Interviews

Interviewing “Los bárbaros”: Ulises Gonzáles, Spanish literature in New York

August 11, 2014  |  in Interviews  |  by Eric M. B. Becker

A conversation with the editor of "Los bárbaros," a Spanish-language journal based in the Big Apple

Peruvian writer Ulises Gonzáles founded the thrice-yearly journal Los bárbaros in 2014. Gathering work from Spanish-language writers about New York, Gonzáles talks about the important role of New York City for contemporary writers in Spanish and his hopes for the journal’s future.

Eric Becker: How did the journal come to be?

Ulises Gonzáles: It’s a great story, actually.

Some of us were in a class at the CUNY Graduate Center and someone mentioned something about the poem “Waiting for the Barbarians” (by the Greek poet C.P. Cavafy). But that person connected it to the idea that now the barbarians are major figures in language and literature departments (throughout the world) and were creating their own literary theories and not leaving it just to the French anymore—because of people like Borges.

And today, for example, people in English departments are reading Borges and it was all about this idea that now the barbarians are in charge. The reach of English is still, of course, broad. But one thing that I like about these Latin American writers is that every one of them is going to tell you that among their favorite writers are maybe Faulkner, maybe Hemingway, maybe Wilde. There’s a big connection: it’s like “I got all this from English literature, I’m going to recycle it and I’m going to tell you about my world through what I learned and at the same time I’m going to teach you something about my world.” READ MORE…

Crime on the Island: Interviewing Cheryl Tan of “Singapore Noir”

August 6, 2014  |  in Interviews  |  by Nicole Idar

An interview with Cheryl Tan, editor of the first Singaporean crime fiction anthology published in the United States

Singapore has one of the world’s lowest homicide rates, but much like its partner in (low) crime, Iceland, it’s fertile ground for noir stories. Launched this month, ten years after the release of Brooklyn Noir, is Brooklyn-based Akashic Books’ newest title in its bestselling series of Noir anthologies, Singapore Noir, edited by the Singaporean writer Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, a former staff writer at the Wall Street Journal and author of A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family.

Nicole Idar: Singapore is the fourth Asian city to boast an Akashic Books Noir anthology, after Delhi, Manila, and Mumbai (Seoul is forthcoming). Can you tell us how Singapore Noir came about?

Cheryl Tan: I’d long admired New York publisher Akashic Books’ award-winning Noir series—a series of anthologies, and there are dozens by now, each one set in a country or a city. Brooklyn Noir was a personal favorite but you also have everything from Baltimore Noir to Paris Noir. Some really big names have edited these collections of dark stories set in these locales—Joyce Carol Oates edited New Jersey Noir, for example, and Dennis Lehane edited Boston Noir.

In November 2011, I was at the Miami Book Fair, speaking about A Tiger in the Kitchen, my first book. At the authors’ party, mystery writer extraordinaire S.J. Rozan introduced me to Johnny Temple, Akashic’s publisher. I told Johnny how much I loved his noir series but asked why there hadn’t been a Singapore Noir. He said it was because he didn’t know any Singaporean writers. And S.J. said, “Well now you do.”  

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Krumping in Translation: Interviewing Aditi Machado, Asymptote’s Poetry Editor

July 31, 2014  |  in Interviews  |  by Patty Nash

On reading translated poems: "It’s a dangerous, unsettling world—that’s why it’s fun."

Asymptote’s poetry editor Aditi Machado has curated across the gutter and five continents. In light of Asymptote’s July issue, I interviewed Aditi, and her responses run the gamut: what follows is an in-depth interview with insight into arranging an issue, poetry in translation, and embracing vulnerability when reading. 

Many think that reading poetry requires a specific literacy—is the same true for reading translation, or poetry in translation?

Reading anything requires specific forms of literacy, even reading a newspaper. With poetry, I think we’re less aware of skills we may already have or of those that may be gained. Additionally, we’re extremely sensitive about our lack in these skills—or, if we feel we do have them, we might be able to articulate how we learned them and how much further we have to go. It’s a special privilege, being literate about one’s literacy. READ MORE…

Publisher Profile: Bloomsbury Publishing

July 23, 2014  |  in Interviews, Publisher Profile  |  by Frances Riddle

"I don't publish literature from other languages as a translation. I publish it as literature."

Founded in 1986, Bloomsbury Publishing is an independent publishing house dedicated to promoting quality literature. During the editor’s week of the Buenos Aires Book Fair I met with Bill Swainson, Senior Commissioning Editor of the Adult Editorial Division at Bloomsbury Publishing in London. 

