What to say that hasn't been said? The last 80 or so pages of the book are a banger, as you might expect. Fans of Godzilla movies (like me) will find What to say that hasn't been said? The last 80 or so pages of the book are a banger, as you might expect. Fans of Godzilla movies (like me) will find exactly what they are seeking here in terms of vicarious experience of overwhelming, unfathomable, awe-filling natural destruction.
Oh, and there's a story too, if you're a fan of classical Roman history (and who isn't)? Well-researched Robert Harris uses a newly-installed engineer as his entry point to the last days of Pompeii (and Herculaneum and Stabiae and a bunch of coastal villas and the entire Roman navy at Misenum in the reign of Titus and...), and in the process provides a close-up view of the function and magnificence of the aqueduct structure that brought near-modern plumbing to the citizenry as if by magic. The usual subplots of treachery and corruption are here, along with some fairly stilted dialogue, but c'mon, that's not really why you bought your ticket, now is it?
Essentially, this book goes from 0...:
...[H]e looked into some of the other storeroom. Piles of towels in one, jars of scented massage oil in another, lead exercise weights, coils of rope and leather balls in a third. Everything ready and waiting for use; Everything here except chattering, sweating humanity to bring it all to life. And water, of course.... [P]rivate baths like these would cost a small fortune in water taxes. (p. 142)
...to 60...:
The light traveled slowly downward from right to left. A sickle of luminous cloud -- that was how Pliny described it -- sweeping down the western slope of Vesuvius, leaving in its wake a patchwork of fires. Some were winking, isolated pinpricks -- farmhouses and villas that had been set alight. But elsewhere whole swaths of the forest were blazing. Vivid, leaping sheets of red-and-orange flame tore jagged holes in the darkness. The scythe moved on, implacably, for at least as long as it would have taken to count to a hundred, flared briefly, and vanished.
"The manifestation," dictated Pliny, "has moved into a different phase." (P. 321)
...in the span of 200+ pages of narrative detail. What a ride....more
Quickie review of a beloved book I read nearly 30 years ago, the memory of which prompted me to take another stab at Life: A User's Manual. This is a Quickie review of a beloved book I read nearly 30 years ago, the memory of which prompted me to take another stab at Life: A User's Manual. This is a tour-de-force, lighthearted detective noir: a search for an essential thing gone missing. To avoid spoilers, don't look at the cover.
Or do. The conceit never outstays its welcome, and you'll goggle at the literary highwire act that Perec and translator Gilbert Adair manage to achieve here. Oh, and occasionally pause to ponder the implications of the book's meta-message, why don't you?
(Yes, yes, I know, I really ought to have written this review in the spirit of the novel, if only to prove how clever I am. But I didn't and haven't, c'est la.)...more
The book is a basic sci-fi potboiler by the author of The Wandering Earth (think Michael Bay), the first of a trilogy known by the same title. Who or The book is a basic sci-fi potboiler by the author of The Wandering Earth (think Michael Bay), the first of a trilogy known by the same title. Who or what is killing off the leading scientists of Earth?
Characters are emotionally ill-developed and largely plot-functional. Why are the smart people sensitive to being gaslit by existential dread and despair? Why don't the protagonists share information with one another, especially in times of crisis? What are their daily lives like? The problems and people that give their lives meaning?
The book opens with scenes from the chaotic Cultural Revolution, which hinted at some of this, albeit by way of backstory only. More of this might have rendered the conflict a commentary on human society, but no. The Lius provide a wealth of references to Chinese history, so it's -- what? confusing? surprising? refreshing? -- to thus find no alternative perspective emerging from the views or actions of the story's stock characters. The translation magnificently balances footnotes to explain allusions which might seem alien to Western readers with words and phrases best learned through context, but the end product will still be recognizable to any fan of serialized pulp publication.
Perhaps inspired by the author's childhood exposure to Silent Spring, a clutch of his ill-treated characters come to view humanity as a pestilence defiling and destroying the Earth. In consequence, they invite an alien civilization facing extinction to invade (the problem of coexistence apparently not being of interest to anyone to try and solve). It may take 450 years of space travel to arrive, but... tick-tock, humanity.
The book takes its name and central premise from the orbital eccentricities that multiple connected bodies experience, and which render their independent paths nearly impossible to accurately predict (a problem the characters do set to work on in the latter half of the book). Our aliens are at the mercy of three such fickle suns, rendering their lives chaotic and cruel, spurring their desire to visit Earth.
