Bucheli, Weidermann and the FAZ Comments Section: a Utopianist Rant

I've been thinking about literary criticism and blogging, sharing some of my ideas here as I go along. And I'm not the only one, as it turns out. On the day I was on that panel in Solothurn, Roman Bucheli had an article in the NZZ on the pressure of digital options on literary criticism (and then sat in the front row of the event, intimidating me slightly). To sum up my reading of the piece, he says that criticism is under pressure because of financial issues (with newspapers having to please advertisers). He also talks about the idea that digital publications can do a lot more because they have more space, and he says the idea of just putting the same reviews online as in print is a bit of a wasted opportunity. He closes:

Even (and perhaps especially) in the digital age, there will be space and need for such sophisticated texts. Digital is not necessarily the grave-digger of analogue critique; rather, it could become a platform for a critical and analytical competence that has  existed in various forms since Lessing. To enable this, open and free spaces for thinking must be created, where the art of reading is linked with enjoyment of argument and the will to interpret is linked with the Eros of writing.

I love this idea, although of course it's very abstract, as utopias often are. To my mind, those spaces would be open to both professional critics and mere amateur book-lovers. They would enable genuine conversations, perhaps in a similar way to the World Literature Forum or the Guardian's Tips, Links and Suggestions thread – only they'd incorporate professional criticism.

So then Volker Weidermann wrote a piece in response to Bucheli in the FAZ. Basically, he said that Bucheli was too pessimistic and critics should stick to writing excellent reviews. Bucheli's comment that readers of print editions are less impatient than digital readers, he points out, is nothing but an assumption - we can't know how many articles are read all the way through in a print newspaper. And he rejects Bucheli's call for new spaces:

The only response is that these "platforms for critical and analytical competence" and these "free spaces for thinking" already exist. They are the arts pages of the daily and weekly newspapers, and – particularly free, particularly open – the internet. All that's needed is to fill these spaces, in such a way that people want to read it.

Look to the past, says Weidermann, and lists a number of excellent literary critics of yesteryear. But for me, he's missed the point. I shall address his vague, blanket use of the concept of "the internet" in a moment. However, his insistence that the newspaper arts pages (in print or digital form) are a free space appears a little ridiculous, frankly. Professional critics can write there, but only if the editors accept their pieces. Readers now have an opportunity to react in a slightly more immediate way via the comments section, but in practice this opportunity is very limited indeed, particularly in the FAZ.

The FAZ comment field has 1000 characters. Try making a coherent point on a complex issue in 1000 characters. Yesterday I tried and failed. What I wanted to say took up three separate comments. It was probably also riddled with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, and very possibly my argumentation was flawed. I can't tell, however, because the FAZ moderates comments before they go online and hasn't yet activated my serious points. Ah well, it's the weekend, I thought initially. It's rather nice that the moderators get the weekend off. Only to find my rather puerile comment about the gendered avatars had been waved through, much to my embarrassment. And then another comment posted by someone else today (Sunday). I'm a little bit upset now, because I'd been talking about the article with a couple of lit-bloggers on Facebook and we/I thought it'd be fun to have that conversation in public, via the comments section.

Obviously, part of my annoyance is sour grapes about what may well be a technical glitch. But on a less personal level, the structure of a comments section that limits the length of entries is a hierarchical one. The professional journalists have space to expand their ideas, while the rest of us are allowed to respond in brief. I think I wrote something to the effect that it's probably not the FAZ's function or indeed intention to democratise literary criticism. However, they did in fact have a more open approach at one point, with the FAZ Lesesaal (which died in 2008). A shame.

Because, given time, that digital space could have become something akin to what Bucheli wrote about and I imagined. A public platform rather than closed conversations like we have on Facebook; a central port of call rather than a thousand individuals' blogs.

Ah yes, the vague and blanket use of the term "the internet". Open, free, full of people expressing their individual opinions. True, this is something we can do on the internet. As Weidermann's probably aware, though, the multitude of voices expressing opinions makes it hard to develop a conversation. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a single critical, analytical space where anyone could join in? I suspect Weidermann's hair would probably stand on end in horror at the idea. Who's supposed to pay professional critics to argue with mere readers? Ach, that's the trouble with utopias, and with incomplete ideas. They fall at the hurdle of financial reality. Still, I suppose there's always Goodreads, for those who aren't boycotting it since Amazon bought it.

