by Yoel Hoffmann, translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole (Israel, New Directions)

Moods by Yoel Hoffmann, translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole, should definitely win the Best Translated Book Award. Outside of what might objectively be considered its qualifying elements, the fact is, when I think about all of the what-seems-like-thousands of books I糖心传媒檝e read during this award process, Moods is the one that makes my heart flutter the most. This almost makes it difficult to write anything. Like if you糖心传媒檝e just fallen in love, and the person is actually great, but you try to talk about this person and then suddenly it糖心传媒檚 impossible to speak in full sentences because you糖心传媒檙e busy blushing and remembering.

There糖心传媒檚 something oddly witchy about this book, in that Moods is precisely what it糖心传媒檚 named to be: moods. It is not about moods; it is moods.

It糖心传媒檚 like a pressure chamber where Hoffmann is slowly and sometimes suddenly changing your atmosphere, making you weep then making you laugh then making you feel inexplicable guilt. Particularly affecting is his work in sadness:

Here are some other things that break the heart: An old door. A glass left out in the yard. A woman糖心传媒檚 foot squeezed into shoes, so her toes become twisted. A grocer whose store no one goes into. Above all, a husband and wife who don糖心传媒檛 talk to each other. One-eyed cats. Junkyards. The stairwells of old buildings. A small boy on his way to school. Old women sitting all day by the window. Display windows with only a single item or two, coated with dust. A shopping list. Forty-watt bulbs. Signs with an ampersand (such as ZILBERSTEIN & CHAMNITZER), and when a person we love disappears (at a train station, for instance) into the distance.

Out of context, maybe that won糖心传媒檛 make you weep. The crazy part is that the 糖心传媒渃ontext糖心传媒� that does make you weep isn糖心传媒檛 a storyline at all. It糖心传媒檚 the precise engineering of the pressure chamber, in which a vague list of items (which don糖心传媒檛 seem to relate to anything) can evoke even more sadness than a seven hundred page novel where your favorite character dies in a tragic accident on the last page. I have theories about how this engineering works, but please, just try it and see what happens. This is why Moods should be named the best fiction, best poetry, best machine, and best spiritual possession of the year.

I糖心传媒檓 flipping through the book again, and hang on, it糖心传媒檚 just too much.

Sometimes it is discomforting honesty:

Penina Tuchner we loved like the Twin Towers, especially when they were burning.

Sometimes it is pure sensitivity:

We should call all things by their first names. All dogs. All frogs. All trees. Once upon a time we took pity on a gourd that the gardener wanted to uproot, and so we called it Simcha.

Sometimes it is depression without sadness:

Life itself should be lived like that. As in a silent film in which one sees only a single hut with a rooster strutting every so often from the left side of the screen toward the right, and a little while later coming back across it.

Once every thousand years or so a word will be heard.

Sometimes it is delight:

My father Andreas like to play tricks on people. Mostly on his sister, my Aunt Edith.
Every year, on April 1, he糖心传媒檇 come up with another prank. Once he started muttering strange syllables and wrote a note to my aunt saying that he had vowed from that day on to speak only Mandarin.

And overall, it is a bit of everything. I糖心传媒檓 ashamed that I can糖心传媒檛 do it justice, but that糖心传媒檚 okay because you糖心传媒檒l see what I mean once you read it.

Beyond this, Moods should win because Peter Cole糖心传媒檚 translation is exquisite. Because it queers the line between fiction and poetry so elegantly. Also, because New Directions has published six previous books by Yoel Hoffmann, and this year is the first time I糖心传媒檇 even heard of him. Not that you haven糖心传媒檛 heard of him糖心传媒攎aybe you糖心传媒檝e already read several of his books糖心传媒攂ut I糖心传媒檝e been working in bookstores for a decade and 糖心传媒淵oel Hoffmann糖心传媒� didn糖心传媒檛 even ring a bell. I糖心传媒檓 sure I糖心传媒檓 partially to blame, but listen, it糖心传媒檚 really about time that this fucking grand master becomes a household name.

Earlier this week, I returned home from a month abroad to find my hall closet overflowing with submissions to this year糖心传媒檚 BTBA. I糖心传媒檓 glad there were no witnesses to my cartoonish glee as I tore into the bright yellow envelopes; not nearly as glad, though, as I am that over the next few months I糖心传媒檒l have the chance to explore so many new translations I might otherwise not have read. To borrow a phrase from a canonical work especially dear to my heart: bring it on.