Here's the thing, though. After the introduction of the audience-surrogate protagonist and nano-materials engineer (!) Wang, I ceased to care. The book is peppered with near future technology (as window dressing with no impact on the plot), but seems to lack an underpinning philosophy. I could find little by way of grand mystery, metaphor, or insight into the human condition here, more a sprawling action movie populated by NPCs. Disappointing....more
This bit of imagined history may well be the best biography of Aaron Burr available outside of Wikipedia, which is why I've given it four stars. I thiThis bit of imagined history may well be the best biography of Aaron Burr available outside of Wikipedia, which is why I've given it four stars. I think it suffers from Gore Vidal's -- obsession? tic? authorial crutch? predilection for? -- unnecessary use of an unreliable P.O.V. narrator, but that's a stylistic preference. He does do it well, and ultimately, for good reason. In Julian, it increased our sympathy with a titular and otherwise controversial protagonist. Here, the device allows Vidal to withhold critical information that lends piquancy to the tale upon its revelation.
Gore Vidal's penchant for metatextual trickery lends him easy outs for liberties and authorial laziness: anything untoward, awkward, or absent can be ascribed to his unreliable, semipro narrator. Charles Schuyler (no relation to the eminent New York Schuylers known and loved by Hamilton enthusiasts) is a wannabe investigative journalist, exploiting the intimacy of his apprenticeship to Burr's law practice in hopes of producing an unauthorized, authorized biography. It quickly becomes clear that Burr himself is onto the ruse, and much of the tale is thus doubly suspect: is Burr relating his story truthfully to his amanuensis or simply burnishing his own legend? The content is told (mostly) chronologically, albeit infuriatingly for anyone seeking an immersive history as it bounces around from present to flashback to other "discovered" material.
Written long before the Hamilton renaissance of Ron Chernow and Lin-Manuel Miranda, Vidal's hook to Burr's lurid lifestory entails teasing a connection to Martin Van Buren, the notorious Tammany builder, political operator/schemer, and ultimately Vice President and President of the United States. It's interesting to consider what Vidal might have produced today, in a time when Burr's reputation and relevance has far superseded Van Buren's. As it stands, I felt more impatient with than captivated by all the would-be intrigue surrounding Van Buren's ambitions.
Would a contemporary Gore Vidal have the confidence to relate Aaron Burr's adventures as a straight-up picaresque tale? Perhaps not -- the straightforward approach just may not be his style. Still, that's the book I really want to read. Maybe Chernow will tackle that someday....more
My present focus on musical theater songwriting and demo recording is making me a far less diligent reader and book reviewer. It's taking me longer toMy present focus on musical theater songwriting and demo recording is making me a far less diligent reader and book reviewer. It's taking me longer to get around to writing up my thoughts on books I've recently completed, in turn making my impressions less immediate and detail-oriented. So with that apologia out of the way, I don't have much to say about this book. I think the author succeeded in doing what he set out to do, namely, to write an urgent Jason Bourne-style action-adventure thriller set in a period-realistic ancient Rome. You don't need to be familiar with Sidebottom's fictional protagonist to appreciate this; I certainly haven't read the six books that preceded this one.
The premise is everything here: our hero has stumbled onto the details of an assassination plot against the emperor 24 hours beforehand and the conspirators are on to him; having no one whom he can completely trust, he's got exactly one day to alert the emperor or otherwise foil the plot. (Apparently, he has a personal acquaintance with the emperor, which is too bad inasmuch as the problem of getting an audience and then presenting a credible case would have made for a nice complication toward the end.) It starts with a ridiculous rooftop leap into the Tiber that leaves him injured and disarmed for the rest of a chase through Rome, avoiding and navigating various obstacles or sub-bosses. It ends in the Colosseum, with the exact gladiatorial combat scene you would expect from such a setting.
Sidebottom's schtick is to research and vividly convey period fighting styles, politics (is this skeevy emperor really worth saving?), and Rome's urban geography, and this I'm informed he has done credibly well. The narrative is predictable at a macro-level (the series-long protagonist survives through to the final chapter); all the twists lie in how our hero gets from one immediate predicament to the next. As such, I think I would have been entertained by the two-hour Matt Damon version of this, paced at a clip that precluded much time for contemplation.
As a book... not so much. I found it predictable and dull, for all the meta-reasons associated with superhero stories that are so often masked in the in-the-moment experience of ride-movie attendance. For one thing, there are no stakes, no risk, no consequences. You can't kill off your series protagonist, only hinder or wound him. So right off the bat, I know that when the hero leaps from roof to raging river (as heroes must), he will land both alive and in suitable condition to continue for the duration of the plot. There will be no twists, no surprises, and no asides, just a competent grind through the levels. Because this is always true, the "setbacks" do not feel all that risky, the injuries always minor or able to be set aside whenever demanded by the plot, the ticking clock never in danger of being exhausted as the pages turn toward the back cover. The madcap chase demanded by the premise precludes much variation in the pacing. Our hero will go from the frying pan into the fire, figuring stuff out on the fly, with little respite in between. As a reward for escaping one set of foes, he will immediately be beset with another, and then another, and so on and so forth, until what emerges begins to feel like very similar sequences with low information density. Just like a video game, you can easily skip or scramble scenes and chapters without affecting the overall experience.
