Recent content by Cleanthess

All I know is that if walked into Christie's, opened an auction display holding a $650,000, 115 carat diamond for "research" and replied "no habla ingles" to any questions, while attempting to swap the gem with a replica, I don't think I'd be allowed to walk out of the place, unless it was in...

That's the problem with reading in translation poets whose main gift is to make their mother tongue sing: their poetry is what's lost in translation. For example, a couple of Russian friends told me that Pushkin's poem below is one of the most beautiful poems in the world, the first line being...

The juice has a small cameo role in the second part of the great French novel, Madame Bovary, also known as The Kugelmass Episode by Woody Allen

Me too. I love that movie. This video from X is similar in spirit

Fame is transient, even for Nobel Prize winners. For example, consider Jose Echegaray, who was greatly admired by George Bernard Shaw and Luigi Pirandello, and who, like them, won the Nobel Prize in literature (in 1904, let me point out that among all the great writers from the whole world...

Excellent summation. Let me just add that the same could be said about a certain Austrian painter. And yes, both K and H belong to the same evil demon clade, the difference between them only a matter of scale in their body counts, hundreds of thousands vs. millions.

Via that brilliant blog, The Automatic Earth:

Hijacking this thread to turn it into The 2024 Wolfie speculation thread. By now the WWLF Academy must have already voted and they must have their shortlist. Based upon discussions about 3 or 4 nominees, it looks like they have 4 candidates. My guess as to who those 4 candidates might be: Paulo...

@Bartleby Any updates regarding the standings? Still two writers neck and neck for third place? Or is it all over but the crying?

Voted for: Frankétienne Rita Indiana Esther Kinsky

The Needle and the Damage Done (by the Nobel Speculation and the Chinese Lit threads): Jon Fosse: Ylajali Rafael Cadenas: Contestaciones and En Torno a Basho Shen Congwen: Border Town Zhang Wei: September's Fable Qian Zhongshu: Humans, beasts and ghosts Jia Pingwa: L'art perdu des fours anciens

Recently someone wondered about Muñoz Molina and his merits regarding the Nobel Prize. His best book, and one of the best Spanish language books in recent memory is The Polish Rider/El Jinete polaco. The Polish Rider of the title is an allusion to Rembrandt's painting, which in the novel is...

Based upon a quick comparison of the first page of translations of Trilogia into several languages, Cavalo de Ferro's translation into Portuguese looks like the richest one. It happens to include Fosse's name in its very first paragraph, not to mention alliteration and internal rhymes ("Asle e...

It feels wrong for us to be criticizing the choice of the 18 members of the Swedish Academy, when, just last week, about 18 of us voted for the Wolfie and ended up with the same result. Worse, Mukasonga, the one non-European female candidate didn't get a single first place vote from us WWLFers...