Anyway. Mixed in among the bounty of this first shipment was Yoel Hoffmann糖心传媒檚 beautifully composed Moods, luminously translated by Peter Cole. The text is a series of numbered vignettes narrated in the first person plural by a voice that is by turns mischievous, nostalgic, cynical, reflective, and often quite funny. (At one point, for example, Hoffmann recommends using the book as a prop to pick up a lover, or as a pillow to soothe an aching back.) A few readers I know have wondered aloud whether the book should be considered a novel, a memoir, prose poetry, or something else entirely; Hoffmann, who seems to have anticipated these questions糖心传媒攐r quite likely set out to provoke them糖心传媒攔eplies, 糖心传媒淲hat糖心传媒檚 the point of classifying books as fiction or contemplative literature, when fiction is part and parcel of contemplation, and contemplation is entirely a matter of fiction?糖心传媒�

My interest may have been piqued by this challenge to literary norms, but it was the spare yet surprisingly rich descriptions of Hoffmann糖心传媒檚 narrative world that drew me in, as well as the urgency with which the book seeks to bear witness to something as vast as a life in one moment, and then unwrite itself in the next. (糖心传媒淚f it were printed on thinner paper we糖心传媒檇 suggest the reader use it for rolling cigarettes. The smoke would write the book in the air as it really is.糖心传媒�)

But let糖心传媒檚 begin at the beginning. 糖心传媒淓ver since finishing my last book,糖心传媒� Hoffmann remarks, 糖心传媒淚糖心传媒檝e been thinking of how to begin the next one. // Beginning is everything and needs to contain, like the seed of a tree, the work as a whole.糖心传媒� Following this observation, Hoffmann presents the beginning of a traditional novelistic storyline (糖心传媒淚 know it糖心传媒檚 a love story糖心传媒�) which糖心传媒攔ather than developing toward the requisite 糖心传媒渕iddle糖心传媒� and 糖心传媒渆nd糖心传媒澨切拇綌is quickly absorbed by a series of divergent reflections that bind the personal to the philosophical with the twine of dry humor (糖心传媒淚t糖心传媒檚 hard to believe that all this is taking place within a book. The people must be very small糖心传媒�).

Though this narrative gambit might look like a false start, the book糖心传媒檚 first chapter does indeed contain the seed of Moods, which is in many ways a work composed of beginnings. Not only because its vignettes could be read in any order, giving rise to new interpretations with every new opening, but also because each chapter seems to double as the opening to another, untold story that intersects with the one on the page at only a single point. And so, across its many moods, this book is糖心传媒攁s much as any I糖心传媒檝e read糖心传媒攁bout what it does not say. Characters we never fully meet pass through the staunchly metonymic moments of a life that seems to remain unknown even to the voice recounting it. One of the great accomplishments of Moods is the way this negative space bears as much weight as the words on the page.

The specter of stories untold is especially pronounced in Hoffmann糖心传媒檚 lists, each element of which seems to contain an entire universe, not unlike Hemingway糖心传媒檚 famous six-word novel. 糖心传媒淗ere are some other things that break the heart,糖心传媒� Hoffmann declares: 糖心传媒淎n old door. A glass left out in the yard. A woman糖心传媒檚 foot squeezed into shoes, so her toes become twisted.糖心传媒� Each image, vivid and universal in its understatement, is heavy with the moments that precede it and invites us to imagine those that follow.

It has been said that one of the most difficult things to translate is the silence of a text糖心传媒攖hose gaps made intelligible by shared cultural or historical touchstones that rarely pass without a struggle into the target system. In this sense, Cole has done an admirable job of preserving as inklings the hollows that Moods offers its readers. I gather from the English that his task must have been doubly challenging: not only is this a book of many silences, in his reflections on the limits of writing, and of language itself, Hoffmann also traffics in linguistically specific reflections. Cole糖心传媒檚 solutions to these challenges are deft, even artful, whether he is re-Englishing Hoffmann糖心传媒檚 adaptation of Joyce or rendering a nursery rhyme in one chapter糖心传媒檚 paean to unadorned language (糖心传媒淚f only we could write like that糖心传媒�).

