EDWARD GAUVIN

So I got the latest issue of PEN America in the mail yesterday, #16. Turns out I’m in it! I had no idea, but—cool!

Or rather, my translation of David B. and Jean-Pierre Filiu is: the first chapter from the recent Best of Enemies, an excerpt that puts quotes from Cheney and Bush into the mouths of Enkidu and Gilgamesh, and ends on a tableau comparing the human pyramids of Abu Ghraib to the Sumerian Stele of the Vultures.

The theme of this issue is Teachers. For a moment, I’m going to be one of those annoying people who say things like, that song about breaking up came out just when I was going through a bad breakup in my life, and it’s like the artist wrote it especially for me! But teaching has been much on my mind of late, since this fall is the first time I’ve had to in ten years, and my first time ever teaching French. There are also neat pieces by Harry Mathews, Julio Cortázar, John Cage, Etgar Keret, Margaret Atwood, and a comic by Brian Evensonand Zak Sally. Check it out!

A Chinese Life is getting some notice, at Comic Book Resources and from Brit comics guru Paul Gravett. On his August Previews page, Gravett also draws attention to Little White Duck: A Childhood in China, a graphic novel from Lerner. Lerner published my translation of A Game for Swallows, to which Gravett also gives the nod. Little White Duck, by Na Liu and her husband, artist Andrés Vera Martínez, coming from a female perspective, would make a great companion read to A Chinese Life. From the publisher:

The world is changing for two girls in China in the 1970s. Da Qin – Big Piano – and her younger sister, Xiao Qin – Little Piano- live in the city of Wuhan with their parents. For decades, China’s government had kept the country separated from the rest of the world. When their country’s leader, Chairman Mao, dies, new opportunities begin to emerge. Da Qin and Xiao Qin soon learn that their childhood will be much different than the upbringing their parents experienced. Eight short stories – based on the author’s own life – give readers a unique look at what it was like to grow up in China during this important time in history.

Come join comics writer Fabien Vehlmann as he reads from the far-future SF graphic novel The Last Days of an Immortal, with art by Gwen de Bonneval!

Two tour dates in L.A. so far:

• Sunday, 9/23, 8pm at the artspace Machine Project in Echo Park: 1200 D North Alvarado, Los Angeles, CA 90026 | 213-483-8761

• Monday, 9/24, 4:30pm at the University of Southern California, Taper Hall Room 420. 3501 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089

Prolific French comics and animation writer Fabien Vehlmann will read from a projection of his digital graphic novel The Last Days of an Immortal, now available at Comixology (print version hits stores in October from Archaia Entertainment). Vehlmann wrote, and Gwen de Bonneval provided the art for this contemplative far-future science fiction tale, reminiscent of the work of Stanislaw Lem, which probes issues of genocide, first contact, cloning, and mortality. It took top prize for best graphic novel at the international science fiction convention Utopiales.

Readings will be followed by an audience Q&A. Refreshements will be served.

Solé cross-sections Fabien Vehlmann, finding references to Fluide glacial.

Fabien Vehlmann has written in almost every comics genre, from long-running serials (Seuls, Spirou & Fantasio), humor (Dieu qui pue Dieu qui pète), and fantasy (Wondertown) to history (Le Marquis d’Anaon) and adventure (Voyage en Satanie). Several of his graphic novels have appeared in English: The Island of 10,000 Graves (Fantagraphics), Green Manor (Cinebook), Seven Psychopaths (BOOM! Studios). His eclecticism has led him to collaborate with many artists with many different styles. His work in animation includes the series Avez-vous déjà vu? with Alain Chabat and the feature film Un monde à nous with Balekdjian. He is one of the co-founders of the comics creators union (SNAC).

just dropped in stores this month, all 700 pages of it. Originally published in 3 volumes from 2009 to last year, this hybrid of personal and national memoir chronicles what is perhaps one of the most recent and massive dramatic upheavals in global history that most of us in the West still know very little about. And yet the last half-century of China’s development is something that surely affects us all already. As publisher Self Made Hero puts it:

“Li Kunwu spent more than 30 years as a state artist for the Communist Party. He saw firsthand what was happening to his family, his neighbors, and his homeland during this extraordinary time. Working with French diplomat Philippe Ôtié, the artist has created a memoir of self and state, a rich, very human account of a major historical moment with contemporary consequences.”

In this graphic novel, the modern Middle Kingdom, closed for so long, opens at last to provide a very personal glimpse. Li’s supple technique ranges from echoes of traditional art, flawless propaganda reproductions, and an original, often tortured expressionist style where distortions in face and figure reflect inner turmoil. One of many stunning achievements in art and story is the way he makes palpably credible just how it is so many people thought and acted as one. When the first volume ends with an announcement of Mao’s death, the grief and terror of the populace is one of the book’s most harrowing moments. This trauma is echoed in the second book with the death of Li’s father, a Party official. Despite being interned in a re-education camp for ten years, his last words to his son are, heartbreakingly, no personal message but a political exhortation toward the Party. The personal and political are intertwined in a way we in the West have too long had the perilous luxury of ignoring.

Li and Ôtié © Photo Alain Dewez - Le Soir de Bruxelles

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is strewn with scraps of energy bar wrappers. Six of us share twelve chairs on casters, usually disposed with random cliquishness, like strangers at a cocktail party. There are three desktops and two printers, none of which work; a dead phone, and through a locked door the gurgle of a boiler. Equipment has crawled here to die: monitors, bookends, the hard discarded core of a roll of scotch tape… The unlabeled cabinets hold umbrellas, tote bags, stacks of dittos; who can say if these were stored this morning or left behind last year? A few coffee mugs, ringed with ageless residue, pin down used paper plates in an upended box top by the door.

