My friend Amanda DeMarco, the founder of Readux Books and general all-round impressive person, is looking to write more reviews in 2015. Here's what she wants to do, in her own words:
This year I've made a resolution to write 10-12 reviews of books translated from German and French. If you'd like to draw my attention to a forthcoming translation, here is the best way:
Please only send literary fiction and serious nonfiction, no genre literature (though I will gladly read literary sci-fi and noir)
2–6 months before the date of publication, send an email to defrbookreviews@gmail.com with Author/Title (DE or FR) in the subject line
Include the publication date, publisher, and description in the body
Attach the English manuscript as an epub or pdf
I am particularly interested in Berlin esp. in den 20s, and the development of technology in the early 20th century. If relevant, mention in subject line.
An example of the sort of review I am planning to write: lareviewofbooks.org/review/toward-incomparable-ways-of-speaking-gert-jonkes-languages-and-landscapes
Showing posts with label amanda demarco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label amanda demarco. Show all posts
Friday, 2 January 2015
Thursday, 16 January 2014
The German Essay
I know very little about the German essay. However, I attended an event last week on "The State of the Essay", from which I gleaned a little knowledge. It was organized by Merkur magazine and the Freie Universität's literature faculty, which is running a course on the essay this semester, and I attended mainly because they invited my friend Amanda DeMarco to speak on the subject. It was a panel discussion, so obviously no conclusion was reached.
I discovered a few things nonetheless. Firstly, nobody knows what an essay is. Wahrig defines "Essay (m. 6 od. n. 15; Lit.)" as "literar. Kunstform, Abhandlung in knapper, geistvoller, allgemein verständlicher Form". Note that it's such a vague thing you can say either "das Essay" or "der Essay". Webster's goes into more detail: "2a: an analytic, interpretative, or critical literary composition usu. much shorter and less systematic and less formal than a dissertation or thesis and usu. dealing with its subject from a limited often personal point of view". German also has the term Aufsatz, which I understand as being less impressive, more the school essay type of thing; perhaps the kind of writing that might take the cheap approach of starting with dictionary definitions. There was discussion on the panel of where to draw the line between journalism and the essay. I would like to suggest that if a writer calls something an essay, we can safely assume it is one.
Then there is a distinction between the academic and the literary essay. Merkur publishes the former type, mainly, but with Michael Rutschky on the panel they had somewhat of a shining example of the literary essayist. There was also Georg Stanitzek, who I believe has studied the German essay from an academic perspective, and offered a historical definition along the lines of "something two gentlemen might discuss while out walking". Merkur doesn't in fact have a terribly good track record on publishing women's writing, although I'm assured they're working on it; you can read some of their ideas on why women don't submit to them in Eurozine. Stanitzek took this gender imbalance as an indication that women still don't write essays. In the audience, the editors of the literary magazine Edit proved that this was poppycock by telling us that fifty percent of entries for their annual essay competition come from women.
The panel itself was admirably balanced, with Kathrin Passig to tell us that the internet doesn't offer the kind of prestige that print publications do in Germany, which is why we're not seeing many essays published online here. The essay, she and Rutschky agreed, is not something one writes for money but for recognition. And that recognition comes less from the genre of the essay, which is apparently slightly frowned upon, at least among academics, than from the subject matter – as the genre is profane, Rutschky claimed, it must be made respectable by writing about a sacred matter, such as literature or art. Another thing I found interesting was the general feeling that it's becoming more acceptable to write journalism and essays in the first person here. This has always been something I've noticed about German journalism – writers will tie themselves up in knots to avoid using the word "ich", whereas the first person is a perfectly viable perspective in English. I'm glad things are changing.
Amanda pointed out that German essays are a little more intellectual than American ones, and I'm glad to say I don't see any evidence of the "confessional essay" (my former life as a prostitute, how my boss harrassed me and I put up with it, etc.) over here. I hate to generalize about national cultures but perhaps we can say that the Germans tend to be somewhere between discreet and uptight about private matters. That can go either way but in terms of the essay, it saves us the dreadful fascination of reading young women's emotional crises splashed all over the internet. Another difference posited was that American creative writing schools are training writers as essayists, whereas Germany only has two creative writing schools in the first place.
Where to start reading the German essay? If you read German, try waahr.de for a large collection of what they label "literary journalism". Edit has just published its award-winning literary essays for this year, which are very unconventional and worth buying. And you can search the Merkur archive for predominantly academic essays, some of which are available for free. Some of the major literary houses also still publish literary magazines, including Neue Rundschau from Fischer and Akzente from Hanser, and the LCB does the excellent Sprache im technischen Zeitalter.
I have three suggestions for German literary essays available in English. Starting way back when, you can read a personal essay by Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt in the new issue of Asymptote journal, translated by Isabel Cole. From the mid-nineties, Austrian Christoph Ransmayr's piece "The Gravedigger of Hallstadt" is what I'd call a first-class essay and is available in Seiriol Dafydd's translation at no man's land. Finally, there's an award-winning essay from the first Edit competition, in my translation, German writer Francis Nenik's The Marvel of Biographical Bookkeeping.
