That Other Word:  Episode 10  |  Esther Kinsky

April 2013 

Prompted by the forthcoming publication of Italo Calvino’s Letters 1941-1985, hosts Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito embark on a discussion of literary lives and letters. They touch upon the marvelous correspondences of Thomas Bernhard and William Gaddis, and look forward to the lectures collected in Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature. Reiner Stach’s Kafka: The Years of Insight, technically the final volume in a biographical trilogy, represents a welcome addition to English-language Kafka scholarship. Curzio Malaparte’s The Skin, a grotesque and haunting semi-autobiographical tale of the Second World War, returns after many years out of print. The introduction closes with a plea from the hosts to Anglophone publishers not to ignore biographies produced elsewhere: Michel Winock’s Flaubert and Madame de Staël, among many others, they argue, deserve a broader readership.

Daniel Medin is then joined by Esther Kinsky, a poet and translator from Polish, Russian, and English into German. Her speciality is Polish literature from the First World War to the 1960’s, and she offers wonderful introductions to some of her favorite writers of that period, including Zygmunt Haupt, who lived in the United States and continued to write in Polish even though his own children did not speak the language, Wiesław Myśliwski, whose Stone Upon Stone recently appeared in English, and Joanna Bator, whose poetic works Kinsky is currently translating. During their conversation, Kinsky and Medin discuss the lives and work of these writers, consider what has kept Eastern European (and particularly Hungarian) poetry and fiction so robust, and discuss the revival of reportage as a genre in Poland. Esther Kinsky also shares an enchanting story about what prompted her to become a translator, muses on the relationship between translating and writing, and mentions her own newest book of prose, whose German title (Fremdsprechen) she roughly translates as “talking something into foreignness.”  

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That Other Word:  Episode 9  |  Ethan Nosowsky

February 2013 

At the beginning of this episode, Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito are happy, along with the rest of the Anglosphere, to be rediscovering Nikolai Leskov’s The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories, newly translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. They also look forward to a recent success from the Netherlands that’s been making waves abroad, Arnon Grunberg’s Tirza, and take an anecdote-filled trip through modernity in Roberto Calasso’s La Folie Baudelaire. They continue to be impressed by Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love, the second volume in a hugely ambitious series that describes (albeit amid a number of digressions) how the author fell in love with his wife.

Scott Esposito then sits down with Ethan Nosowsky, a former Editor-at-Large at Graywolf Press who has recently been named Editorial Director at McSweeney’s. Nosowsky discusses his early career and several of his experiences with editing translations at Graywolf, most notably with regard to Daniel Sada’s Almost Never. He talks not only about seeking out great Mexican writers and getting to know Sada’s work, but also about the working relationship he developed with translator Katherine Silver as she produced the English version. He muses on what makes a manuscript in general attractive to him as an editor and explains McSweeney’s innovative publishing model. In conclusion, Nosowsky enthuses about the latest issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly, which has been described as a long game of “translation telephone,” and resolves to pursue more literature from China.

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That Other Word:  Episode 8  |  Nick Barley

January 2013 

Hosts Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito return in the new year enthralled by the “absolutely insane” game of literary telephone in the latest issue of McSweeney’s, in which texts are translated in and out of English and by, among others, J.M. Coetzee, Enrique Vila-Matas, and Lydia Davis. They look forward to games of a slightly different nature in several forthcoming Oulipian works: the 65th anniversary edition of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style; Georges Perec’s La Boutique Obscure, the dream journal that inspired much of his fiction; and Scott Esposito’s own The End of Oulipo?, a critical examination of the movement co-written with Lauren Elkin. Pierre Michon’s The Eleven promises to be one of the author’s best since his widely-respected Small Lives; Yasutaka Tsutsui’s Paprika is story of clinical dream-invaders from one of Japan’s premier science fiction writers. Daniel Medin also announces the launch of the eighteenth volume in The Cahiers Series, Elfriede Jelinek’s Her Not All Her, next month at the Goethe-Institut in Paris.

Nick Barley is the director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the largest and perhaps best-known literary festival in the world. He gives a lively account of Edinburgh’s literary heritage and the influence it still exerts on the atmosphere of the festival, and testifies to the continuing importance of such festivals for both authors and readers. He explains the origins of 2012’s International Writers Conference, at which authors from around the world were asked questions about the relationship between art and politics and the future of the novel. He reflects on the surprising appetite last year’s audiences showed for translation-related events, and shares several of his own favorite works, of both Scottish and foreign origin, from 2012.

