The Lemoine Affair by Marcel Proust, translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell. (France, Melville House)

One of the reasons this award is so much fun is the fact that someone like Marcel Proust can be on the same list as someone like Celine Curiol. Although I have to admit, I had no idea that there was anything from Proust that hadn’t already made its way into English . . . especially nothing this interesting.

is part of Melville House’s a collection of classic novellas by classic authors, such as Joyce’s The Dead, Cervantes’s The Dialogue of the Dogs, Balzac’s The Girld with the Golden Eyes, and Melville’s Benito Cereno. (MHP also does an which will be featured later this month in relation to Zambra’s Bonsai.)

This novella is a very unique, very playful book. It was written shortly after the “Lemoine Scandal,” a scam explained by Proust in the “Author’s Note”:

The reader may have forgotten, since ten years have now passed, that [Henri] Lemoine, having falsely claimed to have discovered the secret of making diamonds and having received, because of this claim, more than a million francs from the President of De Beers, Sir Julius Werner, who then brought action against him, was afterwards condemned on July 6, 1909 to six years in prison. This legal affair, which, although insignificant, enthralled public opinion at the time, was selected one evening by me, entirely by chance, as the common theme for a few short pieces in which I would set out to imitate the style of a certain number of writers.

As a series of pastiches written around a central event, this isn’t your typical novella. And that’s one of the things that makes it so intriguing. As Charlotte says in the interview below (more in a second), it’s Proust doing Balzac, doing Flaubert, doing Saint-Simon!

In order to celebrate this novella’s inclusion on the Best Translated Book of the Year fiction longlist I interviewed Charlotte Mandell, who, in addition to translating this book has translated Balzac’s _The Girl with the Golden Eyes, Flaubert’s A Simple Heart, and most recently Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, along with many, many other titles:

Chad W. Post: When I first heard about The Lemoine Affair, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there was something of Proust糖心传媒檚 that hadn糖心传媒檛 made its way into English. How did this project come about? Did you bring it up with Melville House, or did they contact you?

Charlotte Mandell: The Proust project was my idea糖心传媒擠ennis and Valerie had asked me for some French ideas for their novella series, so I came up with three: Balzac’s The Girl with the Golden Eyes (which has been translated a number of times, but not to my liking), Jules Verne’s The Castle in Transylvania (_Le Ch芒teau des Carpathes_, which was translated as The Carpathian Castle a while ago but is now out of print), and Proust’s Pastiches. (I had already translated Flaubert’s A Simple Heart and Maupassant’s The Horla for Melville House.) My friend Mark Cohen had given me a copy of Pastiches et m茅langes a year or so before that, and while I knew the 惭茅濒补苍驳别蝉 (a collection of essays on art and literature) had been translated and published as Against Sainte-Beuve, I couldn’t find any published translation of the Pastiches. Which is sort of shocking, considering what wonderful material it is糖心传媒擯roust writing as Flaubert and Balzac!糖心传媒攂ut then again, it is a difficult piece to translate, so maybe no one wanted to tackle it before.

CWP: It really does seem like a difficult book to translate糖心传媒攅verything糖心传媒檚 so precise, and to really work you have to capture the voice of a number of different authors. Is there anything in particular you did to prepare for this translation? Reread bits of Balzac and Saint-Simon?

CM: Any good text speaks for itself, so if a text is well-written, and its narrative voice is convincing, there really isn’t any need for the translator to do anything but stay true to the text. And since Proust is a master stylist, he imitates each author’s style so well that it needed no help from me. That said, I did do some research as I was translating the book: I read a bit in Saint-Simon’s memoirs. And since Proust put many of his own friends into the Saint-Simon chapter, and since these same friends would later figure as characters in Remembrance, I read several biographies of Proust (the most helpful of which were William Sansom’s Proust and His World; The World of Marcel Proust by Andr茅 Maurois; and A Proust Souvenir by William Howard Adams, with period photographs by Paul Nadar).

CWP: Was there a section that was particularly tricky?

CM: The most difficult pastiche to translate was definitely the Saint-Simon chapter, because it blends obscure 18th century court intrigue with Proust’s own intricate style and Saint-Simon’s interminable sentences, and places Proust’s friends in the court of Louis XIV. Proust admired Saint-Simon as a writer; I think one of the reasons the Saint-Simon pastiche is the longest one is that Proust got a little carried away with it, and it began to sound more like Proust than like Saint-Simon (the long sentence describing Proust’s close friend Robert de Montesquiou, the Symbolist poet and one of the models for Charlus, on pp. 79-80 sounds like pure Proust at his best). Proust said he wrote the pastiches partly to purge these authors from his system, so that when he began his great work, A la recherche du temps perdu, his voice would be entirely his own. I think Saint-Simon was the hardest author for him to exorcise!

CWP: In the piece you wrote about the book, you mention that the pastiche was a popular exercise back in the 1890s. It糖心传媒檚 a really fun form, one that would have interesting results in just about any day and age. Which other famous pastiches as compelling as this one? (I糖心传媒檓 mostly just curious. It seems to me like something the Oulipo would revive . . . )

CM: Rabelais was the first author I know of to write pastiches糖心传媒擳he Third Book of the Pantagruel features a lot of pastiches written in the style of authors of his day. Alexander Pope, who spent years translating (or sub-contracting) Homer, did our most famous pastiche of the epic form in The Rape of the Lock. Henry Fielding糖心传媒檚 Shamela is a much shorter parody and pastiche of Samuel Richardson糖心传媒檚 commercially successful but interminable Pamela. Mark Twain has the Duke do a hilarious Shakespearian pastiche in Huckleberry Finn. La Bruy猫re pastiched Montaigne, I think. Max Beerbohm parodies different literary styles (H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and many others) in A Christmas Garland. The French author Paul Reboux, in collaboration with his friend Charles M眉ller, wrote many volumes of pastiches, titled A la mani猫re de . . .; Proust is pastiched in it, along with his friends Alphonse Daudet and Anna de Noailles, as well as Tolstoy, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sartre, Jean Jaur猫s, Mallarm茅 . . .