To round off this rant on a more optimistic note, I have a few more amateur critics to introduce you to – excellent blogs about literature by people with day jobs:

In German: We read Indie - a conglomerate of booksellers, editors and librarians (all women) blogging about independent books. In English: Helen Finch - a Germanist writing about her work issues, German-language literature and translation - and Vertigo - a museum director writing about art and literature, with a particular emphasis on W.G. Sebald.

Kleist Would Have Blogged

Heinrich von Kleist has a website, although it's not updated all that often. It says:

Societal reform ideas and literary experiments went hand in hand for Kleist. He joined the Prussian army at the age of fifteen and left seven years later as a lieutenant, he studied philosophy, physics, mathematics and political science in the city of his birth, Frankfurt (Oder) and was always interested in technology, education and administration.

Apparently he was a nomad who craved recognition but didn't get it, finally despairing of life and committing suicide. But before that he published two different journals, Phöbus and Berliner Abendblätter. While they weren't mere vehicles for his writing, Kleist did place a lot of his own material in them. Nobody bought them though, and both of them folded for financial reasons. I imagine without the burden of printing costs and the fallings-out with his co-editors, Kleist could have gone on sharing his work in self-run journals for much longer. And with a taste for literary experiment and technology, you know he'd have had his own blog. I think his desire for fame and his sense of urgency are quite characteristic for bloggers. If his letters are anything to go by, he'd have been a hit on Twitter too.

But the main reason why Kleist would have blogged is his 1805 essay "Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden". In it, he explains how just talking to someone else about your ideas helps you to formulate them. Thoughts don't have to be fully rounded to share them with others; you learn a great deal by voicing incomplete ideas.

The French say, l'appetit vient en mangeant, and that voice of experience remains true if one parodies it and says, l'idee vient en parlant.

Blogging, for me, is frequently a way of voicing my thoughts. I often write quite quickly, before ideas have had time to settle. In these cases, I work them out as I go along - but because I don't feel I'm forcing anyone to read them, it doesn't matter to me that they're rather nascent. Kleist writes about the look on his sister's face when he tells her things. I feel I get that minimum of feedback through the comments function, and I'm always grateful for comments, even though I don't always want to enter into a fully fledged discussion.

I've been thinking about the differences between literary blogging and literary criticism or professional journalism. Perhaps I'm being naive here, but my guess is that critics and journalists usually know what they're going to write before they sit down and do so. Kleist writes that speaking about ideas that are already complete is an act that takes the excitement out of the speaker (I'm reminded of many a dull lecture). Just because a thought is expressed in a confused manner, says Kleist, doesn't mean it's been thought in a confused way.

And that's what I love about blogging - the opportunity for instant publishing, for sharing incomplete ideas and developing them like in a conversation. Only it's a conversation that stays in the world, a conversation you can look up and return to and add to and really build up a considered opinion over a longer period of time. *Plus - as I'm doing right this instant between the asterisks - you can update your posts and refine them and just type in something that occurred to you a little while later, correct any slips, add in extra witty comments, and so forth.* L'idee vient en bloggant. Kleist would have loved it.
 

Thinking about Literary Blogging

I've been to two events recently that attempted to think about literary criticism and literary blogging. In one case I was on a panel myself, in Solothurn with a Swiss literary critic (print), a Swiss literary programmer (radio) and a German crime writing critic (internet). I think I was supposed to be young and fresh and represent the future of literary criticism – which was the title of the event – but I'm not sure I managed that. Certainly, we didn't really argue and I didn't feel anyone said anything particularly earth-moving. Then there was a panel discussion between literary bloggers at the Brecht-Haus here in Berlin. This was a little difficult, for several reasons. Firstly, bloggers tend to be quite keen to express their opinions, by their very nature, and although there was a little more controversy involved than on the Swiss podium, there was also a lot of microphone-hogging, which was a shame. Secondly, it was hard to find a balance for a very mixed audience of experienced bloggers and venue regulars who seemed to have come out of curiosity about what these new-fangled blog things are. And thirdly, the title was too vague so nobody knew what they were supposed to talk about. But perhaps the problem is that panel discussions are often a bit rubbish, whatever they're about, because we're looking at a bunch of strangers forced to talk to each other in front of an audience in return for a modest fee.

