Tomorrow Pamplona Blog Tour 2011, Gig 9

Laura’s Question: How easy or difficult it was to work on the translation, considering that the book was written in dialogues and so much imagery was involved?

I really enjoyed working on the dialogue. It felt almost like translating a play sometimes! I have to confess to sitting there in front of my computer and talking to myself occasionally, just to check that the dialogue worked. One aspect that I spent some time thinking about was the absence of quotation marks in the book. I tried inserting quotation marks in one short section to see what effect it would have, but it just didn’t feel like Jan’s text anymore. I did perhaps normalise the text a little, by, for example, inserting the names of the speakers at points where I felt the attribution wasn’t quite clear or by rearranging the order of the elements in the dialogue to something that felt more natural in English, but I decided to stick with Jan’s choice not to employ quotation marks.

One interesting point about the amount of dialogue in that text was that the short lines made the book thicker than Peirene’s other titles. Peirene aim to keep their books under 200 pages, which was a challenge on this occasion because so much of the page was taken up by very short lines: ‘Yes.’ ‘Okay.’ ‘No.’ Tomorrow Pamplona may look longer than Peirene’s other titles, but that’s mainly because dialogue is such an important feature of this book.

This translation was a real pleasure to work on, as the original text flows so well and the tension is so strong.

Tomorrow Pamplona Blog Tour 2011, Chapter 2

Question for Jan: The book is very optimistic in the sense that there is more that the characters will look forward to at the end of the book. Why this topic of two strangers whose lives are so different and yet intermingling, come together for a road trip? Where did the idea come from?

Answer: The first idea for a story was about a man who visits the Bull Run. In Pamplona he would find out some things about his life. A story about one person is not so interesting. A story about two friends who travel to Spain, with the long hours in the car, is a better, but still hasn’t got enough drama. Opposite characters would be the best solution, so I decided to let the man run from Amsterdam. He hichthikes and meets this other man. In the first four versions the main character wasn’t a boxer. He was a writer, a bricklayer. All kinds of professions. It didn’t work out, especially not the version in which he was a writer. That was crazy: a writer in a car, talking about writing. The Sun Also Rises gave me the boxer. In the first sentence of that great novel, Hemmingway writes about a middleweight champion. A boxer. My story became easy. The boxer had to run from something in Amsterdam… That part of the book I could write really fast, after I figured out the profession of Danny. So the story gave me the characters very slowly, with two strangers.

Book Review: Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen

For a great foreign language  book to be known that well and widely acclaimed, is always dependent on the translator. Great translators do half the job of making the book great and that I say from experience. For me it is always important that the translator knows what he/she is doing with the book and Laura Watkinson knew what she was doing when she translated Tomorrow Pamplona, written beautifully by Jan van Mersbergen. I would love to thank the publisher – Meike Ziervogel for publishing this brilliant small piece of work.

Now to the book: Tomorrow Pamplona is a book about almost everything and more – it is about love, family, betrayal, and all this on a road to self-discovery. On the path to knowing what it means to be human and what does one do at the crossroads of one’s life? So the book is about a road-trip – a strange trip at that, which takes place between a professional boxer and a family man. Both want to escape their routine existence. Both want a better life, according to them. And in that elusiveness of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they discover themselves and what they really want to be.

Why is the book titled Tomorrow Pamplona? Because both of them are going to the Pamplona Bull Run, with the nagging thought that they have to eventually get back home. That is the situation with most of us – the drab and dull lives that we lead. Tomorrow Pamplona is written with a lot of heart and soul and that is why readers all over can relate to the book and what it says. For me, Tomorrow Pampona was one of those books that make you want to reassess your life – the do’s and the do nots. The want and the yearning to escape and may be that is why the book will hit a note and resonate in our hearts and minds long after the book is done with.

 

An Interview with Matthias Politycki

Here is an interview with Matthias Politycki, the author of Next World Novella. It was a pleasure interviewing him. Here goes:

1. Why the topic of marriage? What drove you to write about a couple?

Well, I AM married. And the longer I am, the more I am afraid that some future day I won’t any longer – at the latest when one of us will die. Isn’t that the ultimate horror, to find the beloved person dead, as the protagonist of „Next World Novella“ does? Maybe it was nothing else but worries that made me write.

2. When did you first decide to become a writer and why?

At about 15. And why? Because I was in love with a girl that definitely wasn’t in love with me. Writing poems helped, reading them to friends and getting their response seemed to help even more.

