2666 in 2008? More from Wimmer and a British Top 50
Catching up over at PaperCuts: Dwight Garner sends his usual three questions to Natasha Wimmer, providing an update on the Q&A we did with her last spring. She has pretty much the most interesting job on the planet to me right now: after translating Roberto Bolano's gigantic novel, The Savage Detectives (my favorite book from last year), she's been working away at his even more gigantic novel, 2666, which, last I heard, was due out this year, although the translation is not listed on our site yet. What a magical task she does: take this wonderful thing that's hidden away by a wall of language and give it a new life in the English-speaking world. (And--more magic--she's been making a baby at the same time.) The translations that get all the attention these days are the high-profile reworkings of classics like War and Peace and The Aeneid, and it is fascinating to see how a book we know can get turned into something (slightly) different in new hands. But nothing near so fascinating as finding a great new book of genius laid on your doorstep for the first time.
And boy, this answer makes me even more antsy to read 2666 (and also wish that I had the bilingual chops to be a translator):
Bolaño really gives the translator a workout. I also researched Black Panther history, pseudo-academic jargon (actually, some of that came naturally), World War II German army terminology, Soviet rhetoric, boxing lingo, obscure forms of divination and forensic science vocabulary, among other things. If that makes the novel sound like a hodgepodge, I promise it’s not. Even the most obscure detours are thoroughly Bolaño-ized - filtered through his weird, ominous, comic worldview.
Also, as in the photo she gave us for our Q&A, she's drinking a cup of coffee in someplace lovely.
Mr. Garner also points to a new argument-starter launched by the Times of London: a list (ranked--thank you!) of the top 50 postwar British writers. As much as I love rankings, this one seems particularly fresh to me, maybe just 'cause it's territory that I haven't been over & over to the point of exhaustion. I have plenty of gaps in my Anglo-reading, so I can't really claim to argue authoritatively with the list, and I kind of like that too. But on first glance it's very friendly to writers in the margins of the literary "genres" of fantasy, SF, spy tales, and children's books (Tolkien, Lewis, Fleming, Dahl, Peake, LeCarre, Banks, Rowling, Pullman, Sutcliffe, Moorcock) and to poets (starting with #1, Philip Larkin) but not to some of the lit stars of the moment (no Zadie Smith, no Alan Hollinghurst, no David Mitchell, no Graham Swift). Who else is missing or maligned? No P.D. James or Ian Rankin? Ian McEwan 21 spots below Ian Fleming? No Margaret Drabble? And has anyone read anything by William Golding (their #3 pick) besides the one everybody (except me) has read? What do you think? I'm especially curious what my Anglophilic colleague Mike Smith has to say. --Tom
KristiC on January 11, 2008 at 09:59 AM
Graham Greene for damn sure should be on the list, along with PD James and probably Alan Hollinghurst. I'd make a left-field pitch for Rachel Cusk too.