If that's your sort of thing, have at it. There was a time when I enjoyed Robert Ludlum, until his hyperbole became so prevalent that reading the heavily-italicized pages of his novels turned into a drinking game. Personally, and thinking back to genre authors I prefer ( Martin Cruz Smith, Elmore Leonard, Gregory MacDonald, John LeCarre, etc.), I favor more witty repartee and either some trope subversion or social commentary to enliven the train tracks. Sidebottom's side dish is merely the verisimilitude of the setting, which just wasn't enough to keep my attention....more
My present focus on musical theater songwriting and demo recording is making me a far less diligent reader and book reviewer. It's taking me longer toMy present focus on musical theater songwriting and demo recording is making me a far less diligent reader and book reviewer. It's taking me longer to get around to writing up my thoughts on books I've recently completed, in turn making my impressions less immediate and detail-oriented. So with that apologia out of the way, I don't have much more to say about this book than where I began some weeks ago. This is a powerful, as well as masterful work. One of Stoppard's best, the more so given how freighted it is with personal relevance.
Stoppard here draws from his recently discovered genealogy to chart the destruction and diaspora of a secularized, assimilated, well-to-do, proudly patriotic, cultured, and intellectual Viennese Jewish community in the first half of the 20th century (specifically 1899 - 1955). He does so in vignettes rather than acts, about 10 scenes altogether that spiral forward through time, in each scene juggling nearly a dozen distinct characters.
The playwright's ability to manage an ever-expanding cast of friends and relations without losing his audience's attention or engagement is an impressive feat, but also essential to the show's final impact. By gradually vesting audience sympathy in an extended and extensive community, Stoppard actually succeeds in wringing empathic horror from the sheer genocidal scope of the Holocaust, an act essential to bridging the gap that yawns between individual tragedy and mass statistic.
This play will be easier to follow on stage, yet remains impactful on the page. Among other things, dramaturgs will appreciate the overlapping ensemble dialogue through which Stoppard manages to introduce and define so many characters in so little time. But be warned: readers more than playgoers will require a slow, careful perusal to follow this pair of parallel scenes (a Christmas party and a bris). Over the footlights, unique, costume-differentiated actors make it easier to keep track of who's who saying what to whom. Off the nightstand, understanding may require continuous reference to the character sheet. Those who can push past these minor inconveniences will be overwhelmed by Stoppard's observations on the fleeting nature of safety and security, the tenuous bonds of love, and the trauma of loss of connection....more
I came to this author following an exercise put to me (and others) by a self-described Chinese scholar named Jenny Mao (sorry to be coy, I don't know I came to this author following an exercise put to me (and others) by a self-described Chinese scholar named Jenny Mao (sorry to be coy, I don't know them personally). She was asking GoodReaders who had reviewed works by Chinese authors in the summer of 2020 to read and share thoughts on the relative poignancy of five different English translations of Lu Xun's short story "Medicine" (one of which is contained in the present collection). I don't know what ever became of the research, but I certainly enjoyed the exercise and plan to share an edited version of our correspondence (and my analysis) here when I finish this collection, which I selected because it was compiled by the "Medicine" translator I preferred.
I find the philosophy of translation fascinating. In fact, I recently read this interesting collection of articles" on Tom Stoppard's play Indian Ink. The series captures the contradictions and challenges of translation brilliantly, considering its subject was an elaboration of a radio show Stoppard wrote a decade earlier about a fictional poet of the 1920s whose letters were themselves subject to interpretation and elaboration by a modern scholar (whose commentary is presented to the audience as diagetical footnotes). So: comments on comments on comments on the difficulties of perceiving an ever-elusive original. An infinite regress of nested matryushkas and Chinese boxes. Intoxicating. Along those lines, this review owes its inspiration as much to Masha Essen, whose essay on translating Tolstoy is definitely worth your time, as to Jenny Mao. Either way, here's how I navigate the delightful rabbit hole for exploration that sucked up much of my time and attention in 2020.
To start with, Lu comes across as witty and casual. His preface introducing this edition is delightful. However, all the works in this collection seem to follow the same, consistent pattern in this edition riddled with undistracting typos: Lu cuts slices of rural and small-town life in China in the 1910s-1920s with much pathos and occasional, modest glimpses of humor. Here lie the travails and delusions that beset a superstitious, poor peasantry. More tragic than funny, not terribly dramatic, but certainly vivid. I'm sure I'm missing plenty of metaphor and allusive material to underscore these points, so -- especially for those curious about Lu who have greater Chinese cultural literacy -- this book seems as good a starting point as any.
