There are a heck of a lot of literary prizes in Germany; Wikipedia lists about 200. The Alfred Döblin Prize is a slightly unusual one, in that the award goes to a manuscript rather than a published book. It was set up by Günter Grass in 1979 and has since gone to a number of genuinely excellent writers, including later Büchner prizewinners Reinhard Jirgl and Josef Winkler.
The judging itself takes place among a circle of invited critics and publishing types. And Günter Grass. For reasons I still cannot fully grasp, I was invited along too this year. Six writers read from their manuscripts, each followed by a relaxed discussion between the authors, the three judges and the invited audience. As someone pointed out, having your manuscript picked from the 500 submissions is an honour in itself, even if you don't get the €12,000 prize in the end.
The shortlistees were Jan Peter Bremer (Berlin), Olga Flor (Graz), Judith Schalansky (Berlin), Albrecht Selge (Berlin), Angela Steidele (Cologne) and Steven Uhly (Munich). The themes ranged from a neurotic writer's life to a modern-day Lady Macbeth, plant life, the city, cross-dressing and Kurdish ghosts. And the writing was of course of the highest standard. Some of the manuscripts are just about to be published, while others were very much works-in-progress.
I particularly enjoyed Angela Steidele's reading, which revived the epistolary novel and interwove an 18th-century soldierwoman with the eccentric Bavarian King Ludwig II - a daring undertaking that instantly called to mind Jeanette Winterson and Sarah Waters, while reminding us that the Germans just don't really do lesbians in literature. Olga Flor dashed my hopes for positive sex descriptions by women in her cool tale of love in an elevator, and Steven Uhly dashed through an enticingly complicated plot while mispronouncing his protagonist's Turkish name.
But it was OK in the end that Jan Peter Bremer won. His novel Der amerikanische Investor is out in August, and deals with the very topical issue of major property sales in Berlin. And the fantastically funny area of a writer's fear of turning bourgeois. Luckily, though, he never earns any money and so has to hope that his hard-working wife will take on a job in development, where he can savour a glass of wine in his African clay hut between cooling the neighbours' fevers. Maybe you had to be there - at any rate it was genuinely funny and obviously terribly well structured and everybody thoroughly enjoyed it.
Monday, 30 May 2011
Saturday, 28 May 2011
Susan Bassnett Went To Berlin
I have been amiss, dear readers, and failed to inform you of a fascinating event on literary translation in Berlin. Subconsciously, that may have been because I couldn't attend. But luckily all my friends went along, and Lucy Renner Jones was kind enough to share her thoughts on her very interesting blog, Transfiction. What was it? Translation theorist Susan Bassnett at the LCB.
Friday, 27 May 2011
Richard Kämmerlings: Das kurze Glück der Gegenwart
Richard Kämmerlings spent several years as a literary editor of the FAZ and is now everywhere you look in Berlin, having moved on to the post of arts editor at the Welt, a newspaper that brings me out in a rash. He’s one of a fairly new breed of German literary critics who aren’t crumbly old fogeys. And to prove it he’s written a book about German-language literature since 1989, entitled Das kurze Glück der Gegenwart (the brief happiness of the present).
Critics, not unlike translators, don’t tend to put themselves in the foreground. Oh, no doubt they’re as vain and self-obsessed as the rest of us, but a traditional book review rarely reveals much about the reviewer. At least in concrete terms; we may of course notice that the critic is patronising or boastful or fond of flowery metaphors. It must get rather tiresome after a while, writing away and never getting to say anything about yourself. So Kämmerlings has rather gone against the grain in his book, as if finally let off the editorial leash and allowed to write as much as he likes about himself.
We’re used to it now, I suppose, from blog culture. There’s a reason why I have a tag called “me, me, me,” for example. And I love reading my friend Jessa Crispin’s criticism because the anecdotal elements feel so direct and pally (try this piece on Yeats and the occult, in which we also learn about Jessa’s religious beliefs and a mental argument she had with an arrogant man). The few American critics I’ve met seem to refer to themselves as writers rather than setting up a separate category. Elif Batuman would be a prime example, I think, with her book-I-haven’t-read The Possessed, which she refers to as “a volume of memoiristic literary-critical essays about the experiences of a graduate student of Russian literature.” Perhaps there’s an element of us clamouring for our fifteen minutes of fame, eked out over time into several years of familiarity to a couple of hundred or thousand readers. But in German, it still feels unusual to read literary criticism in the first person.
It feels great though. Kämmerlings not only abandons all pretence of objectivity, even listing his own top ten books at the end. He also has a premise I can wholeheartedly subscribe to. He argues that there are so many myriads of books out there that new writing has to tell us something about the times in which we live. He wants books to have an effect on their readers, change them in some way. Like reading Richard Ford put an end to Kämmerlings’ first marriage. Did that make you jump? That’s what Kämmerlings does here, all the time. Curiously intimate details that make the reading experience slightly uncomfortable, but all the more memorable. Perhaps an attempt to meet his other demand: literature has to touch a nerve, feel painful.
I must admit I feel thoroughly illuminated about all sorts of literary phenomena that happened here before I started paying proper attention, and I’m grateful for that. However, the meticulous detail on who said what in Klagenfurt in 1993 in the otherwise fascinating programmatic introduction was a little too much of a good thing.
In the chapters themselves though, Kämmerlings goes ahead and races through a history of German books that have touched a nerve in dealing with the present day since the Berlin Wall fell. Berlin and the author’s transformation from nerd to hipster, embodied in the figure of the literary DJ. Why Germans don’t write about war. Sex – although I was disappointed to find only male authors in this chapter (still hoping my thesis about women only writing about bad sex will be proved wrong), I enjoyed Kämmerlings’ excursus on the effect of the internet on the consumption of music and pornography. In a kind of head-nodding affirmative way. East and West – the business and financial world – and work and social issues (in which the author points out that fewer and fewer writers have ever had what we’d call a proper job, so it’s small wonder so few of them write about people at work; a subject dear to my own heart). The family as it is now, in all its many complications, rather than the tired format of the generational novel à la Buddenbrooks: a definite literary desiderata. Interestingly, Kämmerlings groups the provincial and the migration novel together; not a bad idea, although I felt the migration side of things fell rather short. And to finish off: death.
