EDWARD GAUVIN

It was during this time, when low waistlines and oblong spectacles became ubiquitous—when the housing market was referred to as a “bubble”—as if a soap-water whimsy enclosing the house and groomed lawn known as the “American Dream”—and fifty years of headlong spending were coming to a fateful end (for whom else did the rest of the world rely on to buy the fruits of their labors but eager Americans), that the currency itself became progressively, even surreptitiously, more cartoonish, as if money, no longer able to assume the almighty powers attributed to it, were caving in to irony and lampoon. A few years after imaginary super-heroes made their first appearances on stamps as symbols of a national heritage, famous newspaper caricaturists were invited to submit their interpretations of past presidents for banknotes on which denominations appeared, grotesquely enlarged for unambiguous legibility, in such garish inks as orange and purple, as if to admit, if not legitimize, the irresponsibility, the essential impunity, with which we had waved them hamfistedly around.

And just in time to stop the true love I foolishly betrayed with her best friend (unbeknownst to me, for she was in disguise that tragic night) from marrying the evil second cousin removed I never knew I had–who happens to look just like me (or was it the surgery after the submarine accident?), and be my sister’s secret lover! Stay tuned as the backstory behind my two-month disappearance is doled out in suspenseful glimpses over the next few dramatic blogisodes!

(You may, of course, also have heard about the blogger’s guild strike that kept me away from my keypad. Workers of the world etc.)

Starting this Friday the 18^th at 10am EST, you—yes, you too! Even you! No, except for you, in the back there—can find me at Booth 1960 of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center for the 2008 New York Comic Con, tending handsome Eurocomics for a consortium of French publishers (à savoir le Bureau International de l’Édition Française). I’ll be there till the madness winds down Sunday evening. Come one, come all, drop by and I’ll get someone French to turn his or her nose up at your Superman tee as we try to interest you in fine and lavish hardcovers for the discerning artiste. No, we won’t share cheese from our platters, but your food offerings are welcome.

As a result of the madness, I will not be answering emails. Stop sending me emails. Yes, that means you in the back there. I am on contact hiatus until the craziness is over.

That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Also check out the booths of my erstwhile employers Archaia Studios Press (1713) and First Second Books :01!

Silk Road has picked up my translation of Mercedes Deambrosis’ short story “A Spotless Marriage” from the collection La Promenade de délices for their Spring 2008 issue.

Epiphany is publishing my translation of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s “Écorcheville” from the collection Singe savant tabassé par deux clowns for their Spring 2008 issue. UPDATE: Epiphany has included the following in the latest newsletter concerning the upcoming issue: “the first North American appearance in print of the astonishing  Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, in a story, brilliantly translated by Edward Gauvin, about the invention of a coin-operated ‘execution machine’ in a small French village and just why you might—or might not—want the advice of a clairvoyant parrot.”

The Café Irreal will feature my translation of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s “The Pavilion and the Lime Tree” from the collection of the same name, Le Kiosque et le tilleul, in their May 2008 issue.

The 2008 Two Lines annual will include my translation of Chapter 2 from Patrick Besson’s novel Les Frères de la Consolation, which I was lucky enough to give a reading of at last November’s ALTA conference.

I’m overjoyed to report these acceptances: these pieces were all turned down multiple places before finding homes thanks to kind editors, whom I shower with immeasurable thanks.

I’m especially delighted to have doubled, in the last month, the amount of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud available in English. He’s sort of my pet project author—a fabulist of considerable repute in France whom I’ve been trying to smuggle into my language for some time now. Two earlier stories others can be found online here and here, in case you’re interested. The Banff Centre has been kind enough to grant me a residency this June to continue work on a book-length anthology of stories drawn from several of his collections—an introductory reader of sorts, in which I hope to interest publishers. Any editors reading this, by chance?