Monthly Archives: February 2014

Singing Like a Cowboy in Nagaland

Hank Williams, in India's periphery

When Benjamin reached over for a guitar, the last thing I expected to hear come out of his mouth was a Hank Williams song. You see, Benjamin grew up and learned how to play music in a small town in Nagaland, the region in the northeastern periphery of India that is considered isolated and remote from the rest of the continent. (It requires special permits to visit.) Benjamin sat back slowly strummed the guitar and played some of the most haunting renditions of American country-western songs I have ever heard.

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Six Poems by Bijan Jalali

Sepid poetry by Bijan Jalali

بیژن جلالی

Bijan Jalali

 

با مرگ بگریزم

تا کهکشان‌ها

زیرا با زندگی

راه چندان دوری

نمی‌توان رفت

 

with death

i would elope

to the galaxies

because

thus far

my path

in life

is blocked

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Allison M. Charette answers our Proust Questionnaire

A "Lydia Davis" Questionnaire

Who is your favorite fictional character of all time?

Seriously? That’s not fair, is it? This questionnaire is hard. Although now that I think about it: Death. I’ve never met a portrayal of Death that wasn’t incredible.

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Weekly News Roundup, 7th February 2014: Sochi scandals, Library changes, Humans and their hometowns

A look at some of the most important literary news this past week

The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi blast off in just a few short hours—but despite transcontinental fanfare, Russia’s severe censorship and anti-homosexuality laws have already (rather predictably) overshadowed this year’s Games. Over 200 authors have signed a petition with the international PEN Center, including the likes of Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, and Günter Grass, in an open letter condemning Putin’s recently passed gay propaganda and blasphemy laws. In Guernica, an interview with investigative journalist Masha Gessen on Russia’s shrinking public space and the “personal catastrophe” of self-imposed exile. Masha Gessen edited OR Books’ recently published Gay Propaganda: Russian love Stories, putting faces to those affected by the oppression (read excerpts here). Amid political controversy, the PEN Center brings light to an often-overlooked element of contemporary Russia: what’s the literary scene like today? We’ll give you a primer: check out three contemporary Russian women poets or ten wonderful Russian novels you probably haven’t read yet.

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Asymptote never sleeps

What are our editors up to?

It’s time for Asymptote’s monthly community news roundup, featuring our fantastic editors’ latest accomplishments. Learn what Croatian novel to read this weekend, what to do Friday night in Philadelphia, where to catch a play set in neo-Elizabethan Appalachia, and who is Asymptote’s Guest Artist for the April issue… READ MORE…

Pop Around the World: Tombe la neige

An infinity of songs about snow

Most songs about snow are also about Jesus, or about Santa, or cozying up in a toasty cabin. They’re not all like that though, there’s Belle & Sebastian’s “Fox in the Snow” (here in a choral version from Vancouver and here in a delightfully dark version by the great Kiki & Herb), and let’s never forget Marvin Gaye’s “Purple Snowflakes”, which seems ripe for a cover by well-known syzzurp aficionado Justin Bieber. There’s Kate Bush, who recorded an entire album about the ethereal white crystals. Inspired by the widespread idea that ‘Eskimos’ have hundreds of words for snow, Bush created her own list of 50 snow-white synonyms, coming up with delightful terms such as “Zhivagodamarbletash”, “sorbetdeluge”, or “swans-a-melting”, and recorded them with the help of Stephen Fry (rather obsessed with the vagaries and varieties of language). As for ascertaining just how many Eskimoan terms there really are for snow? READ MORE…

“Delicacy,” by Maria Rita Kehl

Translated by Julia Sanches

If I were God and I existed, I would execute an act of administrative intervention on São Paulo. I would raze the whole city to the ground throughout the next decade: it stays just the way it is. Nothing else will be knocked down, nothing more will be built. Try to work on the city as it exists: monstrous, imbalanced, poorly planned and poorly maintained. If it’s a matter of moving money, invest in public spaces: in roads, squares, gardens, sidewalks, lighting, leisure centers, flood prevention—anything and everything that makes of what would otherwise be nothing but a heap of housing, something alike to that impressive human invention we call a city. Investing in urbanity also gives financial return. READ MORE…

Translators of the World, Unite!

An interview with Lucas Klein

On January 22, translator Lucas Klein posted Translation & Translation Studies as a Social Movement, responding to a LARB review of Mo Yan’s Sandlewood Death that only fleetingly mentioned its translator, Howard Goldblatt. The post went viral, and rightly so: Xiao Jiwei’s unfortunate review was symptomatic of the predominant tendency to make translators invisible—a tendency that hurts not only the translators themselves, Klein argues, but the quality of translations and literary criticism as a whole. The solution? Translators must organizedemanding respect commensurate with their role in shaping the world. An interview with Asymptote  READ MORE…