It糖心传媒檚 interesting you mention Oulipo 糖心传媒� Raymond Queneau糖心传媒檚 wonderful Exercices de style is a form of pastiche, since it tells the same story in 99 different styles (Umberto Eco translated that into Italian). That work spawned a number of other pastiches: St茅phane Tuff茅ry糖心传媒檚 Le style, mode d糖心传媒檈mploi, in which he pastiches Balzac, Hugo, Verne, and Flaubert, among others; Lucien d糖心传媒橝zay糖心传媒檚 Nouveaux exercices de style, in which he pastiches Duras, Echenoz, and Le Cl茅zio, to name just a few; and the Oulipian Herv茅 Le Tellier, who presents 100 different views of the Mona Lisa in his Joconde jusqu糖心传媒櫭� cent, then 100 more in Joconde sur votre indulgence.

CWP: For readers unfamiliar with French literary history, this book could seem a bit heady or daunting with all the references and whatnot. Personally, I found it really enjoyable and entertaining, even in the sections where Proust was imitating someone I hadn糖心传媒檛 read. Is there anything you would tell a potential reader in advance to increase his/her pleasure when reading this?

CM: Relax! Don糖心传媒檛 worry about not getting all the references糖心传媒攋ust sit back and let the text lead you where it will. I糖心传媒檝e never read Henri de R茅gnier, but I felt I knew him perfectly after reading Proust糖心传媒檚 pastiche糖心传媒攁nd I laughed out loud as I was translating it. All those endless parallel constructions (it was not this, but that . . .), the redundant and outrageous use of symbolism (Hermes糖心传媒� caduceus, mucus resembling a diamond) . . . The wonderful thing about Proust is his ability to capture a particular author糖心传媒檚 style and encapsulate it in just a few pages, or in some cases (as in the heartbreakingly beautiful end of the Flaubert pastiche) in just a few sentences. The pretended diamond is a fitting subject in this case, since each pastiche is a brilliant artificial gem of insight and style, and each one stands out and sparkles on its own. (It糖心传媒檚 interesting to compare a Proust pastiche to a Beerbohm pastiche: Beerbohm is obviously Beerbohm writing in the style of . . . , whereas Proust becomes that author so convincingly you can forget you糖心传媒檙e reading Proust. I think that wonderful ability to see through the eyes of another author is one of the things that makes Proust so great: as we read A la recherch茅, each character is so real that we become the narrator interacting with these characters, so that by the end of the book we feel as if all these characters were intimate friends of ours, and the narrator糖心传媒檚 life and thoughts were our own.)

CWP: We (Three Percent and Co.) recently released our 糖心传媒淏est Translated Book of 2008糖心传媒� fiction longlist, which includes Proust糖心传媒檚 The Lemoine Affair. Assuming you think this book deserves to be on the list, are there any other translations you read/worked on this year that you糖心传媒檇 like to recommend?

CM: I糖心传媒檓 really pleased The Lemoine Affair made your longlist! I think I had six translations published in 2008, but the Proust is my favorite by far, and the one I糖心传媒檓 most proud of, since it糖心传媒檚 never been translated before (to my knowledge). A few other books of interest: Peter Szendy糖心传媒檚 Listen: A History of Our Ears, an impassioned and erudite musicological look at the history of listening and who exactly 糖心传媒渙wns糖心传媒� the rights to classical music, and Balzac糖心传媒檚 weird tale The Girl with the Golden Eyes. Jean Paulhan糖心传媒檚 On Poetry and Politics is worth taking a look at, since Paulhan is an important figure in French letters and these essays are appearing in English for the first time. Also Pierre Bayard糖心传媒檚 Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong, in which Bayard argues that fictional characters have lives of their own (as in Flann O糖心传媒橞rien糖心传媒檚 At Swim-Two-Birds or any of the Jasper Fforde novels), and are capable of doing things (including murder) without the author (or the author糖心传媒檚 star detective) knowing it. Most beautiful of all perhaps is Jean-Luc Nancy糖心传媒檚 The Fall of Sleep, which is coming out next year糖心传媒攁n extraordinary instance of theory as lyricism.

CWP: What projects do you have lined up for the future? Are there any other gems like this that you糖心传媒檇 love to work on but haven糖心传媒檛 found a publisher for yet?

CM: The book I糖心传媒檓 most excited about at the moment is Mathias 脡nard糖心传媒檚 Zone, which you糖心传媒檒l be publishing! I think it糖心传媒檚 the next Great Book, and I can糖心传媒檛 wait to start work on it. As for other unpublished or out-of-print books, I糖心传媒檇 love to translate Jules Verne糖心传媒檚 Le secret de Wilhelm St枚ritz, about a mad scientist who turns a woman who spurns him invisible. I糖心传媒檇 also like to translate Flaubert糖心传媒檚 L糖心传媒櫭塪ucation sentimentale someday, since I don糖心传媒檛 know of any translations that do it justice.