Inevitably, a subjective book about contemporary literature will appeal to those who share the author’s taste. And I do: Thomas Lehr, Ralph Rothmann, Clemens Meyer, Annett Gröschner, Sibylle Lewitscharoff, Kristof Magnusson, Maria Cecilia Barbetta, Kathrin Schmidt, Julia Schoch, Norbert Zähringer, Ulrich Peltzer… Kämmerlings praises a lot of books by a lot of writers I admire. But I also appreciated his style – witty without being needlessly cruel or condescending. And why the hell not write about “what this book did to me” and “what I want from a book”?
The unpleasant side effect on me, however – to respond to the book in kind – is a sense of embarrassment. German uses the term peinlich berührt – painfully touched – for the feeling, and it’s not wrong. I happened to sit opposite the author the other night, or he happened to sit down opposite me, and I literally had to leave. I was just so embarrassed at knowing all the comparatively intimate details of his life I had gleaned from the book with a kind of manic voyeurism, while assuming he didn’t even know who I was, let alone where I went to school and when I last played badminton or how many children I have in what constellations. At least when you meet a fiction writer you can console yourself that it’s probably all made up. So perhaps it’s fine for critics to get personal – as long as they remain at arm’s distance in the newspaper.
Should you read German and want an entertaining update on contemporary literature, do buy the book. I’m thinking in particular of Germanists in the English-speaking world, for whom it might well be a breath of fresh air. Sadly, due to the international publishing world’s penchant for historical themes in German novels, most of the books Kämmerlings talks about won’t make their way into English translation.
Critics, not unlike translators, don’t tend to put themselves in the foreground. Oh, no doubt they’re as vain and self-obsessed as the rest of us, but a traditional book review rarely reveals much about the reviewer. At least in concrete terms; we may of course notice that the critic is patronising or boastful or fond of flowery metaphors. It must get rather tiresome after a while, writing away and never getting to say anything about yourself. So Kämmerlings has rather gone against the grain in his book, as if finally let off the editorial leash and allowed to write as much as he likes about himself.
We’re used to it now, I suppose, from blog culture. There’s a reason why I have a tag called “me, me, me,” for example. And I love reading my friend Jessa Crispin’s criticism because the anecdotal elements feel so direct and pally (try this piece on Yeats and the occult, in which we also learn about Jessa’s religious beliefs and a mental argument she had with an arrogant man). The few American critics I’ve met seem to refer to themselves as writers rather than setting up a separate category. Elif Batuman would be a prime example, I think, with her book-I-haven’t-read The Possessed, which she refers to as “a volume of memoiristic literary-critical essays about the experiences of a graduate student of Russian literature.” Perhaps there’s an element of us clamouring for our fifteen minutes of fame, eked out over time into several years of familiarity to a couple of hundred or thousand readers. But in German, it still feels unusual to read literary criticism in the first person.
It feels great though. Kämmerlings not only abandons all pretence of objectivity, even listing his own top ten books at the end. He also has a premise I can wholeheartedly subscribe to. He argues that there are so many myriads of books out there that new writing has to tell us something about the times in which we live. He wants books to have an effect on their readers, change them in some way. Like reading Richard Ford put an end to Kämmerlings’ first marriage. Did that make you jump? That’s what Kämmerlings does here, all the time. Curiously intimate details that make the reading experience slightly uncomfortable, but all the more memorable. Perhaps an attempt to meet his other demand: literature has to touch a nerve, feel painful.
I must admit I feel thoroughly illuminated about all sorts of literary phenomena that happened here before I started paying proper attention, and I’m grateful for that. However, the meticulous detail on who said what in Klagenfurt in 1993 in the otherwise fascinating programmatic introduction was a little too much of a good thing.
In the chapters themselves though, Kämmerlings goes ahead and races through a history of German books that have touched a nerve in dealing with the present day since the Berlin Wall fell. Berlin and the author’s transformation from nerd to hipster, embodied in the figure of the literary DJ. Why Germans don’t write about war. Sex – although I was disappointed to find only male authors in this chapter (still hoping my thesis about women only writing about bad sex will be proved wrong), I enjoyed Kämmerlings’ excursus on the effect of the internet on the consumption of music and pornography. In a kind of head-nodding affirmative way. East and West – the business and financial world – and work and social issues (in which the author points out that fewer and fewer writers have ever had what we’d call a proper job, so it’s small wonder so few of them write about people at work; a subject dear to my own heart). The family as it is now, in all its many complications, rather than the tired format of the generational novel à la Buddenbrooks: a definite literary desiderata. Interestingly, Kämmerlings groups the provincial and the migration novel together; not a bad idea, although I felt the migration side of things fell rather short. And to finish off: death.
Inevitably, a subjective book about contemporary literature will appeal to those who share the author’s taste. And I do: Thomas Lehr, Ralph Rothmann, Clemens Meyer, Annett Gröschner, Sibylle Lewitscharoff, Kristof Magnusson, Maria Cecilia Barbetta, Kathrin Schmidt, Julia Schoch, Norbert Zähringer, Ulrich Peltzer… Kämmerlings praises a lot of books by a lot of writers I admire. But I also appreciated his style – witty without being needlessly cruel or condescending. And why the hell not write about “what this book did to me” and “what I want from a book”?
The unpleasant side effect on me, however – to respond to the book in kind – is a sense of embarrassment. German uses the term peinlich berührt – painfully touched – for the feeling, and it’s not wrong. I happened to sit opposite the author the other night, or he happened to sit down opposite me, and I literally had to leave. I was just so embarrassed at knowing all the comparatively intimate details of his life I had gleaned from the book with a kind of manic voyeurism, while assuming he didn’t even know who I was, let alone where I went to school and when I last played badminton or how many children I have in what constellations. At least when you meet a fiction writer you can console yourself that it’s probably all made up. So perhaps it’s fine for critics to get personal – as long as they remain at arm’s distance in the newspaper.
