What a resource!  Each section felt like a small bookstore in the ‘home’ country of that language.  There was a variety of contemporary literature and classics, with an emphasis on the classics.  It felt like every language under the sun was represented.  Odds are, whatever foreign book you’re looking for, Schoenhof’s has it or knows how to get it.  The biggest selection was in French, German, Spanish and Italian.

There is a place for the English speaker, the back room is largely dedicated to language learning materials from dictionaries, to textbooks, recorded lessons.  Plus, there were several books translated into English in the front.  This is a good place to start exploring translated literature.

My favorite section was the alcove behind the front desk for children’s books.  It’s the largest selection of foreign books for children that I’ve come across.  Kelsey is taking Chinese and I enjoyed looking through simple kid’s books to find the one with the best story and illustrations.  Okay, I have no idea if it’s a good story, I can’t read Chinese, but it felt like it.

Want to read something in a different language other than instruction books?  Drop by Schoenhof’s or give them a call.

Schoenhof’s Foreign Books

76A Mt. Auburn St.

Cambridge, MA 02138

Tel:  617.547.8855

Grossman’s book To the End of the Land kept me on the verge of tears.  What made the book universal for me was a mother letting go of her son.  The theme of saying goodbye was heart-wrenching.    I don’t have to send a son I’ve raised with empathy and care into a war zone at age eighteen, but I do have a son leaving for college in 17 months and life will not be the same.  Our relationship will change, my role will be different.  There will be joy and loss in that process.  Reading To the End of the Land stirred the grieving that accompanies this transition.

Grossman’s characters live with a constant sense of the fragility of life.  Another universalism, that we could all get hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow, feels heightened in Grossman’s Israel.  The randomness of pulling a name out of a hat, the name picked is tortured by Arabs, the one not is tortured by guilt.  Whether or not the bus you’re riding on will be bombed, or the one passing you in cross traffic.  The fear of both sons partying at the same bar because it could be the one a suicide bomber visits that night.  Americans don’t live with that same day-to-day fear.  Not only do the characters, and presumably Israelis, live with the underlying fear of random death, there is a sense that the nation could cease to exist:

“Look at them,” Avram had said to her once, in one of their drives around the streets of Tel Aviv after he got back.  ”Look at them.  They walk down the street, they talk, they shout, read newspapers, go to the grocery store, sit in cafes”–he went on for several minutes describing everything they saw through the car window–”but why do I keep thinking it’s all one big act?  That it’s all to convince themselves that this place is truly real?”

“You’re exaggerating,” Ora had said.

“I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think that Americans or the French have to believe so hard all the time just to make America exist.  Or France, or England.”

I grew up in a world where Israel existed, it never occurred to me that a country, especially an ally, could disappear until I attended a lecture a few years ago given by an Israeli political scientist.  The room was filled with about 200 senior citizens, mostly Jewish.  The lecturer asked how many people thought Israel would not survive and a significant majority raised their hands.  As the discussion progressed, it became clear that many believed the state of Israel was a phase; it was not permanent.  I thought of that room when I read the above passage.  The conscious effort to make Israel real is strikingly different from the unarticulated fundamental belief that the United States is permanent.

I wonder if this fear and mindset heightens the sense of life in Israel.  If so, I didn’t get that impression from Grossman’s book.  The richness of family life is well relayed, but not an exuberance.  Grossman’s main characters are very insular.  My primary criticism of this wonderful book is that the characters sometimes felt flat.  I don’t think it’s because of it being translated, I believe it is a result of the private world Grossman creates for them.  Ora, Ilan and Avram bond in the hospital when Israel is under attack, in a fever, in the dark.  There are only the three of them for the first section of the book, the lone Arab nurse is down the hall.  The balance of the book permeates with a world limited by this character triangle.  It is expanded by the the birth of Adam and Ofer but always feels in reference to just the three of them.  Never seeing Ora outside of these relationships, never with a girlfriend or at work, left me feeling like she was a conduit the author used to stir emotions in me rather than a fully realized character.

Grossman leads the reader on a thought-provoking journey filled with emotion.  This isn’t a fast read, it’s paced to match the walk.  It’s a trip I’m willing to take over and over again.

The entire five days I spent in New York City, I exited the subway station to the street and turned in the correct direction only once.  Even when I thought ‘my instincts say it’s to the right, so I’ll go to the left,’ I went the wrong way.  I was so sure I heading the correct direction down 19th Street to Idlewild Books that I walked blocks and blocks away from the store.  It’s a lovely neighborhood, I know because I’ve seen it at a pedestrian’s pace.  Actually, a little quicker.  On the way back it started to sprinkle, then it started to rain, then hard, and I started to sprint.  When I entered Idlewild Books I was dripping.  I literally shook myself off on the landing like my golden retriever.

