A Different Stripe

Guest post: An Interview with The True Deceiver

Today we are very lucky to have Kenny Brechner, of DDG Booksellers in Farmington, Maine (an independent shop that is surely among the treasures of the state), offering up a guest post. Kenny somehow managed to score an interview with that fierce and prickly book, The True Deceiver. What dark magic he used to entice this work to speak with him, we'll never know. All we can say that the answers it gives show the book to be as gnomic as that great interview dissimulator, Bob Dylan. [microphone photo: Keith Bloomfield via Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons usage.]

 This interview originally ran on Three Percent, "a resource for international literature at the University of Rochester," as part of the run-up for the Best Translated Book Award, for which The True Deceiver has been long listed. To read the complete post, along with Kenny Brechner's endorsement of the book, visit Three Percent.

KB: Do you feel that this BTBA [Best Translated Book Award] will be conducted fairly?

True Deceiver: “You know nothing about Fair Play!”

KB: Perhaps not, but how can the awards committee reach truth?

True Deceiver: “The truth needs to be hammered in with iron spikes, but no one can drive nails into a mattress.”

KB: I see. Perhaps you’re right and the committee will need to take a firm line. Now do you feel that Tomas Teal handled his translation of you properly, considering how taut the prose is?

True Deceiver: “Cluttering the ground with Flowery Rabbits would have been unthinkable”.

KB: I see. Now if you had a word for a judge what would it be?

True Deceiver: “He must understand how hard I try, all the time, to put everything I do to a strict test—every act, every word I choose instead of a different word.”

KB: Is there any other objective data that would make the selection of any book other than yourself as the BTBA winner a danger to the future well being of the human enterprise?

True Deceiver: “I’ve given security where there was no security, no direction, Nothing. I provide safety!”

KB: I really appreciate your willingness to go on record and clarify these points. The stakes are terrifying.

True Deceiver: “I can assure you that you needn’t be nervous, there’s no cause for alarm.”

KB: I guess there’s nothing else to be said on the matter!

True Deceiver: “We’ve done what matters most.”

KB: Well I certainly hope so, for all human interconnection involves translation, and without an exploration of its dark possibilities we should all be much the poorer. And, if you don’t mind my saying so, you really add something vital to the whole of Tove Jansson’s sublime body of work. After all the Moomins may demonstrate the delightful exercise of freedom, but your pages reveal both the cost and the means of losing it.

True Deceiver: “Thank you for calling.”

The True Deceiver
by Tove Jansson
Translated by Thomas Teal
Introduction by Ali Smith

"As far back as anyone could remember, there hadn’t been this much snow."

© Tove Jansson (original cover art for The True Deceiver)

It had been snowing along the coast for a month. As far back as anyone could remember, there hadn’t been this much snow, this steady snow piling up against doors and windows and weighing down roofs and never stopping even for an hour. Paths filled with snow as quickly as they were shovelled out. The cold made work in the boat sheds impossible. People woke up late because there was no longer any morning. The village lay soundless under untouched snow until the children were let out and dug tunnels and caves and shrieked and were left to themselves. They were forbidden to throw snowballs at Katri Kling’s window but did it anyway. She lived in the attic over the storekeeper’s shop with her brother Mats and her big dog that had no name. Before dawn she would go out with the dog and walk down the village street towards the lighthouse on the point. She did this every morning, and people starting to get up would say, It’s still snowing and there she goes again with her dog and she’s wearing her wolfskin collar. It’s unnatural not giving your dog a name; all dogs should have names.

A passage from the opening of Tove Jansson's The True Deceiver, posted in honor of the record snowfall we've had in New York this winter, as well as the inclusion of the novel in this year's longlist for the Best Translated Book Award, (one of two NYRB Classics that made the cut—the other is Albert Cossery's The Jokers).

