BlogSpy
12-May-2008, 13:21
A Common Reader (http://www.acommonreader.org.uk/2008/05/review-the-shoe.html) takes a look at Wilhelm Genazino (http://www.ndpublishing.com/books/genazinoshoetester.html)'s The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0811215830):
I read The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0811215830) while relaxing in a snow-bound hotel in Northern France... I like books that create previously unheard of occupations for their main characters (Anne Tyler is also adept at this) and the concept of a shoe-tester is up there with the best - being paid to walk all day around the city of Frankfurt testing up-market shoes and writing reports for the manufacturers. Of course, the job is a pretext for a meandering dissertation on life and its unliveability - for the narrator is a true existentialist, living at the sharp-end where nothing is a given, and the everyday is seen in its remarkability as though through eyes just born to this planet ("through the open door I once again hear the little noises the birds make as their tiny feathered bodies take off with a dense and compact flutter").
A Common Reader (http://www.acommonreader.org.uk/) (a blog I only found out about this morning after noticing Tom had left a comment (http://www.readysteadybook.com/Blog.aspx?permalink=20080501074300#comments) here yesterday and which has now duly been added to BritLitBlogs (http://www.britlitblogs.com)) also brings my attention to the fact there are now at least three English translations of Thomas Mann on the market.
I have the Vintage Classics (http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/vintage/vintageclassics/) Manns and my copy of e.g. Doctor Faustus (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0749386576) has an unsigned translator's note (!) and is a translation that dates from 1949 (just two years after it was published in German). I know that David Luke translated their Death in Venice (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0099428652), but I'm presuming that Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.T._Lowe-Porter) who, according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.T._Lowe-Porter), "enjoyed the exclusive right to translate the works of Thomas Mann from German into English for more than twenty years" must have rendered the versions of Doctor Faustus (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0749386576), The Magic Mountain (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0749386428) and Buddenbrooks (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0749386479) that I own. The Manns that Tom brings my attention to are new(ish -- 1990s I think) translations by John E. Woods (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/search.php?key=mann+john+woods&by=author) (some of which are available in lovely Everyman (http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/classics/) editions). You can find out a bit more about Woods (http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/lp/en3100803.htm) at the Goethe-Institut USA (http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/lp/en3100803.htm)*and Random House (http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780679752608.html) in the States tells me:
John E. Woods is the distinguished translator of many books -- most notably Arno Schmidt's Evening Edged in Gold, for which he won both the American Book Award for translation and the PEN Translation Prize; Patrick Suskind's Perfume, for which he again won the PEN Translation Prize in 1987; Mr. Suskind's The Pigeon and Mr. Summer's Story; Doris Dorrie's Love, Pain, and the Whole Damn Thing and What Do You Want from Me?; and Libuse Monikova's The Facade.
More... (http://www.readysteadybook.com/Blog.aspx?permalink=20080502062211)
I read The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0811215830) while relaxing in a snow-bound hotel in Northern France... I like books that create previously unheard of occupations for their main characters (Anne Tyler is also adept at this) and the concept of a shoe-tester is up there with the best - being paid to walk all day around the city of Frankfurt testing up-market shoes and writing reports for the manufacturers. Of course, the job is a pretext for a meandering dissertation on life and its unliveability - for the narrator is a true existentialist, living at the sharp-end where nothing is a given, and the everyday is seen in its remarkability as though through eyes just born to this planet ("through the open door I once again hear the little noises the birds make as their tiny feathered bodies take off with a dense and compact flutter").
A Common Reader (http://www.acommonreader.org.uk/) (a blog I only found out about this morning after noticing Tom had left a comment (http://www.readysteadybook.com/Blog.aspx?permalink=20080501074300#comments) here yesterday and which has now duly been added to BritLitBlogs (http://www.britlitblogs.com)) also brings my attention to the fact there are now at least three English translations of Thomas Mann on the market.
I have the Vintage Classics (http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/vintage/vintageclassics/) Manns and my copy of e.g. Doctor Faustus (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0749386576) has an unsigned translator's note (!) and is a translation that dates from 1949 (just two years after it was published in German). I know that David Luke translated their Death in Venice (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0099428652), but I'm presuming that Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.T._Lowe-Porter) who, according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.T._Lowe-Porter), "enjoyed the exclusive right to translate the works of Thomas Mann from German into English for more than twenty years" must have rendered the versions of Doctor Faustus (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0749386576), The Magic Mountain (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0749386428) and Buddenbrooks (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/showbook.php?id=0749386479) that I own. The Manns that Tom brings my attention to are new(ish -- 1990s I think) translations by John E. Woods (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/search.php?key=mann+john+woods&by=author) (some of which are available in lovely Everyman (http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/classics/) editions). You can find out a bit more about Woods (http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/lp/en3100803.htm) at the Goethe-Institut USA (http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/lp/en3100803.htm)*and Random House (http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780679752608.html) in the States tells me:
John E. Woods is the distinguished translator of many books -- most notably Arno Schmidt's Evening Edged in Gold, for which he won both the American Book Award for translation and the PEN Translation Prize; Patrick Suskind's Perfume, for which he again won the PEN Translation Prize in 1987; Mr. Suskind's The Pigeon and Mr. Summer's Story; Doris Dorrie's Love, Pain, and the Whole Damn Thing and What Do You Want from Me?; and Libuse Monikova's The Facade.
More... (http://www.readysteadybook.com/Blog.aspx?permalink=20080502062211)