Perhaps what panel discussions are good for is prompting thoughts that occur afterwards, however, rather than solving the world's dilemmas on the spot. So here are the thoughts I've been having, in as yet unprocessed form.

I've been thinking about the kind of literary bloggers who review the books they like, with no particular ambitions other than sharing their opinions and possibly communicating with other fans of their special genres or writers. The kind of bloggers that literary critics turn their noses up at; and perhaps Amazon reviewers also fall into this category. What I love about this phenomenon is that it means people are reading differently. I remember I used to write about seeing live bands for a while, but then gave it up because it made gigs less fun and more of a cerebral experience. Bloggers are reading more consciously because we know we're going to write about the books later. Even something as simple as rating books on Goodreads requires us to think about the extent to which we enjoyed and admired them, rather than merely consuming books and moving on to the next one. The idea that the big, bad internet, e-books, etc., have made reading a shallower experience neglects this aspect.

Bloggers can write about our reading experiences in a subjective way, a form that isn't yet entirely accepted in traditional (German) literary criticism. I like it, I really do. In fact I now feel uncomfortable with the pretense of objectivity in many more conventional reviews. Statements along the lines of "the writer's masterly descriptions of death remind the reader of his own mortality" are exposed as arrogant lies (for me!) when bloggers can write "I loved the writer's descriptions of death; they made me think of my own mortality" or indeed, of the same theoretical book, "the descriptions of death seemed unrealistic to me, and certainly don't tie in with my experiences of losing loved ones." Or whatever. Along with the rise of the first-person narrative essay that we've seen on or via the internet – those self-revelatory pieces with their gruesome fascination – writing about books is also becoming a first-person exercise, or can be. And I personally find that very interesting to read. Aside from Richard Kämmerlings' book on "what all these great books did to me", I don't see that in traditional (German-language) media outlets.

And we can do more creative things in reaction to books, we can rewrite and riff upon and fanfic and we can tell big fat lies (something the internet makes particularly easy). We can write our own fiction and share it, and it may not be much cop but at least we can get it off our chests. We can evangelise and big ourselves up and admit to being biased and unprofessional. We can collaborate and argue and we can try out unusual formats. We can get writers drunk and write them open letters and pretend to be of another gender or from another planet and we can fight against loneliness and isolation and get to know other people who share our obscure passions. We can cast a spotlight, however low-wattage, on our niche literary interests. In fact, writing about books in translation is a case in point: it's the bloggers who do this now in the English-speaking world, and often at an extremely high level. All this is marvellous, I think.

And yet I get the feeling a lot of traditional literary critics and journalists feel threatened by literary bloggers, hence their willingness to dismiss us/them out of hand, as I mentioned above. Is there a sense that the cuts in press coverage for books, and thus the increasing difficulty of make a living as a professional critic, are directly due to book bloggers? I don't think it's nearly that simple, but there are people who've put this case better than I can. I'll readily admit there are things for which professional critics are extremely useful. It's useful that many of them write for particular newspapers or media outlets, so we have a vague idea of what their politics or aesthetic principles might be. It's useful that they can read widely and draw comparisons. And it's good that someone else trusts them to write a decent piece, other than themselves. They come with a seal of approval, if you like. They also reach a far larger readership, as a rule, and can therefore prompt wider debates.

I'd like to regard book bloggers as an equivalent to amateur dramatics companies. We can be amazing, we can be ropey, some of us may rise to the professional level, but we're not ultimately a threat to the professionals. I did a fair amount of am-dram as a child and teenager. It was hard work but great fun. The British actor Michael Simkins wrote a piece in the Guardian last year about amateur theatre, in which he expresses respect for many of his amateur colleagues (and amusingly dismisses others). The difference, he says, is that amateurs prefer not to run all the risks of earning a living from their passion. That pretty much sums it up for me.    

