Happy new year! С
Новым годом! I wish everyone an extraordinarily happy, healthy 2015 with
an abundance of good, (whatever that may mean to you), fun, enjoyable books.
This year, like last, turned out to be all about quality over quantity, with,
alas, a plethora of abandoned books… fortunately, the good books more than made
up for the books I didn’t finish. Here are some highlights.
Favorite book by an author
I’d already read. I still haven’t posted about Evgeny Vodolazkin’s Solovyov and Larionov, which I finished
several months ago. But a post is on the way. Seriously. In brief, though,
Solovyov is a Petersburg historian who goes to Crimea for a conference about Larionov,
a White Army general. Much academic hilarity ensues. Some of it in footnotes. Of
course there are many, many more elements--like timelessness and some malfeasance involving a document--to this fun novel, a big reason why it’s so
difficult to write about…
Favorite book by an
author I’d never read. This one has to be Evgeny Chizhov’s Translation
from a Literal Translation, (previous
post), which I loved for Chizhov’s grace in mixing genres, making an
invented country work for this skeptical reader, and effectively describing all
sorts of heat. I was glad to see that Translation
won
the Venets award last week from the Moscow Union of Writers.
Favorite book read in
English. I admit that, as per the usual, I didn’t read as many Russia(n)-related books in
English during 2014 as I might have... but that doesn’t mean Soviets,
by Danzig Baldaev and Sergei Vasiliev, (previous
post), isn’t worthy of another mention. The combination of detailed
caricatures, black and white photos, and pointed captions is well worth reading
and studying. This must be my year of loving footnotes: Soviets, translated by Polly Gannon and Ast A. Moore, contains lots
of helpful explanatory notes. The publisher, Fuel, continues to produce
beautiful books: I’ve been saving their Soviet Space Dogs, another
attractive book, as a treat. The New Year holiday may be just the right time…
Favorite travel. Everything
was good this year—BookExpo
America in New York, the American
Literary Translators Association conference in Milwaukee, and the Congress
of Literary Translators in Moscow—but I have to vote for the Congress. Not
much beats a trip to Moscow that includes a visit to Andrei Platonov’s grave, speaking
about translating old language in contemporary novels, and having an
opportunity to see so many of “my” writers, not to mention translator colleagues
from all over. It was especially fun and helpful to meet the afore-mentioned
Evgeny Vodolazkin and talk about his Laurus,
which I’m busily working on now…
What’s coming up in
2015? Top blogging priority is to get caught up on posts. And I’m still trying
to figure out ways to capture notes and comments about some of the books I
abandon. Often hundreds of pages in, like, let’s say, Zakhar Prilepin’s The Cloister, a book that offers a new
aesthetic for prison camp novels but just wasn’t going anywhere for me, or
Vladimir Sorokin’s Tellurium, which
seemed to rehash too many Sorokin books I’d already read. I suppose one way to
capture this information is to write by-the-by notes, or add a “Biggest
Disappointment of the Year” paragraph to my year-end posts. I could have written that paragraph this year about Prilepin’s book, which won the Big Book Prize. I could say that Konstantin Milchin sums up my
problems with The Cloister beautifully
here,
noting, among other things, (and I’ll paraphrase) that the novel, which is a
bit lacking on the plot side, could have been 300 pages or 1,000 pages long,
all to, roughly the same effect. (For the record, I read around 270 pages so
didn’t come up very short on that 300 figure...) I was very happy that
Milchin mentions Prilepin’s language, which hardly seems to vary among his 1920s
characters, who speak in suspiciously (my word!) modern terms. I’d wondered
about this but, as a non-native reader of Russian, thought maybe I was too
demanding, particularly given my work on Laurus,
where it’s an understatement to say the dialogue sure does vary.
A reading priority for 2015: I’m hoping to keep reminding
myself to look for more books published by smaller publishers and literary
journals…
Thank You! Finally,
another big thank you to everyone who visits the blog, whether regularly or
occasionally. Happy New Year to everyone! And happy reading!
Up Next: Vodolazkin’s
Solovyov and Larionov, Marina
Stepnova’s The Italian Lessons (Безобжный
переулок), and
Alexey Nikitin’s Victory Park, which
is off to a great start… Also, a list of translations coming out in 2015. I’m
taking names and titles, so send them on in now!
Image credit: Fireworks in Bratislava, New Year 2005, from Ondrejk, via Wikipedia.
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