Bloomsbury logo

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Interview with Luis Negrón

July 3, 2014  |  in Interviews  |  by Eva Richter

"I wanted a book that showed how people find happiness, even if society at large thinks that in their life there is no space for it."

Reading Luis Negrón’s award-winning debut short story collection, Mundo Cruel, one is struck by the author’s daring, his at-times startling insights, and his blistering sense of humor. It is a remarkable collection, and the first translated work to win a Lambda Literary Award for gay general fiction. In his interview with Asymptote blog, Negrón talks about melodrama and monsters in fiction, homophobia in present-day Puerto Rico, and his experience with acclaimed translator Suzanne Jill Levine.

Eva Richter: Your epigraph is a quote from Manuel Puig’s “A Melodramatic Destiny.” “So then, a melodrama is a drama made by someone who doesn’t know the difference, Miss?” / “Not exactly, but in a certain way it is a second-rate product.” How does the notion of melodrama as a second-rate or even naive drama play into your short stories? 

Luis Negrón: There are two ways to answer this question. One, the most obvious one, is by explaining melodrama itself: it is a drama where destiny cannot be escaped. I played with and tried to transform this notion of melodrama in my texts, but not only with the structure of them, but with their aura, the environment of the melodrama, its false and perhaps fake way of suffering. It is also important to put the stories in context. In Latin America, melodrama is king. Our music is melodramatic; our politics are melodramatic, our sports, our way or conceiving love, romantic love, all kinds of love, are pure melodrama. It is our way of dealing with most situations. This is more the case in the working class population, where access to different forms of dealing with feelings are not at hand or are simply unknown. For this reason, melodrama is abundant in the book: it shows how my characters construct whole gammas of feelings, and how they make decisions or just follow the paths dictated by their destiny.

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Publisher Profile: University of California Press

June 30, 2014  |  in Interviews, Publisher Profile  |  by Frances Riddle

"In a different era, colleagues translated books because they believed in the project. That’s not a luxury I have today."

University of California Press Acquisitions Editor Kate Marshall specializes in publishing books on food, the environment, and Latin America in the social sciences and humanities. I talked to Kate during the editor’s week of the Buenos Aires Book Fair.

Frances Riddle: What gap in the publishing landscape does UC Press aim to fill?

Kate Marshall: UC Press is one of the leading university presses in the United States, the largest university press west of the Mississippi and the only major press affiliated with a public university. We publish in many fields but our press is especially known for publishing on progressive social issues, like inequality, human rights, and the environment. We do a lot of books in interdisciplinary fields, books that transcend formal disciplines. 

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Translators’ Tools: Objects from Asymptote’s Virtual Translation Museum

June 23, 2014  |  in Essays, Interviews  |  by Nicole Idar

The Jawi Typewriter

Arabic Typewriter

Manufactured: c. 1966

Height: 5.9 inches, width: 15 inches

On display at the Malay Heritage Centre, Singapore

Jawi, an Arabic alphabet, was the dominant form of written Malay in Malaysia and Singapore for more than 600 years, but these days it’s in danger of becoming as obsolete as the typewriter.

Though the Malaysian ministry of education attempted to revive Jawi learning in the past—in 1970, elementary schools began teaching Jawi, and soon after high schools followed suit—by 1981, when I started Standard One (Malaysian first grade), Jawi was no longer part of the national curriculum. By 2006, Malaysia’s only remaining Jawi newspaper, the Utusan Melayu, which first appeared in Singapore in 1939, had ceased publishing.

As a translator of Malay into English, I’ve long been interested in Jawi, and when I spotted what I thought was a Jawi typewriter at the Malay Heritage Centre (MHC) in Singapore, I was immediately curious. I wanted to know where it came from, how old it was, who had owned it, how it was used. What follows is the conversation I had with the MHC concerning its typewriter, carried out over email. Noorashikin Zulkifli, Head of Curation and Programs at the MHC, helped trace the typewriter’s origins and explained its features. Encik Syed Ali Semait, Managing Director of Singapore-based Pustaka Nasional Pte. Ltd, the publishing and typesetting company that donated the typewriter to the MHC in 2012, helped identify the typewriter’s original owner. READ MORE…

Interview with Suzanne Jill Levine

June 18, 2014  |  in Interviews  |  by Eva Richter

"A greater problem is that there are fewer and fewer readers interested in serious or innovative literary works."