Update: many thanks to Fabian Thomas of the Daily Frown for pointing out a great article on the subject from the professional literary critic's perspective, namely Volker "The Hair" Weidermann in the FAZ. 

Gili Bar-Hillel and the 800lb Gorilla

Five out of ten times when I tell people I translate literature, they ask me: "Oh, did you translate Harry Potter? I bet you're really rich."

No. I didn't translate Harry Potter. I translate from German to English. Joanne Rowling writes in English and is translated into other languages. Her translator into German is Klaus Fritz. No, I don't know him. No, I have no idea how much he got paid. No, you probably haven't heard of any of the books I've translated.

Rowling's Hebrew translator is Gili Bar-Hillel. She writes a blog in Hebrew that I'd never heard of and can't read. But she's written a post in English that you ought to look at. In it, she details her humiliating treatment by Warner Bros. since they started making films of the Harry Potter series. She's been forced to sign away her intellectual rights to all the terms she coined in her translations, is not credited in the Hebrew versions of the films - and wasn't even given a complimentary ticket to see them. This seems to be contrary to common practice in Israel and it also seems to have been the same for all Rowling's translators.

It's a shameful tale. As Bar-Hillel points out, the small figures Warner Bros. might have had to pay to the translators to use their intellectual property have probably been outweighed by all the lawyers' fees to keep them out of it. Her blog is the only recourse she has to express her anger and humiliation against the Hollywood behemoth. I don't know if she'll read this post – just as Bar-Hillel doesn't know if Joanne Rowling will read hers – but if she does: my heart goes out to you, Gili, and I hope you receive some more tangible support and get what ought to be yours. Well done for taking a stand!

Lady Bloggers in Berlin

I shall be talking to ladies from the publishing industry in April, along with Rery Maldonaldo and Nikola Richter from Los Superdemokraticos. Who I think are very cool, I've wanted to meet them for a long time. You should come, it'll be good.

Wolfenbüttel Manifesto - 10 Theses on Blogging for Translators

This is an initial outcome of the workshop on blogging for translators I held in Wolfenbüttel last weekend. You can read the original German at Die Übersetzer. Comments are welcome, preferably over there.

1. Translators are experts. We often know the works we translate almost as well as the writers do, and usually better than their editors. We know the countries whose literatures we translate, and we know the respective literatures themselves. Not least, we have a firm command of our own languages and we play a role in their development, consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or not.

2. Yet translators are often invisible. In reviews, on book covers, in advertising material – often enough, our work and our mere existence are denied. Like vampires, we do not appear in the mirror held up to the public, are seen at times as literary parasites with no life-giving ideas of our own. You can tell a good translation if you don’t notice it’s translated, they say. Whether this old maxim still holds true or not, it doesn’t mean that we translators have to remain invisible.

3. The internet provides a wealth of opportunities for expressing ourselves to a theoretically unlimited audience.

4. A blog is one of these possibilities. With a minimum of technical input, it can be used to spread our ideas, bringing ourselves, our projects and possibly our entire profession out into the public eye.

5. Reader comments and networking with other bloggers enable a dialogue that would otherwise not take place at all.

6. Bearing in mind that the readership is theoretically unlimited – and thanks to online translation services no longer even restricted by language – a translation blog ought to be as readable as possible. In cases where we want to present our work to the uninitiated, we don’t want to scare off this readership.

7. On the other hand, a blog also enables a more intensive dialogue with other translators, possibly from around the world. We need a space for writing about specific professional and translation issues, where we can discuss our work and the way we see ourselves.

8. In the German-speaking world, there are very few links between translation theorists and practitioners. A blog could be an attempt to connect the ivory tower with the ground crew, provided discussion takes place in a generally readable form. It could also involve students of literary translation, who often reflect their own work more than established translators.