(Peter Cole at the University of Rochester)

It糖心传媒檚 a good thing, too, since a skilled hand is needed to translate a work that operates with such intention, and such self-consciousness, on the level of the word. Just as the form of the book糖心传媒檚 opening was the object of reflection, so too is the way it will draw to a close. 糖心传媒淭his might be the last book we糖心传媒檒l write,糖心传媒� Hoffmann muses,

I wonder what how it will end. What its final words will be. Joyce, for example, finished his final book with the word the.

We糖心传媒檝e always thought it extremely strange that movies (and books) end with the word End. Moreover, sometimes the definite article糖心传媒檚 added.

Maybe we糖心传媒檒l end with a different word altogether . . . Imagine if the word turns out to be prow. Or Binyamina. Or epaulettes. Or hydraulic. Or gurgle (which is probably onomatopoetic). Or drowse. Or you.

Given the centrality of beginnings in this book, it is fitting that Hoffmann resolves this question by deciding to close with one糖心传媒擳HE beginning, in fact, which he describes as a 糖心传媒渂eautiful tale糖心传媒�:

In the beginning, when God was creating the heaven and the earth, the earth was formless and waste, and darkness was over the face of the deep . . .

糖心传媒淚magine the loneliness of countless years,糖心传媒� Hoffmann writes. 糖心传媒淟ike a giant, old, autistic man, He stared into what was and saw not even a crack.糖心传媒� Having evoked so many beginnings with his silence, Hoffmann locates silence within this beginning, and in so doing, finds his final word:

The only consolation was His name (or, more accurately, His names). But when He uttered them, He heard (because of the absolute emptiness) not even an echo.

Publishing people love to complain about everything. The Javitz Center sucks. (This is a fact! Stupid glass warehouse. Looks like something from Cleveland.) The BEA is too expensive. No booksellers or critics come anymore. People only want free books. Books don’t sell. Stupid Grumpy Cat is clogging up the aisles. A coffee costs $17. This fair is loaded with crap thanks to you Random Harper House and the Algonquins of mediocrity. Why more Mitch Albom? I thought he was in heaven? Writing us letters? It’ll only be more unbearable in Chicago. And on the weekend they’re actually letting in regular readers. This is the worst.

It’s kind of great! Four days of being around my people, all rant-receptive, all cloaking their belief in the power of books behind a shell of unremitting misery . . . So good! I need this in my life at least once a year—it helps me feel human.

The best post-BEA storyline to me was about the Big Publisher reaction to “BookCon,” the weekend part of the show when readers flood the aisles searching for John Green and buying books (although maybe not the books by the presses whose books I usually buy). Here’s the initial reaction, as reported in

Not only are many New York City-based publishers concerned about staffing for next year’s BookCon, they’re also worried that the change in venue [Ed. Note: BEA is in Chicago next summer] will mark a return to the show’s first year, when attendance was lower and the event itself was more chaotic.

Then, a week later, also in

Heather Fain, senior v-p and director of marketing strategy at Hachette Book Group, said she糖心传媒檚 looking forward to meeting readers from other parts of the country: 糖心传媒淩eaders don糖心传媒檛 just live in New York. If Reed puts together the programming with big names, I think they could get a crowd to come out in any major market. And I like the idea of interacting with readers outside the Tristate Area.糖心传媒�

Wait, there are readers outside of New York City? I CALL BULLSHIT. I’ve said it a million times, but publishers are amazingly good at distancing themselves from their readers. Just wait—next May there will be a slew of articles about how crappy Chicago BookCon is going to be, then in June, publishers will be all “we sold a lot of books! It was great! But next year when it’s in Los Angeles . . . Well, I’m just not sure . . .”

When publishers finally realize that the main reason they exist is thanks to the passion of readers willing to pay money to come to an awful part of NYC just to meet publishers, there will be a sea change in this show. Granted, there won’t be swarms of tween girls bum rushing the Coach House booth in search of conceptual poetry, but still. I see this in my daughter who, to this day (literally), talks about how excited she was to meet J贸n Gnarr and how The Indian is her favorite book. I told her about BEA and to her it sounded like paradise. Not for free stuff, but to see so many books and so many cool people (since cool people are people who work with books) in one place at one time. To her, it was like ComicCon but with fewer costumes.