Luis Negrón’s short story collection Mundo Cruel, recently translated into English by Suzanne Jill Levine, has met the acclaim it well deserves. The first translated work to win a Lambda Literary Award for gay general fiction, Negrón’s debut book is an exceptional merging of absurdist humor (one story chronicles a man’s desperate attempts to have his dead dog stuffed), naturalism (the characters’ voices instantly take shape, come to life), and melodrama. In an interview with translator Suzanne Jill Levine, winner of PEN USA’s Translation Award, Levine discusses what drew her to Negrón’s work, and her career as a writer, translator, and educator.

 

Eva Richter: How did you first learn about Luis Negrón’s work, and how did you come to translate him?  

Suzanne Jill Levine: Out of the blue I received an email from a young editor at Seven Stories Press, Gabriel Espinal, asking me to consider translating Mundo Cruel. The stories and the author, Luis—who is now a dear friend—were totally unknown. At first glance through the book, I was skeptical. Then Gabe invited me to visit him in NYC to talk about it. I was touched by his enthusiasm, the story of how he discovered Luis, and I felt admiration for the work of Seven Stories Press, and so I agreed to do a sample.

As I began translating, I found myself smiling and even laughing as I went along. A miracle: I had discovered a new writer who had a sly sense of humor, and who was dealing with such a destitute, sometimes sordid microcosm, which in his hands became a rich kasbah of living speech, ordinary yet extraordinary characters, depicted with pathos, wit and penetrating wisdom. I was sold.

ER: Mundo Cruel recently won the 26th Lambda Literary Award for gay fiction. Could you speak a little about contemporary LGBT literature in English translation? 

SJL: I cannot comment authoritatively on this, though I presume that LBGT literature receives more recognition now than when I began translating in the 1970s. Translations in general have a double challenge in an English-speaking world—or should I say marketplace—where publishing literature even written originally in English is getting more and more difficult. I wasn’t aware, either, that Lambda had never in its history awarded a [fiction] translation, though I was struck by the fact that mine was the only translation considered this year. Maybe Lambda should add a category for works in translation? Anyway, in the context of Latin American literature, I was among the first to seek out and translate gay writers Severo Sarduy and Manuel Puig, subversively marginal among the Boom writers such as Garcia Marquez—and can only hope that this helped paved the way for others. Puig, from Argentina, was an important pioneer and spokesman for Latin America in this respect.

ER: What were some challenges you faced when translating Mundo Cruel? There are two short stories told by narrators speaking on the phone, using slang, colloquialisms, which I thought specifically must have been demanding. 

SJL: The challenges are precisely what make translation worth doing, but yes, the language in these stories is often a very private language, spoken by a particular group in a particular barrio of San Juan. All the stories are “spoken” with the author as eavesdropper, but there is actually only one in which the narrator is speaking on the phone and it is hysterical because the reader hears only one side of the conversation, a device Manuel Puig used in Betrayed by Rita Hayworth.  The main character, the speaker, is gossiping about “La Edwin,” for example: “The thing is that La Edwin fell for this little ‘Che Guevara’ and she’s got it bad… but when it comes to you-know-what the big machetero can’t even use his machete in the name of the Cuban Revolution… No, girl. That’s not the problem. It’s that the guy was and is straight.” Etc. The best way to explain to you is to show you, right? I also recommend that you read my book The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction, in which I recreate the process of translating slang, puns, and other “impossibles.” In a sense your question is like asking how a musician performs a piece of music; it’s a matter of ear.

ER: Did Luis Negrón engage in the translation process?

SJL: Luis, whose English is great, was a wonderful collaborator and the perfect source, of course, for any questions I had about gay slang, meaning, register, tone: we basically hunkered down for three days in a friend’s apartment in NYC and went through the manuscript. I also went over the text with another Puerto Rican writer and colleague in Santa Barbara, Leo Cabranes-Grant. 

ER: A number of contributors to Asymptote blog have discussed Americans’ “lack of interest” [Nicolás Kanellos] in Spanish-language literature. Javier Molea, of McNally Jackson, said, “With few exceptions, there is no connection between the Spanish literary world and the English one. Any literary event in Spanish is allocated to the community events section of the newspaper, while a literary event in English is highlighted in the culture section.” As an acclaimed translator of Manuel Puig, Jose Donoso, and now Luis Negrón, what are your thoughts on this topic? 

 SJL: I think that what Javier is trying to say is that writers play a more important role in Spain and Latin American countries than they do in the United States (I hesitate to speak for Canada and the UK). A literary event in Bogotá will probably bring in a larger audience than in lower Manhattan. A greater problem is that there are fewer and fewer readers interested in serious or innovative literary works. Here and there a significant writer receives recognition, but more often, from what I’ve observed, there seem to be certain fashionable writers who come to represent their culture or nation in the global marketplace, mainly because of a generally superficial knowledge we have of literature as well as of other cultures and countries. Tim Parks has written on this topic, and I think he is completely accurate.