Unattended

children will be

given espresso

and a free puppy.

reads a photocopied sign. On one shelf old pedagogies slump mummified in old editions beside paperback classics used bookstores would refuse. The torn cardboard sleeve of a case of Diet Coke completes the picture.

The office is tucked far from anywhere students would logically look, in a corner of the Asian Studies warren two floors above the French department. It is no office, but a den; it has no odor but reeks visually of nervous sweat, all-nighters, desperation, deadlines, bachelorhood; it is a windowless bunker with fickle cell and wifi reception where you would barricade yourself, with planks of particle board and crippled chairs, against the rabid hordes. Or else the makeshift HQ of reporters in the field, where stringers stop to wire stories and check the telex. We need a cot in here, a crank radio, and a kit in a metal box with a large red cross.

UPDATE: The computers and printers now work.

1) Show us Koyaanisqatsi, or Pitch Black.

2) Get the Worf poster I ordered for him.

3) See Star Trek Into Darkness.

4) Go hydrobiking with us in Long Beach.

5) Look for housing in LA.

6) Text or call me out of the blue.

7) Suggest a bite at Ensenada Best Fish Taco.

8 ) Show up harassed by L.A. traffic.

9) Turn 51.

10)

RIP, Leonard Pung.

The family of Leonard Pung and The Master of Professional Writing (MPW) Program at the University of Southern California, where Leonard was a student, are hosting a gathering in memory of Leonard. Dr. Leonard Weston, Leonard’s father, and Carolyn Weston, his step-mother. All are welcome. The gathering will be held on Sunday, September 16, 2012 @ 2:00 p.m. at the Fishbowl Chapel, University Religious Center (URC), University of Southern California, 835 W. 34th Street in Los Angeles. I will be there wearing a Hawaiian shirt to honor the late Leonard’s beloved fashion choice. There will in fact be a Hawaiian shirt contingent.

The Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop class of 2009 has started a Leonard Pung scholarship for a Clarion student 40 years old or older. It’s not yet listed at the Clarion Website, but you can already donate to the fund by donating to the Clarion Foundation and specifying that your gift is for the Leonard Pung Scholarship.

from Publishers’ Weekly for Zeina Abirached’s A Game for Swallows:

“Abirached’s B&W inks offer a stark contrast in hard, geometric patterns that make images at once abstract and fully representative of her childhood memories. The characters, despite their cartoonish nature, show a variety of emotions, and Abirached’s gift for pacing makes tense moments appropriately full of anxiety. It is as often the space she leaves empty as the drawings themselves that tell the story—and each detail offered provides insight into the horrors of growing up in a war zone. A winner for young readers and adults alike.”

This year’s Ignatz nominations are in, up for Outstanding Story is Ludovic Debeurme’s U.S. debut Lucille, which came out last year from Top Shelf to stunning reviews! I recently wrote a bit about translating it and its forthcoming sequel Renée at Weird Fiction Review.

The Ignatz Awards, named for the brick-wielding mouse in George Herriman’s classic strip Krazy Kat, are intended to recognize outstanding achievements in comics and cartooning by small press creators or creator-owned projects published by larger publishers. Recipients are determined by attendees at Bethesda’s annual Small Press Expo (SPX), a weekend convention and tradeshow showcasing creator-owned comics. Nominations are made by a five-member jury of comic book professionals.

After being left untouched for nigh on a year, the Translations page (see lower left for link) is now up to date at last, thanks to the efforts of my dog, who is very tired from all that typing.

In honor of the late enigmatic nomad and wandering guerrilla of art, I’d like to share the opening to a book that will probably never be translated: Chris Marker’s first and only novel. Le cœur net (mystifyingly rendered as The Forthright Spirit on Wikipedia and in The Washington Post, but probably someone knows something I don’t) takes its title from a standard expression that has been a perennial thorn in translators’ sides, en avoir le cœur net. Usually “mind” is swapped in for cœur, or heart, resulting in “to be clear in one’s mind” or “get peace of mind” about something, though it has been translated more colloquially as “to get to the bottom” of something, or “to clear [the matter] up.” Another tack is to go with net, or clean, and “make a clean breast” of things.

Marker’s novel was first published by the prestigious literary house Le Seuil in 1949; he was also the editorial director for their Petite Planète imprint. Though it has since been reprinted at least twice, by Le Club Français du Livre and La Petite Ourse, Marker himself disowned and suppressed it (which is why I venture that no translation of it will be legally published anytime soon). Concerning as it does the reminiscences of Agyre, the ghost of a former pilot, it’s hard to read now without hearing echoes (heralds?) of Marker’s most famous work, La Jetée. Probably its most often quoted line is the eerily apt: “Dying is, at most, the opposite of being born. The opposite of living remains to be found.”

“An accident is nothing, quite precisely nothing. There’s the moment before, when the plane leaves the runway, when a certain quality of silence around it, a certain anticipation in the light, hides it from movement, a petrifying fountain (like an angel pressed for time who plucks the souls from men, like the blindfold placed on a condemned man seconds before death)—and the moment after, when the plane is no more than a dart in the ground, a fried grasshopper, a cross… Between the two, nothing.

You’re amazed to have seen it coming. You know, you’re ready to swear that the moment the plane took off you expected the accident, and all the rest just met your expectations. And yet you didn’t move, or make a sound. The accident is a fakir: it lulls you to pull off its feats. Sometimes all you have to do is say something, reach out your hand, to ward off its work.”