I discovered a few things nonetheless. Firstly, nobody knows what an essay is. Wahrig defines "Essay (m. 6 od. n. 15; Lit.)" as "literar. Kunstform, Abhandlung in knapper, geistvoller, allgemein verständlicher Form". Note that it's such a vague thing you can say either "das Essay" or "der Essay". Webster's goes into more detail: "2a: an analytic, interpretative, or critical literary composition usu. much shorter and less systematic and less formal than a dissertation or thesis and usu. dealing with its subject from a limited often personal point of view". German also has the term Aufsatz, which I understand as being less impressive, more the school essay type of thing; perhaps the kind of writing that might take the cheap approach of starting with dictionary definitions. There was discussion on the panel of where to draw the line between journalism and the essay. I would like to suggest that if a writer calls something an essay, we can safely assume it is one.
Then there is a distinction between the academic and the literary essay. Merkur publishes the former type, mainly, but with Michael Rutschky on the panel they had somewhat of a shining example of the literary essayist. There was also Georg Stanitzek, who I believe has studied the German essay from an academic perspective, and offered a historical definition along the lines of "something two gentlemen might discuss while out walking". Merkur doesn't in fact have a terribly good track record on publishing women's writing, although I'm assured they're working on it; you can read some of their ideas on why women don't submit to them in Eurozine. Stanitzek took this gender imbalance as an indication that women still don't write essays. In the audience, the editors of the literary magazine Edit proved that this was poppycock by telling us that fifty percent of entries for their annual essay competition come from women.
The panel itself was admirably balanced, with Kathrin Passig to tell us that the internet doesn't offer the kind of prestige that print publications do in Germany, which is why we're not seeing many essays published online here. The essay, she and Rutschky agreed, is not something one writes for money but for recognition. And that recognition comes less from the genre of the essay, which is apparently slightly frowned upon, at least among academics, than from the subject matter – as the genre is profane, Rutschky claimed, it must be made respectable by writing about a sacred matter, such as literature or art. Another thing I found interesting was the general feeling that it's becoming more acceptable to write journalism and essays in the first person here. This has always been something I've noticed about German journalism – writers will tie themselves up in knots to avoid using the word "ich", whereas the first person is a perfectly viable perspective in English. I'm glad things are changing.
Amanda pointed out that German essays are a little more intellectual than American ones, and I'm glad to say I don't see any evidence of the "confessional essay" (my former life as a prostitute, how my boss harrassed me and I put up with it, etc.) over here. I hate to generalize about national cultures but perhaps we can say that the Germans tend to be somewhere between discreet and uptight about private matters. That can go either way but in terms of the essay, it saves us the dreadful fascination of reading young women's emotional crises splashed all over the internet. Another difference posited was that American creative writing schools are training writers as essayists, whereas Germany only has two creative writing schools in the first place.
Where to start reading the German essay? If you read German, try waahr.de for a large collection of what they label "literary journalism". Edit has just published its award-winning literary essays for this year, which are very unconventional and worth buying. And you can search the Merkur archive for predominantly academic essays, some of which are available for free. Some of the major literary houses also still publish literary magazines, including Neue Rundschau from Fischer and Akzente from Hanser, and the LCB does the excellent Sprache im technischen Zeitalter.
I have three suggestions for German literary essays available in English. Starting way back when, you can read a personal essay by Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt in the new issue of Asymptote journal, translated by Isabel Cole. From the mid-nineties, Austrian Christoph Ransmayr's piece "The Gravedigger of Hallstadt" is what I'd call a first-class essay and is available in Seiriol Dafydd's translation at no man's land. Finally, there's an award-winning essay from the first Edit competition, in my translation, German writer Francis Nenik's The Marvel of Biographical Bookkeeping.
Friday, 16 August 2013
US PEN Translation Prize to Donald O. White
The PEN America Center announced the winners of its literary awards a couple of days ago. Scroll down, down, down to the PEN Translation Prize, which has been awarded to Donald O. White for Albert Vigoleis Thelen's Island of Second Sight.
I'm very pleased indeed. My friend Amanda DeMarco reviewed the novel for Three Percent earlier this year, so I know it must be outstanding. And White got an honorary mention for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize too. I've been feeling eternally guilty because the British publishers sent me a big fat review copy a couple of years ago (the book came out in the UK in 2011). At which I baulked slightly - a 450,000-word novel about bohemian adventures in 1930s Mallorca! - and passed it on to someone else to read, who presumably baulked as well and passed it on to... and so on. Which is why there's no love german books review.
And that's been somewhat of a pattern, I suspect. The story of how the English translation came to be published is an inspiring one. The Cambridge-based translator Isabelle Weiss rediscovered the novel, which was first published in the Netherlands in 1953; too anti-fascist for German publishers even then. And she found out that the American Germanist Donald O. White (don't you love the name overlap?) had been working on a translation for twenty-odd years. A labour of love, I believe we call this. So they spent a year or so approaching major UK publishers with the manuscript, all of whom said no. It was too long and too obscure. In the end, a friend - Robert Hyde - who'd been in on it all from the beginning, decided to revive his old publishing house and bring the translation out himself.
