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Almost Corner Bookstore – Rome, Italy

February 26, 2010 in bookstore, translation by Kim | 2 comments

When I told people I was visiting Rome, several people suggested I stop by the Almost Corner Bookstore.  It sells English books in a cozy shop with wall-to-wall books.  A center table stacks current bestsellers and books with Italy as the subject matter.  Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, due to the release of the film, received the center spot. An observation from a customer who lives in Rome, “clearly Dan Brown didn’t visit Rome before he wrote the book.” For such a small store, they carried an impressive selection of genres, from English fiction and non-fiction to contemporary Chinese literature.  I also noticed several bestsellers in paperback that were still in hardback in the US. [Aside:  This always irritates me.  I finished the third of the Millennium Trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the  Hornet's Nest, in paperback over the Christmas holidays because a friend bought it overseas.  It won't be out in hardback here until May.]

The atmosphere was fun, when I visited two booksellers were holding court along with a professor from Cal State Los Angeles and an ex-pat who later delivered us to a terrific dinner restaurant.  Their customers are tourists to a certain extent (apparently an Australian Cardinal drops in every time he’s in Rome to buy a novel for the plane ride home), but at least a third are English speaking Rome residents.  Many Italians who read English books because book options are limited in Italian, the publishing world is smaller. The store’s bestsellers are detective and mystery books, even before the likes of Dan Brown, especially if the locale is Italy.  Once Almost Corner buys a book, they keep it until it’s sold.  While the store doesn’t sell used books, some of them may be very old.

Rome was the last stop on our trip to Italy and by the time I reached the Almost Corner Bookstore in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome, I couldn’t help noticing lots of the small bookstores scattered throughout the country in both large and small cities.  Finding a native English speaker and bookseller, I asked about the prevalence of bookstores everywhere.  The answer, there isn’t competition.  To buy a book is to buy it at the local bookstore.  There are bookstore chains, Read the rest of this entry »

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Some Literary Links that Started Me Thinking

January 10, 2010 in award, bookstore, translation by Kim | No comments

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Translated Tuesday – Wherever I Lie Is Your Bed

December 8, 2009 in book review, poetry, short story, translation by Kim | No comments

wherever-cover-medAfter spending the last few months consciously trying to read translated books, I found the newest anthology by Center for the Art of Translation, Wherever I Lie Is Your Bed, the perfect introduction to translated literature from around the world.  The anthology is a mixture of short stories, book excerpts, and poems.  The works are stellar; one after another capturing a haunting moment, the beauty of a life, the isolation of a life alone.  Each story embodies an intimacy that some people believe cannot be translated from one language to another.  When I read a translated book, I often feel like the translator is a person in the corner watching me, knowing but silent.  I poured over the translators introductions to each entry finally feeling like an essential person in my experience was finally given voice.  As a result, I’m excited to ask one of the translators from Wherever I Lie Is Your Bed, Alison Anderson, a few questions.

Alison translated one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I have read in a long time, “The Lady in White” by Christian Bobin.  Whenever anyone mentions lyrical writing again, I’ll think of this piece.  I loved the writing so much, I bought the only other book by Bobin that I could find in English, The Very Lowly: A Meditation on Francis of Assisi.  Here are some of Alison’s thoughts on translations and, of course, bookstores:

1.  The writing in The Lady in White is so lyrical, how much leeway do you give yourself between the literal meaning versus the sound and the poetry of the writing?  Which do you believe is most important of the two?

I think, in the case of Bobin, I would always lean toward the lyrical. However, because of the clarity and evocative simplicity of his writing, there is rarely a conflict between the literal meaning and the sound and poetry. English being far less poetic than French, it’s sometimes a stretch, but I’ve usually found satisfactory solutions.

2.  Are you (or most translators) equally comfortable in both languages, and if not, is it better to be the native speaker of the original work or the translated one?

