Both the plot and the characters left me a bit cold, but I
was constantly fascinated by Stevenson’s imaginative, expressive, slightly
idiosyncratic prose style. I found myself frequently stopping and savouring
certain phrases here and there, thinking ‘Anybody else would have said it this way, but he says it that way.’
There are, unfortunately, two problems with style-driven
fiction:
1. It’s never popular, so authors go unpublished and die of
pneumonia in garrets. (Unless, of course, they’re Tories with a private income,
in which case they succumb to gout in capacious drawing rooms.)
2. Style is inevitably the first casualty of translation,
and it bothers me that if I read something by one of the great, non-English
speaking authors, I’m not really hearing his or her voice. I’m only getting the
plot and characters.
7 comments:
I'll try not to write a whole sermon here :)
Your writing is also style-driven with so many beautiful phrases which enhance the mood. But you're not weak on plot. I'm thinking mainly of your short stories, btw. What is most notable is the atmosphere and the sense of uncertainty you weave – not the same as leaving 'open endings' which is more simplistic.
I've just started reading 'White is for Witching'by Helen Oyeyemi because I'm seeing her at our Literature Festival next week, and never actually read her books! I'm only 50 some odd pages in, but would say it qualifies as style-driven. Aside from that, my verdict's not in yet, as I like a good story, too (see my Rowling sermon :))
You always did have a higher opinion of my writing than I do, Della. Thank you.
I will admit, though, that generating atmosphere was always a primary drive with me simply because I'm so sensitive to it myself, and because I always most liked literature which does that very thing.
I'm going to admit my ignorance by admitting that I've never heard of Helen Oyeyemi. I assume she writes in English, or maybe German if you're fluent. Would you agree that style is almost impossible to translate, since it depends on nuances only available in the native tongue?
Oyeyemi is British actually, and though I can read in German it's tough and when I do I stick to easy, funny books just to get through.
I completely agree that translations are a big problem, for the very reason you cite. Poetry translation seems crazy to me, and I wonder how it is with Shakespeare (we have a German collection of his plays, btw, I suppose on some level it works).
Funny you should bring this up because there was a piece yesterday in the BBC (magazine section) complaining that too few foreign titles were published in English (translations, thus). One argument for this was that we can learn so much from other cultures, which is somewhat true. Perhaps translating non-fiction then is a better idea, as I'm not sure how much our society as a whole learns from fiction anyway (except that Dumbledore is gay, which of course is life-changing ;)).
Translation is like dubbing, it filters the original through another soul, not only personal but cultural, which changes the work too much. It becomes a similar story, but never the same one.
and p.s. it would be nice to see your short stories bound in a collection...(I know, not easy) because I think many people would enjoy them!
Like dubbing, yes; we had this conversation once before, I recall. I still think it's worth translating foreign works though. You can pick up quite a lot about other cultures from plot and character.
I don't think any of the mainstream people publish collections of short stories these days, do they? Not unless they're re-hashes of classics like Saki and MR James.
Sure, that's true (publishers not interested in new author collections), but sometimes things happen and one's MS ends up in the right hands. So much continues to develop in the industry as well, one never knows. Maybe it's too much work for you to self-publish your own collection?
The problem with self-publishing is that it's either very expensive if you put it into a printer's hands, or a lot of trouble and frustration if you go with somebody like Lulu (which I did with the novel and novella.)
Then comes the marketing. There are millions of titles available through the internet with people like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but you have to know how to bring them to people's attention and give them a reason to want to read them. That isn't my forte.
As you say, sometimes things just happen, but it's a very long shot.
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