Steve Rosato, who runs BEA, told me that NY ComicCon—which I am going to go to—draws TEN TIMES as many attendees as BookCon/BEA. This is insane to me. 150,000 people are at NYCC at any moment in time. People who paid $50 to get into a show to buy more stuff. We all love superhero movies more than experimental prose, but still, the great benefit of the various book festivals around the country—the LA Times Festival of Books, Printers Row, Miami Book Fair, now BookCon—is that there’s an opportunity to interact with these people. Instead of only interacting with fellow publishing people drowning their misery with alcohol and hate. (Although alcohol and hate are both wonderful.)

Anyway, my favorite BEA moment? Walking the aisles and finding this at the Overdrive Booth (Overdrive being a service working with libraries to allow patrons to check out audiobooks and ebooks—it’s my favorite app):

Yep, that’s an Open Letter book right next to Dan Brown, and under Gone Girl and Wimpy Kid. We made it!

Not only was on this oft-repeating mosaic of major works, but they used it as the feature book (along with The Girl on the Train, the number one best-selling book in the country) on this background image inside their booth:

I’ve always dreamt of seeing someone randomly reading one of our books on the subway, but although that hasn’t happened, this is a good runner-up dream.

and by Enrique Vila-Matas, translated by Tom Bunstead and Anne McLean (New Directions)

Vila-Matas is one of my favorites—especially Montano’s Malady—for all the formal games he plays with point of view and narrative, which he uses to upend your expectations time and again, shifting his books from half-essays into strange beasts that aren’t what we usually think of as “novels.” This is important and wonderful. And a book about a secret society of people called “the Shandies,” obsessed with “portable literature”? Yes, all the yes.

By the way, next week, Tom and I will be recording our 100th episode of the Three Percent Podcast. We’re going to make this a “listener appreciation” podcast in which we answer any and all questions from you about publishing, sports, books, whatever. Just send them to threepercentpodcast@gmail.com.

by Kamel Daoud, translated from the French by John Cullen (Other Press)

To be honest, I’m not actually all that interested in this book. I’m sure it’s fine and competent and will reach a very wide audience (especially after the Kakutani NY Times review), all of which is great for Other Press and the book. (The set-up alone—a retelling of The Stranger from the perspective of the Arab Meursault kills—guarantees this a huge book club audience.) A lot of people I respect really like this, but I can’t imagine it blowing my mind. Nevertheless, a ton of people will be talking about this, and I’m sure that conversation will be interesting to thousands of readers.

I have to say, the older I get, the less I feel like reading books that I should read in favor of ones I want to. When I moved recently, I was reorganizing my bookshelves and kept having the thought that I was saving books that I would never possibly get to before I die. Ever. It’s an anxiety-making idea, in part because of the death aspect, but also because it makes me question why I choose to read the books I do. I have no good answer to this, but I’m pretty sure The Meursault Investigation won’t be one of the 100 titles that makes the cut for 2015. Sorry.

That said, Jeff Waxman from Other Press—and all their other staff members—is a great guy doing a lot of amazing things, especially in terms of connecting small presses with booksellers. (Like at the upcoming Small Press Night at Green Apple Books in San Francisco.) Jeff is my favorite thing about Other Press. That and the Simon Critchley book they’re bringing out later this year.

by Yoel Hoffmann, translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole (New Directions)

It’s really too bad that FOX has the rights to the Women’s World Cup. Their soccer coverage is fine, but it just feels so buried seeking the games out on FOX Sports 1. Granted, ESPN aired most of last year’s World Cup, but everyone has ESPN. That’s like basic cable.

I was really surprised that last night’s USA-Australia game wasn’t on FOX proper. It was a perfect opportunity for FOX to remind the nation that FOX Sports 1 still exists, and to get a ton of people hooked into this competition. Instead they aired a rerun of So You Think You Can Dance. FOX sucks.

Bringing together my two great loves—translation and sports—here’s a picture of Peter Cole (translator of Yoel Hoffmann’s Moods) giving a talk in front of the Men in Blazers mug that George Carroll sent me.

by L茅on Bloy, translated from the French by Erik Butler (Wakefield Press)

The that I saw during the NBA Finals, and which brought up a lot of questions.