Should you read German and want an entertaining update on contemporary literature, do buy the book. I’m thinking in particular of Germanists in the English-speaking world, for whom it might well be a breath of fresh air. Sadly, due to the international publishing world’s penchant for historical themes in German novels, most of the books Kämmerlings talks about won’t make their way into English translation.
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Prosanova
Now, speaking of major gatherings of emerging writers, the innovative Prosanova literary festival has just kicked off in Hildesheim. And it seems to be a rather exciting event that everybody's talking about. The festival is run by a huge team of students (I'm guessing unpaid), so they get some really odd stuff going on. Plus it's in a very small city so people really notice it, unlike when you have major literary events in big places and they tend to go under. And also, it only takes place once every three years so you don't get event fatigue.
What I like - and don't like - about Prosanova (at least this time) is its very experimental nature. So they're staging literary performances and scenic readings, a competition, events about literary event culture, readings in the dark, and all sorts of other offbeat stuff. Accompanied by the obligatory parties and concerts. And I can see the point, really I can. Don't you love it when people come up with new ideas and formats for putting literature out there? It's great to experiment, and what better place to do so than at university? Think outside the box! Kick over the statues!
But. In practice these things often make me squirm with embarrassment. Although I'm not necessarily a follower of the If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It school of literary events, I do think that the format should never become more important than the content. Go ahead and frame literature in all kinds of ways, but don't make the frame bigger than the picture. Just sayin'.
What I like - and don't like - about Prosanova (at least this time) is its very experimental nature. So they're staging literary performances and scenic readings, a competition, events about literary event culture, readings in the dark, and all sorts of other offbeat stuff. Accompanied by the obligatory parties and concerts. And I can see the point, really I can. Don't you love it when people come up with new ideas and formats for putting literature out there? It's great to experiment, and what better place to do so than at university? Think outside the box! Kick over the statues!
But. In practice these things often make me squirm with embarrassment. Although I'm not necessarily a follower of the If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It school of literary events, I do think that the format should never become more important than the content. Go ahead and frame literature in all kinds of ways, but don't make the frame bigger than the picture. Just sayin'.
Bachmann Prize Take 1
Yesterday they announced the participants in this year's Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. The competition is not unlike a cross between the Eurovision Song Contest and Pop Idol. Only much more glamorous, of course.
Fourteen emerging writers from Austria, Switzerland and Germany read texts live in Klagenfurt, only to be ripped to shreds live by seven critics. Then there's a nail-biting vote for the best and also a public voting bit. Although the poor writers do have to suffer, the competition really is a training ground for excellence. Many of the participants go on to greatness not much later. Last year I was rather smitten with Dorothee Elmiger - and I've just finished translating her short novel Invitation to the Bold of Heart. And just like last year, my colleague Stefan Tobler and I are translating all the texts into English. They'll go online as they're read, and I'll try and do another live blog as it happens.
I'll also try and stave off my envy for the reams of people who actually go along and partake of the fringe activities, which seem to consist of swimming in lakes, playing football, drinking and gossipping. But hey, I can do all that here in Berlin.
Fourteen emerging writers from Austria, Switzerland and Germany read texts live in Klagenfurt, only to be ripped to shreds live by seven critics. Then there's a nail-biting vote for the best and also a public voting bit. Although the poor writers do have to suffer, the competition really is a training ground for excellence. Many of the participants go on to greatness not much later. Last year I was rather smitten with Dorothee Elmiger - and I've just finished translating her short novel Invitation to the Bold of Heart. And just like last year, my colleague Stefan Tobler and I are translating all the texts into English. They'll go online as they're read, and I'll try and do another live blog as it happens.
I'll also try and stave off my envy for the reams of people who actually go along and partake of the fringe activities, which seem to consist of swimming in lakes, playing football, drinking and gossipping. But hey, I can do all that here in Berlin.
Monday, 23 May 2011
How To Get Your Name in a Book
There are several ways to get your name in a book. You could become one of those crazed serial killers who get gruesome true crime books written about them. You could launch a celebrity career and get someone to ghostwrite your memoirs. You could write your own book. You could translate a book. You could marry a writer and get him or her to dedicate their next book to you.
All rather time-consuming though, I'm sure you'll agree. So you'll be very glad to hear there's now a much faster way to get your name in a book: simply subscribe to And Other Stories. True to their philosophy of involving editors, readers, translators, critics, literary promoters and academics in their decision-making processes, And Other Stories give you quite some buck for your subscription bang:
All rather time-consuming though, I'm sure you'll agree. So you'll be very glad to hear there's now a much faster way to get your name in a book: simply subscribe to And Other Stories. True to their philosophy of involving editors, readers, translators, critics, literary promoters and academics in their decision-making processes, And Other Stories give you quite some buck for your subscription bang:
- uniquely numbered, limited first edition copies
- you will be thanked by name as a subscriber in the next 2 or 4 (depending on subscription) books we print
- you will be warmly invited to contribute to our plans and choice of future books
- and you will have that warm glow of knowing you have made the publishing of these books possible.
Sunday, 22 May 2011
eReader Sex Appeal...?
A few years ago I did a bit of an experiment. Usually if I'm reading a book on public transport I concentrate on actually reading the book. As you do. But I'd read somewhere or other about whether what you read on the train makes you more sexy, or some such fluff. So I chose various books and sort of read them while peering over the top to see how people reacted. The one that worked best was a book with a very sexy cover, a 2006 Penguin paperback of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. I remember getting a whole lot of male attention, which was nice except for some reason all the men who were interested in Bulgakov had beards. And I'm not really into beards.
