The Book and Beyond

You want your author to be appreciated, to be read. Yes, why not, to be respected. As a writer at least, if not as a person. And the author’s image, not just the work, is in your hands. That’s the way it works in English at least, where translation tends to be decentralized. I’m not referring to commissions obviously. In that sense translation is like any kind of creative writing – you choose your project, you shape it, you develop it, you pitch and promote it, and you pitch and promote the image of the author that goes with it. So the question: what to do when your author is not an especially attractive character, not a good person, a bad husband, for instance, a bad father?For instance, Eligio Zanini was a bad husband and a bad father. He abandoned his family when two children were small and a third was on the way. He never contacted them again, though he lived just down the road. When his son died in a car accident at the age of seventeen and the parents were supposed to go down to ...

U članku se analizira uloga knjige u pet ključnih ruskih distopija u dvadesetom stoljeću (Mi, Čevengur, Iskop, Plavo salo i Kis). U svakoj od ovih distopija knjiga/umjetnički tekst (kako se knjiga shvaća u ovom članku) ima jednu od ključnih uloga – posebno u dvije recentne distopije (Plavo salo i Kis). Knjiga se u ruskim distopijama promatra kao jedno od temeljnih obilježja čovjeka i sve promjene čovjeka kao individue ili društvenog bića reflektiraju se na knjigu ili pak knjigom bivaju potaknute.Možda je čudno ili možda tek loš stil započeti članak s dvije digresije. Ali, kao prvo i sasvim neznanstveno, ne mogu se oteti potrebi započeti ovaj članak razmišljanjem o upotrebi i ulozi misala u obredu katoličke svete mise. Slabo pamtim pa me zanimaju načini kojima se ljudi bore protiv zaborava, a posebno su mi zanimljivi (zavidim im) ljudi koji dobro pamte. Nisam osobit vjernik, ali onda kad odem na misu, uvijek me čudi (da, čak i zaboravljivu mene) zašto svećenik koji je održao tisuće misa...

John Stuart Mill’s, The Subjection of Women (1869), remains one of the harbingers of women’s emancipation and presents a strong moral argument in support of the suffrage movement in late 19th century Victorian England. His work launches an urgent appeal for the need to provide freedom, equal treatment and opportunities to women, so that they can develop their capacities for the full benefit of a liberal democratic society. An imaginary dialogue is established between Mill’s significant statement of liberal feminism and his audiences at the time of publishing of the book as well as the new generations, with the purpose of tracing the significance of his book in challenging social structure and discussing crucial problems of social justice, such as gender equality and freedom. Reading the book requires a contextualist approach regarding the historical context as well as dominant political and ideological discourses. Such an approach may also explain many of the perceived ‘shortcomings’ o...

When the news broke out that the military successfully neutralized the most wanted terrorists since the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, there was a wave of excitement, thrill, tears and patriotic riots in front of the White House. The Washington Post reports several thousands of young Americans rushing to the fence of the White House, in a spontaneous display of jubilation, dancing and cheering ‘USA!’. Not long passed before there were T-Shirts celebrating Bin Laden’s death being sold. President Obama addressed the nation, claiming that justice has been served. Relief flooded through the American world, even in the euphoric moment, as if they have been searching for some crumb of comfort, or partial closure ever since that awful morning of 9/11. The emotional and psychological wounds of the 9/11 tragedy become thus more evident, from ten years ago, when the image of the great world in its image crushed so profoundly that it become something new, an unknown and fearful o...

In fine-tuning Turusbek Madilbay’s rough dictionary translation (a ‘trot’) I became convinced that a good match between writers and editors or translators is essential. I imagine it’s tempting for a writer to throw up her hands, to abdicate responsibility and let the publishing houses use their stock translators, but I recommend that creative writers learn about the process of translation in order to find the best partner for putting their work into another language. The responsibility must never rest solely with the translator, who is always working with limited information and within temporal and fiscal constraints. It’s always, to some degree, piecework. I hope it’s not a breach of publishing protocol to read reviews of work by, and to solicit samples from, several literary translators, and then choose among them. A beginner will do the job more cheaply, but will the skill be there? Do not leave the job to chance. My spotty linguistic background was well-suited to working with a tro...

Due to their self-reflexive propensity, postmodern fiction and metafiction, in particular, have been relentlessly criticized of solipsism and of an indifference to relate to the extralinguistic world. While the novel is deemed to pause in its trajectory to examine itself, to examine its conventions and rejections of them, to address its future uncertainties and its at-present struggles, it has become a misprision that all it can bestow to its readers is an understanding of itself. The basic argument unravels as follows: language is devoid of reality, therefore, literature does not contain reality either; now more than ever, fiction recognizes that it is a self-contained artifact which can only engage in a representation of itself, having no interest in proffering its readers anything but an understanding of itself. The novel in the postmodern period has faced the crisis of representation, when linguists and theorists alike unmask the insufficiency of language and its inability to repre...