists (OK, I lived in Munich for two years and perhaps I just had enough of Germany), and reading, all the way through, some of the great epic poetry. I did read Dante’s "The Inferno" last year. Until then, I admit my reading was basically a case of Canto I and random sampling. I think I’m a little bit afraid of those ancient epics even in modern day vernacular, but the "The Inferno” was fabulous and I feel a better person for reading it.

But, bad habits are hard to break--and they're impossible to break if we try to break them all at once. So, I’m not adding Larry McMurtry or Jack Schaefer to my reading list (and for those of you who don’t know who these guys are, well, according to some polls, they are the top novelists of our great mythological ‘West’) and I just don’t see myself suddenly interested in most people’s true life stories. Fiction is usually so much better!

However, I am going to try and read two novels by German writers (perhaps Thomas Mann and our latest Nobel winner Herta Muller). I am also going to read, not skim, not read critiques, and definitely not (just) listen to on audiobook, “The Aeneid,” Robert Fagles translation. Anyway, after "The Inferno,” I just want more Virgil. It doesn’t seem a lot and certainly easier than giving up Strawberry Frosted Poptarts.

Jetlag, Global Literature, and Pamuk at Midnight

Suffering from jet lag, which is the usual punishment for those trying to live across multiple time zones, I spent some time listening to the always-fabulous (though sometimes too ingratiating) Michael Silverblatt and his interviews of also always-fabulous writers on KCRW’s Bookworm. A two part interview of Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish Nobel Prize winner in literature, is well worth ceding a bit of sleep. And sorry, but I had to include these pictures of Pamuk--he is adorable.

Their conversation used Pamuk’s most recent novel (The Museum of Innocence) as a starting point to discuss the problem of national versus global literatures. Reacting to last year’s comments by one of the Nobel panel that the US “does not have a global literature worthy of winning the Nobel Prize,” Silverblatt said that perhaps it is because in the writings of US authors such as Don Delillo (e.g., "White Noise"), “the city has become a place full of images and slogans rather than people,” implying that a lack of specificity is part of the problem. I was confused by his statement as it seemed to run counter to the complaint that US literature is too inward looking. Pamuk disagreed, however, saying that “the human heart is the same everywhere,” and that “American literature is not so different than other literatures; it captures the essence of American life.” Though I'm not sure this was an endorsement given Silverblatt's characterization. They did agree that novels (and I suggest poems) are ‘museums of everyday life’ and ‘handbooks to a life that is and was.’
 
Anyway, Pamuk also said that to consider your audience, whether local or global, is to “poison the work.” Do the work. Ignore the audience as best one can, especially those hailing from Sweden. Anyway, I can only ask myself as I type this blog and my poems in the middle of another Israeli night, what audience are they talking about?

Stepping on Orozco

I spent a few hours at New York's Museum of Modern Art checking out the Gabriel Orozco retrospective. Given all the hype and coverage, how could I not? To that point, here are a couple of the glowing critiques given by The New Yorker and The New York Times. Anyway, proving that I do actually agree with the critics once in a while, I quite loved it--it was funny and, at times, beautiful (e.g., the whale skeleton tattooed with seemingly-organic graphite abstractisms, the etched ceramic shells). Though there were a few found objects that I puzzled over (see the "Empty White Shoe Box" photo).


In honor of Orozco, and my experience with his white shoebox, I wrote a quick and slightly silly poem. Anyway, the exhibit is worth the trip but try and go at odd times to avoid the school kids and tourists. And no critiquing the poem, please, it's only for this page!


Modern Art

            It makes one appreciate the space around an artwork
            as much as the art itself.
                      - From artobserved.com, Dec 23, 2009

The guard grabbed my arm the moment I stumbled
on the small white box on the floor, crushing
one of its sides. Though it wasn’t until he whispered,
Good God!, that my eyes found the very tiny sign
on the wall behind, which read “Empty
Shoe Box,” Courtesy Marion Goodman Gallery, New York,
naming the object I’d just destroyed as Art.

It wasn’t my fault. A group of gangly girls
most likely on a school trip giddy with the scent
of each other or with being thirteen had pushed
past me, almost over me. Of course, I’d been absorbed
in a hunt for my glasses, one hand
holding the mouth of my messenger bag away
from my body, the other wrist-deep
in its depths. You see, I can’t really read
without them, actually without glasses
even familiar faces look fuzzy these days.

