April 10th Post - Audree

Peter Constantine Talk

I really enjoyed Peter Constantine's presentation. It made sense that his approach for The Bird is a Raven was domestication because it's true that there aren't many indicators apart from the cities of Berlin and Munich and certain street names, that the book is German. The background on the author, Benjamin Lerbert, was also insightful. The fact that he was 19 when he wrote the book but also that he was never a "typical" kid in the way he spoke makes a lot of sense. While the characters in the story where clearly young, there was no distinct way that each of them spoke and no slang or colloquialisms that particularly made them seem young. However, I do think that Constantine did a good job with the dialogue because while the two characters don't employ slang or anything, there is still a youthfulness about the way they speak and interact with one another. Having this clarification about the original work was helpful.

The Disappearance of M + Carlos Rojas Introduction

I really liked this story, and found that Rojas' introduction was very fitting and provided good context for the reading.The debate about a book's "nationality" is an interesting one, and the story broaches the topic in an amusing and interesting way. The idea that a certain nation can claim a work is strange when you think about it, especially when what makes up a nation is rarely straightforward. I found that the story sounded very natural in English, but it also still felt like I was reading a translation. This is partly due to the content of the story itself, but also because of Rojas' foreignizing choices (keeping "li" as a unit of measurement for example).