[Mary Meriam]

Slipp, this was many years ago, in my tome-reading days. Since you love it, I will make a point of trying again!

[David Landrum]

Originally posted by Mary Meriam:
I spent many miserable years, dragging around Mann's The Magic Mountain, convinced that I had to read it, trying again and again, failing again and again.

However, I have read all of Soltzhenitsyn.

The Magic Mountain is good until one of the characters dies (can't remember who--the protagonist's brother?) and after that it falls apart and becomes a series of unrelated segments that don't tell much of a story until Mann finally just decides to end it. It is magnificently written, but structurally it is lacking.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is very near the top of my list of great novels. I've read it dozens of times and taught it a lot. I love, too, the ending of
The Cancer Ward, which is a sentence fragment (at least in the translation I have): "An evil man threw tobacco in the eyes of the Rhesus monkey. Just like that."

[Janet Kenny]

I went through a phase of Thomas Mann and Herman Hesse and Joseph Roth. Tolkien slipped easily into those years.

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited July 29, 2008).]

[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

Just want to say that all three of my daughters have read and greatly enjoyed all of the Harry Potter books as well as the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I've read none of them.

I can't remember what all I haven't read - Nor what all I have read Plenty of cliff notes in school, no doubt.

Anne

p.s. the last novel I read was Cold Mountain - and that has been a few years ago. I read political and theological books mostly, which don't count as English literature.

[This message has been edited by Anne Bryant-Hamon (edited July 29, 2008).]

[Mike Slippkauskas]

Mary,

Oh Mary. Do try again if you must but don't hold me responsible for several more years of misery! I do respect differences of opinion.

Janet,

You know I love you from afar but your comments on the translatability of complex Latinate sentences into English seem doctrinaire, almost silly. Particularly when one considers that Proust modeled his prose style on that of John Ruskin. Almost everyone agrees that Proust in English reads wonderfully, even French scholars.

I've looked at the new Penguin tag-team translations of Proust. In almost every passage I've compared, I prefer the original Moncrieff (revised by Enright, etc.)

Best,
Slipp

P.S Editing in to say, Janet, I do appreciate that you grappled with the Italian into English and have an intimate view of the exigencies involved. And I know you admire and respect the differing capacities of different languages. But my comment largely stands.

[This message has been edited by Mike Slippkauskas (edited July 29, 2008).]

[Janet Kenny]

Originally posted by Mike Slippkauskas:

Janet,

You know I love you from afar but your comments on the translatability of complex Latinate sentences into English seem doctrinaire, almost silly. Particularly when one considers that Proust modeled his prose style on that of John Ruskin. Almost everyone agrees that Proust in English reads wonderfully, even French scholars.

I've looked at the new Penguin tag-team translations of Proust. In almost every passage I've compared, I prefer the original Moncrieff (revised by Enright, etc.)

,

Mike,
I know some pretty sharp bi-lingual French writers and editors (in Paris) who agree with me. It was like the tablets of Moses that Scott Moncrieff was untouchable.
We can't read English that takes a whole page to complete one sentence. Italian does that sort of thing with more ease. Natalia Ginzburg's "Lessico Famigliare" is similarly constructed and works beautifully in Italian. In English, it was necessary to break the sentences in order to retain the freshness.

Lydia Davis says:
Scott Moncrieff had considerable persuasive skill as a writer, his version was the first and for a very long time the only English translation available, and Proust's novel is powerful enough to shine through almost any translation: for these reasons, the Scott Moncrieff version has become deeply entrenched, and the experience of reading Proust has been, for readers confined to English, inextricably identified with Scott Moncrieff's flowing but misrepresentative version. For them, Scott Moncrieff's style is the voice of Proust.

But it is not. Proust, in French, is plainer, and clearer.

I don't like the idea of several translators either. It must be one mind. Perhaps I attributed the translation to Christopher Prendergast, the editor, and was in error. I know some fine translations which are consistently the product of a good writer of English and a bilingual native speaker, but they have collaborated for the entire book. Perhaps Christopher Prendergast is the unifying voice?
I had the same experience with Arthur Waley's translation of "The Book of Genji". I learned to love Genji through Waley and was slowly persuaded to give the later and more austere Seindensticker a chance.
Janet



[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited July 29, 2008).]

[annie nance]

Here's an interesting aside that could very well deserve a thread of its own:

and no longer teach at the Evangelical school of which I did not believe any of its doctrines anymore)

Inquiring minds want to know...

[Mike Slippkauskas]

Janet,

Thank you. (I think you cross-posted with my P.S.) I do know that Moncrieff was ornate and that he bowdlerized certain passages and metaphors. And that there have been textual advances since the first translations. These are issues that Enright deals with in his revisions of Moncrieff. And these revisions are more direct, plainer, dare I say more masculine, than those very first versions. Proust is at his absolute best, most moving, when utterly plain (I'm thinking in particular of the grandmother's long death scene.) I had looked forward for years to Richard Howard's announced complete translation but it was, alas, never to be.

My French is nil so I make do. The experience in English is huge enough. (And I do know of your general, and wise, distrust of translations. I just didn't know that it extended as passionately to prose, ordinarily thought of as "translatable.")

Best,
Slipp

Janet, I'll note to the Sphere that Lydia Davis is one of the Penguin tag-team and has a vested interest in distinguishing her translation from Moncrieff's (which has been revised twice). I do know that you linked her but not everyone pursues such links.



[This message has been edited by Mike Slippkauskas (edited July 29, 2008).]

[David Landrum]

Okay: anybody do this? I go into big bookstores--Barnes & Noble and Borders in the USA--go to the literary racks and count how many books in each section I've read. Sometimes, in fact, I'll even say, "I'll bet I've read at least twenty in this rack," and then see if my estimation is correct or over. It's a great boost for the ego.

Vanity of vanities . . .

dwl

[Janet Kenny]

Originally posted by Mike Slippkauskas:
Janet,

Thank you. (I think you cross-posted with my P.S.) I do know that Moncrieff was ornate and that he bowdlerized certain passages and metaphors. And that there have been textual advances since the first translations. These are issues that Enright deals with in his revisions of Moncrieff. And these revisions are more direct, plainer, dare I say more masculine, than those very first versions. Proust is at his absolute best, most moving, when utterly plain (I'm think in particular of the grandmother's long death scene.) I had looked forward for years to Richard Howard's announced complete translation but it was, alas, never to be.

My French is nil so I make do. The experience in English is huge enough. (And I do know of your general, and wise, distrust of translations. I just didn't know it extended as passionately to prose, ordinarily thought of as "translatable.")

Michael,
I learned to love Russian novels by way of what very knowledgeable Russian editors have told me was Constance Garnett's production line. I didn't know that the translations were dreadful because something of the original reached me and changed my life. Five minutes' conversation with the Russians convinced me that I had barely scratched the surface of the novels. Still, without Constance Garnett I wouldn't have even guessed at the world the novels represent.

I intended to improve my French but something always got in the way. I could sing in it and I still cook in it but now I wonder about trying some childish Pinyin Mandarin instead. Probably neither will happen.
Janet