Some of the stained glass and chairs are from the original Idlewild Airport

David, the owner of the store, asked “Did you forget your umbrella?”

I said, “I’m from Los Angeles, I don’t even own an umbrella.”

I’m sure the store is beautiful in any weather, but it is perfect for a stormy day.  It exudes warmth.  Check out the picture with the wooden floors, huge front window and bookshelves everywhere.  There is an alcove or two for curling up in.  In fact, the entire time I was there a man was diligently working on his laptop in a corner.  In Los Angeles, he would be a screenwriter, but since I was in New York I assumed he was writing the next Great American Novel (no, it wasn’t Franzen).

I hesitate to say that Idlewild Books is a travel bookstore because I fear that the title invokes the travel section at Borders with sloppy shelves of guidebooks.  Idlewild Books has guidebooks (they looked neatly organized), but its charm is as an advocate for traveling with or through literature.  In the last 18 months, I think I’ve purchased about a dozen books there (a set for each family vacation) and only one was a guidebook that David practically had to beg me to buy when he found out I loved Italian art.  My experience has been to tell David where I’m going and what I’m interested in and he tells me the books that will add an entirely new dimension to the trip.  I should add, it’s not just me, he recommends the books my teenagers will carry with them.  [What we read on our latest family vacation, including David's suggestions, will be in a future post.]

The store is divided geographically with all the guidebooks, novels, YA, classics and non-fiction about the appropriate area in one location.  By providing novels relevant to the literature, culture and history of various countries, the store is also a treasure trove of translated literature.  When I was looking for books to read while traveling in Italy, it was from Idlewild Books that I found translated gems.  Lately, they started offering language classes in the store.  It’s one stop shopping-research traveling in a country, read it’s literature and learn its language-all at Idlewild Books.

If you can’t make it to the store, check out the website.  I found the website focuses more on guidebooks than literature for some areas, for those countries I recommend calling the store directly and ask for recommendations.  Give it a try, you’ll find that ‘you are there’ reading (to quote Anne Fadiman) enriches your trip.

Idlewild Books

12 W 19th Street

New York, NY 10011

Tel:  212.414.8888

It can be difficult for some to understand what was truly revolutionary about Impressionism.  Looking back from Pop Art to Abstract Expressionism to Surrealism, by the time our eyes land on Impressionism, what’s the big deal?  The Birth of Impressionism grounds the reader in the 1860s art world describing the Salon monopoly and the popular art of the time.  The first section includes four essays on the accepted art of the time: realism, soft porn nudity sold as classicism, grand history painting, and Orientalism.

The catalogue and the show set up Manet as the turning point from the conservative art to modern art.  The essay entitled “Manet:  Innovation and Innovation” nails his pivotal role as an artist who wanted to succeed in the Salon world but opened the door to displaying modern life in a manner that loosened the restrictions of formal painting.  The catalogue doesn’t limit itself to the paintings in the exhibition.  Especially with Manet, it is important to show his development with such works as “Luncheon in the Grass,” “Olympia,” and “The Dead Toreador” none of which are in the show but the book discusses in the context of his career.  The third section of the catalogue, entitled Impressionism and the New Painting shows how he was the leader of loosely knit group of artists who discussed a different way of making art, but each with his own style.  The Impressionists weren’t a disciplined group with one set manifesto and style, they were artists united in their willingness to break outside of the bounds of Salon painting.

Woven in with the revolution in art, the catalogue portrays the importance of the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Commune, and the bloody week of May 1871.  The essay “The Terrible Year” puts the pictures relating to these events in context.  The works discussed, Meissonier’s ‘The Siege of Paris” or Chavannes “The Pigeon” and “The Balloon”, aren’t technically precursors of Impressionism, but they document events that turned the society the artists lived in upside down.  It’s this upheaval that helped wear down the resistance to ‘New Painting.’

My primary criticism would be how little attention was given to Degas, while not my favorite Impressionist, I would have given him more importance in the catalogue and the exhibit.  But then again, the catalogue is about the birth of an art movement and to accurately document that, the reader needs to know what the movement is coming from and who bore the birth pains, all of which the catalogue effectively accomplishes with gorgeous reproductions.

On a side note, I was pleased to see that the bulk of the catalogue was translated by Alison Anderson, a translator I interviewed last year.  This is the third book I have read and reviewed for the Art  History Challenge.

