Weekly acquisitions
It’s started again…
- Nabokov’s The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, much easier going than Pale Fire (I’m still working on that one though). I vaguely remembered this as not very impressive but I’ve totally come around about it — it’s not as beautifully written as Lolita but also not as emotionally difficult, and it has some gorgeous moments. Boekenmarkt Spui.
- The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem’s stories of the Constructors Trurl and Klapaucius. I borrowed this from a Dutch friend some months ago and read it straight through, which was a bit much — the stories taken individually are spectacular, but all together they lose some of the sparkle and individuality. Which is why I’m particularly glad to have it in my bookshelf, in return for proofreading a paper by a Polish friend (Lem is Poland’s great contribution to science fiction); now I can dip into it at my leisure and take each story on its own merits. You can get some sense of how overwhelming 300 pages of Cyberiad stories could be by checking out the verbal gymnastics of “Love and Tensor Algebra“, a “love poem, lyrical, pastoral, and expressed in the language of pure mathematics. […] But with feeling, you understand, and in the cybernetic spirit.” It sparkles and bubbles and crackles with genius (I put my hat on especially so I can take it off to the translator!) but it’s best taken in small doses. So thanks, Nina and Jakub, for ensuring me a steady supply!
- Moby-Dick. I didn’t intend to buy this. I went to Waterstones looking for Jeff VanderMeer’s City of Saints and Madmen, but they didn’t have it. So I went to the American Book Centre, which somehow didn’t exist any more. I checked online back at the office and found that they had recently moved to Spui, and that the first floor (science fiction and fantasy, among other things) wasn’t unpacked yet. But then later I happened to be on Spui, so I stopped by to check it out anyway. Turns out the website is slightly out of date, the first floor is open, but still undergoing construction. And f/sf is unpacked … A–S. VanderMeer has not yet seen the light of day. At this point I decided somebody influential was having a little laugh at my expense — a notion reinforced by the discovery that Athenaeum (the academic bookstore, also on Spui) stocks, in the ‘English/American novels’ section, Neal Stephenson but not Jeff VanderMeer. So, as one does in these circumstances, I bought Moby-Dick instead.
Comments
Learning Polish: it was a plan for a while... but I got sidetracked by Spanish.
*Moby-Dick*: I agree with S. australis, it's a glorious read *if* you've got the belly for it. Trouble is, you won't necessarily know straight away -- I'm roughly a quarter in now, and the style just changed rather dramatically. From the introduction I gather that this isn't the only time it happens.
I really couldn't believe that there's no direct English translation of Solaris--after all, it is Lem's masterpiece...
But I googled, and it turned awfully true---some mad people seem to own of the license for the book in the English world...
The only solution I see is to start learning Polish. :P
BTW: Moby-Dick is one of the books I always wanted to read, but never managed to... Arturo Perez-Reverte mentions it in a lot of his books...
Golly, that's "Nature" I guess. And I wondered what a bunch of Naturalists arguing with each other had to do with Nature...
*Solaris* is only available in Babelfish whispers?! That's criminal!
*Eating People is Wrong*: haven't read, will check it out. I presume you know the Flanders and Swann song, but if not, you should. I'm also loving *Moby-Dick*, the quote book is filling steadily...
Lem was a genius. The Cyberiad is markedly different in style to anything else of his that I've read, and as you say it is perhaps a bit much at one gulp. Hofstadter's Le Ton Beau de Marot uses the "Anything that starts with an N" story as the kernel of a discussion of translation and its impossibility; specifically, when Klapaucius requests (in Polish) "nauka" (science), how do you render it into English? Every possible solution is (as ever in translation) unsatisfactory, but which is least unsatisfactory?
And yes, Michael Kandel is as incredible a translator as Lem is an author. I don't know how much Lem you've read, but I urge you to read more -- anything you can get your hands on. (Some of his works are shamefully hard to come by in English, though; last I checked, Solaris was only available -- unforgivably -- in double translation via German. But, even viewed through that murky glass, it was an amazing book.)
I'm most of the way through Moby-Dick at the moment (it went on hold for Eating People is Wrong (recommended) which in turn went on hold for The New Zealand Road Code, but is now at the top of the stack again). It's a glorious read for anyone who can stomach a ~1:8 plot-to-digression ratio; I'm loving it.
Some brief research shows that, yes, the translation I read ~10 years ago (by Kilmartin and Cox, 1961 -- via French rather than the German I recalled) is still the only English one. I also found the first two chapters of a stalled English translation here, but the English is terrible. Looks like it's time to start learning Polish.
Incidentally Le Ton Beau... is also recommended if you haven't read it. Not as coherent and satisfying as GEB (and a bit too wafflesomely anecdotal at times) but rich and gorgeous nevertheless.
I shall track down "The Reluctant Cannibal" and give it a listen; I've been fairly underexposed to Flanders & Swann.