The book's heart and most representative work is The True Story of Ah-Q (gesundheit), a free version of which you can find here. Hsun's novella is a rambling, picaresque slapstick about a poor, drunken bum that spoofs its subjects' primarily by juxtaposing the village idiot's grandiose self-importance against the equally pathetic narrowmindedness of the village inhabitants, for whom "revolution" implies little other than a change of allegiances. These are a people whom Ah Q sees as but simple Weichuang villagers. "Again, when they fried large-headed fish in oil… all added shallot leaves sliced half an inch long, whereas the townspeople added finely shredded shallots…. 'How ridiculous!' But the Weichuang villagers were really ignorant rustics who had never seen fish fried in town!" (a typical passage from p. 72). The story has more depth to it than my superficial summation implies, and compares favorably to John Kennedy Toole's superior A Confederacy of Dunces. Still, the other works in the anthology are fairly similar: eschewing storytelling for evocative descriptions of day-to-day superstition, stagnation, and poverty against a distant backdrop of corrupt and oppressive (when not negligent) bureaucracy. Again, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
Of course, I didn't know any of that when I started reading Lu Hsun. Mao had circulated on GoodReads to survey willing participants for a graduate paper (an output I still hope to see). Her stated intent was to further her "study on dissemination of Lu's works in the English world," but the brief she provided was to read multiple translations of a Lu short story and answer a few multiple answer questions. Still, all this made me curious to discover how disparate translators handled the same text, and the extent to which -- assuming in each case a good faith attempt by skilled, bilingual professional(s) -- the translator matters. I present here the results of my encounter as a reader of five translations of Lu's story, Medicine.
Let's start with the basics of any translation exercise: the subject matter of the material being translated. As I understand it, this short story was originally written in 1919. At that time, Lu Hsun was a middle-aged writer with communist sympathies setting pen to paper a mere seven years after Sun Yat-Sen's overthrow of the Manchu state, a time when the consolidation of power was still under way and internal factionalization was rising. Medicine can thus be read in the context of socialist realism and protest, a means of showing a way forward from the oppressions that beset "backward" Chinese villagers toward a new and better day, perhaps even (for Lu) auguring the inevitability of a communist China yet to come.
Stripped down to essentials, I think the story beats of "Medicine" break down as follows:
(1) One chilly autumn day, Hua Shuan (middle aged? older?) wakes up before dawn, his son coughing in the next room of their house/tea house. (2) He takes money from his wife, calling out to his son that she will take care of opening the shop. (3) On the road, he feels both anxious and excited. Dawn breaks. (4) His progress is interrupted by passing security forces and a sudden crowd assemblage. (5) As soon as they part the person he meant to meet accosts him holding up a dripping red bread roll. Shuan hesitates, confused and uncertain, and the man takes charge of the swap: "medicine" for money. (6) Shuan returns home to a shop open and ready for business. (7) He gives the bun to his wife for ritual preparation. Their son eats it, still hot. (8) "Uncle" Kang insinuates himself among the usual customers and reveals to all that: (a) Shuan's son has tuberculosis; (b) a young, arrogant rebel named Hsia was just captured, beaten, and executed; (c) Hsia's paternal grand-uncle (his father's uncle) betrayed him to the authorities in exchange for amnesty and the reward money; and (d) it's therefore lucky for Shuan to come by a fresh, hot, blood-soaked bun. (9) The next spring, Mother Hua visits her son's fresh grave in the pauper's cemetery outside the city gates. (10) An old woman (Mother Hsia?) does likewise in the criminal's cemetery directly adjacent. (11) They are observed by a crow on an overhanging tree branch. (12) Both are startled by the presence of a garland of red and white flowers on Hsia's grave. (13) Mother Hsia prays aloud for her son's spirit to show his presence by having the crow fly down and perch atop his gravestone. It does not. (14) The crow flies away as they are leaving.
It's a simple story enriched by overlapping screens of imagery, allusion, metaphor, and ambiguity. Western readers will benefit from at least three footnotes: one setting the story in the waning days of the (foreign, Manchu) Qing dynasty; a second providing various associations to the character 'Ba' above and beyond the image of emaciated shoulder blades); and a crucial third which invites them to read Hua and Hsia together as Huaxia, thereby allowing the suffering poor (Hua) and dissident (Hsia) to be seen as one people. Other layers will be readable via the shared tropes of literature: how a flickering grease lamp connotes both poverty and life's fragility; the apparent equation of a blood-drenched loaf of bread with a vital heart, its steam reflective of life's breath; the connection between Red-Eye the jailer to the red-piping on the soldiers' uniforms; the further significance of the color red (in the roll and wreath) to communist iconography; the transition of the story from a chilly autumn morning to an unseasonably cold spring day, with the promise of summer to come, the mother's prayers answered by the crow's flight, not to the grave, but at the horizon/distance/audience/future. Finally and irrespective of the author's actual intent, Western audiences may associate Kang's insinuation that he arranged it all -- Hua's silver to Hsia's brother in exchange for Hsia's blood -- with the Christian story of Jesus' betrayal by Judas to the Romans.