So perhaps it wasn’t odd that I overlooked
the white box on the floor
next to an equally white wall. I read later
that in ‘93, Gabriel Orozco, the artist, ran hours
through Venice’s dark flooded streets searching
for a similar box, after someone,
like me, kicked it during its first exhibition.

Less than two minutes later, a woman
in a black suit with creased edges and unexpected
purple punk hair emerged from a door etched
into a far wall. She held a brown paper bag
in one hand. The woman stepped quickly over
to us and without speaking to me
or the guards, reached down and picked up
the dented white box, tucked it under her left arm.

Then she reached into her brown paper bag,
extracted another white box exactly the same,
sans dent. She placed the box carefully
on the floor, turned it a few degrees
to the left, then stood and, still without saying
a word, returned through the door in the wall,
clicking it softly behind her. I wonder
what she told Marion Goodman.

Open Letters--Small Publishing of Big Translations

Speaking of translation...in today's New York Times Arts section, there was a long lovely article on a small, year-old press called Open Letter Books that does nothing BUT translation. The press, affiliated with the University of Rochester in New York, publishes 10-12 books a year and has an online literary website called Three Percent. Get it, 3%? Because translations account for only about 3% of the US book market.

Open Letter's list includes authors from all over the world--South Africa, Chile, Spain, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, France, Iceland...no region seems excluded and though there are no Middle Eastern or Asian writers, I'm sure we'll see representation as the publishing house evolves. Right? The concentration so far has also been largely fiction and essays, though they said to expect some poetry soon. I'm looking forward to that as well.

Anyway, for $100 you can receive all 10 of a year's publications, which seems a pretty good deal though given how much is already begging to be read on my shelves, I'm not sure I want to add to my pile without a thorough perusal. Their books DO have beautiful covers, so perhaps just looking at them might be worth the investment.

Check it out and kudos to what seems a really fascinating press.

More Translation Please

In my last post, I was complaining a bit about the narrowness of translations of not only novels but also poetry into English. So, rather than complain, I thought I would highlight a couple of translation awards. Perhaps an idea for a late Christmas present or something to bring in the New Year?

First, there is the Popescu Prize for Poetry in Translation, which is a biennial prize awarded by the UK’s Poetry Society. You can think of the UK Poetry Society as analogous to the US Poetry Foundation. On their website, the UK Poetry Society call the Popescu a “prize for poetry translation” and, further down, a “prize for European poetry translation” featuring “poetry translated from another European language into English”. This year the Popescu went to Professor Randall Couch for his translation of Gabriela Mistral’s Madwomen. Of course Mistral is Chilean. The prize really is an honor for both the author and translator, though I’m not sure the Chileans enjoy having works by one of their own classified as ‘European.’

Of as much interest is the shortlist for the prize. I’m particularly intrigued by two authors I’ve never heard of: Elena Shvarts and Oktay Rifat. Without these translations, perhaps I never would have.

Of course there’s also the annual PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, which is conferred every spring in New York. The award recognizes book-length translations of poetry from any language into English published during the current calendar year, and is judged by a single translator of poetry.

Two PEN award winners I have particularly loved are Peter Cole’s translation of Aharon Shabtai’s J'Accuse; and Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld’s translation Open Closed Open by Yehuda Amichai. They could not be more oppositional in terms of tone--Shabtai is politically on the faaaaar left while Amichai was, I'd say, more middle left. There are no right wing Israeli poets, or rather, there are no well published right wing Israeli poets.

Anyway, I know that translation, perhaps more so in poetry than in novels, is almost impossible. A better word might be transliteration, representing words in one language into another. Moreover, a good translation depends as much on the talent of the translator as on the talent of the originating writer. But that doesn’t mean we ignore them. And it doesn’t mean that all is lost in the translated work. Rather, I believe that the act of reaching out, of trying to grasp another’s experience, another’s words, even if slightly garbled, broadens our own experience. How can we forego that?

Where are the Translations?

