September 28, 2010 Events Lorin Stein Heads West By Nicole Rudick Well, slightly West. First stop: Pittsburgh Tomorrow, September 29, Stein will join Bob Hoover, books editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, to reveal “The Sordid Confessions of a Subversive Big-Apple Editor.” The free event starts at 6:30 P.M. at the Cathedral of Learning, 4200 Fifth Avenue. Next: Chicago On September 30, Stein and Stop Smiling editor JC Gabel talk with Literago.org’s Mairead Case at Maxim’s: The Nancy Goldberg International Center, 24 East Goethe Street. The conversation begins at 6 P.M.
September 27, 2010 Events An Editor Abroad: Washington, DC By Lorin Stein Literary agent Anna Stein, artist Gay Gladding, editor Lorin Stein (clutching stuffed Eeyore) on the steps of the Beverly Court, Adams-Morgan, Washington, DC The Paris Review Whistle-stop Tour of 2010 (aka The Choo-Choo Revue) got off to an intimate start Saturday at Politics and Prose. It was a shimmering semitropical September afternoon. The Washington sun was shining. So were the faces of the staff: Jonathan Franzen had come through the night before, drawing a crowd of a thousand and selling about as many books. Luckily, P & P had the foresight to reserve a nearby auditorium. No auditorium was needed in our case—but the cream of the Beverly Court was in attendance. Noted artist Gay Gladding was full of praise for Tauba Auerbach, whose work she has admired since Tauba’s San Francisco days. Double-threat jazz clarinetist and tennis instructor Bob Greene was seen to trade phone numbers with TPR Daily tennis correspondent Lousia Thomas, in town to research her book Conscience: Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family—A Test of Will and Faith. Dorothy Jackson, the doyenne of Washington event planners, sparked a spirited discussion of the literary magazine today. Actually, it was more of a monologue, but our old neighbors were indulgent. As were my parents. Many thanks to Barbara Meade, co-owner of the store, and Mike Giarratano and the rest of their staff for their gracious welcome—and for excellent recommendations to read on the train.
September 27, 2010 On Sports The Saddest Man in Professional Football By Miranda Popkey My love for Brett Favre—it was always Favre, and only incidentally his team, that I loved—made me something of an oddity in Northern California. “What a bum,” my grandfather, a 49ers fan, would grumble, examining my first serious crush. “The man can’t even shave for Monday Night Football.” This was true. Favre’s manly scruff was a trait I found charming as a child, seductive as a teenager, and slightly depressing as a young adult. It’s also the key to his allure. Brett Favre can play perfectly without being perfect. He has—still—one of the best arms the NFL has ever seen, but he isn’t a Tom Brady touchdown-making machine. He’s not a robot from the Manning factory. He’s just a guy, trying to do his job, who often forgets to shave in the morning. He’s played hurt, he’s played sad, he’s played bearded, and yes, he’s played terribly. In fact, how terribly he sometimes plays is part of the magic. In the early days, with the Packers, he would throw four interceptions in the first half, come back in the third quarter with a few well-placed passes to put the Pack within six, and then, with thirty-five seconds left on the clock in the fourth, he would go into the no-huddle offense, calling audibles just before the snap, sneaking forty-yard completions into double coverage, emerging breathless, victorious, arms raised. Even then, his heart was more powerful than his body. But after a heartbreaking NFC Championship loss to the Giants in the winter of 2007, a game essentially ended by an interception (last-minute interceptions had, by that point, replaced his Hail Mary completions), even I knew it was time for him to retire. I also knew that he wouldn’t be able to until he had made it back to the Super Bowl. Favre has one Super Bowl ring, which he won in 1996, as a shaggy-haired twenty-seven-year-old. He took the Packers back the following year, but they lost. He spent the next decade trying to prove that victory wasn’t a fluke, but with close of the 2007 game, he had squandered his last chance. We both cried when he announced his retirement. And when he changed his mind, it was tempting, given my emotional investment, to feel betrayed. It seemed like a classically cocky move from an aging athlete who didn’t know when to quit. But it wasn’t. Most people know when it’s time to retire. At thirty-eight, Brett Favre had just given up the one thing he had likely been perfecting