Most, if not all of this information is equably conveyed by each of the five translations. (It definitely comes across from a Rashomon-like reading of all five in succession.... or perhaps Sima Qian would be a more apt reference?) At any rate, given all this, what distinguishes the five translations? To figure that out, I thought a side-by-side comparison of choice passages and content might be illustrative. To save space here, I've placed each summation into its own comment field, italicizing those I thought were the 'best' passages, with explanations below.
What distinguishes these translations? Let's start by looking at the choice of tense. Most of the fiction I remember reading growing up was written in the past tense. My wife tells me that the convention has shifted today to favor the present. (I prefer the use of past tense for fiction and present tense for nonfiction essays; I do not know whether this has more to do with familiarity or connotation.) In this case, it seems Lu wrote his story in the present tense. Do we know why? I thought Yao/Snow's translation was awkward, and in this respect, a failure. Lyell solves the tense problem by giving his prose immediacy: artful and no mean feat.
Moving on, two classic translation challenges are what to do with names and idiomatic speech. Many proper names have clear etymological derivatives to professional roles, relationships, or places of origin (Miller, Smith, Ander's Son, de Souza, etc.). Likewise, idioms are phrases that over time come to take on meanings which can be quite different from those of their individual words. Ironically, in either case literal translation can sow confusion in a reader's mind. Wherever the primary purpose of a word is to serve as a label, phonemic replication is the best choice. Lyell accomplishes this by placing "mantou" in italics. I understood that to be a specific type of roll, and it's usage lent verisimilitude and exoticism to his text. By contrast, his choice to render the protagonist literally as "Big Bolt" came across as clumsy, and for two reasons. First, because "Big Bolt" implies a nickname more than a name -- and an unusual one at that which feels at odds with it's appearance throughout Lu's story -- and second, because the word "bolt" itself carries multiple meanings in English, with the association to electricity (e.g., thunderbolt, lightning bolt) being stronger than the one that indicates a door latch. Worst of all, the fully analogous word in English with 'bolt' that unequivocally means a thrown-rod locking mechanism is "deadbolt." If Lu was intentionally reaching for this pun, my guess is that most people would regard it as excessively labored. Better left behind. Of the five, I thought Kennedy's name translations best balanced function with meaning. Yang's depersonalizes the wife (who needs to exist as an independent character for the last section of the story). Each has a different but equally effective approach to identifying the name of the festival, which carries little impact on the narrative. Lovell's names are a bit too generic. Yao's are all over the place.
Lyell's translation has a few other strengths relative to the others akin to his choice to use "mantou" for the blood-steeped bread. Lyell softens Lu's heavy-handed reference to Qiu Jin, by translating the appearance of the intersection as little more than a weathered, semi-legible milestone. His is also the only one of the five that clearly communicates the point of Kang's mockery: it's pathetic that Red-Eye sides with young Hsia's oppressors. This is a particularly challenging idiomatic passage that none of the other translators could solve. Points for pedanticism. Alas, Lyell goes overboard with his footnotes; I think the Western reader only needs three, possibly four: ba, executioner, and Hua/Xia; the Qiu Jin reference is nice but of lesser importance since Lu's intent comes across without being hit over the head with it.
One last comment -- the import of the reference to the "barkless dogs" in the story is not at all clear. Stray dogs are evocative of rural poverty in general, but a dog that doesn't bark is worthy of note in Western literature. Arthur Conan Doyle's "curious incident of the dog in the nighttime" is now so famous, the phrase itself has become idiomatic (try searching "curious incident" in GoodReads and see how many titles surface). Perhaps Lu hoped to allude to Doyle for the purpose of implying Hua was, in his commonplace poverty, a kindred spirit to stray dogs? If so, that would be a pretty big reach from the literal familiarity Sherlock Holmes deduced. Kennedy, Yang, and Lyell each offset the dogs against their bark by use of the word "but." Lyell and Kennedy emphasize how unusual is this silence: "not one" barks. For Yao/Snow, they are just local color. Lovell just finesses the problem. The dogs pass. Whatever.
Culturally-specific references are a core challenge to would-be translators. Should translators treat language-specific idioms literally and word for word; by turning a culturally-specific expression like "may you grow like an onion with your head in the ground," to something more generic or vulgar, like "eat sh*t;" or by using cultural cognates (to turn a mantou from a steamed bun into a brioche or hamburger bun)? In terms of effectiveness, this is probably an empirical question: I would certainly like to see a table of popular translations from the past 5 years of books on the NY Times bestseller list (or Amazon, or Ali Baba, or any equivalent compilation of fiction sales) coded for the authenticity of translation.
