Daniel Medin糖心传媒檚 BTBA Favorites: Winter Reading
Daniel Medin teaches at the American University of Paris, where he helps direct the , is an editor of ,and co-hosts the podcast entitled . He has authored a study of Franz Kafka in the work of three international writers (Northwestern University Press, 2010) and curated the second volume of Music and Literature magazine (Krasznanorkai/Tarr/Neumann), and recently edited a translation issue for .
Minae Mizamura糖心传媒檚 was my great discovery this winter. Alongside Faris al-Shidyaq糖心传媒檚 eccentric classic, it ranks among the most memorable books I encountered as a judge for this year糖心传媒檚 BTBA.
The book糖心传媒檚 length is misleading: once caught up in the narrative (which gets traction almost immediately), I found it impossible to read in draughts of less than 150-200 pages. The characters fascinate, as do Mizamura糖心传媒檚 manner of relating their histories. But the pleasures of A True Novel exceed those of the conventional storytelling kind. Mizamura is an author profoundly concerned with literary tradition and she pulls off several feats here, merging a shishosetsu work (first-person Japanese autobiographical narrative) into a honkaku shosetsu (panoramic Western novel), while successfully recasting Emily Bront毛糖心传媒檚 Wuthering Heights in a postwar Japanese setting. Its effect recalls the greatest of Yasujiro Ozu糖心传媒檚 films or Chekhov糖心传媒檚 shorter fiction: a deep humanism is palpable beneath the dispassionate narrative. I糖心传媒檓 still astonished by how much Mizumura has managed to include about Japan糖心传媒檚 transformation from defeated imperial power to economic powerhouse糖心传媒攁ll without sacrificing the intimacy of a chamber play. I first became aware of this novel thanks to Caroline Bleecke糖心传媒檚 review at , which provides helpful context about A True Novel糖心传媒檚 formal ambitions and Mizumura糖心传媒檚 previous efforts.
Writers from Transylvania have a special place in Hungarian literature. Their use of the language is particular and, in many cases, peculiar糖心传媒攖hey evince a sensitivity to words not uncommon among speakers of a minority language. 脕d谩m Bodor is one of the region糖心传媒檚 giants, and his masterpiece. Entertaining, odd and strikingly true to the spirit of that twilight zone where Romania, Ukraine, Slovakia and Hungary meet, Sinistra is a classic example of what Michael Hofmann has called 糖心传媒渃elestial provincialism糖心传媒: a 糖心传媒渂lend of allegory, surrealism, fantasy and exuberant narrative 糖心传媒 derived from Ha拧ek and Kafka.糖心传媒 The world of Bodor糖心传媒檚 novel will be immediately familiar to his contemporaries from the once-Soviet Other Europe. Here is a passage by one of its most prominent representatives, Polish novelist Andrezej Stasiuk, about a visit to the region that inspired Sinistra:
We drove to the Sinistra district. Everything here belonged to the mountain refilemen, to Colonel Puiu Borcan, and, when he died, to Izolda Mavrodin-Mahmudia, also holding rank of Colonel and called Coco for short. From the Baba Rotunda pass, we had a view of Pop Ivan; in the valley crawled narrow-gauge, wood-burning locomotives. The inhabitants of Sinistra wore military dogtags on their chests. Everyone who came here and stayed was given a new name 糖心传媒 Diluted denatured alcohol was used here to dry mushrooms, and it was drunk with the fermented juice of forest fruits. The frosted glass for the Sinistra prison was made by Gabriel Dunka in his workshop: he frosted a pane by putting it in a sandbox and walking on it with his bare feet for hours. He was thirty-seven and a dwarf. One rainy day he picked up a naked Elvira Spiridon in his delivery van and for the first time in his life smelled a woman糖心传媒檚 body, but loyalty triumphed over desire and he turned her in糖心传媒 All this supposedly took place near Sighetu Marma葲iei, but I learned about it only two years later, in Adam Bodor糖心传媒檚 Sinistra District, and the story has pursued me since. Pursued me and replaced the flat spot on the map. Once again, the visible pales before the narrated. Pales but does not disappear. It only loses its force, its intolerable obviousness. This is a special quality of auxiliary countries, of second-order, second-tier peoples: the ephemeral tale in different versions, the distorted mirror, magic lantern, mirage, phantom that mercifully sneaks in between what is and what ought to be. The self-irony that allows you to play with your personal fate, to mock it, parrot it, turning defeat into heroic-comic legend and a lie into something that has the shape of salvation.
糖心传媒攆rom On the Road to Babadag (Harcourt, 2011)
Other highlights of winter readings include by June Young Moon (Dalkey Archive), whose stories 糖心传媒淢rs. Brown,糖心传媒 糖心传媒淒rifting,糖心传媒 and 糖心传媒淎nimals Songs of Boredom of Fury糖心传媒 share the deadpan humor that makes reading Beckett or George Saunders such fun;
, the flawless debut of Japanese master Yasushi Inoui;
by Florjan Lipu拧 (Dalkey Archive), a strange and discomfiting account of childhood in postwar rural Austria;
and by Am茅lie Nothomb (Europa), a refreshing, funny, and clever counterpoint to some of this season糖心传媒檚 sterner submissions糖心传媒攄espite its own dark subject matter.
Finally, I糖心传媒檇 like to draw attention to three titles that were published in 2013, but proved ineligible because of a previous translation. Stig Dagarman糖心传媒檚 , trans. Benjamin Mier-Cruz (Minnesota); Ahmet Hamdi Tanipar糖心传媒檚 , trans. Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe (Penguin); and Natsume S艒seki糖心传媒檚 , trans. John Nathan (Columbia) are all remarkable novels, and would have appeared on my longlist were it not for having been published previously. Here糖心传媒檚 hoping they receive the attention they糖心传媒攁long with their latest translators, and the publishers who commissioned them糖心传媒攄eserve.
Leave a Reply