Category: Latest Post

Recap of NYU Event

A sincere thanks to Eliot Borenstein for the invitation and the introduction two weeks ago for my talk at the Jordan Center at NYU. And to Anastassia Kostrioukova for the recap and summary at the above link, which begins like this: “On April 3, 2015, the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia… Continue reading Recap of NYU Event

Communication, Literature, Translation

A couple of readers of a recent post of mine objected to my claim that literature makes very little use of the common tools of interpersonal communication. I suspect this is a simple case of miscommunication, not a disagreement about principle. Interpersonal communication makes use of a wide and rich spectrum of sensations, an extensive… Continue reading Communication, Literature, Translation

Deep Translation

I’m taking a little break from responding to comments readers have been sending about recent posts in order to think a little more deeply about the activity of translation, beyond, let’s say, the most comment use of the term as a means of finding equivalents across languages and cultures. Now I’m sure someone may find… Continue reading Deep Translation

That Damned Anna Karenina Again

Erik McDonald has expressed some doubts about my take on the quickly aging Gessen review of AK, so here goes–I’m quoting from his blog XIX vek, of which he sent me a snippet. “I personally love trying to figure out what’s causing a whole group of translators to read something differently than I read it… Continue reading That Damned Anna Karenina Again

Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7

I’m giving a couple of pre-concert talks for the Indianapolis Symphony, which is performing Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony, “Leningrad” on Friday, February 6 (and then again on the 7th in Carmel), under the direction of Krzysztof Urbański. It is such a perfect case of the changing fortunes of a musical work against the backdrop of world… Continue reading Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7

The Translator’s Answerability

My previous post on Masha Gessen’s review of the two new Anna Karenina translations, one each by Rosamund Bartlett and Marian Schwartz, attracted some criticisms. I’ll respond in a couple of posts to make each one shorter. John Cowan comments, “You write as if the translator had no responsibility to the author at all, and… Continue reading The Translator’s Answerability

The Translation Police arrest Anna Karenina

Masha Gessen’s review of the latest two Anna Karenina translations in the December 24, 2014 Sunday Book Review of the New York Times is a subtle example of what Eliot Weinberger once called the translation police at work. The translation police are those, according to Weinberger, “who write — to take an actual example —… Continue reading The Translation Police arrest Anna Karenina

Prehistoric Times

Alyson Waters has a fantastic translation of Eric Chevillard’s Prehistoric Times, which was published a couple of years back by Archipelago Books. I liked it so much that I reviewed it. Here is the first paragraph: “Under the influence of having just completed this book—and let me note at the outset that the influence is… Continue reading Prehistoric Times

More Substance

Okay, yes, that last post was a little fluffy, even if the quote is from a weighty personage, so here’s a bit more substance. In the book’s introduction, I make an extended comparison of the  images of the U.S. and the Russian Empire at about the time that Alexis de Tocqueville made the following memorable… Continue reading More Substance

Looking up to her window

In looking for images for the book cover for The Woman in the Window, I stumbled upon something both surprising and depressing at the same time. Most of the images that come up through the various major search engines if you enter “the woman in the window” are of a particular sort. I’m not talking… Continue reading Looking up to her window