The Marketing of Titles

[Heteronym]

I'm currently waiting for a friend's husband to arrive from Brazil with a copy of Euclides da Cunha's Os Sert?es. Now in English this book is known as Rebellion in the backlands. Sert?o means Brazil's isolated wilderness. But it got me thinking why someone introduced the word 'rebellion'; this immediately gives way the story of the book, which is a first-hand account of the Canudos War (look it up, it's fascinating; and for the Vargas Llosa fans, this book was the inspiration for The War at the End of the World). Now this is one of Brazil's great literary masterpieces, widey read there. But for a foreign market the translators had to make the title more interesting.

This got me thinking about other books that have received new titles for marketing reasons, sometimes becoming deceiving. The first book that ever made think about this was Jos? Saramago's O Memorial do Convento, which the British cleverly translated into Baltasar and Blimunda. Now the novel is all about the construction of the Convent of Mafra, with a secondary (and I'd say banal) love story. But the British title makes it look like it's all about the lovers. I wonder how people react expecting a love story and find dozens and dozens of pages about the minute details of building a convent in 18th century Portugal

Primo Levi's Se questo ? un uomo is known in the USA as Survival in Auschwitz, which is rather redundant. Of course he survived; otherwise there wouldn't be a book.

Now the British left the original title If This Is a Man. This title is a better description of what the book is about, which is a study of how low people will go to survive, making the reader question his definition of man. It's basically an anthropological, sociological study. With the USA sensationalist title (can't you just imagine an exclamation point at the end for emphasis?), it sounds indistinguishable from other holocaust memoirs.

My last example is Pablo Neruda's memoirs, which was imaginatively translated as Memoirs. I presume this is to cash in on the growing market for (auto)biographies. But lacks the beauty and audacity of the original title, I Confess I?ve Lived. For a man who fought fascism all his life, who was hated by many right-wing politicians in his own country, who suffered exile, who escaped prison, this is a bold statement. It?s completely lost on the American translation.

Titles sometimes have interesting lives.

[Igu Soni]

Just one point:

Primo Levi's Se questo ? un uomo is known in the USA as Survival in Auschwitz, which is rather redundant. Of course he survived; otherwise there wouldn't be a book.

Calling it that just means that the book is about the survival. It's kind of like calling a book Journey to the End of the World: of course there was a journey (otherwise there wouldn't be a book...), but all the title is omplying that it's about the journey.

[Heteronym]

But Survival in Auschwitz gives the impression it's focused on Levi's survival, that it's about how he survived. Which is simplistic. He's an observer, describing life in the camp, the strategies employed by everyone to live another day.

That's what distinguishes it from a memoir and places it among the great books of sociology of the 20th century.

[Eric]

Publishers want to sell books; so often they browbeat the translator into submission and alter the title to sell copies and make money. There are, of course, honourable exceptions, publishers who care and try to maintain the subtleties of the original.

But you didn't actually have to survive the Holocaust to be a witness in print. What about Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum and Ir?ne N?mirovsky?

[Igu Soni]

But Survival in Auschwitz gives the impression it's focused on Levi's survival, that it's about how he survived. Which is simplistic. He's an observer, describing life in the camp, the strategies employed by everyone to live another day.

That's what distinguishes it from a memoir and places it among the great books of sociology of the 20th century.

Fair enough. I just had a problem with what you said up there.

[hdw]

Publishers want to sell books; so often they browbeat the translator into submission and alter the title to sell copies and make money.

A few years ago I wrote a literary biography of a distant relative of mine called William Tennant, a Scottish academic and writer who was regarded as one of the leading comic poets in English in the early 19th century, and a possible influence on Byron.

I wanted to base my title on a comment made in a contemporary review of his major poem, so I was all set to call the book Unbroken Cheerfulness and Measureless Content: the Life and Works of William Tennant. The American publishers threw that one in the bin and insisted it be called A Literary Biography of William Tennant. Their main market is academic libraries in the US and librarians like to know what a book is about from a quick glance at the titles in the latest catalogue. Wit and originality are not in demand.

Harry

[Eric]

Harry, there's nothing like literary biographies. But your plaint exposes an important point: however artistic the title, the undertitle must somehow contain the name of the author or the purport of the anthology.

If a book stands on a shelf with the title "The Glade With Life-Giving Water" or similar, you cannot guess whether the book is about:

1) Zoroastrian Mysticism.