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That Other Word:  Episode 7  |  Stephen Henighan

November 2012 

This month, hosts Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito begin by talking about books they haven’t read, but are eager to: the young Mexican novelist Juan Pablo Villalobos’ Down the Rabbit Hole, which continues to attract praise from all corners; and two works by Marie Chaix, The Laurels of Lake Constance and the forthcoming Silences, or a Woman’s Life, both of which have been translated by Chaix’s husband, the American Oulipian Harry Mathews. Daniel Medin enthuses about two stories in the latest issue of Granta, The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists: Daniel Galera’s dynamic “Aponea” and Michel Laub’s “Animals,” which Adam Thirlwell calls a “matryoshka feat.” Continuing along in the Portuguese vein, Scott Esposito introduces Mia Couto’s The Tuner of Silences, a recently-translated novel from a fascinating Mozambican writer.

Scott Esposito then speaks to Stephen Henighan, a novelist, critic, and translator from Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. Since 2006, Henighan has been general editor for the International Translation Series at the Canadian-based press Biblioasis. He talks about immigrant experiences in Canada and his own “deeply-rooted rootlessness,” the Canadian relationship to English and translation, and the challenges of procuring and producing translations for the Canadian market. He discusses Mia Couto’s “rural modernism,” his literary influences, and why the author travels well, despite being essentially “untranslatable.” Finally, Henighan tells the comical and haphazard story of how he came to learn Romanian, and describes the process of translating and trying to publish Mihail Sebastian’s The Accident.

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That Other Word:  Episode 6  |  Géraldine Chognard & Sylvia Whitman

October 2012 

In this episode, Daniel Medin and Scott Eposito revisit Robert Walser's Microscripts in its new illustrated paperback edition, and look forward to another take on that author’s work, the strange and musical “monologue for multiple voices” that is Elfriede Jelinek's Her Not All Her: On/With Robert Walser. They discuss the reconstructed romances in Jacqueline Raoul-Duval's Kafka In Love and the well-earned praise for Stig Sæterbakken's Self-Control. They hope that Dalkey Archive Press’ Arvo Pärt in Conversation will bring about a resurgence in the genre of conversations, and tip their hats to Seagull Books for publishing two works by the 2012 Nobel Laureate Mo Yan, Change and the forthcoming Pow!

Daniel Medin then speaks to two booksellers in Paris about introducing and promoting literature in translation, challenges to bookselling in the age of Amazon, and the idea of the bookshop as community center.

Géraldine Chognard manages Le Comptoir des Mots (near the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris’ twentieth arrondissement) and co-runs the small press Cambourakis, which specializes in literature in translation and has published Stanley Elkin and László Krasznahorkai, among others. She speaks about Librest, a cooperative effort among seven bookshops in eastern Paris, and ways to promote new works in translation. She mentions Le Comptoir des Mots’ successful poet-in-residence program, which has already hosted Frédéric Forte, a member of Oulipo, and Benoît Casas, and comments on Cambourakis’ upcoming publishing projects, including the French translation of Krasznahorkai’s War & War.

Sylvia Whitman took over Shakespeare and Company, Paris’ best-known anglophone bookshop, from her father, George Whitman, five years ago. She talks about appreciating the shop’s history and her efforts to expand its mission, the joys of reading in multiple languages, and the unique position of anglophone booksellers in France. She reveals Shakespeare and Company’s bestselling titles and recommends some of her staff’s recent favorites.

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That Other Word:  Episode 5  |  Margaret Jull Costa

September 2012 

Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito return to the second season of That Other Word energized by the translators’ duels at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the great work being done at the UK-based press And Other Stories. They look forward to new works in translation this fall, including Antonio Tabucchi's The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico, Basque author and Edinburgh guest Bernardo Atxaga's Seven Hours in France, and the latest from César Aira, The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira. Daniel Medin hopes that several novels generating interest in Germany and France — Jenny Erpenbeck's Aller Tage Abend, Clemens J. Setz's Indigo, and Jean Echenoz's 14 — will soon be translated as well.

Afterward, Scott Esposito sits down with Margaret Jull Costa, a distinguished translator from Spanish and Portuguese who has brought Javier Marías, José Saramago, and Eça de Queiroz into English. She is the winner of numerous literary awards for translation, including the IMPAC Dublin award for her version of Marías' A Heart So White. She speaks about her twenty-five year career, her pragmatic approach to translation, her favorite authors and her love of the nineteenth century, as well her thoughts on the evolution of Javier Marías' style and his latest novel, which she has translated as The Infatuations.

