{"id":113182,"date":"2017-07-28T13:20:46","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T17:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=113182"},"modified":"2017-07-28T13:26:55","modified_gmt":"2017-07-28T17:26:55","slug":"staff-picks-cuddy-boont-zuzzo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/28\/staff-picks-cuddy-boont-zuzzo\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff Picks: Cuddy, Boont, Zuzzo"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

From the cover of Wi the haill voice<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do we need a translation of Vladimir Mayakovsky\u2019s poems into Scots? The late Scottish poet Edwin Morgan would certainly say we do. His belief was that Scots is more suited than English to the \u201c \u2018barbarian lyre\u2019 of the revolutionary spirit\u201d in Mayakovsky\u2019s verse. And I think I agree. Wi the haill voice<\/em><\/a>, a collection of Morgan\u2019s twenty-five translations originally published forty-five years ago, was reissued last year in the UK, and I\u2019ve just discovered it. Scots reads onomatopoeically, reproducing the verve and jump of Mayakovsky\u2019s verse: \u201cForcryinoutloud! \/ The starns licht up\u2014aa richt: \/ does that prove some loon hud to hae it?\u201d I don\u2019t know the language\u00a0and so used the book\u2019s glossary to perform a second translation (and learned many wonderful words in the process, including grumphie<\/em> [\u201cpig\u201d] and collieshangie<\/em> [\u201csquabble\u201d]). But really, it\u2019s more fun to read without meaning, instead feeling the rhythm and energy of the language, which becomes a zaum<\/em>-ian exercise: \u201cThe cuddy cam clunk, \/ cloitit doon doup-scud, and wheech \/ but the muckle-mou\u2019d moochers wena lang \/ in makin theirsels thrang.\u201d \u2014Nicole Rudick<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last week, the podcast Some Noise<\/span><\/a><\/em> finished up\u00a0a three-part series on the Anderson Valley, home to Boonville, the birthplace of the Boontling language<\/span><\/a>. The area is a sort of last stop on a trail to nowhere at the end of America\u2014the stretch of California is sometimes called \u201cthe lost coast.\u201d It\u2019s a steep, rugged, isolated country whose industries are logging, hops farming, grape orcharding, and, relatively recently, marijuana growing. Host Najib Aminy learns all this while investigating gentrification in rural America, but he also stumbles upon decades-old feuds between San Francisco\u2019s exiled hippies and local rednecks, and lots more. \u201cTimes has changed terribly,\u201d says the old-timer Wes Smoot, also known by his Boont name, Deacon, meaning\u00a0\u201clooker\u201d (perhaps \u201cseer\u201d). Smoot is one of the last fluent speakers of\u00a0Boontling, whose words, Aminy finds, exist mostly on wine and beer labels glued to the drinks produced in the area. In 2018, pot will finally be legal for recreational use in California. As the date approaches, residents of the Anderson Valley, located squarely in the state\u2019s notorious Emerald Triangle, are both weary and eager about the next boom. Aminy finds it fitting that one of the latest Boontling words, invented\u00a0by Smoot is\u00a0\u201cdownstreamer.\u201d \u201cDownstreamers are salmon come up to spawn,\u201d says Smoot. \u201cAnd when they spawn, their life is done, and then they start back downstream. Well, when they go downstream, they\u2019re all wore out, and, finally, they die, you know?\u201d \u2014Jeffery Gleaves\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Somebody left Thom Jones\u2019s 1993 story collection, The Pugilist at Rest<\/em><\/a>, on the discard table in our lobby last week. Somehow I\u2019d never read the famous title story, so I took it and read it on the subway, then came home and read it to Sadie. By the end, one of us was in tears: not Sadie. It was ridiculous. I\u2019ve never been in combat, never lost a buddy\u2014I haven\u2019t\u00a0been in a fight since I was a kid. It wasn\u2019t the scenes of carnage in Vietnam that choked me up (though those were the parts that impressed Sadie), it was the wild leaps in tone the story made, from stoical reportage to a desperate, almost fussy refinement, when the narrator talked about books\u2014that, combined with the old-fashioned artistry of the plot, holding the story together, modeling its own kind of control in the face of grief and shame. It\u2019s an unfashionable kind of story, a boy story. It is theatrical. But it\u2019s been a while since I read anything that sounded so perfect to my ear. \u2014Lorin Stein<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In May,\u00a0the\u00a0Daily<\/em>\u00a0interviewed Joanna Ruocco<\/a> about the five books she\u2019s publishing this year (I\u2019ll give you a moment to languish, as I did, in the realization of your own insufficient productivity habits). As excited as I am for her new work, I thought I would first try\u00a0Dan<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0Ruocco\u2019s 2014 novel.\u00a0The pages of the compact book follow a precocious girl, Melba Zuzzo, who lives in a hamlet named\u00a0Dan. Anyone who has lived in suburbia will recognize the tone of small-town weirdness, normally humming just below the surface, that Ruocco plucks out and amplifies. That unsettled feeling comes largely from the ambiguity of time, which Melba believes is a gelatinous substance that envelopes the physical world: \u201cI\u2019ll never figure it out,\u201d she thinks. \u201cMeanwhile, people keep dying and where do they go in the jelly? Do they rot in the jelly and make more jelly? Could time be made of people?\u201d There is always the sense that in Dan,\u00a0which seems to exist both nowhere and everywhere, no amount of change, even death, is substantive.\u00a0Ruocco\u2019s skillful subversion of language contributes to the overall strangeness of what\u2019s happening, yet even after I closed the book, I found myself wondering whether or not this place, Dan, is closer to reality than I would like to admit. \u2014Lauren Kane<\/strong><\/p>\n