since he was an impressionable eight-year-old. He was a confused middle-aged man doing one of the most pathetic, desperate, moving things a human being can do. He was a guy begging for a second chance. He was the saddest man in professional football. When Favre pleaded with the Packers to take him back, detractors focused on Aaron Rodgers, Favre’s backup, who was ready to be QB1. But Rodgers is young—only twenty-six. He has seasons to prove himself; Favre doesn’t. And though more than a decade older, Favre is still the better quarterback, still better than most quarterbacks. Last year he led the Vikings to the NFC conference game. He threw an interception in the last seconds of the fourth quarter, and his team lost. I cried because, at this point, watching Brett Favre play football may be the only thing sadder than being Brett Favre. Every loss is proof that desire gets you less than ten yards. Every completion, every victory reminds me of his tearful pleas, even as he makes good on their inherent promises. He is asking for just one more season, one more game, one more chance. And because he’s still good enough, because his heart aches for redemption so badly it (almost) trumps logic, physics, and modern medicine, I am still saying yes. Editor’s note: This post originally stated that Brett Favre threw an interception in overtime in the 2009 NFC Championship game. We regret the error.
September 27, 2010 On Translation Trust and Betrayal By Lydia Davis I first read Madame Bovary in my teens or early twenties. Although even in high school I was aware of translators and translations, it never, ever occurred to me that the reason I did not like the novel might have been not only its unsympathetic characters (whom Flaubert himself did not like), or the weak and relatively thoughtless heroine (I craved a strong, thoughtful model), but most of all the inadequate translation. There is great trust in translations on the part of many people who don’t know any better and even many who do. Now that I’m aware of how many previous translations of Madame Bovary there are, and how inadequate most of them are, I suspect I read a bad one. The quality and nature of a translation (let’s say from the French) depends on three things, the first fairly obvious and the second two not quite as obvious: 1) the translator’s knowledge of French language, history, and culture; 2) his or her conception of the task of the translator; and 3) his or her ability to write well in English. These three variables have infinite subsets that recombine infinitely to produce the many different kinds and qualities of translations that we have. Publishers selecting a translator seem to proceed on the assumption that the most important qualification is the first. “Let’s ask Prof. X, head of the French Department at Y!” Often they completely ignore the second factor—how will Professor X approach the task of translating?—and certainly the third—what is Professor X’s writing style like? All three factors are vital, but in many instances, if one has to rank them, the third—how well the translator writes—may be the most important qualification, followed closely or equaled by the second—how he or she approaches the task of translating—and it is the first that comes in last place, since minor lapses in a knowledge of the language, history, and culture may result in mistakes that are, in a beautifully written, generally faithful version, fairly easily corrected, whereas a misconception of the task of the translator and, worse, an inability to write well will doom the entire book through its every sentence. Eleanor Marx Aveling, daughter of Karl Marx, produced the first translation of Madame Bovary in 1888. The Paul de Man revision of the Marx Aveling translation (Norton, 2005, 1965) retains some of her old-fashioned or inappropriate vocabulary, such as “heretofore” and “conjure” for “beg” or “plead.” It integrates explanations or identifications into the text (“the Chaumière” becomes “the Chaumière dance hall”)—undoubtedly helpful to the reader, but a betrayal of the original—and the writing style is poor, the revision making a rather poor style even poorer. For a while it seemed to me the very worst translation out of the eleven. It isn’t. Maybe it’s the second worst. But then, such a thing is hard to judge, because in certain specific passages, it is the worst. Although Marx Aveling was not a brilliant writer, she was a better writer in English than de Man, so where he corrects a mistake of hers, the correction is often not as well written as the original mistake. (This occurred, also, in the Kilmartin and