Here's my style guide. Translate proverbs and slang using appropriate vernacular. Failing that, translate them into plain language, as we do with the Eastern European insult about growing like an onion. Introduce the first appearance in a text of culturally-loaded words (words specific to context and/or culture like 'mantou' and 'Qing Ming Festival') with a parenthetical or footnote (e.g., 'steamed bun' and 'springtime festival when people attend to their relatives' graves'). Thereafter, use the transliteration alone. Translate words common to the English language, like "rice," directly. Translate and preferably place nicknames in quotes; transliterate proper names. Thus: Old Shuan, "Uncle" Kang, Mama Hua. In dialogue, translation should follow relevance to minimize reader confusion. So, Shuan's father should remain as Old Shuan, unless parallel usage is nondisruptive (e.g., Mama and Papa Hua, or 'the boy and his father'). Present words for which ideograms serve as visual puns as-is, including a direct translation in a parenthetical, and offering deeper layers -- if crucial to understanding -- in a footnote or endnote. Thus, "ba," 八 (fortune, literally the number 8). Proper names that should be common knowledge (Qing Dynasty), should be presented as-is and explained, if at all, in a prologue, glossary, footnote, or afterword.
I hope my rules follow clarity. As to aesthetics, I doubt you can translate a work well unless you have at least some affinity for its underlying ideas in addition to how those might best be expressed in the target language. If you have that sympathy, are you really going to want to bastardize the material hoping to spur sales? Translators should always make their best efforts to communicate the essence of the original. Nuances and corrections are best left to footnotes.
So again, what makes a "good" translation? This presumably depends on the intentionality and translatability of the author's choice. Should a translator follow the author or contemporary convention, and which of these five translations, if any, gets it "right"? Personally, I think the translator's job is to convey the affect the author hoped the original would present to an average Chinese reader at the time of publication. Translator preferences may be distinct from those of readers; what readers want is, I think less relevant to what makes for an effective translation. First and foremost, I would expect readers to want from a translation what they want from any book, namely an encounter with a good story. I'm sure I would probably feel a little cheated after the fact to discover that the translation I enjoyed had in fact been watered down or altered in some significant way from the original -- I might even feel condescended to or misled -- but really, even if my first encounter with a book I liked proved to have come from an "inauthentic" translation, I'd still be left having enjoyed the work. I mean, the general consensus is that the King James version of the Bible was a woefully inaccurate translation, but it remains acclaimed as great poetry in its own right. It's still in print; people still buy it.
Somewhat analogously, consider how many adaptations of Shakespeare's and Jane Austen's work there are floating around in film and television. Are moviegoers seeking authenticity, contemporary relevance, or just resonance in general? I suspect it depends on the audience. To digress further, theater is a living art. (Most good) playwrights expect their works to evolve through the efforts of each new production to realize them. Accents, line readings, blocking, costumes, and sets all change regardless of whether any modifications are made to the dialogue itself. Which of these is rightly regarded as the most "authentic" version? [Remainder of review in comments]...more
I picked this up without having seen any of Justified, so I can't speak to the quality of FX's adaptation or Leonard's inspiration. Frankly, I was looI picked this up without having seen any of Justified, so I can't speak to the quality of FX's adaptation or Leonard's inspiration. Frankly, I was looking for credibly dialogue-driven fiction that featured coal miners or coal mining, and Leonard is among the best in the business at fast-paced repartee.
Readers of this collection (or its individual components) won't be disappointed, but I would like to call out some oddities on a book-by-book basis.
Pronto - This is the book that introduces the character of Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens. It's a bit weird in two ways. First of all, it reads a bit as though Leonard was figuring out his plot as he wrote, beginning as a Hitchcock-style paranoid thriller about an aging bookie in trouble, abandoning bookie Harry to swerve into a mafia crime tale, before discovering Raylan and deciding that perhaps this might be the most interesting character to follow after all. From there, the rest of the story reads a bit like Leonard's exploration of what Wyatt Earp in the present might be like, setting events in motion to conjure up a climactic High Noon showdown. It's an entertaining, lurching mess. So, three stars.
Riding the Rap is better than its predecessor, most likely because Leonard now understands his characters and can allow them to behave in a self-consistent fashion. It's a straight-up detective story that revisits the previous Pauline-in-peril plot, this time with the bookie as a kidnap victim for Deputy Marshal Givens to rescue (or not). Once again, the story seems geared around variations on the theme of the pistol-duel showdown, and Leonard gives us another pair of these (in fact, the author uses this book to substantially hype the events of the first). Considering that the author makes a point of telling us modern-day law officers should not be pulling their guns, let alone firing them, it appears odd in retrospect that Raylan should have waited until his 40s to indulge in the satisfaction of killing in the name of justice. Perhaps he just needed an ice breaker. As enjoyable a read as this book is, it does peter out quickly, almost as though the author hit an internal word limit and decided to wrap Rap up rather than introduce new complications that would have resulted in a more intricate tale. I won't fault it for opportunity cost, though: four stars here.