This commercial opens with the following rhetorical question: “What do you think of when you think of the United States Postal Service? . . . . . . Exactly.”

Exactly what??? The things that come to mind when I think of the USPS are, in descending order, 1) the phrase “going postal,” and 2) nothing. It’s like thinking about electricity or garbage collection—it’s just something that’s there and works most of the time.

I feel like the commercial should go on in this way, “You know what we here at the USPS are good at? Occasionally delivering Amazon orders. We’re better than imaginary drones at that! The Postal Service. Sounds like a band name. Hell, next time you hear this commercial think of that. USPS. Band. Name.”

I’m sure that FOX has this commercial on endless loop.

by Mario Vargas Llosa, translated from the Spanish by John King (FSG)

This book sounds like such an old man book—I love it!

In the past, culture was a kind of vital consciousness that constantly rejuvenated and revivified everyday reality. Now it is largely a mechanism of distraction and entertainment. [. . .] Vargas Llosa traces a decline whose ill effects have only just begun to be felt. He mourns, in particular, the figure of the intellectual: for most of the twentieth century, men and women of letters drove political, aesthetic, and moral conversations; today they have all but disappeared from public debate.

I think I’m going to read this over the weekend and spend hours yelling at my books to get off my lawn.

by Juan Jos茅 Saer, translated from the Spanish by Roanne Kantor (Open Letter)

This is our fourth Saer book—with another coming next summer!—and the first to be translated by Roanne Kantor. (Steve Dolph has done the other three, and he’s amazing.) Roanne won the in 2009 for this book, which is how she ended up working on it for us.

Speaking of Susan Sontag, her biographer, Ben Moser, won the Internet recently for his photo of his six-year-old niece flipping out in the White House. I’m sure you’ve seen it, but if not, here’s a I get overly excited when people I know become 眉ber-famous for something that’s not what they always do. Now, hopefully 1/1,000,000 of the people who saw that photo will buy a book that Ben has translated, edited, or written.

by A Yi, translated from the Chinese by Anna Holmwood (Oneworld)

So, China was the Global Market Focus country at BEA this year, which was interesting. I only attended a couple of the main events, but saw their various displays, which took up a sizable portion of the exhibition floor.

The New Yorker ran an about China and BEA, which includes a depressing story about A Perfect Crime:

Even the Chinese delegation糖心传媒檚 most promising soft-power weapons, the twenty-four authors, had trouble drawing crowds. On Friday, a Chinese newspaper lamented the lack of attendees at the on-site book signings. “Where Did the Readers Go?” read the headline. According to the article, during one signing featuring the crime novelist A Yi, the author grabbed a book and tried to push it on a middle-aged American man as he walked by. A Yi soon returned, dejected. “You糖心传媒檇 better stop,” said another author, Su Tong, jokingly patting him on the shoulder. “You糖心传媒檒l humiliate our country.” The article went viral in China, before being deleted. (ChinaFile has a translation ) The rest of the planned book signings were cancelled as a result.

This piece also ends with an odd quote from our favorite author to troll, Jonathan Franzen, which, obviously I’m going to quote:

When I approached Franzen at the PEN rally, he told me that, after visiting China, he糖心传媒檇 come to understand the case for censorship. “China has known so much misery, so much social instability in the last century, that there糖心传媒檚 this deep cultural fear of it that cuts substantially across political lines,” he said. “From the point of view of the Chinese government, trying to maintain social stability, there are reasons for censorship. And that糖心传媒檚 a point of view that has a right to be heard, in the same way that the writers we were supporting here have a right to be heard.”

by Violette Leduc, translated from the French by Sophie Lewis (Feminist Press)

Violette Leduc was one of the coolest authors ever, and it’s so good that this is finally available in its unedited version.

Also, Feminist Press rocks and you should really listen to our recent podcast in which Feminist Press editor Julia Berner-Tobin joined us to talk about Virginie Despentes’s Apocalypse Baby.

by Alan Pauls, translated from the Spanish by Ellie Robins (Melville House)

I couldn’t get into the Pauls book that Harvill brought out a few years ago, but he’s always talked about as one of the great contemporary Latin American writers, so I’m willing to give this one a chance.