3. What inspired you to write Next World Novella?

A nightmare, including all the shimmering light, the floating colours, even the smell described on the very first pages of book, and all that and more in precise details. I was so overwhelmed by the dream that I could only get rid of it by inventing more horror to top the initial one.

4. Your literary influences…

Kafka, Eichendorff, Brentano, Laurence Sterne, Diderot, Hofmannsthal, Nietzsche, Benn, Hemingway … only to name a few. The more you think about influences, the more you accept having been influenced – one way or another – by nearly every book. Even the bad ones make you think, don’t they, make you think WHAT makes you feel so bad while having read them. Maybe you can learn more about writing when NOT being pleased by a book?

5. Matthias as a writer…

I don’t have a daily writing routine; to be honest I love days, weeks, months without writing at all. What makes me write is … if nothing else helps, in order to get rid of an experience, a thought, a certain emotion, phantasy, whatsoever. Writing to me is not a job to be done, but the only means to get back to those happy days when there is no need at all to write.

6. Matthias the reader…

If I only could read again as I did when I was a child, when I was at school, at university! But I can’t, some 20 years ago writing started to be a profession and reading, sad to say, changed to be nothing but part of the job. If I could concentrate on the plot, while reading, and on nothing else but the plot! But I can’t, have to concentrate on the set of tools the author shows or tries to hide, have to concentrate on the way he/she puts his words etc. pp – I can’t help it.

7. Did you get involved in the translation process yourself?

Well, you shouldn’t bother a genius at work, should you? I am so pleased Anthea Bell is my translator. When I first looked at the translation I felt a bit sad, because some of my beloved long sentences had been cut into pieces. But that all changed after my first reading in English, when everybody told me how good the text sounded. Thank you, Anthea.

8. Your next venture…

… has already been gone through und just these days been published in German: „London for Heroes. The Ale Trail – an Ale Tale“, a long poem about pubs, ales, regulars & irregulars. As I had the opportunity to spend some months in London’s East End, you can picture me there, the German, being brought up with Bavarian beer, and now sipping and supping that strange „real ale“ that tastes like … (better read the book). I love London, the Londoners, even love the slogans about their beers, the claims of the brewing companies, the poetry of the tasting notes, the names of the ales; but … Well, it was high time to make fun of it. Cheers, mate!

You can read the review here

Book Review: Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi

Title: Beside the Sea
Author: Veronique Olmi
Publisher: Peirene Press
ISBN: 9780956284020
Price: £8.99
Source: Publisher
Genre: Translated Work, French Fiction, Novella, Literary Fiction
PP: 111 Pages
Rating: 5/5

What would drive a mother to kill her own children? Why would she do that? Which mother ever does that? What must be the situation or circumstance that propelled such behaviour? I had these questions raging in my mind, when I read about 3 weeks ago in the local newspaper, that a woman had flung her 2 children – aged 6 and 11 years old and then took the path of suicide herself. She could not handle the stress at home and her husband wasn’t supportive of her choices either. I stared at her picture for the longest time and then it struck me that I studied with her. She was almost my classmate. We knew each other. I had once upon a time laughed with her. I could not get her out of my head for the longest time and she still lingers there somehow.

The reason I mentioned all of this is when I started reading, “Beside the Sea”, my thoughts time and again centred on her and her children. The book is about a nameless mother and her two children Stan and Kevin and their trip beside the sea. The story is set in a nameless town – grey and dark and full of rain and mud. There is no mention of any colour in the entire book and may be that is how it is supposed to be, given the plot and the atmosphere. Well the story hinges on the two day trip and aftermath. I had to give the spoiler away since I had to mention what I was going through and what I had experienced.

This is no joyful jaunt to sun, surf and sand. Instead, we discover a deeply disturbed mother, already on the edge, afraid for the life of poverty and exclusion that she fears her boys are destined to lead. Determined to give them at least one happy memory, she takes them on a holiday that she cannot afford and has not properly planned.

We are introduced to the two little boys, Stan and Kevin, through the eyes of their mother allowing us to develop a proxy parental concern for them. The story is told from within their mother’s mind but she remains nameless, allowing us to feel empathy for her while still keeping her at arms distance.

Seeing the experiences of this family through the eyes of the boys gives a sense of wonder and delight, but the covering veil of the mother’s thoughts and emotions and the constant presence of rain give the story a continual sense of darkness that leads to a disharmony – a sense that something is not quite right.

