EDWARD GAUVIN

This brief text, posted here shortly after it was translated on 1/15, will appear, along with other selected texts by Roland Jaccard, in a 2009 issue of Absinthe: New European Writing, thanks to editor Dwayne Hayes, in a slightly altered form, thanks to a generous read by Barbara Harshav.  The author was kind enough to send me, in thanks, a copy of his latest book, a musing on Louise Brooks. I confess to not understanding the French fetish for Louise Brooks, which approaches their national love of Jerry Lewis, and remains less famous only because that silent actress hasn’t the household-name value of the comedian… perhaps this book will enlighten me.

Catching up with reviews… The Onion AV Club’s Comics Panel covers Lewis Trondheim’s Kaput & Zösky and Cyril Pedrosa’s Three Shadows.

I read one of Trondheim’s Lapinot books (part of my NYCC swag pile). V. enjoyable: I’d put it on a par with a really clever sitcom, but edgier. Handles multiple storylines well, sustaining tension throughout. Quick and witty neurotic dialogue among citydwellers and, floating over it all, the delicious and slightly despairing nastiness of a pessimistic author toying with his characters.

Trondheim also had a funny sketchbook page on his blog presenting overheard conversation “traduit de l’américain”: “J’ai eu le mal de mer à cause des vagues.” Always amusing to have the redundancies of national speech patterns shoved in one’s face through the defamiliarizing mechanism of a foreign tongue. (I can’t link to it anymore; he fades old pages out and takes them down.)

So much for updating more regularly… the perennial life vs. blog conflict, you might say. Not to be mistaken for life vs. art , which is a matter of expectations–the former is purely a matter of time.

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?

Dude, I’m in New York Magazine. Color me astonished. Between Lou Reed and Nicole Kidman. Check it.

Kudos and thanks to Mr. Pedrosa and the team at First Second.

A much belated announcement that the Okko hardcover, collecting the four gorgeous issues of the Cycle of Water, has been out for two months from Archaia Studios Press, so why don’t you own it yet? It is sumptuous, handsome, and in the right lighting, or understanding hands, even sensual, redolent of such Eastern spices as were bestowed upon the Lord by road-weary heathen kings. It fine binding creaks discreetly when you open it for the first time, and inside a voyage awaits like that of Keats looking into Chapman’s Homer. The dun and beige scheme of its covers mimics brass plate that gives burnished reflection of the wondering reader.  Preview the first issue of the next arc, the Cycle of Earth, here. Everything Archaia pretty much available here.  Support my colleagues and an indie comics company.

Maestro Alexis Siegel namechecks me in an insightful article, chock full of excellent examples, on the puns and pratfalls of comics translation, at the First Second blog. Love from the sensei humbles the student. An excellent link may be found therein to an Anthea Bell article from The Telegraph. This woman is responsible for the English rendition of one of my favorite books, Sebald’s Austerlitz. But before that, she was all about Asterix–in the comics world, translations legendary as Beckett’s own of Godot. There is something in these two pieces that points toward the hope and possibility of actually helpful essays on this admittedly very specialized subgenre of a marginalized literary activity. The possibility of saying anything useful in the field had defeated me, but once again, teacher shows the way. I liken it to the pointer-laden craft approach of this article.

Staying with First Second Books for a moment, my lucky editrix will be leaving the company to pursue a full-time children’s dream at Roaring Brook. Sniff! I’ll miss her. She’ll be gone by the time Cyril Pedrosa’s Three Shadows comes out in April, right before NY Comic-Con. Congrats to the French original which was one of five to pick up an audience favorite prize, the Must-Read, at Angouleme: the biggest comics festival in the world.

Last but definitely not least, the new February Words Without Borders, the second graphics issue in what may become a n annual tradition, is a treasure trove featuring an interview with Gipi and a Korean childhood favorite from Heinz Insu Fenkl.  Editor Samantha Schnee struts out two South American comics, and Dupuy (of Dupuy & Berberian, the team behind Monsieur Jean, who took Angouleme’s top prize this year), has a whimsical confection about a world-traveling rabbit.  I’m elated to have two new comics translations, collage from Lebanon and comedy from Gabon, appear amongst such riches (at this point there are still some typos in them).

The cruel man instinctively understands that humanism is the senile daydream of winded nations who haven’t enough strength left to come to terms with the idea of universal hatred, who cannot bear to think history condemned to repeating the tragedy of Cain and Abel.

The cruel man believes the most contemptible of men is he who needs the respect of others in order to respect himself.

The cruel man puts us on our guard: girls are dangerous playthings. Even the sweetest leave a bitter aftertaste.

The cruel man concedes a single merit to literature: to raise the reader toward the heights of lucidity, only to hurl him into the void.

The cruel man detests memories, especially good ones.

The cruel man recommends suicide to all when they no longer find favor in their own eyes.

The cruel man aggravates his wound.

The cruel man deems it shameful to cling to life. The best thing to do upon finding oneself alive is to bow out.

The cruel man knows he will not overcome his own suffering by trying to ease that of others. Thus he pays but vague attention to it.

The cruel man always feigns the feelings he gives the illusion of actually experiencing, and never experiences what he manages to feign.

The cruel man abhors the cynic’s every pose, starting with his own.

Roland Jaccard, Cioran et compagnie (Presses Universitaires de France, 2005)

Pourquoi Pierre Menard est-il le traducteur parfait?

a) Parce qu’il respecte les mots de l’auteur au point du plagiat

b) Parce que son travail demeure inachevé—car une traduction n’est jamais finie

c) Parce qu’il fait un travail de recherche minutieux

d) Parce qu’il se soucie de ce que l’auteur veut dire tout en tenant compte du nouveau contexte auquel il livre son ouvrage

The ALTA Conference 2007 just ended Sunday, and I’m sad. I couldn’t possibly do it justice. Bits of a most memorable time will probably trickle their way into other posts.

A mouse has run, my story’s done. Just felt like letting you know.

L’année prochaine à Minneapolis!

… translating Archaia Studios Press’ series The Killer by Jacamon (art!) and Matz (words!), with issue #5,

released back to back two weeks ago with issue #6

to grateful exclamation. The start of this new arc, “The Debt”, is a good place for new readers to jump on. Reviews have been ecstatic, especially over the NY scenes in #6, though not a single critic has neglected to bewail Archaia’s lateness in delivering what seems their best-loved translated title. Nor am I privy to what editorial congestion held up timely publication–but it wasn’t this translator! Writer Matz provided Archaia with his own translations of his work, which they asked me to brush up. Working on this series has been a crash course in concise dialogue. The other two Archaia series I work on, Okko and The Secret History, the former with its flourishes of formal diction, and the latter with its historical freight, both allow more leeway in narration than the clipped tone of The Killer. The rule of thumb that English is 15% more concise than French does not apply to slang (and in my experience applies more to the formal French of nonfiction and newspapers than to the literary idiolects authors invent to express largely personal concepts). » Read the rest of this entry «