It helped that Thomas Mann and Paul Celan had praised the book in the 1950s. The novel got favourable reviews in serious publications and was then picked up by Overlook Press in the US. Where they certainly know how to honour translators, if not in monetary terms then at least in terms of high-profile awards. White receives $3500 from PEN and the knowledge that a lot of people appreciate his hard work and excellent translation.
I think this is a great success story, one to remind us that it is OK to publish long, obscure books in translation. Specially for Donald, Isabelle and Robert - and by way of apology - here's the world's biggest band playing their tune in suitably ecstatic manner.
I'm very pleased indeed. My friend Amanda DeMarco reviewed the novel for Three Percent earlier this year, so I know it must be outstanding. And White got an honorary mention for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize too. I've been feeling eternally guilty because the British publishers sent me a big fat review copy a couple of years ago (the book came out in the UK in 2011). At which I baulked slightly - a 450,000-word novel about bohemian adventures in 1930s Mallorca! - and passed it on to someone else to read, who presumably baulked as well and passed it on to... and so on. Which is why there's no love german books review.
And that's been somewhat of a pattern, I suspect. The story of how the English translation came to be published is an inspiring one. The Cambridge-based translator Isabelle Weiss rediscovered the novel, which was first published in the Netherlands in 1953; too anti-fascist for German publishers even then. And she found out that the American Germanist Donald O. White (don't you love the name overlap?) had been working on a translation for twenty-odd years. A labour of love, I believe we call this. So they spent a year or so approaching major UK publishers with the manuscript, all of whom said no. It was too long and too obscure. In the end, a friend - Robert Hyde - who'd been in on it all from the beginning, decided to revive his old publishing house and bring the translation out himself.
It helped that Thomas Mann and Paul Celan had praised the book in the 1950s. The novel got favourable reviews in serious publications and was then picked up by Overlook Press in the US. Where they certainly know how to honour translators, if not in monetary terms then at least in terms of high-profile awards. White receives $3500 from PEN and the knowledge that a lot of people appreciate his hard work and excellent translation.
I think this is a great success story, one to remind us that it is OK to publish long, obscure books in translation. Specially for Donald, Isabelle and Robert - and by way of apology - here's the world's biggest band playing their tune in suitably ecstatic manner.
Wednesday, 10 July 2013
That Very Exciting Thing: Readux!
The big day has come: the yummy new Readux website is live! Feast your eyes on the first four teeny books to go on sale in October. There's an original essay by Gideon Lewis-Krauss, whom I once accidentally called a nerd to his face. There's Swedish fiction from Malte Persson (trans. Saskia Vogel). And there are two classic 1929 pieces on Berlin by Franz Hessel (trans. Amanda DeMarco). Yes, he was indeed Stéphane's father but he was also a fabulous writer and flaneur.
Most exciting for me, as you might imagine, is my translation of Francis Nenik's The Marvel of Biographical Bookkeeping. It has been so very hard not to splurge this all over the internet, but now I can. Hooray! I absolutely adore this little book and I hope you will too. It's an award-winning piece of writing that will melt the hearts of all those who care about poets and also confuse you, I very much hope. I went out drinking with Francis Nenik in March, by the way.
Please join me in being very excited about this new venture to publish great writing in small packages, focusing on translation.
(Full disclosure: Amanda DeMarco of Readux Books is sitting opposite me right now. But you should still go to the website and you should still buy all four books in October and also all the later books she publishes. I am biased but I do have good taste.)
Most exciting for me, as you might imagine, is my translation of Francis Nenik's The Marvel of Biographical Bookkeeping. It has been so very hard not to splurge this all over the internet, but now I can. Hooray! I absolutely adore this little book and I hope you will too. It's an award-winning piece of writing that will melt the hearts of all those who care about poets and also confuse you, I very much hope. I went out drinking with Francis Nenik in March, by the way.
Please join me in being very excited about this new venture to publish great writing in small packages, focusing on translation.
(Full disclosure: Amanda DeMarco of Readux Books is sitting opposite me right now. But you should still go to the website and you should still buy all four books in October and also all the later books she publishes. I am biased but I do have good taste.)
Monday, 29 April 2013
Introducing Readux Books
My lovely friend Amanda DeMarco is an awe-inspiring person. Not only has she very recently introduced me to bourbon, she's also just announced she's launching a publishing house, Readux Books. Come October you'll be able to read the first four teeny books (small format, 32–64 pp.) either in beautiful print editions or electronically. And most of them will be translations! Including from German!
I'm very excited indeed about this. I actually know what most of the books will be but I don't think I'm supposed to tell you. What I'm sure I am allowed to say is that they're going to be fantastic and you'll be licking your literary lips at the very thought of them. I know I am.
I'm very excited indeed about this. I actually know what most of the books will be but I don't think I'm supposed to tell you. What I'm sure I am allowed to say is that they're going to be fantastic and you'll be licking your literary lips at the very thought of them. I know I am.
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