Carlin Romano reports on the second PEN World Voices Festival: A literary world out there, but not for U.S.
By both force of numbers and abundant literary talent, however, many of the writers challenged America's stinginess toward other literary cultures, what Italian writer Roberto Calasso called "a lethal mixture of provincialism and imperialism."
At an opening session on "Translation and Globalization," moderator and former Los Angeles Times book editor Steve Wasserman reported that only 3 percent of books published in the United States are translations, compared with almost 70 percent in Italy. And of the 3 percent, Wasserman added, "many were technical manuals or reference works."
"There is something seriously wrong in the landscape of American publishing," echoed Calasso, who runs the prestigious Italian publishing house Adelphi. He suggested it's no wonder Americans often misunderstand the rest of the world, given how little we publish and read about it.
Well, take a look at some European best-seller lists, Signor Calasso, and see how many American titles are there. Amazing how Europeans so often misunderstand America given how much they must read about the place. And, by the way, one of our biggest publishers, Random House, is owned by Bertelsmann. Maybe he should complain a little closer to home. Sounds like the French film industry's complaints.
I think it's a little more complicated than that. I talked with Steven Rea, one of our film critics, about this, and it was he who said it was just like the complaints he hears about American films in Europe. Those films dominate the market in Europe - because they are what the audiences want to see. Apparently European readers also want to read American authors.
ReplyDeleteNow, it is true that American publishers seem reluctant to publish works in translation (but you can't blame readers for not reading what is not published) and when they do publish them, rarely publicize them. So Torgny Lindgren gets published, but is not well known. Henning Mankell is doing quite well, though. Umberto Eco does well. The novel I review this Sunday is tranlated from the French and in a just world would top the best-seller list for weeks. I just reviewed two Spanish best-sellers. One was OK, the other was dreadful. The OK one is a best-seller. Still, there is the Bertelsmann connection - and other European connections as well. I like German literature a lot myself, but am not aware of any recent writers I should read (though I am reading a collection of stories by Peter Stamm, who is Swiss and I think writes in German). I like Lindgren a lot, but he's Swedish. I think Peter Handke is awful, and have never much liked Grass. Houellebecq, to switch to the French, I think is overrated, but Emmanuel Carrere deserves to be better known. Among Italians Laura Grimaldi is very good also.
Oh, and Roberto Calaso gets published here, but I haven't read him. And I still think his point is worth challenging: If Americans would understand Europe better if they read more European authors, how come Europeans, who seem to be reading enough American authors, don't understand America better?
To say nothing of the fact that my twitting the Yurpeens is in a fine tradition going back at least to Mark Twain.
Most of the literature I have read over the past ten years has been translations, or from the English-speaking Commonwealth, or non-mainstream. I honestly find most American mainstream novels to be utterly bland and tripe (there are of course always a few exceptions), and what passes for best-sellers on the Mew York Times list are rarely books I have any interest in reading.
ReplyDeleteAudrey Niffenegger's movel "The Time Traveler's Wife" is the only "big mainstream" novel I've read in the past year, and it was just terrific. And I found it at Goodwill.
The only writer of thriller, spy, espionage, whatever you want to call it, fiction that I ever thought had some literary merit was Robert Ludlum. The whole flap around Dan Brown is amusing because it's so pointless, in terms of literature.
I read a lot of science ficition, too; which in some circles would get one's other opinions immediately dismissed. But good writing is good writing, in whatever genre.
I'm looking at my bookshelves right now, and the Americans I see are mostly poets and "nonfiction" writers like Loren Eiseley, Robinson Jeffers, John McPhee, Barry Lopez, Jane Hirshfield, Rob Brezsny, Matthew Fox, Caroline Myss, a few others. I'm always reading something related to Jungian studies, mysticism, and the like, and there are plenty of great American writers in those fields. But is that literature? I suppose it at least literate and well-written, at times, although its intention is not necessarily to be Literature or Great Writing.
I find myself very much drawn to writers like Octavio Paz, Borges, Cavafy, Odysseas Elytis, George Seferis, Rilke, Italo Calvino, Eco, Primo Levi, Ihara Saikaku, Andre Malraux, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, some others.
I have a real deep interest in Japanese literary forms such as zuihitsu and haibun, and other haiku-related forms; so I have the classic collections of most of those. (And I have to say, I still think Sam Hamill's translations from the Japanese and Chinese are among the best.)
I guess my point here is, while there might be a real imbalance between Europe and America in terms of publishing in translation, I do feel that BOTH American provincialism AND European self-boosterism are in play here. Probably everybody is a little right, and a little bit wrong.
And I don't see the same dearth of translations that is being declaimed, as it seems to me that we live in a time when much more than ever before is being translated. It seems like a rather high percentage of the shelves on many of the bookstores I frequent are translations.
The statistics are probably skewed because of the publishing boom of what some have called "throwaway books," all those spy novels on the best-seller list being first amongst equals. If anything, more is getting translated and published than ever before—AND more crap is also being published than ever before, period. Translation may only still be a small percentage of overall publishing numbers, but it sure seems to me like anything I really want to read, especially in poetry, is now quite readily available in translation.
Amidst the European table-pounding, I wonder what the balance is between North and South America, and America and Asia. I am aware from ahving lived in Asia that all things American are quite popular over there, and easily attainable, legally or otherwise—since we don't actually have reciprocal copyright agreements with several Asian countries such as Indonesia, enforcement is the real problem there, not interest or desire.
So. Tempest in a teapot? American provincialism? Eurocentrism? All of the above?
I suspect it's a litlle of both - maybe even all of the above. I confess that, like you, I find most American literary fiction uninteresting. I gravitate toward British fiction - or, I must admit, so-called genre fiction, principally because I like a good story if I can find one. Also like you, Art, I seem to find enough books in translation. Still, I am inclined to think that the problem on this side of the Atlantic is that publishers presume Americans are too provincial to want to read foreign officers. It may be the publishers who are provincial, though.
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