I’ve been browsing bookstores in New York, which has become an even greater pleasure since living in Israel, where there are no English language bookstores and the English language section of most Israeli bookstores is taken up by bestsellers and books on Jewish/Israeli themes. One point struck me—the volume of poetry books that are translations from other languages. Of course this includes such classics and required reading by authors like Beowolf, Chaucer, Dante, Homer, as well as what might be called translation candy (so good no one can resist and that seems to find its way into everyone’s stocking at some point) from Rilke, Rumi, Neruda, etc.

But taking up a lot of shelf space were fairly recent translations of Durs Grunbein, Adam Zagajewski, Jorge Luis Borges, Mahmoud Darwish, C.P. Cavafy. Not that any of these poets are likely to displace the Steven Kings and Dan Browns of the poetry world. Yes, you know who I mean—Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, and Billy Collins. Although I think all three of these poets have great merit. And what would my father give me every three years if not Billy Collin’s latest book of poems?

So I spent a few minutes congratulating readers of poetry for their broader interest. Certainly Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Nobel prize jury, couldn't have mean poetry readers when he said last year, "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature." Engdahl went on, "That ignorance is restraining." Well, maybe, maybe not. Because after my few minutes of satisfaction, I couldn’t help but note the lack of contemporary translation. Yes, there was another translation of Rilke, another of Darwish, but what of the thousands of poets writing around the world right now, today?

Of course I know the difficulty of translation, especially when most local poets in their respective countries have yet to garner a large enough body of work (not to mention local audience) to have translators outside their borders take note. Still. To that point, I want to shout out about a couple of blogs that highlight translations and works (in English) being produced outside US borders. Two I like are ShadowKnifePen, which always has interesting news and anecdotes of South American poets, and Absinthe Minded, which focuses on European poetry.

If you know of any, please dash off an e-mail to me. I’d love to take a look.

The People Spoke

I watched “People Speak” on The History Channel last night. I loved it. Some won’t agree. Howard Zinn, is, to say the least, a controversial figure, even an instigator. Many call him Marxist, socialist, anarchist, even liar. As one blogger put it today:

“Zinn has spent a lifetime teaching college students about the evils of capitalism, the promise of Marxism, and his version of American history – a history that has, in his view, been kept from students. His controversial 1980-book The People’s History of the United States paints traditional American history as a façade – one that has grotesquely immortalized flawed leaders and is based on principles that victimize the common man. In 2004, Zinn wrote a companion book entitled Voices Of A People’s History Of The United States, which includes speeches and writings from many of the people featured in The People’s History.

How could you put this forward as HISTORY? It's political commentary without attribution.”

History is written by the victors. I’m not sure who wrote that but it’s true and in America’s case, ‘victors’ include those in political and financial control, those who fund, publish, market the books we study in grade school.

With that in mind, I found Zinn’s program interesting, entertaining, even inspiring. I’ve read Zinn’s “The People’s History,” and yes, as the blogger writes, Zinn suggests that the history told in school, in books, is not the whole truth, but I think what Zinn is actually asking us to do is to view all accepted history with skepticism. There is no one history and for each group, perhaps for each person, it will be different. America’s history is certainly not always heroic. For many peoples, it was filled with tragedy and horror. But part of America’s greatness, I think, is that we are able to still hear voices telling those histories and recognize them. Zinn’s is one of the voices, and he puts forward the case for an alternate history, or at least versions of alternate histories, which I believe are no less true than those I read in my sixth grade history book.

In People Speak, various actors and celebrities recite the words of historical figures such as Susan B. Anthony, Langston Hughes, Cesar Chavez. Yes, Zinn sometimes seems a little heavy handed in his dismissal of the ‘accepted’ history but the words, poems, songs, speeches he evinces should be heard. Here is one I particularly loved, a speech given by the African American abolitionist and woman's rights activist Sojourner Truth in 1851 at The Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. It’s not the version on Zinn’s program, but equally spellbinding:

As a citizen of Israel, I’ll add that Israel is similarly experiencing the painful recognition of alternate histories. There is valid Palestinian anger to the Israel Palestinian conflict—towns were razed, people killed, intent sometimes verged on evil. Israel is beginning the painful recognition that their truth is not the Palestinians. Revisionist historians who write about Israeli transgressions such as Benny Morris have gained widespread recognition, films such as Beaufort and Waltz With Bashir, which present the moral ambiguity of Israel’s history, were wildly popular and won many awards. Anyway, in both cases, that of the US and Israel, history moves, as it must.