A Cover for Propp

It’s been a whole summer (a glorious one) and a bit of a fall (also pretty glorious) since I last posted, and there are too many things to write now, so I’ll need to pace myself. First, Propp is coming! At last the book is finished and entering the production process at Indiana University Press.… Continue reading A Cover for Propp

The Promise of Translation

I was reading Peter Brooks’ review of two new Proust translations in the NYRB for March 21, 2024 (“In Search of His Vocation”) and came across a passage quoted from Le Temps retrouvé that Brooks calls the book’s “titular claim”: ‘I slowly became aware that the essential book, the only true book, was not something… Continue reading The Promise of Translation

Words and the World

[This post also available as a podcast.] I’m always a bit more secure on the territory of words and their transfer across the supposed boundaries among languages. Maybe this is inevitable, given my expertise and how I have spent most of my time in the world. So in reading two books recommended to me as… Continue reading Words and the World

A Prize for Kin

My translation of Miljenko Jergović’s Kin was awarded the prize for “Best Literary/Scholarly Translation into English” by the American Association for Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) at its just completely conference in Las Vegas. They don’t seem to have updated their website yet, but here’s the link for all the long- and… Continue reading A Prize for Kin