More on the Best Translated Book Award
Damion Searls on Tove Jansson in Harper's

40 years after publication, J.G. Farrell's Troubles wins the "Lost" Man Booker Prize

If you're wondering why the Man Booker committee decided to bestow this prize a few years later than might have been expected, here's the lowdown: In the first years of the Booker's history, prizes were awarded the year after publication (the 1970 prize was given to a book published in 1969). But in 1971 the rules changed, and the prize was given to books published in the year named in the prize  (the 1971 Booker was given to a book published in 1971). But wait, hey—what about books published in 1970? Well, no one really cared because the prize had yet to become as big a deal to as it has since morphed into. It took Peter Straus, Booker archivist, to realize that something was fishy and to remedy the situation and propose the "Lost" [Man] Booker Prize.

We'd like to think that our nagging getting out the vote helped Troubles win the Lost Man Booker Prize with more than double the votes of any other shortlisted book.

Troubles is set in a crumbling Irish hotel, but we didn't realize until leafing through the recently released J.G. Farrell in His Own Words, that Farrell worked on the book while visiting the US and that one of the inspirations for Troubles's troubled Majestic Hotel was located on Block Island, off the coast of New Hampshire Rhode Island:

"While here I've made another 'fresh start' on my book—partly inspired by the charred remains of the Ocean View Hotel which stands, or stood, on a cliff overhanging the old harbour where the ferry comes in. It burned down a year or so ago."

 

The Ocean View Hotel, from the breakwater, New York Public Library

A 1902 New York Times article (rounding up the best places to summer on Block Island) described the Ocean View as "a liberally conducted house, [which] has numbered among its guests Presidents, Supreme Court Justices, diplomats, Senators, and Congressmen." Today a nature sanctuary stands on the ruins of the hotel.

Farrell's letters also show his initial confidence in the worth of Troubles:

7 July 1969

"I still haven't heard what anyone thinks of Troubles...Can it be that it's really no good? In spite of everything, I find this hard to believe. I've never felt as confident about a book as about this one and if it should be judged to be mediocre then it means that my judgement has seized up."

and later frustration during what appears to have been a very long and involved process of cutting many passages from its text.

27 March 1970

"Troubles went off to the printer a couple of weeks ago at long last—I was beginning to think it would never get there. I understand that they plan to publish it in September. However, to say that excitement is running high in the book world about its forthcoming appearance would be an exaggeration. Indeed, excitement seems to be running low here, and even lower in the US where, after months of study and a course of electric shock treatment the editor in chief of Harper and Row reached the conclusion that he didn't know whether he wanted it or not."

It's also fun to find out, via these collected letters, the types of books and movies Farrell was consuming while writing and editing Troubles: Cold Comfort Farm, Thomas Hardy ("barmy"), The Garden of Finzi-Continis, Easy Rider. He also, delightfully, recommends Olivia Manning. Earlier he writes: "I've been reading Olivia Manning's splendid Balkan Trilogy set in Bucharest and enjoying it guiltily when I should be writing me own novels."

Farrell died in 1979—had he lived he would be 75 years old now and no doubt pleased to find his early assessment of what would come to be the first volume of his Empire Trilogy (the two other volumes are The Siege of Krishnapur, which won the Booker Prize outright in 1973 and The Singapore Grip) so heartily justified.

The "Lost Booker" and J.G. Farrell

Lavinia Greacen is the author of a biography of J.G. Farrell, J.G. Farrell: The Making of a Writer, and the editor of the recent volume J.G. Farrell in His Own Words: Selected Letters and Diaries (to which John Banville provided an introduction). She recently sent out a letter to spread word that Farrell's novel Troubles is one of six books shortlisted for the Lost Booker Prize of 1970.

To vote for Troubles, visit the Booker Prize website.

*****

Last week the Irish Embassy in London invited Cork University Press to launch JG Farrell in His Own Words, his Selected Letters and Diaries, which was edited by me. The Ambassador made an excellent speech, and the packed event was a great success.