Anyway, on Friday I read a piece on the very good German lit-blog litaffin, which was about some kind of conference on bookselling and publishing in the future. Or something along those lines that didn't really rock my boat all that much. Except for the comment that online bookseller René Kohl made: "The sex appeal that an eBook reader lends its owner on the table in a bar is about the same as that of an insurance policy." Now come on, I thought. I've just bought an e-reader and all my poverty-stricken bookish friends are really impressed. Surely the kudos of owning such a natty device that simply does what it says on the tin is translated into public transport sex appeal? And surely tech freaks will show an interest in a woman reading a book by electronic means?
Hence experiment two, for which experiment one served as the control run; i.e. I had previously established that a book can lend its reader sex appeal on public transport. In experiment two I dressed in an attractive manner and positioned myself on a station platform with my eReader device in my bag. While waiting for the train I gauged my sex appeal to be about eight out of ten (judging by the admiring glances, friendly hellos, etc. Of course, that might have been because I was staring at all the men on the platform, but who said I had to be strictly scientific about it?) On boarding the train, I deliberately placed myself in the vicinity of various male subjects who appeared to have a technical affinity, i.e. were talking on expensive phones, etc. I then whipped out my device and adopted the reading position.
At which point all male interest instantly ceased. I swear, it was like I'd just donned a cloak of invisibility. Despite my frequent sidelong glances, not one of the men sitting or standing around me paid me the slightest bit of attention from that point on. I'd probably have got more interest if I'd fanned myself with an insurance policy.
Later in the evening I made a last-ditch attempt to test out the eReader's sex appeal at a literary-type event, by taking it out of my bag and showing it around a bit. Nada. OK, I was standing next to a man with a much larger and shinier device, which also had a teleprompter function for those impromptu speeches and played music and stored photos. But still, I'd have appreciated a bit more than "Oh, yours is just an eReader..."
And so to the conclusion: an eReader is a useful device for reading books and manuscripts you only have on pdf. It will not, however, give you sex appeal. If you want a bookish bearded boyfriend, go for Bulgakov in paperback.
A bonus piece of advice: Don't carry your eReader around unprotected in a tote bag with your keys, purse, sunglasses, etc. all night long when you go drinking and dancing and generally banging it around until the dawn chorus. It may get scratched.
Anyway, on Friday I read a piece on the very good German lit-blog litaffin, which was about some kind of conference on bookselling and publishing in the future. Or something along those lines that didn't really rock my boat all that much. Except for the comment that online bookseller René Kohl made: "The sex appeal that an eBook reader lends its owner on the table in a bar is about the same as that of an insurance policy." Now come on, I thought. I've just bought an e-reader and all my poverty-stricken bookish friends are really impressed. Surely the kudos of owning such a natty device that simply does what it says on the tin is translated into public transport sex appeal? And surely tech freaks will show an interest in a woman reading a book by electronic means?
Hence experiment two, for which experiment one served as the control run; i.e. I had previously established that a book can lend its reader sex appeal on public transport. In experiment two I dressed in an attractive manner and positioned myself on a station platform with my eReader device in my bag. While waiting for the train I gauged my sex appeal to be about eight out of ten (judging by the admiring glances, friendly hellos, etc. Of course, that might have been because I was staring at all the men on the platform, but who said I had to be strictly scientific about it?) On boarding the train, I deliberately placed myself in the vicinity of various male subjects who appeared to have a technical affinity, i.e. were talking on expensive phones, etc. I then whipped out my device and adopted the reading position.
At which point all male interest instantly ceased. I swear, it was like I'd just donned a cloak of invisibility. Despite my frequent sidelong glances, not one of the men sitting or standing around me paid me the slightest bit of attention from that point on. I'd probably have got more interest if I'd fanned myself with an insurance policy.
Later in the evening I made a last-ditch attempt to test out the eReader's sex appeal at a literary-type event, by taking it out of my bag and showing it around a bit. Nada. OK, I was standing next to a man with a much larger and shinier device, which also had a teleprompter function for those impromptu speeches and played music and stored photos. But still, I'd have appreciated a bit more than "Oh, yours is just an eReader..."
And so to the conclusion: an eReader is a useful device for reading books and manuscripts you only have on pdf. It will not, however, give you sex appeal. If you want a bookish bearded boyfriend, go for Bulgakov in paperback.
A bonus piece of advice: Don't carry your eReader around unprotected in a tote bag with your keys, purse, sunglasses, etc. all night long when you go drinking and dancing and generally banging it around until the dawn chorus. It may get scratched.
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
Büchner Prize to FC Delius
Germany's most prestigious literary award for lifetime achievement has gone to the frankly rather excellent Friedrich Christian Delius, as Deutsche Welle reports.
You can read his earlier work The Pears of Ribbeck (trans. Hans Werner) on Google Books, and his more recent award-winning novella Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman (trans. Jamie Bulloch) is published by Peirene Press. Both of them are entirely free from punctuation, although he doesn't usually go without. I wrote about Portrait and Delius here.
The Georg Büchner Prize has basically gone to all the great writers in post-war German-language literature (although it started as a regional prize in 1923). Think of a prestigious, established German (probably male) writer: he will no doubt have won it. You can check on Wikipedia for hours of nerdy fun.
I'm particularly pleased about Delius getting it for two reasons: firstly because he's been published in English so recently and secondly because I really enjoy his writing, which is experimental while eminently readable. Oh, and they've put the prize money up from €40,000 to €50,000. Congratulations!
Update: a curmudgeonly informer has pointed out that not actually all great German writers have won the Büchner Prize. Thank you. And that it's more a sign that a writer has been accepted into the literary establishment once and for all. And that the great Georg Büchner himself would never have won a prize of its ilk. Not that they had many literary awards by the time of his death in 1837. But hey. I'm still pleased.
You can read his earlier work The Pears of Ribbeck (trans. Hans Werner) on Google Books, and his more recent award-winning novella Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman (trans. Jamie Bulloch) is published by Peirene Press. Both of them are entirely free from punctuation, although he doesn't usually go without. I wrote about Portrait and Delius here.
The Georg Büchner Prize has basically gone to all the great writers in post-war German-language literature (although it started as a regional prize in 1923). Think of a prestigious, established German (probably male) writer: he will no doubt have won it. You can check on Wikipedia for hours of nerdy fun.
