proximoception | (no subject)

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I received two each of a couple books from my birthday list, and it's been over a month since their purchase so I assume amazon won't be thrilled to take them back. One's Chekhov's complete plays, the new Norton hardcover. The other a few of you might be interested in, it's an expensive, bizarre four-paperback boxed set called Wonderwater. Anne Carson wrote one, is the thing (the other three are by Helene Cixous (!), John Waters (!!) and some sculptor named Louise Bourgeois); each paperback annotates drawings, or titles of drawings, by someone named Roni Horn. Anne's centers on Holderlin rather than Horn, in a characteristic series of quotations, poems, mini-essays and indescribables. I'll send the volume and/or set to the interested person (drop a comment if you are) who wants it most and/or is cheapest to send to. Carson shouldn't moulder on my shelf or in a warehouse. And this doesn't sound like it will make it to many libraries.

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Wait, are you offering the Chekhov too? Because I'll take that if no one else has requested it or if it was not implied in nightspore's fuck yes (I too will reimburse for postage and whatnot).

Yeah, it too. Interested in Crowley's exquisite, unfindable Aegypt as well? My father has a copy of mine and I'm meeting up with him in LA in a week or so, where he's being honored by a historical society. I can send you the Chekhov now or both volumes when I get back home. (The Chekhov's a beautiful book but I can't vouch for the translator, he's new to me; the acid test is if he made The Proposal and The Bear AKA Boor funny...I'll let you know.)

Send a mailing address to smb2@sfu.ca either way. And don't sweat it about postage.

Yes, I would love to have the Crowley--thanks very much!

I've only ever read Chekhov, well just the amazing Cherry Orchard, in the Constance Garnett translation, and she is widely reviled, so this guy is probably an improvement. By googling I found a radio interview with the translator here (http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2005/12/20051215_b_main.asp) and plan to listen to it later as I clean the apartment.

Garnett's great for the stories, actually. She made mistakes, and later translators justify their own versions by listing them, but it's what people do right that matters. Never tried or heard anything about her dramatic versions though.

Well I listened to the radio show and they brought in Garnett for the usual roughing-up. You cannot hear Chekhov's delicate sensibility in the straitjacket of her nineteenth-century English is what the translator said. In my experience, that's going a little far for her versions of Chekhov, and of Tolstoy. For Dostoevsky though, you need another translator.

The straitjacket of her five-times-our-vocabulary, seven-times-our-dictive-alternatives? Pfft.

I do Edmonds (Penguin translator) for Tolstoy though; Garnett's kind of annoying with dialogue and the Maudes are a bit flat. They say the Pevears communicate Dostoevskyan baldness well.

Yes, have to have Pevear for Dostoevsky. He's also good on Tolstoy, but the difference between him and Garnett wasn't all that striking to me. I suspect it matters a little less with Tolstoy; the power is going to come through no matter what. (Though I hear the new translation of War and Peace sports dialogue full of British slang.)

I hate when they do that. No American would have the gall.

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