The timing could not have been better. The following day JG Farrell made the Lost Man Booker Prize shortlist with Troubles, his novel set in Ireland, which was subsequently awarded the Faber Prize. It is the first book of his acclaimed Empire Trilogy.

The "Lost" Man Booker is a one-off prize to honour the books which missed out on the opportunity to win the Booker Prize in 1971. That year, just two years after it began, the Booker Prize ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became-as it is today-a prize for the best novel of the year of publication. As a result a wealth of fiction published for much of 1970 fell through the net. Twenty-one novels were chosen last month for the longlist, and now six are on the shortlist.

J.G. Farrell—known to his friends as Jim—was drowned on August 11, 1979 when he was swept off rocks by a sudden storm while fishing in West Cork. He was in his early forties. "Had he not sadly died so young," remarked Salman Rushdie in 2008, "there is no question that he would today be one of the really major novelists of the English language. The three novels that he did leave are all in their different way extraordinary."

The winner will be decided by public vote, and this closes-quite soon-on 23 April 2010. The result will be announced on 19 May.

If you feel that Irish author JG Farrell deserves to win, then please vote by using the link below. Please circulate this email widely, too, because every single vote for Farrell is valuable!

www.themanbookerprize.com/news/vote

 With best wishes from Ireland,
 Lavinia

*****

More

Sam Jordison writes about The Siege of Krishnapur, the second book of Farrell's Empire Trilogy, which did in fact win the Booker in 1973.

The Cork University Press blog posts some photographs of Farrell's grave, and of the house he moved into in Cork not long before his death.

A blue plaque for the author of The Book of Ebenezer Le Page

 

Enough death (although, we still have one more to mark), let's have some good news, shall we?

What do Giuseppe Mazzini, Natsume Soseki and Martin Van Buren have in common? They all have blue plaques affixed to their former residences in Great Britain. And, since last October, G.B. Edwards, who lived most of his life in relative obscurity and died in real obscurity—try finding a photograph of him—has one too. This is apparently the first blue plaque on Guernsey. It's doubtful that Ebenezer Le Page would have been impressed by something like this, but the rest of us can be.

More on The Book of Ebenezer Le Page [link] [link] [link]

Translation awards season

Photo: Caitlin Burke, via flickr

We haven't shared the good news, of which there is quite a bit:

Joel Rotenberg's translation of Stefan Zweig's Post-Office Girl is a finalist for the 2009 PEN Translation Prize

The late Douglas Parmée's translation of Guy de Maupassant's Afloat is a runner up for the French-American Foundation's Translation Prize

And Jamey Gambrell's translation of Vladimir Sorokin's Ice has been shortlisted for the Rossica Translation Prize, which honors excellence in translations from Russian

Monday Multimedia: Peter Coyote talks about Emmett Grogan and the state of the counterculture

Peter Coyote reads a bit from his essay about Emmett Grogan at Book Passage and then discusses is own path from the "bland East coast suburbs" to the heart of 60s counterculture, and about the current cultural moment.

Even if you're sick of hearing about the good old days of the sixties, when just about everyone was a believer in truth love and understanding and all of that—especially if you're sick of hearing about all of that—you should listen to Coyote talking about Grogan and the Diggers (later the "Free Family"), and their attempts at a truly radical remodeling of consumer-based society.

Counterpoint will be re-releasing Coyote's memoir Sleeping Where I Fall later in the year.

50 Outstanding Translations of the Last 50 Years

A list compiled by The Translator's Association of The Society of Authors (UK) in honor of its own fiftieth anniversary.

Two NYRB Classics are included.

#6: The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia, translated by Archibald Colquhoun (and Arthur Oliver)
#48: Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman, Life and Fate, translated by Robert Chandler

The Society of Authors, by the way, is a fabulous institution, which fulfills its mission "to protect the rights and further the interests of authors" fairly and with grace, acting as advocates for its members, and as representatives for many estates. As far as we know, there is no American sister institution, which is a shame.