I'm particularly pleased about Delius getting it for two reasons: firstly because he's been published in English so recently and secondly because I really enjoy his writing, which is experimental while eminently readable. Oh, and they've put the prize money up from €40,000 to €50,000. Congratulations!
Update: a curmudgeonly informer has pointed out that not actually all great German writers have won the Büchner Prize. Thank you. And that it's more a sign that a writer has been accepted into the literary establishment once and for all. And that the great Georg Büchner himself would never have won a prize of its ilk. Not that they had many literary awards by the time of his death in 1837. But hey. I'm still pleased.
Monday, 16 May 2011
(Austrian) Things to Do in London
Do you live in London? Dull, isn't it?
But not for much longer! For a plethora of exciting events will soon take you to Austrian literary heaven. Start on 26 May with the delightful and talented Anna Kim at the Austrian Cultural Forum. She and her translator Mike Mitchell will be reading from her most recent novel Frozen Time. Which is very good. Her latest book in German is an essay on travel and Greenland's colonial history, Die Invasion des Privaten. That's how cool she is.
And then only weeks later, the London Review Bookshop hosts its annual World Literature Weekend from 17 - 19 June, featuring Daniel Kehlmann. He's Austrian too! Plus, and this is particularly cool, my two favourite London publishers Meike Ziervogel and Stefan Tobler have a chat in a cake shop. Neither of them is Austrian, but I thought I'd mention it anyway because Meike is publishing the Austrian author with the wonderful name of Alois Hotschnig soon (translated by my friend Tess Lewis). And Stefan is publishing Clemens Meyer's short stories All the Lights soon, translated by me. Clemens Meyer isn't Austrian either but he once went all the way to Klagenfurt.
Back on the actual Austrian front, you can watch two top translators pitting their wits head to head when Mike The Mountain Mitchell and Shaun Big Daddy Whiteside enter the ring to do battle and fight until the blood flows down their bare fists and one of them starts crying at a live translation event! Or, as the LRB puts it: "with the help of the author and chair, the variations and nuances of the text, in both languages, are brought to light." With Daniel Kehlmann and Daniel Hahn.
Should you be of the translatorly persuasion yourself, you can also sign up for a half-day translation workshop from German, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish or Arabic. I'm only going to mention in passing that it's a bit odd they're all led by men. They're certainly all excellent translators.
So, don't be down in the doldrums, Austrian-literature-loving Londoners! Your time is now.
But not for much longer! For a plethora of exciting events will soon take you to Austrian literary heaven. Start on 26 May with the delightful and talented Anna Kim at the Austrian Cultural Forum. She and her translator Mike Mitchell will be reading from her most recent novel Frozen Time. Which is very good. Her latest book in German is an essay on travel and Greenland's colonial history, Die Invasion des Privaten. That's how cool she is.
And then only weeks later, the London Review Bookshop hosts its annual World Literature Weekend from 17 - 19 June, featuring Daniel Kehlmann. He's Austrian too! Plus, and this is particularly cool, my two favourite London publishers Meike Ziervogel and Stefan Tobler have a chat in a cake shop. Neither of them is Austrian, but I thought I'd mention it anyway because Meike is publishing the Austrian author with the wonderful name of Alois Hotschnig soon (translated by my friend Tess Lewis). And Stefan is publishing Clemens Meyer's short stories All the Lights soon, translated by me. Clemens Meyer isn't Austrian either but he once went all the way to Klagenfurt.
Back on the actual Austrian front, you can watch two top translators pitting their wits head to head when Mike The Mountain Mitchell and Shaun Big Daddy Whiteside enter the ring to do battle and fight until the blood flows down their bare fists and one of them starts crying at a live translation event! Or, as the LRB puts it: "with the help of the author and chair, the variations and nuances of the text, in both languages, are brought to light." With Daniel Kehlmann and Daniel Hahn.
Should you be of the translatorly persuasion yourself, you can also sign up for a half-day translation workshop from German, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish or Arabic. I'm only going to mention in passing that it's a bit odd they're all led by men. They're certainly all excellent translators.
So, don't be down in the doldrums, Austrian-literature-loving Londoners! Your time is now.
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Tom Kummer, Interviewer of the Imagination
The Guardian has a fascinating piece by their Berlin correspondent Helen Pidd, all about the Swiss journalist Tom Kummer. A new documentary is out now, Bad Boy Kummer, telling the story of how Kummer made up interviews with Hollywood stars during the 90s for the German broadsheet Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Swiss magazine Das Magazin.
It all came out in the year 2000, and heads rolled. What I love about the story is that Kummer put the most preposterous words in the mouths of people like Pamela Anderson, Mike Tyson and Sharon Stone. He hadn't ever met any of them, needless to say. Whether his editors believed him or not is one thing, but I suspect a good few readers were fooled. I do wonder whether that was plain naivety - I'm imagining German intellectuals genuinely believing that Sean Penn had read Kierkegaard, simply because their own horizons are so narrow that they couldn't imagine he hadn't. Or maybe he has, what do I know?
Kummer himself seems happy enough, refusing to apologise. A lot of people - and I have to admit I'm one of them - are impressed by his chutzpah. Pushing back the boundaries of journalism, blending fiction and fact, adding a little mischief to the mix. I'm sure he's inspired a lot of youngish hipsters writing in German today, most notably Rafael Horzon with his White Book, in which he eulogises his own rise to fame with what they call the Münchhausen touch.
What Pidd leaves out in her article of course is the infamous 1983 Hitler Diaries scoop in Stern magazine, Hitler being the most marketable of all German celebrities. Tom Kummer himself seems to have been lured by fame rather than fortune - you can read his own version of events in the book Blow Up. The collection of his "interviews" published in 1997, though, is out of print.
