James Wood Response and Publishers Harris & Post - Lianbi

 Post-talk notes on James Wood:

I enjoyed it a lot. He is such a thoughtful critic! His talk provided such a great introduction to Madame Bovary to me. Like his reviews, his talk convinced me that Madame Bovary is the masterpiece that it is today and made me want to read more. I would sometimes find it a little bit difficult to relate to the passion in a very Europe based narrative of literary history, but his was different. Perhaps it’s because I love Russian literature (in translation) and he does too. I feel like he really engaged me. 

I appreciate his humbleness a lot. I always love that in a scholar and teacher. During our pre-seminar chat he insists that he doesn’t know enough about translation and showed great curiosity in our insights and experiences. I was moved by that curiosity. In a way, I think it is his humbleness that made him prepare such a thorough presentation on Madame Bovary. I love close reading, I love close reading translations more. He may not know about the exercise of translation but he is a great reader. I wish that we get more of these close readings in the talks! (Whole presentation could be slightly shorter though.)

Pre-talk notes on Chad Post and Susan Harris

https://www.openletterbooks.org/

Chad is not only a critic of literary translation, advocate for international literature in America, but also a publisher himself. (I don’t see editor as his title though, so I think he doesn’t have the time for that type of hands-on work.) I like his data-driven approach to the literary scene, and I appreciate his lists of “ten best” that do not impose ideas of good and bad to people. But isn’t it interesting that he also publishes ten books with Open Letter every year? He both comments on this industry and is an active contributor to what’s available on the market. 

I have talked to Chad when I got into URochester’s MA in Literary Translation Studies. He is a very dominant figure in that program too. Two out of the four courses taught in the fall were basically his classes. In one of the classes he teaches his “ten best” list. I don’t know exactly what his methodologies of literary criticism are. I think he is a smart business person and has a true passion for literature. I personally just didn’t like that the program did not provide its students with language specific mentorship and was not academic in general. (My goal is to stay in academia, not going into publishing, so in retrospect this decision was so so right!)

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/creating-a-bridge-a-conversation-with-susan-harris-editorial-director-of-words-without-borders/

I looked at the Words without Borders website as well as this short interview. I have always been a fan of the WWB. They publish such beautiful stories and make them all accessible. They are timely, urgent, and in conversation with one another. She just seems like a very kind person! I don’t know how to grasp her own editing strategies because publishers don’t say who was the editor… 

Some questions I have for them:

Is there a possibility for American publishers to hire more multilingual editors?

What are some countries or regions that you find definitely underrepresented in American international literature these days? What are the practical reasons? What might be the deeper social/political/economic/ideological reasons? 

How do you decide what to publish and what not to? This question is especially for Chad, because Open Letter Books precisely publishes ten books a year. Do you care about representation? Do you care about the interests of academia and classroom teaching? Is it stylistic inventions? Or is it established writers’/critics’/publishers’/translators’ endorsement? Do you ever feel more interested in a work because of its translator (like Japanese publishing industry)?