It would take Leonard another 7 years to return to Givens with his book of short stories Fire in the Hole, but the eponymous story is the only one that features the Deputy Marshal. That alone is worth the price of admission, even though it starts to feel somewhat formulaic. Again, we're winding up to a showdown, again we're hyping the events of the first book, and again, Leonard seems to tire of his plot and moves quickly to tie up loose ends. In that sense, this story would likely adapt easily to a movie script.
In that same vein, fans of the George Clooney/Jennifer Lopez film Out of Sight will enjoy being reunited with another of Leonard's marshals, in this case Karen Cisco in his story "Karen Makes Out." As with Deputy Marshal Givens, Leonard leans into male fantasy, although with Cisco it's less about inhabiting an aloof hero that all the women want to bed then about ogling a hot, tough babe who keeps a gun tucked in her skivvies. Here again, we have Leonard starting up a plot, seemingly tiring of it, and expeditiously dispatching it. In fact, most of the stories in this book read a bit like scenes or explorations that Leonard has tried, dropped, and collected for purposes of publication. It's very hit-or-miss, but die-hard Leonard fans will presumably find resonances between individual stories and many of his full-on books (I haven't read Cuba Libre, but there are at least two tales in this collection that turn in the direction of the Spanish American War, which I would not be surprised to learn had characters in common). So three stars, juuuuust barely....more
This licensed spinoff isn't bad throughout, but it does suffer some structural problems and an ending that goes completely off the rails. The setup isThis licensed spinoff isn't bad throughout, but it does suffer some structural problems and an ending that goes completely off the rails. The setup is straightforward enough. The Cold Forge is a remote, privately-owned-and-operated secret weapons development station with three projects in simultaneous development: a super-virus programmed to infect and destroy any computer infrastructure, some kind of long-range transmitter jammer/disabler, and enough xenomorphs and egg cases to start a hive. It is artificially maintained in close orbit around an especially intense star.
The setting is effectively a timebomb set for spectacular self-destruction, the only questions being when, how, and under what circumstances anyone will survive. Fine. The cast is the usual roster of nonplayer characters and cannon fodder necessary to populate an unfolding disaster, plus two primary antagonists through whom the majority of the story is told: scientist Blue Marsalis, researching the face-huggers for a genetic cure-all opposed by Dorian Sudler, a sociopathic Weyland Yutani inspector general. The antagonism here is natural, if wholly artificial -- there is no reason for Marsalis to be keeping the purpose of her potentially lucrative experiments secret from her employer, and it's a bit much for the corporation to have thrown a borderline-murderous psychopathic investigator at this expensive powder keg -- but since these facts serve as the premises and catalysts of White's plot, it's pointless to complain about them. This is the ride. Get on board or leave the book behind.
The author handles his material competently if without subtlety.
No one has ever slapped him before, and the urge to retaliate is instantaneous. Heat rises in his breast, and he sucks in a breath. he wants to strike her back, to break her against the bulkhead and wrap his hands around her slender throat. He wants to crush her fucking skull -- but then he remembers their wild sex and thinks better of it....
"We're going to discuss this when we get back to the ship," he whispers.
"What, are you going to fire me some more?" She rises to a low crouch and grabs him by the wrist.
He smirks. "Maybe you can get your job back."(Pages 188-9)
His two-dimensional characters exist in a Cold Forge environment whose layout and function are nonetheless clearly delineated and coherent. My primary disappointment here has to do with the structure White imposes on his narrative, a disservice of three distinct, fully-realized arcs, each of which reach a natural conclusion that require an external triggering event to resume. Because they are not organically intertwined, the closure of each act undermines the pacing and intrigue of the story as a whole, effectively turning it into three books, the third and final of which is so unbelievable as to be laughably silly.
Book #1 concerns the auditor's hamfisted investigation. It's okay. Not terribly exciting or intriguing, but the introduction to the leads and the setting are sufficient to sustain interest. Book #2 chronicles events that follow the release of the caged xenomorphs into the station. This part is hit-or-miss and would be better served by characters in whom the reader had more of a rooting interest, but there's plenty of monster and survival story fun. As mentioned, it also suffers by failing to proceed naturally from the immediately precedent action. This, too, reaches a natural end-state if not an equilibrium state with about 100 pages to go and leads to an artificial turning point at which the author quits on his three star endeavor by inexplicably having the two principals abandon the goals that have driven them the entire book in pursuit of an absurd mano a mano final battle that forms the substance of book #3. From here the narrative devolves into a violent, simplistic cartoon. Adding insult to injury are a pair of epilogues: a "and then I awoke from my nightmare" fake twist ending, followed by five pages that impart a superfluous moral.