The flirting stage began with the introduction.  I like reading introductions, Julie Robinson, my book discussion guru. warns against them.  Julie thinks it could steer the reader away from what he or she would otherwise feel about the book.  Maybe, but I’m fairly opinionated and not too easily steered.  When I have the time, I like easing into a book with an introduction.  Michael Cunningham‘s essay on reading and translation is, by far, the best introduction I recall.

Claire and I have spent several lunches and many blog posts discussing translated literature.  Claire consistently feels that reading in translation keeps her at a distance.  I know what she’s feeling, but I wonder if it is because much of the translated literature we have read is from Europe and we’re experiencing a cultural difference.  Cunningham argues that all literature is a work of translation from the ideas in a writer’s head to the printed word.  To a certain extent, he agrees with Claire, but his argument is that the act of writing is a process of translation:

My own translators, the best ones, seem always to battle a sense of failure–the conviction that while they’ve come close they’ve missed something in the original, some completeness, some aliveness, that refuses to quite come through in French or Italian or Japanese.  This, too, is familiar to me.  I always feel the same when a novel has finally exhausted me, and I feel compelled to admit that, although it doesn’t, seem finished, it is as close to completion as I’m capable to getting it.  Some wholeness isn’t quite there.  While I wrote, I felt it hovering around me.  I could taste it, I could almost smell it–the mystery itself.  And even if that published novel has turned out fairly well, there is always that sense of having missed the mark.

Fiction is, than, at least to me, an ongoing process of translation (and mistranslation), beginning with the writer’s earliest impulses and continuing through its rendering into Icelandic or Korean or Catalan.  Writers and translators are engaged in the same effort, at different stages along the line.

I’m reading the 2004 translation by Michael Henry Heim, not the first for Death in Venice which was originally published in 1912.  Cunningham’s introduction was written before all of thehullabaloo over the Pevear and Volokhonsky translations of War and Peace. But, without conducting extensive researching whether he wrote on that subject, I would guess he was in favor of renewed translations.

For a handful of the greatest writers, Thomas Mann among them, the process of translation continues even further.  Occasionally a book like Death in Venice speaks so enduringly to readers that it is translated not once but again, and sometimes again and again.  This is as it should be.  It respects the fundamental nature of literature as a mutable and ever-unresolved business involving writers’ and readers’ ongoing attempts to get to the heart of the matter, to complete that which can never be completed.  A great book is probably, be definition, too complex and layered, too intricately alive, to be translated once and for all.

Cunningham continues in his essay to discuss specifically why this translation is better than a previous one, however, his examples relate to scenes in the book, which I need to get back to if I am going to finish it for tomorrow discussion. What are your thoughts on Cunningham’s view of translation?  What are yours?  We would love to hear them in the comments.

San Miguel is a town to meander around.  The colonial buildings open into court yards containing stores, restaurants and galleries.  And if the door is closed?  So much the better because the doors of San Miguel are beautiful, so much so there is a book, aptly named The Doors of San Miguel de Allende, by Robert De Gast, documenting them.

Wandering through the streets, we stumbled upon Garrison & Garrison Books, an English language used bookstore.  It’s fairly tiny store with about 8 bookshelves, a book table and a few tattered but comfy chairs.  The flyers for ex-pat events showed the store was a bit of a community center itself.  The store offers the traveler a variety of literature, mystery or airplane reads.  There is also a selection of local interest books, among them said Doors book.  Before leaving for Mexico, I looked for Life in Mexico by Frances Calderon De La Barca the Scottish wife the Spanish Ambassador from Mexico from 1839-1845, a book of lively letters, but was told that it was out of print.  It was sitting on the table in Garrison & Garrison, I was thrilled until I noticed the size.  It was a doorstop book that I couldn’t imagine carrying around all day and then home in  my luggage.  Every time I was in a taxi that drove by Garrison  & Garrison, I was tempted to ask the driver to pause just for a minute while I ran in to buy a book the weight of a newborn child.

