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landofnowhereKing of Shadows, Susan Cooper. This book is still good! Timeslip fantasy of the most self-indulgent kind: teenage boy performing at the reconstructed Globe Theatre is sent 400 years back in time to play Puck to Shakespeare's Oberon. There is a darker edge, though; Nat is processing grief and trauma, which is compounded by the experience of being jerked around in time. This book was so obviously written for 13-year-old me, it's ridiculous (well, maybe not the trauma aspects) -- I assumed it must have been an influence on the classical music time travel story that I wrote when I was 13, but the timing doesn't work out.
I spent a while leafing through old journals looking for my review of it, but it seems that all I wrote was "I absolutely [hart]ed it." I feel like younger Alison could have had more consideration for her older self when writing down reactions to books, but no -- she wrote multiple pages ranting about a bad book that wasn't even interestingly bad, and just this sentence. Hopefully older Alison is doing better? Maybe?
Jonathan Strange et Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke, translated into French by Isabelle Delord-Philippe. This is a curiosity -- a French translation of a very English novel. I bought it in 2017 when Schoenhof's Foreign Books was closing its brick-and-mortar location, and tried reading it then, but only made it through about the first third. I'm trying again, and have just gotten to "Illusions-Perdues" ("Lost-Hope"). Susanna Clarke is still funny when translated into French, even if it's not quite the same voice, and I'm learning dubiously useful vocabulary like "guéridon" and "occire". The poetry doesn't really hold up, but that's hard to do.
The translator occasionally makes her presence known by footnotes -- not as good as Clarke's -- mostlyfilling in English history or references that the French reader won't get -- though there are a couple places where she makes her love of Victor Hugo clear -- *obviously* if you're going to translate this book you should choose someone who loves Victor Hugo. (If I lose patience I might just skip to the Waterloo section and see what the translator has to say.) It's interesting to see which things *don't* get translated: most of the time "gentleman" is left in English to make it clear this is the ineffably English notion of gentlemanhood, but sometimes it's translated as "gentilhomme". On the other hand, anytime anyone is dropping French words or sentences into the conversation, those are not only italicized but marked with an asterisk to make this clear.
I spent a while leafing through old journals looking for my review of it, but it seems that all I wrote was "I absolutely [hart]ed it." I feel like younger Alison could have had more consideration for her older self when writing down reactions to books, but no -- she wrote multiple pages ranting about a bad book that wasn't even interestingly bad, and just this sentence. Hopefully older Alison is doing better? Maybe?
Jonathan Strange et Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke, translated into French by Isabelle Delord-Philippe. This is a curiosity -- a French translation of a very English novel. I bought it in 2017 when Schoenhof's Foreign Books was closing its brick-and-mortar location, and tried reading it then, but only made it through about the first third. I'm trying again, and have just gotten to "Illusions-Perdues" ("Lost-Hope"). Susanna Clarke is still funny when translated into French, even if it's not quite the same voice, and I'm learning dubiously useful vocabulary like "guéridon" and "occire". The poetry doesn't really hold up, but that's hard to do.
The translator occasionally makes her presence known by footnotes -- not as good as Clarke's -- mostlyfilling in English history or references that the French reader won't get -- though there are a couple places where she makes her love of Victor Hugo clear -- *obviously* if you're going to translate this book you should choose someone who loves Victor Hugo. (If I lose patience I might just skip to the Waterloo section and see what the translator has to say.) It's interesting to see which things *don't* get translated: most of the time "gentleman" is left in English to make it clear this is the ineffably English notion of gentlemanhood, but sometimes it's translated as "gentilhomme". On the other hand, anytime anyone is dropping French words or sentences into the conversation, those are not only italicized but marked with an asterisk to make this clear.
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Date: 9 Sep 2021 09:18 (UTC)This is funny! I find that it's highly satisfying to spend paragraphs complaining about how terrible something is, and then when I want to talk about something I love, all I can come up with is "this is SO GREAT." Sympathy for younger!Alison.
Also that is a really fascinating account of the French translation; it sounds like the translator knew what she was doing. I've seen a couple of essay collections on literary translation in general, but none that focus on translation of SFF; I would love to read something like that.
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Date: 9 Sep 2021 11:33 (UTC)no subject
Date: 9 Sep 2021 12:44 (UTC)It just tickles me to know that Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell has a Waterloo chapter. Apparently once a book gets above a certain length, it MUST have a Waterloo chapter, it's just LAW.
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Date: 13 Sep 2021 23:34 (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 Sep 2021 00:10 (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 Sep 2021 00:13 (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 Sep 2021 01:31 (UTC)However, Anne Karenina has neither Waterloo NOR Napoleon, so clearly some books escape the curse entirely.
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Date: 14 Sep 2021 03:24 (UTC)