k..
"Frank also copies down one sentence from a piece, "The Writing Life," by Thomas McGonigle: The dead are always with us.from DOUBLE VISION by George Garrett, The University of Alabama Press, 2004.
This can serve as a preface to what follows. Of course the important detail is the publisher...
j..
Translation has been in the news. Much of what is translated in junk. All too often the stuff is re-cycled drivel that admits in both form and content that it has been influenced by certain American writers who in turn are already second and third rate versions of in many cases foreign sources. Or the work is published to validate some progressive cause or viewpoint and then the writing is usually of a tedious realistic nature designed to teach a lesson or make us sympathetic for some new victim.
As a rule of thumb--- to fall into a cliche--- translators should avoid the new and the young for a certain period of time... all too often these young writers merely echo the newspaper headlines of the moment and simply put, there are too many works of literature that have been over-looked and which if translated will actually broaden our understanding of what literature is and what can be done beyond the dreary realism that is still the benchmark of ninety five percent of what passes for American writing.
My list of writers whose works should be published, newly translated or republished in new translations, or brought back into print if originally written in English/American must include:::: if I could, I would alter this list every time you look at it since they are listed not in any particular order and any order that is here should be read without significance:::
Louis Ferdinand Celine
Hal Bennett
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
Juan Carlos Onetti
Georgi Ivanov
Jose Lezama Lima
Julien Gracq
Julian Rios
Julian Green
Uwe Johnson
Glenway Wescott
Robert Brasillach
Marcel Jouhandeau
Ernst Junger
Nina Berberova
Heimito Von Doderer
Edward Dahlberg
Thomas McGonigle
Francis Stuart
Robert Pinget
James Hanley
Robert Walser
Peter Handke
Thomas Bernhard
Walter Kempowski
Gerhard Roth
George Garrett
Claude Simon
Arno Schmidt
Giuseppe Berto
David Slavitt
Tom Whalen
Botho Strauss
Pati Hill
Hannah Green
Kenneth Tindall
Gil Orlovitz
Miroslav Krelza
Alberto Savinio
Hector Bianciotti
Jacques Rigaut
k..
If a publisher came along and said what would you publish and why should I make you an editor I would answer with this list...