ER: Regarding the diminished appreciation of serious or innovative literature, why do you think that is? How has it affected your work?  

SJL: In part I am speaking as an educator regarding this sense of a diminishing literary readership. My friends in publishing have plenty to say about this problem as well. In the past 30 odd years in academe I have watched the Humanities lose ground to the Social Sciences, but even more so, I have watched generations of students turn from the written word to the video/digital world: they are becoming increasingly illiterate, either uninterested or unable to read.

Obviously there are elite groups that continue to cultivate the study and appreciation of literature, and of course many will say that literature is evolving into other equally creative forms—and no doubt some of this is true.

How does the diminishing interest in literature affect me? There are fewer books I want to translate and fewer opportunities for publishers to translate the works of writers I like.

This being said, I am working more with poetry—and have discovered wonderful new poets from Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua—and also on my own creative non-fiction. After all, translation is a rite of passage, as someone once said. In 2012 I came out with my first poetry chapbook (Reckoning: Finishing Line Press), which brings together poems I’ve written with poems I have translated—and the translations seem almost more autobiographical than the originals…

ER: Do you have a translation philosophy that guides your work? How did it serve you (or not) in your translation of Mundo Cruel? 

SJL: The Subversive Scribe speaks about translation as creation or “transcreation.” A writer, a translator succeeds in creating when s/he finds a voice: I would say that this happened in the translation of Mundo Cruel, but only you, the reader, can tell me if this is true.

***

Suzanne Jill Levine’s acclaimed translations, which include books by Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Three Trapped Tigers) and Manuel Puig (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), have helped introduce the world to some of the icons of contemporary Latin American literature. She is also an editor of Penguin Classics’ essays and poetry of Jorge Luis Borges and the author of The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction. She is the winner of PEN USA’s Translation Award 2012 for her translation of Jose Donoso’s The Lizard’s Tale.

Publisher Profile: Arte Público Press

June 11, 2014  |  in Interviews, Publisher Profile  |  by Frances Riddle

"We exist to give access to Latino writers and to Latino intellectuals."

Arte Público Press of the University of Houston is the oldest and most esteemed publisher of Hispanic authors in the U.S. Dedicated to publishing contemporary Hispanic literature, Arte Público also boasts a successful children’s book imprint, Piñata Books, and the Recovery Project, which aims to recover Latino writings that were lost from the colonial period to the 1960s. At their offices in Houston, Texas, I sat down with Dr. Nicolás Kanellos, founder and director of Arte Público Press.

Frances Riddle: How did Arte Público Press start out?

Nicolás Kanellos: I first founded and edited a literary magazine, the Revista Chicano-Riqueña for some eight, nine years. This came out of the Latino Civil Rights movement where I had worked with lots of writers who didn’t have any place to publish. We founded the magazine in 1972, and by 1979, we decided that we could publish books. First we published poetry books by Nuyorican [New York Puerto Rican] writers and then went on to prose. It’s called Arte Público because we were influenced by the public art movement, which meant we believed that there was art and culture in the community, and we wanted to take that art and format it and give it back to the community and make it known to everyone.

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Interview with Roberto Rivera Vicencio

June 4, 2014  |  in Interviews  |  by James Kelly and Roberto Rivera Vicencio

“Without a doubt, I demand a lot of my readers, perhaps even too much for the banality and superficiality of the times in which we live.”

In 1994, twenty-one years after General Pinochet seized power in Chile, and just four years after his leaving office, Roberto Rivera published A fuego eterno condenados (literally Condemned to Eternal Flames). Partly grotesque political satire, partly social realism, the novel follows two parallel narrative strands: the first chronicles the rise and fall of a minotaur in the dark corridors of political power; the second captures the inertia of a group of disenfranchised young people living out their lives on the fringes of Chile’s rapidly changing society. Taken together, they present a vivid portrait of the absurdity and corruption in the political sphere and the tragic human cost visited at the hands of its cruelty.

Despite having been largely ignored in Chile, the novel represents a serious literary attempt to address the legacy of the dictatorship at a time when wounds were still very much open. Arguably ahead of its time in many aspects, it is notable for a political outlook that constitutes a rare attempt to transcend the partisan fighting between right and left and address the larger issue of the political process as a whole.

In this interview, I discuss with the author some of the inspirations behind the novel and the challenges of writing in such a complex political dynamic.