Unfortunately, Melville House doesn’t send us review copies, so I went ahead and ordered this on Amazon.

by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, translated from the French by Edward Gauvin (Dalkey Archive)

This looks really interesting: a short set of essays about the art of writing from the author of The Bathroom and Television. When he’s on, Toussaint is spectacular, and it makes me curious to see what his nonfiction is like. Also, this book is 57 pages long with a gigantic font size, so it’s one that I can definitely finish . . .

There are bunch of books I’d like to include, but don’t have the time/energy for. (In other words, I have no obvious jokes for these titles.) So here’s a short list of other things coming out in June that are worth checking out.

by Marc Auge, translated from the French by Chris Turner (Seagull Books)

by R贸bert G谩l, translated from the Slovak by Mark Kanak (Dalkey Archive)

by Alisa Ganieva, translated from the Russian by Carol Apollonio (Deep Vellum)

by Kati Hiekkapelto, translated from the Finnish by David Hackston (Arcadia)

Guadalupe Nettel, translated from the Spanish by J.T. Lichtenstein (Seven Stories Press)

Micheal 脫 Conghaile, translated from the Irish by Katherine Duffy (Dalkey Archive)

“Like a New Sun: New Indigenous Mexican Poetry”: (Phoneme Books)

I have just opened Yoel Hoffmann糖心传媒檚 Curriculum Vitae at random, somewhere in the middle. Having finished the book and wondering where to begin if I am to describe it, this seems an appropriate opening gesture, one I hope to justify as I continue. In any case:

At night we slept (we and Yolanda) back to back while each one saw, as though in a bubble emerging from the head of a comic-strip character, different dreams.

Yolanda most likely dreamed of great gardens. Clay pots. Dalmations.

We (which is to say, I) saw heavier dreams. Landslides in the mountains and an entire town with its golden church spires buried beneath the dirt. Men spreading newspapers out on the floor and reading things in them that make the heart tremble.

It糖心传媒檚 all so self-evident why Joyce wrote, for some twenty years, a book without any real words in it. After all, one could die from the clear-cut borders between one word and another: Pot. Skyscraper. File. Scandal. Dentures. Scabies. Snow. Old age. Flute. Cobalt. Socialism.

Sometimes we made instant coffee with three teaspoons of sugar (as Yolanda liked it) and put it before her.

Note the first two parentheticals, which clarify the two uses of 糖心传媒渨e.糖心传媒� Early in the book, Hoffmann advises us that he will often be referring to himself in the first person plural. He maintains this distinction vigilantly, on the one hand rendering the 糖心传媒渞oyal we糖心传媒� so humorously, and obviously, obsolete, but also bringing around a fresh aspect of self-scrutiny: the simple, almost constant reminder that he is using the same pronoun for two subjects stresses the importance of his own life in relation to his life together with his family.

Next, note the grandiloquent generality of 糖心传媒渞eading things in them that make the heart tremble,糖心传媒� against the minute twentieth-century contextual analogy, 糖心传媒渁s though in a bubble emerging from the head of a comic strip character.糖心传媒� Such range of figuration is characteristic of Hoffmann糖心传媒檚 writing in Curriculum Vitae, a sharp specificity as of the latter which justifies the appropriate use of the former. Consider this range of figurative device along with the next point: 糖心传媒淥ne could die from the clear-cut borders between one word and another.糖心传媒� In one sense, it may be Hoffmann糖心传媒檚 own solution to Finnegans Wake. In another, this is one among countless aphoristic conclusions about life, about language, spirituality, writing糖心传媒攁ll of the biggest concerns of this writer糖心传媒檚 existence. It is a conclusion that seems more a restatement of the problem, an unsolvable riddle, than an answer: it is like a zen koan, which is a significant point to which I will return. But philosophical bombshells like this one would surely misfire without being carefully juxtaposed against equally weighted statements of utter mundanity and real-world particularity of the final sentence, set off in its own paragraph, about instant coffee with sugar. Because this book is a condensed picture of a life, where the particular way one糖心传媒檚 wife takes her coffee carries just as much existential weight as the crises of faith which keep one awake at night.