the Enright revisions of Scott Moncrieff’s Proust, where the original impeccable grammar of the earliest version is replaced by an “improvement” that introduces a grammatical mistake.) The book exists for a couple of wrong reasons, and people buy it for another wrong reason. Wrong reason #1: Norton chose to use the Aveling translation because it was in the public domain and wouldn’t cost anything (I’m assuming, or I was told—can’t remember which). Wrong reason #2 (I’m guessing here): They asked Paul de Man to revise and edit it not because he was conscientious and an excellent writer in English but because he had prestige, a reputation, and scholarly intelligence. He then apparently asked his wife to do much of the work (this is rumor, but from a good source—I’d be happy to have it proved either right or wrong) and did not acknowledge her. Wrong reason #3: People buy the book not because it is an excellent translation of this important novel, but because it has a useful apparatus of essays, etc.—handy for a teacher, for instance. So readers have a collection of useful material to read about the novel, but are reading one of the most important novels in the history of the novel, and one of the most famous novels, in a poor translation. Lydia Davis’s translation of Madame Bovary debuted last week. On October 4, she will be speaking at the 92nd Street Y. See Also: “Group Think” See Also: Lydia Davis in Feed Magazine, from 2000
September 25, 2010 Events Today: Lorin Stein at Politics and Prose By Nicole Rudick Join editor Lorin Stein at the first event of his whistle-stop tour. At 3:30 P.M., he’ll be at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW, in Washington DC, to present the new Fall issue. If you’re in DC, don’t miss it!
September 24, 2010 This Week’s Reading Staff Picks: Nathanael West, Pavement, Eliza Griswold By The Paris Review I’ve just finished Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts and am halfway through The Day of the Locust (New Directions not long ago issued them together in a single paperback volume). The undercurrent of violence in the two novels, the way in which nearly every act and thought is awash in it, is startling. The characters in Miss Lonelyhearts are drowning in Prohibition booze; how else to manage the crushing disappointment and despair of early thirties America? But the illusion of Hollywood hope that masks alienation and desperation in Day of the Locust feels like a much longer hangover. —Nicole Rudick If you fell in love with Stephen Malkmus’s dead eyes in the “Major Leagues” music video, or appreciate apathy raised to the level of art, or just really like the sound of 1994, then read Chuck Klosterman’s GQ profile of Pavement from earlier this year. New York Magazine also has a sharp—and more recent—analysis of the band’s resurgent appeal. —Miranda Popkey The Tenth Parallel, Eliza Griswold’s account of years traveling through regions of Africa and Asia crossed by the latitudinal line that—owing to centuries of historical accidents and decades of misguided Western intervention—marks where Christian and Muslim cultures meet, or rather collide. What’s particularly striking is the restraint of the writing, given the violence—both physical and spiritual—she chronicles in a series of stories. There are clearly no simple answers to the conflict, and Griswold, to her credit, avoids reductive solutions or comforting interpretations. The stories themselves are enough. —Peter Conroy The GQ oral history of GoodFellas is a reminder that the best pulp culture is invariably produced by insurgent campaigns. It’s also made me wonder whether the enduring power of “Then He Kissed Me” owes more to the Steadicam shot to which Scorsese set it, or vice versa. —David Wallace-Wells I heard David Bezmozgis read from his forthcoming novel, The Free World, at the FSG Reading Series last Tuesday. And I pocketed a galley that’s been keeping me up past my bedtime. The book isn’t out until April of next year, but in the meantime, you can tide yourself over with “The Train of Their Departure” in The New Yorker. —Thessaly La Force I watched eagerly the first installment of “Grand Openings,” a video essay on director David Fincher—and especially his credit sequences—by Matt Zoller Seitz and Aaron Aradillas. Nobody else seems to have figured out how to make use of the possibilities of video criticism beyond the DVD-commentary model, and though the series Seitz has produced for the Museum of the Moving Image’s Moving Image Source over the past year or two might not be all masterpieces, he is truly miles ahead of the competition. —D. W.-W.