It all came out in the year 2000, and heads rolled. What I love about the story is that Kummer put the most preposterous words in the mouths of people like Pamela Anderson, Mike Tyson and Sharon Stone. He hadn't ever met any of them, needless to say. Whether his editors believed him or not is one thing, but I suspect a good few readers were fooled. I do wonder whether that was plain naivety - I'm imagining German intellectuals genuinely believing that Sean Penn had read Kierkegaard, simply because their own horizons are so narrow that they couldn't imagine he hadn't. Or maybe he has, what do I know?
Kummer himself seems happy enough, refusing to apologise. A lot of people - and I have to admit I'm one of them - are impressed by his chutzpah. Pushing back the boundaries of journalism, blending fiction and fact, adding a little mischief to the mix. I'm sure he's inspired a lot of youngish hipsters writing in German today, most notably Rafael Horzon with his White Book, in which he eulogises his own rise to fame with what they call the Münchhausen touch.
What Pidd leaves out in her article of course is the infamous 1983 Hitler Diaries scoop in Stern magazine, Hitler being the most marketable of all German celebrities. Tom Kummer himself seems to have been lured by fame rather than fortune - you can read his own version of events in the book Blow Up. The collection of his "interviews" published in 1997, though, is out of print.
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
Pixi Books and Celeb Children's Authors
Pixi Books are small books for children, slightly smaller than the Mister Men format. You'll usually find them in a big transparent dish held aloft at children's grabbing level by a moulded plastic pixie that always reminds me of those charity collection boxes shaped like pitiable children in 1970s England. Only the pixie is smiling through button eyes like a horror film character in a silly hat. Although it looks tasteless enough to be very retro, it seems the plastic pixie has only been around since 1994.
Children are very fond of Pixi books because they cost 95 cents and are the perfect item to nag their mother for while in a bookshop. Maternal guilt dictates that she cannot refuse to buy her child a small, cheap book with fairies or tractors on the cover while agonising over whether to get a lovely new hardback for herself or maybe two paperbacks. On the other hand, the large transparent dish is sometimes good for at least five minutes of earnest rummaging, thus distracting the child while the mother deliberates further.
Now Germany has fixed book prices of course, which is why the concept has worked since 1954. There's probably not a huge profit margin on a 95c book, but at least nobody's going to try to get it even cheaper. Having sold 13.5 million copies worldwide per annum, though, the German publishers Carlsen have finally managed to export the concept to the UK. As The Bookseller reported a while back, British publishers Autumn Children's Books will be marketing the mini books in packs with stickers from this summer. Which means they can set a fixed price too, of 99p. Because it would seem it's OK to demand a fair price for stickers, just not for books.
No word in the article on whether they've bought into the scary plastic pixie thing though.
Meanwhile, a recent Süddeutsche Zeitung article reviews the latest Pixi series (they come in sets of eight with a common theme). To celebrate the 200th series, Carlsen commissioned celebrities to write books for them. Only - who'd have thought it - they don't seem to be all that good, at least if the reviewer Cornelia Fiedler is to be believed. Heidi Klum's story is about a sadistic tooth fairy, film director Fatih Akin can't be bothered to tell a story, and there's one by a TV presenter about a bread roll and a doughnut who make friends. Luckily, they drafted in a genuine expert, children's writer Cornelia Funke, to write one of them. Funke is famous for being a writer and living in LA.
It's a great cantankerous piece, I must say. But does it really come as a surprise that celebs don't do good (children's) books? Ahhh, a quick search of German Amazon reveals that Katie Price's Perfect Ponies series hasn't made it into translation.
Children are very fond of Pixi books because they cost 95 cents and are the perfect item to nag their mother for while in a bookshop. Maternal guilt dictates that she cannot refuse to buy her child a small, cheap book with fairies or tractors on the cover while agonising over whether to get a lovely new hardback for herself or maybe two paperbacks. On the other hand, the large transparent dish is sometimes good for at least five minutes of earnest rummaging, thus distracting the child while the mother deliberates further.
Now Germany has fixed book prices of course, which is why the concept has worked since 1954. There's probably not a huge profit margin on a 95c book, but at least nobody's going to try to get it even cheaper. Having sold 13.5 million copies worldwide per annum, though, the German publishers Carlsen have finally managed to export the concept to the UK. As The Bookseller reported a while back, British publishers Autumn Children's Books will be marketing the mini books in packs with stickers from this summer. Which means they can set a fixed price too, of 99p. Because it would seem it's OK to demand a fair price for stickers, just not for books.
No word in the article on whether they've bought into the scary plastic pixie thing though.
Meanwhile, a recent Süddeutsche Zeitung article reviews the latest Pixi series (they come in sets of eight with a common theme). To celebrate the 200th series, Carlsen commissioned celebrities to write books for them. Only - who'd have thought it - they don't seem to be all that good, at least if the reviewer Cornelia Fiedler is to be believed. Heidi Klum's story is about a sadistic tooth fairy, film director Fatih Akin can't be bothered to tell a story, and there's one by a TV presenter about a bread roll and a doughnut who make friends. Luckily, they drafted in a genuine expert, children's writer Cornelia Funke, to write one of them. Funke is famous for being a writer and living in LA.
It's a great cantankerous piece, I must say. But does it really come as a surprise that celebs don't do good (children's) books? Ahhh, a quick search of German Amazon reveals that Katie Price's Perfect Ponies series hasn't made it into translation.
Friday, 6 May 2011
Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize to Jean M. Snook
The news isn't up in English yet, but if you speak German you can read all about Jean M. Snook and her award-winning translation of Gert Jonke's The Distant Sound.
The Helen and Kurt Wolff prize is the most prestigious award for German-English translation, and comes with a stay in Berlin. I do like the way they praise Gert Jonke (1946-2009) as a great contemporary writer - alongside Thomas Bernhard and Arno Schmidt, who have been dead since 1989 and 1979 respectively.
I'm very pleased that it's gone to a woman this time, only the sixth in sixteen years. And not just any woman! I really respect Jean Snook's work as very conscientious and empathetic - as the judges say, she makes translation look easy. The prize will be awarded in Chicago on 13 June - I'm sure the deserving winner will have fun with the $10,000 cheque.