Recommended Reading for San Miguel de Allende

Not willing to endure an aching back from hauling around Life in Mexico, I did read two books that added flavor to my visit.  To make progress on the Essay Challenge, I chose DH Lawrence’s Mornings in Mexico.  Traveling in the San Miguel area while reading Lawrence’s essays created a dialogue between what I was seeing and what I was reading.  The essays were written in the 1920s and described a world that is much changed 80 years later, but there was an essence of the place that Lawrence experienced and I sensed.  The courtyard life Lawrence describes in “Corasmin and the Parrots” as he ponders evolution is very similar to the atmosphere we wandered through and relaxed in.  We visited during Holy Week, consecutive days full of beautiful observances, and Lawrence was struck by a similar beauty in one of the church scenes he witnessed in ‘Walk to Hayapa.’  My favorite, along many other people, is ‘Market Day.’  I read it after returning home from San Miguel’s huge Tuesday market.  Kelsey bought sandals, Keith ancient coins and we all decided to try a cactus dish.  During his market day, Lawrence pretends to bargain for a pair of sandals but doesn’t buy them because they stink, knowing the whole time that the odor is the result of tanning them in manure.  I couldn’t stop myself from sniffing Kelsey’s sandals, just to make sure.  I sat for an hour one afternoon in the central jardin reading the descriptions of the characters in the essays and watching the Mexicans milling around me, the traits Lawrence described in one person or another seemed to pop up repeatedly.

The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes throws Mexicans and Americans together as part of Poncho Villa’s army.  Fuentes throws the two cultures together just as both cultures intermix in San Miguel.  The stories of the interactions in The Old Gringo and what I witnessed in San Miguel are different, but the concept of the two neighboring countries living together and apart was interesting to read in a ex-pat outpost in Mexico.

If you’ve read about  a romantic Mexico with a colonial or hacienda feel but have wondered where it is as you’re on the beach in Cancun or shopping in Tijuana, you’re in the wrong place, go to San Miguel de Allende.

Garrison & Garrison Books

Hernandez Macias 59

San Miguel de Allende

• An essay is both a verb and a noun because the writer figures out what she thinks as she writes.
• An essay is a quarrel with the writer’s self or the world.
• The essay is the reverse of redemption narrative because it doesn’t answer questions, it’s an ongoing argument and asks more questions.
• It’s a work of art that can change the reader’s perception of self or other people.
• The essay might not have any function at all.
• Finally, quoting D’Agata from the book, “I think the essay is a antidote to the stagnancy of writing because the essay tries to replicate the activity of the mind . . . the essay is the equivalent of a mind in rumination, performing as if improvisationally the reception of new ideas, the discovery of unknowns, the encounter with the “other.”

I bought this compilation at Bookshop Santa Cruz last summer as a counter point to the essays in Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Essay.  The Lost Origins of the Essay is a doorstop compilation of essays from across time and all over the world (other than the United States) that one speaker described as an argument that the essay is a vehicle for art.  The four essays I heard read certainly supported the case for artistic writing:

From 1957 – “Tisanes” by Ana Hatherly are vignettes, some a paragraph, others a sentence.  To date, Hatherly, a Portugal writer, has written 463 Tisanes, approximately a third of them are translated and 15 of those are published.  The provide a flurry of images interwoven with questions and observations that left me contemplative and quiet.

From 1500 B.C.E. – “Dialogue of Pessimism” by Ennatum of Akkad is a conversation between a master and slave wherein the master instructs the slave to an action, the slave instantly agrees in such a manner that the master changes his mind.  While laughing at the hilarity, I wondered who really is the master and how influenced are we by the opinions of people around us?  I can’t even order dinner at a restaurant without polling what everyone else is eating first.

From 1499 – “Definitions of Earthly Things” by Bernardino de Sahagun is an excerpt from the twelve volume study of Aztec life titled A General History of the Things of New Spain (one of which is now on view at the Getty’s Aztec exhibit).  The book includes history, definitions, memories and stories in both Spanish and Nahuatl, the Aztec’s language.  This essay is a list of definitions.  What’s fascinating is that the Aztecs defined their words in relation to themselves and their reactions and experiences with the object, far more adjectives are used, and the definition is fluid, the word is defined as of that day.  The speaker pointed out that the Aztecs who defined the words were under Spanish rule and were dying off very quickly which may explain why so many definitions included death and violence.  I was trying to think of words that change over time, one thought was the emotional reaction an American may have over “Germany” in 1910 and then again in 1940.  Let me know if you think of any other words.

From 996 – “The Pillow Book” by Sei Shonagon is a series of notebooks, similar to a journal, written by a handmaiden to the Japanese Empress.  The book includes observations, stories, poems and lists.  The woman has a wicked wit, I think I like her.  This essay includes lists she made, “things people despise” and “things that make your heart beat fast.”  I was impressed by the insight in just a list and motivated to try a few of my own.

If you like essays half as much as I do, join the Essay Challenge at Books and Movies and check out some of the essays I’ve been reading the last couple of years.