This is the entirety of section 34 of the book. There are one hundred sections, all of a similar length, and there are no page numbers. The book is thin, the margins wide, and the prose, as is evident in the above passage, exceedingly light. It can be read in a single (perhaps lengthy) sitting, such as a long train ride or an afternoon off in the park. It has the feel, reading it, of a book of aphorisms, or of zen koans, the latter which must be no coincidence because the author, Yoel Hoffmann, is Professor of Japanese Buddhism at Haifa University. His travels and studies in Japan are treated at length in the book, although it may be inaccurate to use the term 糖心传媒渁t length糖心传媒� at all. Textually speaking, there is nothing 糖心传媒渁t length糖心传媒� about the book, and yet the material carries the reader into realms far beyond the text: realms of humor, family life, travels, varying religions and peoples, and childhood in a distant past.

I realize that I have described the book above as a condensed picture of a life. According to the back cover blurb, it is 糖心传媒減art novel and part memoir.糖心传媒� This is an accurate description: the subject is Hoffmann himself and his memories. But it is also part other things which fall into no easy categories. The book resists my simple description, and Hoffmann himself would surely scoff at it. He writes,

If I were able (by means of a deeper covenant than that which exists between author and reader) to fall on people糖心传媒檚 necks and say to them Come, let糖心传媒檚 sit while the tea is steeping, then drink, and you糖心传媒檒l tell me about your lives and I will tell of mine, I糖心传媒檇 toss this manuscript into the trash and do precisely that. In such a world the law would forbid the making of fiction.

In no way is the novel driven by the usual devices one associates with fiction and novels: there are no motivating conflicts, no themes, and the 糖心传媒渃haracters糖心传媒� do not exactly invoke the sympathies that generate a reader糖心传媒檚 interest. It would seem that the book is more the memoir, with its frequent tone of reminiscence and reflection. But then again, having finished it, I cannot say I have a clear picture of the life of Yoel Hoffmann. It is largely autobiographical, but one could hardly call it an autobiography. This, I think, is one of the book糖心传媒檚 greatest strengths. A reader may only be interested in an author糖心传媒檚 memoiristic novel or novelistic memoir if that reader were already familiar with the author糖心传媒檚 other work; I can certainly say that this is my first experience of the work of Yoel Hoffmann and as far as I can tell, it is as good a place to enter this Hebrew writer糖心传媒檚 not inconsiderable oeuvre as any other (this being the sixth of his books to be published by New Directions, in English translations by Peter Cole). Indeed, I am eager to dig into some of his other works.

Part novel, part memoir, part neither, Curriculum Vitae is a frolicking dive into the self of the writer, where he finds his life糖心传媒檚 collected works in the form of unsolvable riddles that, like a good zen koan, taste like wisdom and provide as much entertainment and satisfaction as the reader cares to draw from them.

Here’s the opening of Phil’s review:

Imagine the scene we are all familiar with: you are writing up a C.V. to send out to those who might judge your capabilities, your efficacies, and the quality of your existence to date from what you were able to condense onto a single side of a sheet of letter paper. Imagine adding, among sections detailing work experience and education, sections that enumerate your preferred breakfast cereals, your ongoing spiritual conundra, and personal illustrations that are little more than impressionist contour doodles. Imagine allowing yourself a healthy dose of humor; it can糖心传媒檛 hurt to make your assessors laugh a little. Now imagine reading such a thing.

I have just opened Yoel Hoffmann糖心传媒檚 Curriculum Vitae at random, somewhere in the middle. Having finished the book and wondering where to begin if I am to describe it, this seems an appropriate opening gesture, one I hope to justify as I continue. In any case:

“At night we slept (we and Yolanda) back to back while each one saw, as though in a bubble emerging from the head of a comic-strip character, different dreams.

Yolanda most likely dreamed of great gardens. Clay pots. Dalmations.

We (which is to say, I) saw heavier dreams. Landslides in the mountains and an entire town with its golden church spires buried beneath the dirt. Men spreading newspapers out on the floor and reading things in them that make the heart tremble.

It糖心传媒檚 all so self-evident why Joyce wrote, for some twenty years, a book without any real words in it. After all, one could die from the clear-cut borders between one word and another: Pot. Skyscraper. File. Scandal. Dentures. Scabies. Snow. Old age. Flute. Cobalt. Socialism.

Sometimes we made instant coffee with three teaspoons of sugar (as Yolanda liked it) and put it before her.”

Click here for the full review.