The Helen and Kurt Wolff prize is the most prestigious award for German-English translation, and comes with a stay in Berlin. I do like the way they praise Gert Jonke (1946-2009) as a great contemporary writer - alongside Thomas Bernhard and Arno Schmidt, who have been dead since 1989 and 1979 respectively.
I'm very pleased that it's gone to a woman this time, only the sixth in sixteen years. And not just any woman! I really respect Jean Snook's work as very conscientious and empathetic - as the judges say, she makes translation look easy. The prize will be awarded in Chicago on 13 June - I'm sure the deserving winner will have fun with the $10,000 cheque.
Thomas and Ross Hit Rochester
Watch Thomas Pletzinger and Ross Benjamin at a Reading the World event in Rochester, NY. You get a lovely view of both their shoes while they present Funeral for a Dog. I'm not sure whether Ross is wearing socks or not.
Thursday, 5 May 2011
German Book Club Reads Clemens Meyer
Well, looky here! The New York Goethe Institut's book club is reading Clemens Meyer's Die Nacht, Die Lichter in June.
Now obviously there is never any time like the present to read Clemens Meyer's mind-blowing short stories. I've just finished translating them for And Other Stories, a fact I may have mentioned a few times previously. They'll be available in the UK under the title All the Lights from And Other Stories - but US rights are still available, as far as I'm aware. If you're a US publisher, you should buy them right now. If you're not a US publisher, you should set up a publishing house right away and buy them.
Go on, you know you want to.
And thanks to my supergrass Jamie Lee Searle (again) for the tip-off.
Now obviously there is never any time like the present to read Clemens Meyer's mind-blowing short stories. I've just finished translating them for And Other Stories, a fact I may have mentioned a few times previously. They'll be available in the UK under the title All the Lights from And Other Stories - but US rights are still available, as far as I'm aware. If you're a US publisher, you should buy them right now. If you're not a US publisher, you should set up a publishing house right away and buy them.
Go on, you know you want to.
And thanks to my supergrass Jamie Lee Searle (again) for the tip-off.
Gutekunst Prize to Kári Driscoll
The Goethe Institut in New York announced the winner of the inaugural Gutekunst Translation Prize, which is one of a crop of new awards going to emerging translators. All the applicants translated a passage from Martin Mosebach's linguistically challenging novel Was davor geschah. And the winner is a graduate student by the name of Kári Driscoll, who is pictured looking young and attractive. I bet he sent in a fake photo, because everybody knows all translators are old and wizened.
They tell us: "The winning entry impressed the judges (Mark Anderson of Columbia University, Susan Bernofsky, scholar and translator, and Liesl Schillinger, book critic) for its flowing, eloquent prose, its admirable accuracy, and its inventive rendering of Mr. Mosebach's lyrical passages and natural imagery." You can download his translation behind the link, should you be so inclined. Mr. Driscoll gets $2500 and a trip to Chicago for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Symposium.
Speaking of which, I seem to have read on Facebook who's actually won the prestigious Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize this year, but I can't find confirmation anywhere at all. I'm very pleased though...
They tell us: "The winning entry impressed the judges (Mark Anderson of Columbia University, Susan Bernofsky, scholar and translator, and Liesl Schillinger, book critic) for its flowing, eloquent prose, its admirable accuracy, and its inventive rendering of Mr. Mosebach's lyrical passages and natural imagery." You can download his translation behind the link, should you be so inclined. Mr. Driscoll gets $2500 and a trip to Chicago for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Symposium.
Speaking of which, I seem to have read on Facebook who's actually won the prestigious Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize this year, but I can't find confirmation anywhere at all. I'm very pleased though...
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
Clemens Meyer and the Literary Tattoo
Tattoos are a funny thing, don't you think? When I was a kid there was one tattoo parlour round our way, which was a source of great fear and trepidation. In my childish imagination it was a den of iniquity frequented by sailors, bikers and jailbirds. And now we're surrounded by the things. The nearest tattoo shop to me in Berlin even has a kiddies' corner where the nippers can sit down and draw a nice picture while mummy and daddy get inked up.
And now mare Buchverlag - who do books with a tie-in to the sea - have brought out an anthology of tattoo stories, Das Herz auf der Haut. To make up for that very silly article the other day, Der Freitag has a report by Sebastian Kretz on a Berlin event where the writer Clemens Meyer presented the book, having written the foreword. Disappointingly for me, most of the pieces are translated from English, but it does promise a story by the young German writer Franziska Gerstenberg (who I once heard reading a story about shaving that made me wince, in a good way).
Meyer, of course, is predestined to present a literary anthology about tattoos, seeing as he has many himself. I haven't seen them all but I can testify to there being plenty of them. When he first started out he was marketed as "Germany's first fully tattooed writer" - but nowadays you're more likely to see him in long sleeves. I also know a woman writer with a sun on her back and a publishing person with a Pynchonesque post horn on his arm. Of course there are limits to the number of publishing people I've seen with their clothes off, so maybe literally everybody out there is all covered in tattoos underneath.
I'm imagining Günter Grass with a petite dolphin on his left ankle, Julia Franck with a portrait of her cat on one breast (life-size), Rainald Goetz no doubt has red and back skulls all up the back of both calves, Katja Lange-Müller has A.C.A.B. inside her lower lip, and I bet Martin Walser has a big fat 47 tattooed on his chest. In courier typeface.
I don't have any - I have freckles. But you could go to The Word Made Flesh and look at literary tattoos to bide the time while you're waiting for Meyer's own short stories All the Lights to come out in my translation. There's a tattoo in one of them as well.
And now mare Buchverlag - who do books with a tie-in to the sea - have brought out an anthology of tattoo stories, Das Herz auf der Haut. To make up for that very silly article the other day, Der Freitag has a report by Sebastian Kretz on a Berlin event where the writer Clemens Meyer presented the book, having written the foreword. Disappointingly for me, most of the pieces are translated from English, but it does promise a story by the young German writer Franziska Gerstenberg (who I once heard reading a story about shaving that made me wince, in a good way).