My head was empty when I finished reading this book. I don’t know why. I know and yet the book shook me in several ways, ways I did not think it was capable of. The book takes you by surprise (or may be by shock?) and manages to make you think long after you have finished reading the book. I thought the translation was perfect considering it was originally written in French by Veronique Olmi. The writing is perfect, neither too less and nor too much – anyway that’s how a novella should be written, isn’t it? I did not want to know more at the end of it. I was satisfied. I have had a roller-coaster of an emotional ride while reading this beautiful work. So must you.  

You can purchase the book here on Flipkart

Book Review: Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki

Title: Next World Novella
Author: Matthias Politycki
Publisher: Peirene Press
PP: 138
ISBN: 9780956284037
Price: £8.99
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

This latest publication from Peirene is a fascinating dissection of misunderstandings and failure to communicate that can lead to the failure of a marriage. But Hinrich Schepp doesn’t realise any of this until after the death of his beloved Doro, when it is too late.

`Being dead, he thought, means first and foremost that you can’t apologize, can’t forgive and be reconciled, there’s nothing left to be forgiven, only to be forgotten. Or rather, there’s nothing to be forgotten, only forgiven.’

It’s short, a novella rather than a novel, as implied in the title, but its 138 pages contain a depth of miscommunication and loss. The book begins after Doro has died, when Schepp discovers her sitting at an awkward angle in her chair, as if she had fallen asleep while editing the manuscript that lay on her desk. His sense of shock and disbelief as the realisation dawns is beautifully and sensitively described:

`I don’t understand, thought Schepp, understanding.

`It’s not true, Schepp decided.

`Everything will be all right again, Schepp assured himself, and at the same time he was overcome by the certainty that he was choking.

“At least say something,’ he whispered finally. `Just one word.”

The story is a mere snapshot, one day in the life of Schepp, an academic in an arcane field of ancient Chinese language. It is through Schepp’s recollections and the notes on the manuscript Doro was editing before she died that we experience the depth of feeling and misunderstandings, and how they had arisen. The details of pertinent points in their relationship are portrayed in detail such that there is no need for more, no need to know what happened during the intervening years, and it is exquisitely translated from the German, occasionally wry, occasionally with a light touch of humour. For instance, in the early days Schepp habitually took Doro a pot of green tea in her room at the university, .

So the story is told through his reading of the manuscript and Doro’s notes on it about the marriage and sometimes about the lives they lead. What I loved is the story within the story so to say. The man who has a crush on the waitress is her husband as she is editing the manuscript. As he reads Doro’s notes and corrections, he understands that she knew all about the things he thought he had kept secret.

At one and the same time he dissects the narrative of the putrefying corpse of a failed marriage and clinically examines the role of the writer and reader in making texts. He interweaves three story strands to explore where writing comes from and who makes and owns meanings. The uber- narrative of the unfolding of Hinrich Schepp’s and Doro’s disintegrating relationship is interrupted by a story Schepp wrote decades previously, before his marriage. It portrays a semi-erotic fantasy of unrequited lust, which is dramatically realised in more recent years, yet unrequited in real life, apparently. Politycki’s main protagonists interface only in writing and rewriting. Fact, fiction and memory seem ironically unstable. Doro, in the shifting course of events has moved from editing Schepp’s work to correcting it and ultimately rewriting and continuing the story, making it her story, her version.

Perhaps the authorial choice to provide two endings to the novella can be seen as an assertion of writerly authority. Yet again all we have are versions of events and some readers, disrupted and unsettled by what they may perceive as an intrusion of a second ending may choose to privilege ending number one. Of course, some readers will prefer the second ending’s less macabre implications and seek some readerly solace in a more fantastical return to the radiant beginning of Hinrich and Doro’s love. Before the rot set in.

Readers will not feel neutral at this point of the book. In the end, Politycki shows himself equally to be a reader’s writer. For what more could we wish for? A page-turning twister of a tale, playing with versions of reality, whilst its literary tentacles wrap us around in this fantastical and stylish twenty-first century exploration of nothing less than our own Momento Mori.

`Next World Novella’ is a great two hour read. And an even better two hour re-read.

And last but not least, I would like to celebrate Anthea Bell’s remarkable translation of this wry, poignant and very telling tale. I felt the intense pathos when two people in a marriage are not able to tell each of their feelings, when a marriage breaks apart due to it and changes forever.