Best of Booker:Last chance to vote for Siege of Krishnapur

It's the last week to vote for J.G. Farrell's Siege of Krishnapur as the Best Booker book ever (it's made a shortlist of six books). Though the 1973 winner may look like a long-shot, we can be heartened by a BBC story about an experiment done in a small English village, in which copies of all six finalist books were distributed and The Siege of Krishnapur beat favorite Midnight's Children. As reported on the Booker Prize site:
 

Despite being one of the earlier winners, the villagers called the book a "rip roaring yarn", enjoyed the humour and adventure, and likened it to the "Indiana Jones" films. Tim Samuels suggested the Best of the Booker award might bring the book back in to circulation after it had dropped off the radar for modern readers.

[when did the word "modern" come to mean anything that happened more than five years ago? is there some meaning drift happening, making "modern" a direct synonym for "contemporary"? maybe the shift is inevitable and we should stop being prescriptivists.]

We've finally tracked down Lavinia Greacen's Farrell biography, which turns up some other tidbits:

• Mary McCarthy and Edna O'Brien were judges that year
• John Banville was on the unofficial longlist; he would not win until 2005
• Iris Murdoch, who was the presumed winner, did not attend the award ceremony
• After criticizing the prize's sponsor in his acceptance speech, Farrell eased up on the company, which produced Tia Maria: "An acquired taste, perhaps, but delicious poured over vanilla ice-cream and served with a sprinkling of Ovaltine for the texture. I call it Sepoy's Surprise."

Vote here and spread the word!

The Best of the Booker: The Siege of Krishnapur

As we mentioned last month, the second "Best of the Booker" award will be given out this summer. Now the shortlist has been announced, and J.G. Farrell's Siege of Krishanpur (a creative retelling about seemingly hapless Brits during the Sepoy rebellion of 1857) is indeed one of the six finalists. Farrell is not as well known over here as some of the other names on the list (Rushdie, Gordimer, Carey, Coetzee, Barker), but his inclusion on the shortlist points to the importance of his "Empire Trilogy"—which also comprises Troubles (about Ireland) and The Singapore Grip.

Vote for The Siege of Krishnapur at themanbookerprize.com.

 Though the bookies aren't setting great odds for Farrell's book to win, its underdog status has brought out reevalutions from many intelligent fans.

One of the best discussions of The Siege comes from Sam Jordison at The Guardian books blog. He manages to touch on the book's humor, its pathos, why it isn't "guilty of 'cultural imbalance,'" and the debate still going on about the significance of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (for more on the rebellion—or mutiny, or "first war of independence"—see William Dalrympole's history The Last Mughal.)

Sam Jordison also reminds us what a tough-ass Farrell was: "At the ceremony he pointedly remarked that he was going to use the money they'd give him to research 'commercial exploitation' and noted that: 'Every year, the Booker brothers see their prize wash up a monster more horrid than the last.'" (Now where is our copy of Lavinia Greacen's Farrell biography so we can read more about this episode?)

Also rooting for Farrell is James Higgs, who writes about the book at the Telegraph.com, and also at his blog, 26 Books:

Farrell’s prose has a wonderful sense of place, and the disintegration of the community and its values is subtly conveyed by the writing. It is also wonderfully funny, with almost no character escaping Farrell’s scorn and ridicule.

The author of the Fleetofworlds blog remarks,

If I had to choose one book to take to a Desert Island it would be The Siege of Krishnapur. It is a work of genius. If you haven’t read it, I strongly suggest you do so. It is funny, heartbreaking, horrifying and touching, and essentially British - a damning critique of Empire which never resorts to mere Empire-bashing.

Tom at Omnivoracious, admitting to having read none of the books on the shortlist, nevertheless sends us some love, as do Eric Forbs at Goodbooksguide and the bookdwarf.