2) Estonian short-stories.

3) Ecological Irrigation.

4) Trees and Wood Nymphs.

5) Poetry and Water.

In a chaotic second-hand bookshop, you may never find this title if looking along the shelves by title alone.

[Galatea92]

Titles sometimes have interesting lives.

Titles change even from one English-language market to another. Examples that come to mind immediately are Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises which was published as Fiesta in the UK, and Ray Bradbury's The Silver Locusts which was published as The Martian Chronicles. (Chronic lack of imagination on the part of the English publishers, I think).

[Eric]

The Glade With Life-Giving Water is the real title of an anthology of short-stories. But if that opaque title is the only thing facing you in the shop from the spine of the book, you would not necessarily guess what it is about, or be inclined to even look.

However, I agree with Galatea about the sad lack of imagination of publishers that want everything to be too obvious. Novels have their own personal titles, and that is legitimate. Anthologies of stories, however, should be more obvious, as they contain various works.

[Bubba]

Titles American publishers have given other Primo Levi books:

La tregua = The Reawakening
La chiave a stella = The Monkey's Wrench

In their defense, US publishers were not that far off with the title Survival in Auschwitz, though Levi himself rarely mentions Auschwitz in the book. After all, Levi's original Italian title was I sommersi e i salvati, a title he later used for another book. It was changed to Se questo ? un uomo by his Italian publishers.

It may be annoying when a publisher changes a perfectly good title, but if, as a result, the book finds more readers, maybe it's for the better. But a wrench belonging to a monkey is patently absurd, and a book whose title suggests that it is about said ape-owned wrench is hardly likely to appeal to a lot of readers. Is there any business that operates counter to its own interests more than book publishing does?

[Eric]

Bubba, I don't know what the exact English title was, but a "monkey wrench" (not "monkey's") is a perfectly good name for an adjustable spanner, at least in Britain.

In some cases, however, publishers seem to change titles at will, often without taking puns, associations, and so on into account.

[Bubba]

In my native US of A, a "monkey wrench" is perfectly standard, too. But what, pray tell, is the point of inventing a title like The Monkey's Wrench? With the apostrophe s. There's a monkey in the book, but it doesn't have a wrench.

The UK edition of the book is titled simply The Wrench, a perfectly accurate translation. Likewise, in the UK, La tregua is titled The Truce and Se questo ? un uomo is If This Is a Man.

Primo Levi's books were my introduction to a great body of excellent Italian literature on fascism and the war, nearly all of it (Emilio Lussu, Rigoni Stern, Nuto Revelli, Luigi Meneghello, Fenoglio, N. Ginzburg) unknown to English-speaking readers. And to think that I too would have remained ignorant of the superb work of these writers had a recommendation from a friend whose tastes I trusted not prompted me to overcome my instinctive distaste for books with Hollywoodized titles like Survival in Auschwitz and for anything my countrymen insist on pigeonholing as "Jewish" literature.

[Eric]

Bubba, if it was indeed called "The Monkey's Wrench", it may have been the pathetic scrabblings-scribblings of some over-punning editor, who didn't realise that books touching upon people who suffered the Holocaust didn't need wacky titles.

My introduction to Fascism, Communism, and the various devastating wars and occupations that Europe has suffered comes from Baltic and Polish, rather than Italian sources. I agree that the pigeonholing of "Jewish" literature is a limiting thing, as I pointed out on the thread devoted to Yiddish literature. Many European people wrote in Yiddish about the Holocaust / Khurbn / Shoah long before young big- and motor-mouthed Americans muscled in on the genre. I don't think that any nation in Europe or north America should monopolise the memory of one of the worst acts of genocide that Europe has suffered.

[Bubba]

Ha, Eric, you seem reluctant to believe that the book was titled The Monkey's Wrench, but I can assure you that it most certainly was.

It doesn't have anything to do with the holocaust, but it doesn't have anything to do with a monkey's wrench, either.

[Eric]

You're quite right, Bubba, I really thought both that "The Monkey's Wrench" was a sloppy rendering of the title, and that Primo Levi wrote only about the Holocaust. Well, thank-you, I've learnt something.

I really cannot understand how the title arrived at that, unless there is something in the book that does imply that the protagonist was monkeyish. Also: the word "wrench" can mean a painful separation. I don't know whether that is relevant.