What I am here calling book #2 are pages 145-347. That's the ride and the sole reason to buy your ticket. I would skim the first 144 pages to get a gist for the setup and then skip everything after page 348 (if you must, just make up your own ending). The xenomorph universe of Alien offers authors fertile ground for storytelling that White largely fails to exploit....more
Read long ago. We're going digital, so rather than retain a physical copy on the bookshelf, I'll use Goodreads as my external memory drive.
As fan fictRead long ago. We're going digital, so rather than retain a physical copy on the bookshelf, I'll use Goodreads as my external memory drive.
As fan fiction goes, this is a pretty faithful rendition and extension of [Author: Arthur Conan Doyle]'s Sherlock Holmes series. I could have done without Sigmund Freud as a guest star, but whatever, we're dealing almost exclusively here with a harrowing tale of obsession and opioid addiction. Apparently, there's a graphic novel version of this out there... may have to check that out someday.
Read long ago. We're going digital, so rather than retain a physical copy on the bookshelf, I'll use Goodreads as my external memory drive.
Two of thesRead long ago. We're going digital, so rather than retain a physical copy on the bookshelf, I'll use Goodreads as my external memory drive.
Two of these three books are excellent ( The Terminal Man is the weak entry here, but nonetheless entertaining fluff for all that). The Andromeda Strain is really a classic science fiction cautionary tale about the risks of acting without sufficient understanding (ah, xenobiology).
The Great Train Robbery is worth the price of admission alone, and every bit as good (or perhaps even better) a caper than the wonderful movie with Sean Connery, Leslie Downes, and Donald Sutherland. Why should a gentlemen's gentleman seek to rob the Crimean gold train? Simple. "I wanted the money."...more
Read long ago. We're going digital, so rather than retain a physical copy on the bookshelf, I'll use Goodreads as my external memory drive.
It's MemoriRead long ago. We're going digital, so rather than retain a physical copy on the bookshelf, I'll use Goodreads as my external memory drive.
It's Memorial Day weekend, gosh darn it! Amity Island swims with the fishes! What could go wrong? Heh, heh, heh.
Hard to believe, but as with Jurassic Park, the book managed to be better than the movie. And the movie was incredible. No knock against Richard Dreyfuss' portrayal, but the Hooper here has more depth and a killer backstory relative to Chief Brody. Lots of fine ichthyology, to boot.
Peter Benchley was Michael Crichton before Michael Crichton was Michael Crichton. Don't believe me? Read Q Clearance, one of the great, unsung satires of senseless bureaucracy....more
Read long ago. We're going digital, so rather than retain a physical copy on the bookshelf, I'll use Goodreads as my external memory drive.
This is an Read long ago. We're going digital, so rather than retain a physical copy on the bookshelf, I'll use Goodreads as my external memory drive.
This is an excellent collection of mysteries, and as good an introduction to the 20th Century's contribution to the genre as any you'll find. Represented here are Dorothy Sayers, G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, all of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade stories, a bit of William Faulkner, Raymond Chandler's "Trouble is My Business," Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe ("See No Evil"), Ross Macdonald, P.D. James, Ed McBain, and a few others.
Read long ago. We're going digital, so rather than retain a physical copy on the bookshelf, I'll use Goodreads as my external memory drive.
Not everythRead long ago. We're going digital, so rather than retain a physical copy on the bookshelf, I'll use Goodreads as my external memory drive.
Not everything here is sheer brilliance ("The Oval Portrait," I'm looking at you), but the hit rate and volume is substantial. "X-ing a Paragrab" is hilarious, "Annabel Lee" haunting, and so are many of the other stories and poems, all of which are by now so deeply embroidered into the public memory that you know them even if you don't: "Telltale Heart," "Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "A Descent into the Maelstrom," "The Raven," "The Bells," "The Black Cat," etc.
This is another author whose example taught me to write, and whose influence turned me on to The Alan Parsons Project and Sergei Rachmaninov, among others. (BTW, Eric Woolfson's Poe show is a hoot, and campy as all hell, as what Poe show could not be?)...more
Read long ago. We're going digital, so rather than retain a physical copy on the bookshelf, I'll use Goodreads as my external memory drive.
My copy of Read long ago. We're going digital, so rather than retain a physical copy on the bookshelf, I'll use Goodreads as my external memory drive.
My copy of this was likely a BOMC pick up. All public domain now, of course.
Brilliant, timeless stuff that everyone should read, following in the footsteps of and improving upon Edgar Allan Poe's Auguste Dupin. Is there anyone out there for whom the Hound of the Baskervilles was *not* nightmare fuel?...more
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