I gave my boyfriend one of my favorite books for his birthday. Then I took it out of his hands it and read it myself for \u2026 the third time?\u00a0The fourth time?\u00a0Billy Bathgate<\/em><\/a>, by E. L. Doctorow, sounds nutty when described: it\u2019s about Jewish gangsters in the Bronx in the 1930s. It is funny, but it isn\u2019t a comedy; there is mystery, but it isn\u2019t pulp. The novel\u00a0starts\u00a0on a\u00a0nauseating\u00a0boat ride on\u00a0the East River, and\u00a0Doctorow is great on the look of the\u00a0doomed\u00a0man\u2019s\u00a0black silk socks, the snatch of song he is singing, the vomit on the dress of the woman he was with. There are twists and punches that make me\u00a0jump\u00a0even the third (fourth?) time\u00a0through\u00a0and sex that still makes me blush.\u00a0Billy\u00a0shows\u00a0himself to be \u201ca capable boy\u201d\u00a0and goes where the mob goes, as though he is on some sort of lethal, lucrative\u00a0internship. He first impresses\u00a0the boss by juggling a series of differently weighted objects and continues to do\u00a0so, metaphorically speaking, throughout the novel, negotiating loyalty and\u00a0violence, intelligence and wealth,\u00a0New York City and everywhere else.\u00a0Billy is\u00a0sharp\u00a0and asks big questions, but Doctorow\u00a0keeps the ball rolling: \u201cYou know, the waitress comes over and says will that be all and then you ask for the check and you pay it.\u201d \u2014Julia Berick<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent much time this past year in the work of Wendell Berry, the writer and farmer from Kentucky, and have noticed that he creates a variety of impressions. Some champion him for his environmentalism, seeing him as a leader in protecting Earth from rampant industrialism and thoughtless development. Others are dismissive of his regionalism and singularly local focus, or regard him as curmudgeonly and frustratingly contrarian (maybe pointing to his cheeky\u00a0By the Book<\/a>\u00a0interview in the New York Times<\/em>\u00a0last year, in which he responded to a question about what author he\u2019d like to meet, living or dead: \u201cI am grateful to have known several authors living and dead, and am not greedy.\u201d) Some see the Port William farming community of his fiction as a model of sorts for their own lives; others see it as a last grasp to a way of life that is done for, a relic of past times. Personally, I have been very moved by Berry\u2019s writings. He paints a picture of a unified life that appeals to me, arguments for its feasibility today notwithstanding. In all the discussions of Berry I\u2019ve encountered, one element of his writing that frequently gets overlooked is its playfulness and joy, of which I was reminded this past week reading through his collection of poems\u00a0Given<\/em><\/a>. He takes pleasure in his poetry and prose; it is clear that he delights in the world, even in the brokenness and sorrow of which he frequently writes. The little poem \u201cWhy\u201d is a good sample:<\/p>\n

Why all the embarrassment
\nabout being happy?
\nSometimes I\u2019m as happy
\nas a sleeping dog,
\nand for the same reasons,
\nand for others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014Joel Pinckney<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>

Giorgio Morandi, Still Life<\/em>, 1953.<\/p><\/div>\n

Michiko Kakutani is stepping down\u00a0from her role as benevolent (depending on whom you ask) czar of the book universe, but her replacement,\u00a0Parul Sehgal, is a more-than-worthy successor.\u00a0If you\u2019re not familiar with Sehgal\u2019s excellent work in the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0and elsewhere, I\u2019d recommend starting with her bimonthly\u00a0Roving Eye\u00a0column, which spotlights outstanding international literature. The\u00a0latest installment<\/a>\u00a0digs into that pesky task of chronicling the present moment, but other highlights include the recent\u00a0Leonora Carrington extravaganza<\/a>, which tackles the peculiar nature of writing outside one\u2019s mother tongue, and her\u00a0wonderful piece<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult<\/em>, whose first sentence demonstrates the power of strong leads, even in book reviews: \u201cBohumil Hrabal died only once\u2014in Prague, on Feb.\u202f3, 1997\u2014but there are at least two versions of the story.\u201d \u2014Brian Ransom<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Do we need a translation of Vladimir Mayakovsky\u2019s poems into Scots? The late Scottish poet Edwin Morgan would certainly say we do. His belief was that Scots is more suited than English to the \u201c \u2018barbarian lyre\u2019 of the revolutionary spirit\u201d in Mayakovsky\u2019s verse. And I think I agree. Wi the haill voice, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[438],"tags":[29789,9158,5409,18815,23761,775,12243,29791,29795,16177,71,29790,28701,687,11612,1650,5504,29786,26526,165,14456,29787,93,29792,179,11466,29794,21945,3946,29796,25225,230,530,176,29270,183,29788,29793],"class_list":["post-113182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-billy-bathgate","tag-birthdays","tag-bohumil-hrabal","tag-boontling","tag-bronx","tag-california","tag-e-l-doctorow","tag-edwin-morgan","tag-emerald-triangle","tag-farming","tag-fiction","tag-jelly","tag-joanna-ruocco","tag-language","tag-leonora-carrington","tag-marijuana","tag-michiko-kakutani","tag-parul-sehgal","tag-podcast","tag-poetry","tag-rereading","tag-reviewing","tag-san-francisco","tag-scots","tag-sex","tag-small-towns","tag-some-noise","tag-the-mob","tag-the-new-york-times-book-review","tag-the-pugilist-at-rest","tag-thom-jones","tag-time","tag-translation","tag-vietnam","tag-vladimir-mayakovsky","tag-war","tag-wendell-berry","tag-zaum"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStaff Picks: Vladimir Mayakovsky, Thom Jones, E.L. 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