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English without Pain

June 2, 2014  |  in Interviews  |  by Miriam Sherwood

An interview with Thomas Smetryns on his untraditional, comic opera made with English language-learning records

Belgian composer Thomas Smetryns wrote one third of Triptych, a new opera commissioned and created by Opera Erratica. His piece A Party uses the English language-learning records L’anglais sans peine from 1950s France as the basis for an absurdist comedy.

How did you come across the L’anglais sans peine records?

I DJ with 78rpm records with a friend, and I was always looking for new material, because we didn’t want to only play the regular Bing Crosby and Andrews Sisters songs. I found the German-language records first and then I started to look for them, especially, and collect them. They’re all from the 1950s because they stopped producing 78rpm at the end of the 1950s.

How did you choose which records to use in A Party, your section of Triptych?

I was quite fascinated by L’anglais sans peine because there is a lot of material, it had the book with it, and because it was just quite funny. The accents of the records… the way they pronounce the words, as a Belgian I find them very refined, but for Patrick and other native speakers they are funny just because it’s a very old-fashioned way of talking.

I had already transcribed the whole record, so when Patrick [Eakin-Young, director and co-librettist] and I were trying things out for Triptych, I said he should take a look at it. He was completely enthusiastic, so from then on it went really fast, I think two weeks later I got the first draft of the libretto from him.

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Publisher Profile: Will Evans of Deep Vellum

May 26, 2014  |  in Interviews, Publisher Profile  |  by Frances Riddle

“Translation needs to be brought out of the ghetto that it’s in… we talk about translation as if it is separate from literature”

The contagiously enthusiastic Will Evans views literature as an international art form. His passion for world literature was the inspiration behind his brand new publishing venture, Deep Vellum, based in Dallas, Texas. Dedicated to quality literature in translation, Deep Vellum’s first titles are slated for release later this year.

Book Expo America attendees (or anyone else in NYC this week!) can check out Deep Vellum at the Translation Happy Hour Event Wednesday, May 28th, co-sponsored by Asymptote in celebration of the BEA’s Translation Market Focus.

Frances Riddle: What gap in the publishing landscape does Deep Vellum aim to fill?

Will Evans: I started Deep Vellum with a threefold mission to fill in the pieces that I feel are lacking in the literary landscape. Deep Vellum is going to publish translations of literature from every language and an unspoken part of that is I want to publish a lot of Mexican and Latin American literature. Based in Texas, we have strong ties to our neighbors south of the border.

I’m committed to publishing equal numbers of men and women authors. I’m very committed to publishing a diversity of authors from different styles, different viewpoints, different lifestyles, cultural backgrounds. The second part of Deep Vellum’s mission is to promote the art of translation, the more creative writing side of literary translation. And the third part of my mission is to promote literature as a part of the larger arts community in our country. If you look at the funding for the arts in America, literature is not considered the arts. So we need to get literature included in a discussion of the arts and the vital role that the literary community can play in this country.

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Reviewing “Red Monsoon,” Interviewing Eelum Dixit

April 21, 2014  |  in Interviews, Reviews  |  by Elen Turner

"I think that Nepali cinema is at a point now where if people at the top work together, we can really create a proper industry. "

Red Monsoon, a Nepali-language feature film directed by young Nepali filmmaker Eelum Dixit, will open in Kathmandu multiplexes in May. A select crowd of Lalitpur intelligentsia, myself included (I say this with my tongue firmly in cheek!) were invited to preview the film last week in the more intimate atmosphere of the refurbished 1920s-era Yalamaya Kendra complex.

South Asian film is perhaps too often synonymous with Bollywood. The overwhelming image is of the colourful, sequined song-and-dance routine, melodrama, three-hour-plus duration, as well as big-budget, cartel-backed production.

But Red Monsoon contains only one of these characteristics. The low-budget film (starring several members of Eelum’s family) opens with footage of one of Kathmandu’s many crowd-pulling religious festivals, yet riot police are beating back revelers. In the next scene, a group of young men discuss migration to the Gulf. “Good luck with your new life in Dubai,” says one friend. READ MORE…

Interview with Alex Cigale: Part II

April 15, 2014  |  in Interviews  |  by Eva Richter

Featuring poetry by neo-futurist poets Serge Segay and Rea Nikonova!

In Part I of Asymptote blog’s interview with Alex Cigale, Cigale discussed the roots of Russian Futurism, its modern inheritors, and politics at play in Russian poetry. Now he discusses his poetry and translations of Russian neo-futurist poets Serge Segay and Rea Nikonova. Read on for new poems by Segay and Nikonova, and to find out about Cigale’s Kickstarter campaign to finish exoDICKERING: Compositions 1963-1985, translated poetry by Serge Segay.

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