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That Other Word:  Episode 4  |  Antoine Jaccottet

June 2012 

This episode’s opening conversation celebrates literature from Eastern Europe: Daniel Medin, speaking from Book Expo America in New York City, is impressed with Mikhail Shishkin’s forthcoming novel Maidenhair, and Scott Esposito loves Marek Bieńczyk’s genre-bending Transparency. They hope that Julius Margolin’s memoir from the Gulag, Voyage au pays des Ze-Ka will make its way into English soon, and in the meantime they enjoy the biting humor of Éric Chevillard’s Prehistoric Times and Demolishing Nisard. Finally, Contemporary Georgian Fiction, the latest in Dalkey Archive Press’ series of regional anthologies, provides a welcome introduction to writing from an often-overlooked country.

Daniel Medin then speaks to Antoine Jaccottet, who founded the Paris-based press Le Bruit du Temps in 2008 and has since brought out an admirable collection of works in translation, collected works, memoirs, poetry, and philosophy. He has stated that the press’s mission is to publish, if possible, “constellations of books rather than books in isolation. A bit like a musical season: we establish projects around an author (Browning), a book (The Tempest), a theme.” He speaks about the publishing program of Le Bruit du Temps, the importance of translation, Robert Browning, Isaac Babel, Julius Margolin, Virginia Woolf, Zbigniew Herbert, and Osip Mandelstam. The conversation concludes with a bilingual reading: Medin recites Gabriel Levin’s poem “In Alexandria” in the original English, and Jaccottet reads the beautiful French translation by Emmanuel Moses.

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That Other Word:  Episode 3  |  Benjamin Moser

May 2012 

In this rather German conversation, Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito discuss the melancholy and pleasure in the most recent collection of W.G. Sebald’s poetry to appear in English, Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems 1964-2001. History is a found object in Sebald, and also in December, a wintry advent calendar of thirty-nine short stories by Alexander Kluge and thirty-nine photographs by Gerhard Richter. Robert Walser’s The Walk may induce laughing out loud at the wilderness, and the thirtieth anniversary of Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop’s Autonauts of the Cosmoroute should inspire some very leisurely drives from Paris to Marseilles.

In the second half of the episode, Scott Esposito interviews Benjamin Moser, author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector. Moser has recently re-translated Lispector’s last novel, The Hour of the Star, and is currently editing a series of four of her earlier works for New Directions (Near to the Wild Heart, A Breath of Life, Agua Viva, and The Passion According to G.H.). He talks about falling in love with Lispector, his missionary urge to promote her work, The Hour of the Star’s stylistic strangeness and surprising pathos, and why online grammar forums make the work of translation less lonely.

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That Other Word:  Episode 2  |  Petra Hardt

April 2012 

In this episode, Scott Esposito eagerly anticipates the Dirty War in Sergio Chejfec’s The Planets, and Daniel Medin shares a delightful description of a freeloader from Nescio’s Amsterdam Stories. They discuss Daniel Sada’s Almost Never and the general robustness of contemporary Mexican fiction, attempt to explain why reading Can Xue’s Vertical Motion is like running downhill in the dark, then hesitate over whether to call Daniel Levin Becker’s Many Subtle Channels a memoir or a work of criticism, but agree that it is about Oulipo and very candid.

Daniel Medin then speaks to Petra Hardt, head of the rights department at Suhrkamp Verlag and author of Rights: Buying. Protecting. Selling. Suhrkamp is one of the most prestigious presses in Germany and in Europe, and since its founding in 1950 has published not only many of the greatest German-language writers of the twentieth century — among them Paul Celan, Theodor W. Adorno, and Thomas Bernhard — but foreign authors as well, including Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust, and Julio Cortázar. In a series of wonderfully engaging anecdotes, Petra describes her work in rights and foreign rights, how that work is changing in the digital age, and why her book is intended for new presses in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

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That Other Word:  Episode 1  |  Lorin Stein

March 2012 

In this first episode, Daniel Medin and Scott Esposito chat about the accidental poetry and reasonable plausibility of César Aira's Varamo, the miraculous strangeness of László Krasznahorkai's Satantango, and the hopping city at the heart of Robert Walser's Berlin Stories. They also mention recent and upcoming events at their respective centers, including the CWT’s publication of the latest in The Cahiers Series, A Labour of Moles by Ivan Vladislavić, and the upcoming visit of Jay Rubin and J. Philip Gabriel, translators of Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, at the CAT.

Afterward, Scott Esposito is joined by Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review and former senior editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. They discuss editing the English version of Jean-Christophe Valtat's 03 (translated by Mitzi Angel), procuring the rights to Roberto Bolaño’s works and editing Natasha Wimmer's translations, failure and what separates translation from other kinds of writing, ‘living with books’, and why The Paris Review publishes what it does. The conversation concludes with Edouard Levé, touching on his aphoristic influences, his humor, his suicide, and his book Autoportrait, which Stein has recently translated from the French.

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