I would say I am equally comfortable in both languages, at least for speaking and understanding, but I would hesitate to write in French, for example… good translators, literary or otherwise, should always translate Read the rest of this entry »

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Herta Muller Wins the Nobel Prize for Literature!

October 8, 2009 in award, translation by Kim | 1 comment

20994-004-D4CF17B4It’s a big week for literary awards.  On Tuesday, Wolf Hall won the Man Booker Prize and today (or yesterday depending upon your time zone), Herta Muller won the Nobel Prize for Literature.   The committee described Muller as a writer who “with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed.” Muller grew up during the Nicolae Ceausescu regime and writes from the perspective of living under a totalitarian government.  Many noted that she is an appropriate choice for the 20th Anniversary of the fall of communism.  I haven’t heard of her before, but what I learned today peaks my interest.  Rather than summarizing what is better said by others, here are some interesting links to Mueller information and this year’s Nobel Prize:

  • Three Percent, my favorite blog about translated literature, lists reviews for each of Muller’s works that are translated into English.  Let me know which one you’re interested in reading, I’m not sure which I want to start with and am in the mood to be easily influenced.
  • Michael Orthofer of the The Complete Review/Literary Saloon predicted yesterday that Herta Muller would win and today posted a Herta Muller page full of information about her and her books.
  • Book Fox, one of my top two Los Angeles literary blogs, wrote about the speculation that precedes the announcement of the awards, and then about the lessons learned from this year to remember for predicting a future winner of the literature prize. 

Awards are fun and frequently I am introduced to new authors and books, which has certainly been my experience with the Nobel Prize.  I’m looking forward to discovering Muller’s world.

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Translated Tuesday – The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder

September 1, 2009 in Uncategorized, book review, translation by Kim | 1 comment

ogawa-752354Claire and I started the Translated Tuesday summer series after receiving so many lovely translated works in response to my post about The Elegance of the Hedgehog.  It is appropriate that we end the summer series with The Housekeeper and the Professor because I learned of the book through Hedgehog.  While visiting Portrait of Bookstore, I raved about the book to a fellow customer and the owner, Julie von Zerneck, overheard me and recommended I read The Housekeeper and the Professor.  In true bookseller fashion, she was right, if you like one, you’ll like the other.

The narrator is a housekeeper assigned to work for a math professor with an eighty minute memory.  Due to a head injury, he can remember everything before the accident, but after the accident only the last eighty minutes.  The housekeeper must reintroduce herself every morning.  When confronted with an unfamiliar situation, the professor falls back on talking about numbers.  Each morning when the housekeeper arrives, he asks her phone number or her birth date.  He discovers that her birth date is February 20th or 220.  The number on the back of the watch he won as a prize for solving a math problem is 284.  He notices the relationship between the two numbers:

“[T]hink about these two numbers:  220 and 284.  Do they mean anything to you?”

Pulling me by my apron strings, he sat me down at the table and produced a pencil stub from his pocket.  On the back of an advertising insert, he wrote the two numbers . . . “Well, what do you make of them?”

I wiped my hands on my apron, feeling awkward, as the Professor looked at me expectantly.  I wanted to respond, but had no idea what sort of answer would please a mathematician.  To me, they were just numbers.

“Well I stammered. “I suppose you could say they’re both three-digit numbers.  And that they’re fairly similar in size–for example, if I were in the meat section at the supermarket, there’d be very little difference between a package of sausage that weighed 220 grams and one that weighed 284 grams.  They’re so close that I would just buy the one that was fresher.  They seem pretty much the same–they’re bothin the two hundreds, and they’re both even–”

“Good!” he almost shouted, shaking the leather strap of his watch. . . “It’s important to use your intuition.  You swoop down on numbers, like a kingfisher catching the glint of sunlight on the fish’s fin.”

The Professor’s enthusiasm for math and joy in sharing it is a building block in the relationship.  The housekeeper’s willingness and curiosity about math fuels their discussions.   And the relationship between 220 and 284?  They Read the rest of this entry »

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