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,Feltrinelli being the most prevalent, but the stores themselves aren’t huge and they haven’t permeated everywhere.  But what about Amazon?  I was shocked to learn that there is very little e-commerce in Italy.  The Italians firmly believe that if they give their credit card online, the next day their entire bank account and retirement savings will be gone.  Moreover, there isn’t anywhere for a book to be delivered.  Most Italians live in apartments with small mailboxes and no one trusts their neighbors enough to leave a package by the mailboxes or the door to the apartment.  The person I was talking to said that there isn’t evidence of mass theft from the mail; it’s just a cultural belief.  I was stunned and asked what does an Italian do when a package is to be delivered?  A few neighbors have their packages delivered to the bookstore, but mostly they simply do not receive packages.  E-commerce hardly exists in Italy.  I felt like I was stepping in the early 1980s before the advent of Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.  Italian suspicion is saving the small store owner.

And that unique store name?  Years ago the store was situated on the corner and was called Corner Bookstore.  A larger space with better heating opened up down the block and the owner grabbed it and changed the name to Almost Corner Bookstore.  If you are fortunate enough to be in Rome, stop by and chat.  You may find a new but yellowed book to keep you company on the plane trip home.

For more English bookstores in Rome, check out Ron in Rome.

Almost Corner Bookstore

Via del Moro 45

Trastevere, Rome 00153

Tel:  39 06 583 6942

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 toward their native language i.e. the one they would write their own fiction in…

3.  Do you work with the author of the book?  If so, how is the author a valuable resource for you?

On some books I have worked with the author, on others not. I have corresponded with Christian Bobin but not with questions about the text. The author can be an invaluable resource when things aren’t clear or if you need permission to go with a certain odd word or concept that’s different from the original. Where it gets delicate is when they try to intervene too enthusiastically in the English, and you have to start explaining how English works in order to defend a choice of word or tense…You walk a fine line between needing their help when something is not clear, and keeping the text safely in English, in your own idiom.

4.  Before translating The Lady in White, did you feel you needed to know anything more about Emily Dickinson than is already provided in the book?

 Oddly enough I had never felt drawn to Emily Dickinson as a poet, and this text changed that for me, because of the way we perceive her through Bobin’s words. It made me want to go back and re-read the poetry, learn more about her life. I think however that I didn’t want to interfere with Bobin’s own understanding of her biography, so I didn’t explore it on my own.
5. What is the publication date for the entire book?

I don’t have a publisher for the entire book; I’m hoping the excerpt in Two Lines might attract a publisher’s attention. On the other hand, two other collections of lyric essays are coming out early next year, published by Autumn Hill Books. I’ll be very proud to see these finally in print. One is called “A Little Party Dress”, the other “I Never Dared Hope for You” . Short pieces on children, nature, love, life, very much in the same gentle, lyrical idiom as The Lady in White.

6.  Is there a bookstore that played a role in fostering your love of books?

I’ve had a schizophrenic relationship with books and bookstores all my life. I moved to Europe when I was quite young, and desperately missed English-language bookstores (trips to England and Foyle’s or Waterstone’s (before it became a chain) were like Christmas in July…) Then when I finally moved back to the States, I missed the French bookstores and whenever I was in France I would send whole boxloads of books back to California. Now I’m again missing the English/American bookstores, while guiltily ordering from Amazon.uk just to find the books I need for work (Swiss bookstores practice a markup of nearly 50% for English-language imported books, so…)… I do have a wonderful little independent bookstore just over the border in Divonne, France, “Page à Page,” and I’m hoping to discover some more treasures to translate there…
7.  Do you have an independent bookstore(s) that you currently visit on a regular basis?

I had three independents when I lived in the Bay Area that I visited on a regular basis, and which also helped me with my own writing career and love of good fiction. One was Stacey’s, on Market Street in San Francisco which closed six months ago; the city won’t be the same without them. I found so much wonderful literature there, even in their bargain basement (Javier Marias, who has become one of my favorite authors). And Book Passage in Corte Madera is another that helped me as a writer and where I’ve also found treasures. Finally the Book Depot was just down the street from where I lived in Mill Valley and I loved stopping in there on a regular basis and I’m sure I did a lot of impulse buying, in addition to drinking coffee and eating ginger scones.
You’ve made me feel very nostalgic! It is hard to work with language and literature and not be  in the country of my native language; but I think it was this very absence of English in my life for so long that made me love it so much, and it fine-tuned my ear…

Thank you Alison!  We’ll see what we can do about finding a bookstore that can ship to you without it costing a fortune!