The Cinémathèque française just opened an amazing Jacques Tati exhibition (8 April - 2 August 2009) that really makes me wish I were in Paris and not here. I've noticed that in conjunction with this event, several books on Tati are to be published in April and May, but the definitive one seems to be the exhibition catalogue published by Naïve:
Before they were an independent publisher, Naïve were (and still are) an indie record label, and back in February they issued Sonorama !, a double-CD set of all of the music featured in Tati's films (which is amazing, by the way). Of course, there have been at least two other collections of Tati's film music issued on CD but, to use that word again, this really does appear to be the definitive collection.
Now if only their Canadian record distributor hadn't gone bankrupt last year, and if only their Canadian book distributor weren't so incompetent, then we'd be all set...
See also: controversy surrounding Tati's pipe and anti-tobacco legistlation.
In honour of the imminent publication of Susan Bernofsky's translation of Robert Walser's Geschwister Tanner (The Tanners), which until now had been inédit in the English-speaking world (although it has been available in French here in Canada since 1985), I've put together a roundup of some recent events in the world of Walser.
Firstly, Robert Walser's 1907 novel The Tanners is finally coming out in English translation for the first time, published by New Directions (distributed in Canada by Penguin and in the US by W.W. Norton) and scheduled for release on 28 April 2009. From the publisher:
The Tanners is the last major novel by the great Robert Walser to finally make it into English.
The Tanners, Robert Walser’s amazing 1907 novel, is now presented in English for the very first time, by the award-winning translator Susan Bernofsky. Four brothers and a sister comprise the Tanner family: their wanderings, meetings, separations, quarrels, romances, employment and lack of employment over the course of a year or two are the threads with which Walser weaves his airy, strange and brightly gorgeous fabric.
Translated from the German, with an Afterword, by Susan Bernofsky Introduction by W. G. Sebald (translated by Jo Catling)
“A clairvoyant of the small,” W. G. Sebald calls Walser, one of his favorite writers, in his acutely beautiful, and personal long introduction, studded with his signature use of photographs.
CLOTH
5X7
368 PAGES
Exciting stuff, indeed. British readers should note that the last major Bernofsky/Walser event — New Directions' June 2007 North American publication of the first ever English edition of The Assistant — was followed by a gorgeous Penguin Modern Classics edition of the same, published in March 2008 and exclusive to the British market. Something tells me that there will be a similar transatlantic arrangement between New Directions and Penguin UK for the publication of The Tanners...
In other news, although nothing is ever likely to equal the monumental Robert Walser Week that aired on France Culture in January 2007, there have nonetheless recently been a few noteworthy radio programmes about Walser:
Public Radio International's World Books on The Assistant and The Tanners, with Susan Bernofsky [mp3] - 3 March 2009
France Culture's Ça rime à quoi on Walser's poetry, with translator Marion Graf [real audio] - 25 January 2009
RSR Espace 2's Entre les lignes on the new French translations of Prosastücke (Morceaux de prose) and selected poetry, with translator Marion Graf [audio file no longer available] - September 2008
Speaking of momumental undertakings, this past fall Suhrkamp published the massive, 511 page Robert Walser: Sein Leben in Bildern und Texten (Robert Walser: His Life in Pictures and Texts), edited by noted Walser scholar Bernhard Echte. My German isn't strong enough to be able to grasp the exact nature of the project, but it looks amazing. With any luck, one of Walser's French-language publishers (I'm talking to you Zoe and Gallimard!) will decide to translate it one day (I don't think there's any hope of this ever coming out in English). I've managed to glean a few sample pages to whet your appetite:
Granted, I already have the Walser biographies written by Catherine Sauvat, Peter Utz and Marie-Louise Audiberti, but can you ever really have enough? Thankfully, Susan Bernofsky is working onAnd No One Ever Knew: A Biography of Robert Walser, which to my knowledge will be the first ever English language biography of Walser.
To wrap up this extended post devoted to what is clearly an obsession of mine, this past fall Geneva-based publisher Zoe issued two new volumes of Walser's works, plus a brief study of his work:
With translations of lesser-known texts, as well as studies and biographies, including two splendid volumes on the famous Walser microgrammes, Zoe really is doing more to get Walser's work out there than any other French-language publisher. Kudos to them.
