EDWARD GAUVIN

My translation of an excerpt from Jacques Gélat’s clever and charming 2006 novel Le traducteur is up at Words Without Borders in this month’s Postrevolution Iran issue. I did this piece in the summer of 2010, so I’m glad it’s finally seeing the light of day in a subsection on Writing about Translation.

As with all dramatizations, Gélat’s founding premise of forgotten punctuation is a bit of a stretch: practicing translators regularly rearrange punctuation, and how punctuation use differs between languages is one of much discussion among translators. However, his observations of what the act of translation can mean on a more metaphorical level are quite astute.

Every translator has dreamed of writing someday, and I was no exception. Sheets of paper have long dawdled in my drawers; diverse notes, vague plans for novels, even the beginning of a short story. But I’d always given up under the pretext of having a translation to start or finish. In truth these projects didn’t inspire me; they lent me no élan. Perhaps there would be a day for writing, but moreover, and most importantly, you must know just how daunting writing is for a translator.

I make definitive assertion: no one knows books better than we do. Readers, critics, editors—none of them know the weight of a word, the structure of a novel, its most intimate arrangements, as we translators do. I’ll go even farther: in many areas, writers themselves are less aware than we are of their work. Quite often their style, an instinctive reflection of their affect, gets away from them; they toss it onto the page, too busy to chase it down and make out the logic whose very workings we translators follow with a jeweler’s loupe.

Issue Fifteen of the Hugh Behm-Steinberg-edited Eleven Eleven, the literary journal from California College of the Arts, will soon be available. Meanwhile, for those who can’t wait, I’ll be reading for it at an exclusive sneak preview event this coming weekend in Oakland’s Beast Crawl, a free literary festival now in its second year. It will feature more than 140 writers in a single night spread out over three hours and twenty-six local galleries, bars, restaurants, cafés, and storefronts. The name “Beast Crawl” derives from the Pig Latin for Beast, which is East Bay, symbolized by the classic Oakland image of the giant cranes that stalk our shore.

This Beast has four legs, each lasting an hour and offering as many as a dozen readings to choose from.

• 1st leg: 5pm to 6pm
• 2nd leg: 6:30pm to 7:30pm
• 3rd leg: 8pm to 9pm
• 4th leg: 9pm to 2am (After Party)

There’s a half hour break between literary legs for socializing and relocating to a new venue before the next reading begins. Crawl maps listing all the venues, curators, legs, and after-party locations are available online.

Eleven Eleven’s event, entitled “Four out of Fifteen,” is in the second leg of the crawl, and starting at 6:30, I’ll be reading alongside Monica Mody, Tedd Fluffqvist Trees (aka Ted Rees) and Caitlin Myer at the exquisite SomaR bar: 1727 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, CA. See you all Saturday, July 6^th!

Subtropics Issue 16 (Spring/Summer 2013) is now available, and my contribution to it can be read in its entirety online: a translation of Jean Ferry’s story “La Maison Bourgenew,” first published in the August 1953 issue of La (Nouvelle) Nouvelle Revue Française, the eighth issue of the august Gallimard house organ’s postwar resumption under the editorship of Jean Paulhan. As can be seen from the cover below, that issue was a litany of interesting names: playwright Paul Claudel, novelist Jean Giono, poet Jean Follain, an essay by Maurice Blanchot, reviews by Michel Butor and Roger Nimier, André Pieyre de Mandiargues (in his capacity as regular chronicler), and Pierre Leyris’ classic feats of translation: Gerard Manley Hopkins in French (“faucon-Phaeton” for “dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon” remains a personal favorite).

Old issues can be such a grab bag of goodies. Here’s hoping Subtropics #16 will age just as well. All my thanks to David Leavitt and the Subtropics team at UF Gainesville, where I have been blessed with being a fairly regular contributor. This marks my fourth translation to appear in its pages since Bernard Quiriny’s “A Guide to Famous Stabbings” (still available in its entirety online) in early 2010 (Issue 9 Winter/Spring 2010), followed by Paul Willems’ “Cherepish” (Issue 13 Winter 2012) and Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s “Final Residence” (Issue 14 Spring/Summer 2012).

I owe my title for Ferry’s story “La Maison Bourgenew” to Simon Watson Taylor, who in his 1968 anthology French Writing Today published the only other translation of the story in English (his own). Watson Taylor (1923-2005) was an English actor and the secretary of the British Surrealist Group, who edited the English language surrealist review Free Union. He translated Breton’s nonfiction and plays by Boris Vian, as well as works by Artaud, Louis Aragon, and Alfred Jarry. He also co-edited, with Roger Shattuck, the  famous May-June 1960 special issue of Barney Rosset’s Evergreen Review devoted to ’Pataphysics.

In his memoirs, Taylor refers to Ferry as a friend. Standing on the shoulders of Watson Taylor’s freeflowing version, I can only hope to have brought my own slightly different sensibility to it.

