Culture
Audiobooks, Translations, and Other Letters to the Editor
Pay attention Up
To the Editor:
As a loyal audiobook listener of literary fiction, I’m so disillusioned that your audiobook evaluations proceed to be about nonfiction titles. Is there a purpose for this? You probably have had a fiction column that I missed, I apologize, however it might be a rarity. The newest audiobook evaluations (March 13) are extra nonfiction.
An awesome performer can carry an important e book to life extra magnificently than studying on the web page. To wit: Listening to Juliet Stevenson learn “Middlemarch” is likely one of the aesthetic highs of my life. Current terrific audios of latest novels embrace “The Lincoln Freeway” and “Cloud Cuckoo Land.”
I’m at all times on the lookout for good fiction audios and would admire your options.
Anna Belle Kaufman
Sebastopol, Calif.
Translations Run Aground
To the Editor:
Relating to Pankaj Mishra’s By the Ebook interview (March 6): As one exception to Mishra’s remark that hardly any reader of English is aware of of Mercè Rodoreda’s novel “In Diamond Sq.,” I ready for my first journey to Barcelona in 2019 by looking for a e book translated from Catalan, and occurred upon her e book “The Time of the Doves,” during which the protagonist known as “little dove.” Discovering on the library shelf one other quantity of Rodoreda’s entitled “In Diamond Sq.,” I began that novel as nicely, and was shocked to seek out it was the identical story in one other translation, with the identify of the birds she seeks to lift given as “pigeon,” and the lady’s nickname modified to “Pidgey.” Having as soon as lived in a neighborhood teeming with pigeons, this evoked a really totally different, much less beautiful, picture in my thoughts. What a distinction a translator could make! However in both case, it is a marvelous novel, particularly pertinent in right this moment’s worldwide context. Diamond Sq. in Barcelona homes a life-size statue of the protagonist and her birds, in addition to a wall plaque honoring the creator. Each the e book and the city web site are very a lot worthy of a go to.
Marilyn J. Boxer
Kensington, Calif.
Nightmares and Black Hearts
To the Editor:
In her By the Ebook interview (March 13), Karen Pleasure Fowler endorses a technique of inviting to dinner “authors who weren’t acknowledged of their lifetimes,” so as to buoy their spirits by letting them know “how nicely regarded they’re now.” One of many writers she goals of together with is Franz Kafka. However Kafka famously requested that each one of his work be burned; the widespread circulation and celebration of Kafka’s writing is the results of his good friend expressly ignoring his needs. It appears sort of merciless to resurrect Kafka so as to let him know that his nightmare got here true. I say let him sleep.
Sarah Aintelope
Irvine, Calif.
♦
To the Editor:
I’m delighted to see that Fowler is studying “The Wolves of Willoughby Chase” to her grandson. I urge her to proceed on to “Black Hearts in Battersea,” as she has not but met the redoubtable Dido Twite.
Mary Harriman
Milwaukee
Double Requirements
To the Editor:
Walter Kirn, creator of “Blood Will Out,” actually appeared out for blood in his overview of Heather Havrilesky’s “Foreverland” (March 6). The chauvinistic tone as he roots for the creator’s husband is off-putting from the beginning (“a wedding between a neurotic perfectionist and a formidably affected person man”). Kirn admits, “I do know solely my very own marriage,” however he would somewhat preserve it “a secret.” (That is fascinating, as his memoir is a few failed marriage and being pals with a sociopathic assassin.) I say Havrilesky is courageous to share struggles that replicate many marriages however that almost all of us are afraid to show as a result of we would like the world to view {our relationships} as blissful. If a reviewer needs to debate the writing, wonderful, however don’t stab the creator simply to gleefully watch her bleed.
Donna Marie Merritt
Watertown, Conn.
Correction
A overview on Could 10, 2020, about Cho Nam-Joo’s novel “Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982” referred incorrectly to the e book’s protagonist, Jiyoung. She has a daughter, not a son. This correction was delayed as a result of the error was dropped at the eye of editors solely just lately.