Meyer, of course, is predestined to present a literary anthology about tattoos, seeing as he has many himself. I haven't seen them all but I can testify to there being plenty of them. When he first started out he was marketed as "Germany's first fully tattooed writer" - but nowadays you're more likely to see him in long sleeves. I also know a woman writer with a sun on her back and a publishing person with a Pynchonesque post horn on his arm. Of course there are limits to the number of publishing people I've seen with their clothes off, so maybe literally everybody out there is all covered in tattoos underneath.
I'm imagining Günter Grass with a petite dolphin on his left ankle, Julia Franck with a portrait of her cat on one breast (life-size), Rainald Goetz no doubt has red and back skulls all up the back of both calves, Katja Lange-Müller has A.C.A.B. inside her lower lip, and I bet Martin Walser has a big fat 47 tattooed on his chest. In courier typeface.
I don't have any - I have freckles. But you could go to The Word Made Flesh and look at literary tattoos to bide the time while you're waiting for Meyer's own short stories All the Lights to come out in my translation. There's a tattoo in one of them as well.
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Arno Schmidt on the Watering Can Spout
I know a few Arno Schmidt fans out there read love german books occasionally, so I wanted to point their way to this fascinating TAZ article by Gerhard Henschel, about 6 newly released CDs of the great writer and translator singing popular songs drunk one New Year's Eve.
Apparently they feature Schmidt's renditions of Blue Suede Shoes, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Der Tag, als Conny Kramer starb, and many more. The writer used the spout of a watering can for added amplification and finished off with the tune to Bonanza on the mouth organ.
Henschel writes:
But how did the recording come about? According to the editorial team, Schmidt's wife Alice found a tape recorder in a skip in the late autumn of 1977, brought it home and repaired it. A handwritten note dates the recording to New Year's Eve 1977/78, which was apparently a rather "jolly" evening. The tapes were subsequently deposited in a kitchen drawer, the key to which was lost at some point, only to turn up this spring.
It's such a shame the piece isn't strictly true.
Apparently they feature Schmidt's renditions of Blue Suede Shoes, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Der Tag, als Conny Kramer starb, and many more. The writer used the spout of a watering can for added amplification and finished off with the tune to Bonanza on the mouth organ.
Henschel writes:
But how did the recording come about? According to the editorial team, Schmidt's wife Alice found a tape recorder in a skip in the late autumn of 1977, brought it home and repaired it. A handwritten note dates the recording to New Year's Eve 1977/78, which was apparently a rather "jolly" evening. The tapes were subsequently deposited in a kitchen drawer, the key to which was lost at some point, only to turn up this spring.
It's such a shame the piece isn't strictly true.
Monday, 2 May 2011
Reading - Not for Everybody?
In Der Freitag, Magnus Klaue criticises what he calls infantilism in promoting literature. He finds it appalling that the public is being encouraged to read books for the usefulness or pleasure of the exercise, rather than for the aesthetic experience. The piece got me so angry I signed up as a community user and tried to boil my criticism down to a pithy response in German.
Here's what I think: reading is something anybody can do, provided they are literate. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it being either a useful or pleasurable activity, and if libraries, publishers, booksellers and cultural institutions want to encourage people to do it then it's perfectly legitimate for them to target people who want to use their time usefully or pleasurably. In fact, I imagine a PR campaign that said, "Hey people, books are great, you should try them some time for the aesthetic experience" might backfire.
OK, so maybe the writer himself doesn't refer to himself as a bookworm, a term he takes exception to in his piece. But that doesn't make him any better or worse than people who do (although his vocal exception to the term might make him an intellectual snob).
And while it hurts my soul to hold up an article in the FAZ over a piece in Der Freitag, I just can't help it. Joseph Hanimann wrote there a couple of weeks ago about the Schüler-Literaturpreis der Euroregio Maas-Rhein, a literary prize awarded by school students in the border region encompassing Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. This year's award went to the Flemish writer Stefan Brijs for his The Angel Maker (published by Penguin in Hester Velmans' translation). Although more surprised than he ought to be, Hanimann tells us how open the students were for "sophisticated" literature and how heated the debates were.
Is it just me, or is this proof that you don't need a PhD to be a passionate reader? Reading is indeed a pleasure, and at times a useful one too. Surely it's a good thing to encourage more people - from all walks of life and with all vocabulary levels - to read books? Klaue's attitude reminds me of indie music fans who would deny anyone they don't approve of from listening to the bands they discovered first. Luckily, that doesn't work either.
Here's what I think: reading is something anybody can do, provided they are literate. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it being either a useful or pleasurable activity, and if libraries, publishers, booksellers and cultural institutions want to encourage people to do it then it's perfectly legitimate for them to target people who want to use their time usefully or pleasurably. In fact, I imagine a PR campaign that said, "Hey people, books are great, you should try them some time for the aesthetic experience" might backfire.
OK, so maybe the writer himself doesn't refer to himself as a bookworm, a term he takes exception to in his piece. But that doesn't make him any better or worse than people who do (although his vocal exception to the term might make him an intellectual snob).
And while it hurts my soul to hold up an article in the FAZ over a piece in Der Freitag, I just can't help it. Joseph Hanimann wrote there a couple of weeks ago about the Schüler-Literaturpreis der Euroregio Maas-Rhein, a literary prize awarded by school students in the border region encompassing Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. This year's award went to the Flemish writer Stefan Brijs for his The Angel Maker (published by Penguin in Hester Velmans' translation). Although more surprised than he ought to be, Hanimann tells us how open the students were for "sophisticated" literature and how heated the debates were.
Is it just me, or is this proof that you don't need a PhD to be a passionate reader? Reading is indeed a pleasure, and at times a useful one too. Surely it's a good thing to encourage more people - from all walks of life and with all vocabulary levels - to read books? Klaue's attitude reminds me of indie music fans who would deny anyone they don't approve of from listening to the bands they discovered first. Luckily, that doesn't work either.
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