A few months ago, we reported on an American train company’s nostalgia-inspired plan to offer residency for certain writers, after some mused that they found they could boost productivity in transit. The company pulled through: here’s the list of the official Amtrak writers-in-residence.
Here’s an interesting twist on the lost-language trope we report on all too often at the Roundup. Language heritage advocates at Viki are enlisting the likes of über-addictive Korean soap operas and (somewhat-less-salient) Mel Gibson movies to help preserve endangered languages across the globe. And while translators are often lamented as all-too-invisible arbiters of global literature, sometimes, that invisibility may be by choice: a profile of the anonymous translator of French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet’s latest shocker, A Sentimental Novel. Meanwhile, things aren’t quite looking up yet for the publishing industry in Nigeria—but it isn’t all bad, either, and one of Spain’s most venerated writers, Javier Marías, is finally getting acknowledged in English-speaking markets (slowly, but surely).
New to read: six months after Gabriel García Márquez’s death, Vintage Books has released a digitized version of his many classic tomes, including Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude—so the Colombian Nobel laureate can live on in e-ternity (get it?). And speaking of literary remembrances, this week marked the passing of Scottish poet, essayist, and translator Alastair Reid—here you can take a look back at his contributions to The New Yorker. Meanwhile, German translator, Asymptote friend, and all-around superstar Susan Bernofsky reflects on Robert Walser, whom she helped popularize in the Anglophone market.
Finally, a bit of self-referentiality: September 24 marked the so-called (National) Punctuation Day—we hope you celebrated with a semicolon. And speaking of e-books and unnecessary holidays, this week also witnessed National Read an E-book day—here’s a list of other dates you could honor with reading a good book. And whenever you shall ask Twitter, Twitter shall deliver: here’s a crowdsourced list of words journalists use incessantly in their writing, but never actually say out loud.