I think of Ferry’s tale as a take on Shangri-La. It’s one of the two more fully standalone tales he ever wrote, ones that feel like full-fledged stories in a more traditional sense, rather than sketches—the other being the oft-anthologized “The Society Tiger.” In 1991, Claude Andrieux adapted the story into a prizewinning short film (his first), which can also be watched online, though do yourself a favor—read the story first.

Should Ferry’s name seem familiar, he has been my next big project (see the Forthcoming link in the left sidebar). So far, besides Subtropics, I’ve published his work in Weird Fiction Review and The Coffin Factory, with forthcoming pieces in Anomalous (#9), Birkensnake (#6), and elsewhere. Ferry (1906-1974) was something of a 20^th century touche-à-tout, on the fringes of France’s great literary schools: ’Pataphysician, Surrealist, Oulipian, fantasist.  A career screenwriter, best known for his collaborations with Clouzot, Buñuel, Louis Malle, and Georges Franju, he was also considered, in his day, the greatest specialist in the works of Proust’s neighbor, Raymond Roussel.

Jean Paulhan published Ferry’s only book of prose fiction, The Conductor, in 1953 at Gallimard. Recently brought back into print by Éditions Finitude, it will be published in English for the first time by Wakefield Press this fall in my translation. There’s a bit more recent good news about this book that I’m not able to share yet, so… stay tuned!

Hearty congratulations to my fellow winners for this year’s John Dryden Translation Prize!

• First prize: Francis Jones, Ivan V Lalić (Serbo-Croat), Early Poems
• Third prize: Adam Elgar, Alessandra Lavagnino (Italian): The Mother of the Prophet
• Commendation: Angus Turvill, Hisashi Inoue (Japanese):  House up the River

I’m delighted to announce is the second time I’ve placed (with midcentury French fantastical fiction) in the yearly competition sponsored by the British Comparative Literature Association and the British Centre for Literary Translation. In 2010 I took first place with André Pieyre de Mandiargues’ “The Red Loaf,” since published in Words Without Borders, and this time I took second with Marcel Brion’s “La Capitana” (as yet unpublished).

All glory to Lauren Evashenk, who penned a winning piece about me for USC’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences site. Merci beaucoup to her and photomaster Vince Passaro for making me look good!

Huge if belated congratulations to all my fellow winners of 2013 English PEN grants! Sixteen projects (books + publishers) were selected for funding via the PEN Translates! program, which

awards grants to UK publishers for translation costs and is supported by Arts Council England. English PEN accepts submissions of fiction (including children’s literature), non-fiction, poetry, prose or plays (for print edition), but not magazines, in all languages.  The main criteria for assessment are literary quality, strength of the publishing project and making a contribution to literary diversity.  Titles are selected from a long list assessed and reviewed by an expert panel chaired by English PEN trustee and professional translator, Ros Schwartz.

I’ll be working with Tartarus Press on one of my dream projects: editing and translating an anthology of French and Belgian fantastical tales from 1940 to the present, tentatively entitled I Do Not Write to be Believed.

The PEN Translates! grants cover an impressive range of languages, with French coming in first at 4 books, followed by Spanish with 3, and Chinese and German with 2 each. Other languages represented include Occitan, Polish, Farsi, Portuguese, and Hebrew. I’m also proud to report that indie publishers scooped both grants and in the prize category for the PEN Promotes! program.

The English original of H.V. Chao’s short story “My Father’s Hand” is now available for the first time in print in the latest issue (#173) of Canadian litmag The Antigonish Review (Spring 2013). Spring comes late to Canada… hence the funereal cover.

where for the last month I have enjoyed a residency courtesy of the Villa Gillet and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in NY. As part of my duties, I gave a translation workshop on Friday, May 31 to this year’s talented class of graduating students in NYU’s Master’s in French translation program, conceived of and run by Emmanuelle Ertel. It was part of the Villa’s annual festival, Les Assises Internationales du Roman.

I was housed in Les Subsistances. I blogged about it and the festival for French Culture, the website of the Cultural Services. My life here has been pleasantly low-key: rain or shine, I spend much of the day, nose to the grindstone, in the room I describe in that article. I often lunch out, instead of dinner–it’s cheaper, the set menus make for a pleasingly complete culinary experience. The walk to lunch and back breaks up the day, allowing me to see the various neighborhoods of Lyon. Perhaps more, someday, on various author visits.

Lisa Carter, owner and founder Intralingo, who profiled me in at her site, is hosting a virtual literary salon on Saturday, June 29^th to celebrate the launch of The House of Impossible Loves, which she translated. It is the first novel for adults by prizewinning Spanish YA author Cristina López Barrio.

You’ll be able to e-meet the author, translator and acquiring editor Christina Morgan in a live online conversation and book giveaway. Invite your friends, bring your questions and join the discussion! For more information about the participants and to register for this complimentary online event, go to www.intralingo.com