9. A blog should be fun to read. As translators, we have the rhetorical tools at our fingertips for writing well. We ought to use them. It can be incredibly liberating to put your own words down on an empty blog page rather than interpreting others’ as usual. Writing freely also has advantages for our translation work, even if it’s something as banal as helping us to find new formulations.

10. All too often, translators are reticent people who shy away from the limelight. For some time though, especially in Germany, we have been raising our voices through readings we organise ourselves, the PR work of the professional organisations, letters to newspapers, etc. Let’s take another step out of the shadow of our writers and create our own platform.

Off to Wolfenbüttel

Tomorrow sees the start of the annual three-day social gathering of German literary translators known as the Wolfenbütteler Gespräch. I'll be holding a workshop on blogging for translators. I suspect I'd be better at holding a workshop on pant-wetting during public appearances for translators, but hey. There are only three award-winning translators in my group, I'm sure I'll be fine.

I was asked to present the workshop, possibly because blogging isn't really something many literary translators do in Germany. Or to be precise, there are literary translators who blog, like my friends Isabel Bogdan and Rasha Khayat. But they tend to do so in more of a private than professional capacity. What I'd love to come out of the workshop would be a collaborative project in which German literary translators blog about their work, their books, the countries they're familiar with, and so on.

But to get started I want to show the group what blogs are already out there, think about the whys and wherefores, talk about what works and what doesn't, and give them a tiny taste of blogging by putting together a special one-off blog about the annual get-together itself. Watch this space for more details.

Just to Reassure You

Dear readers,

Please rest assured that I am not a middle-aged man posing as a woman. That photo on the left is really of me; I did not steal it from someone I don't know. The opinions I state on this blog are my own, as is the name I write under. The few details I have revealed about myself are true. Except maybe that thing about going on tour with the Beastie Boys in 1992.

I've been following the unravelling of lesbian blogger identities behind the "gay girl in Damascus" and now "Paula Brooks". And I have to say I find the phenomenon fascinating. Feminists predicted some years ago that the internet would dissolve gender identities, but it didn't actually appear to be doing so. One reason was that social media sites insisted on profiles being either male or female, and of course many people use them to display their gendered sexual identities, particularly via photos. So while we have more opportunities than ever to state our opinions anonymously, we tend to do so in a gendered way. Don't believe me? Go to any online article dealing with feminism and see what people say in the comments.

What's interesting here though is that two heterosexual men have been posing as lesbian women, in one case of a different ethnicity too. It's obviously cooler to be a lesbian activist than to be a heterosexual man, in certain circles. And you know, there are days when I wake up in the morning and am really grateful to be a woman. Why, only today I rejoiced in my lack of hair loss. But these two men have taken on identities as members of, let's say, doubly and triply oppressed minorities - because they say people wouldn't have taken them seriously otherwise.

Leaving aside questions of boundaries between fact and fiction and whether anyone's taking them seriously now, I have to say this is the most patronising thing I've heard in a long time. These men assumed false identities because they felt their opinions on female sexuality were equally if not more relevant than those of actual lesbians. In the case of "Amina", we also have an element of western paternalism, with an American assuming a Syrian identity to "combat liberal Orientalism". From priveleged positions, they both attempted to fight other people's battles for them. Good intentions perhaps, but so condescending.

There's a tendency to do this in German books too. Think of the crime writer Jakob Arjouni, whose detective Kemal Kayankaya and colourful assumed surname made critics think he was Turkish to begin with. He's exonerated himself in my mind though by writing well about all manner of things. And let's not forget Günter Wallraff, who still blacks up in this day and age to "highlight racism", as if black people were incapable of doing so themselves.

It is possible, however, for white people to write about ethnic minorities, for heterosexual men to write about lesbians, without pretending to be them. The German examples that immediately spring to mind are the work of Raul Zelik (particularly Bastard, which centres on a German-Korean woman), Christoph Peters' Mitsoukos Restaurant, and Thorsten Becker's Sieger nach Punkten. All fiction, which is allowed. I can't actually think of any examples of male writers playing with female sexuality though.

Interestingly, the man who pretended to be Amina has written that he originally wanted to write fiction. Perhaps he should have done so, under his own name.