Following on from April's roundup of recent publishing events surrounding the œuvre of Robert Walser, six months later there's even more to report!
Firstly, the English translation of the The Tanners finally did come out, although a few months late (reaching the Canadian market on 25 August). After reading Jean Launay's 1985 French translation, reissued in 1992, I very much look forward to reading it in my mother tongue.
But Susan Bernofsky hasn't stopped there. Currently on the horizon, in addition to her forthcoming biography of Robert Walser, is a volume of Walser microgrammes, or Microscripts as they are being called, in English translation. These will be published by New Directions in the spring of 2010, coinciding with an exhibition of the microscripts at the Christine Burgin Gallery in New York. As told by Susan:This project came about as a co-production with Christine Burgin Gallery after Burgin fell in love with Walser’s miniature manuscripts (both the sheets of paper and the handwriting that covers them are unbelievably small) and decided to put together an exhibition of them in New York, due to open in the spring of 2010. The volume Microscripts will serve as a catalogue for the exhibition—it will contain a number of high-resolution facsimiles of Walser’s beautiful manuscripts—and at the same time is a collection of stories from his late work.
As told by the gallery:In Spring 2010 the Christine Burgin Gallery and New Directions will publish a facsimile edition of Robert Walser's microscripts with new translations by Susan Bernofsky. This will be the first publication in English illustrated by and devoted to Robert Walser's microscripts.
Details:
The Microscripts
Robert Walser
New Directions
Hardback, 160 pages
ISBN 9780811218801
25 May 2010
$24.95 US (Canadian market information unavailable at this time)
It seems to me that this book will be a cross between two books previously published by Geneva-based Éditions Zoe:
Despite its 400 pages, the former is in reality but a small subset of the microgrammes published in the monumental six-volume Aus dem Bleistiftgebiet. Mikrogramme aus den Jahren 1924–1933 (2003). Every time I see this beautiful boxed set sitting on the shelves of Das Buch on Sherbrooke Street East, I have to hold myself back from buying it, reminding myself that my German is nowhere near good enough to be able to read the Walser Microgrammes in their original language. But I digress...
Getting back on topic, believe it or not, there's even more on the way from Susan Bernofsky! On her website, she mentions a forthcoming English translation of Robert Walser's "Berlin Stories", to be published by the New York Review of Books in their Classics series. This has also been confirmed by NYRB Classics themselves. I had never even heard of the "Berlin Stories" before today. If anyone knows what these are, and what texts they correspond to in the complete works of Robert Walser in German, I'd love to hear from you...
Moving on to the French side of things, on 9 September 2009 Gallimard reissued La Rose, Bernard Lortholoary's 1987 translation of Die Rose. It's due out later this month in Canada. This book features one of my favourite Walser quotations: "Personne n'a le droit de se comporter à mon endroit comme s'il me connaissait".
Éditions Zoe have lots of Walser stuff coming out in the next few months:
Ouf! Quelle aventure... While all of this is going on, Suhrkamp too seem to have constant stream of Walser publications coming out in the original German, including Robert Walser for Idlers, a book of bons mots and aphorisms, and Der Schnee fällt nicht hinauf - 33 Gedichte, a collection of 33 (winter?) poems.
Exciting times indeed!
19 October 2009
Robert Walser Roundup 19 October 2009
12 April 2009
Robert Walser: The Tanners and other new releases
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:
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 on And 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.
21 March 2009
Spaziergang in Montreal
As someone who is (relatively) new to Montreal and enjoys a good walk, I'm expecting great things from this one:
Marcher à Montréal et ses environs
SÉGUIN, Yves
Ulysse
22 April 2009
$22.99
192 pages (with 20 maps)Voici un guide indispensable pour quiconque cherche à s'évader, ne serait-ce que quelques heures. Il met de l'avant près de 95 lieux de randonnée situés à Montréal et ses environs. Tous des endroits accessibles en transport en commun, situés à moins d’une soixantaine de kilomètres de la métropole. Entre la rue Sainte-Catherine et l’avenue du Mont-Royal, les parcs-nature et les Grands parcs de Montréal, les collines montérégiennes et les nombreux sentiers que l’on retrouve sur la Rive-Nord... la région de Montréal offre un vaste choix pour qui veut prendre une marche de santé sans avoir à parcourir de longues distances.
I wonder which cover design they'll end up using...
08 February 2009
Translating from the French, or How might a human being put the same idea?
On the first page of the first chapter of his 2001 book The Flâneur, Edmund White describes La Défense as having gone ‘directly from being futuristic to being passé without ever seeming like a normal feature of the present’. He then goes on to say:Honestly, instead of ‘like a normal feature of the present’ I almost wrote 'without ever being inscribed within the interior of the present'. That's how much I've been submerged in contemporary French nonfiction. I frequently have to stop and ask myself how a human being might put the same idea.
Obviously this is a bit of exaggeration for the sake of a bon mot, but as someone who does a fair bit of translation from French to English, and proofreading of texts translated from the French, I have to say that I find this absolutely hilarious. I am forever asking myself the very same question: just how would a human put that? Hmm...
22 March 2008
Germans and the French language
Here's an amusing passage, pertaining to the prestige enjoyed by the French language in foreign lands:"Une jolie petite française", the conductor's wife said, evidently overjoyed at having an occasion to recite a few French words she knew by heart. This is always the case in Germanic lands, people love to be able to show that they understand French.
Robert Walser, »Der Gehülfe« (The Assistant), 1907, translation Susan Bernofsky (2007)
"Frau Tobler," Joseph thought, "knows no French at all, the poor thing!"« Une jolie petite française », dit en français la femme du contrôleur, manifestement ravie d'avoir l'occasion de débiter de mémoire quelques mots en français. C'est toujours ainsi dans les pays de langue allemande : les gens sont contents de pouvoir montrer qu'ils comprennent le français.
Robert Walser, »Der Gehülfe« (Le commis), 1907, traduction Bernard Lortholary (1985)
« Ma patronne, pensa Joseph, ne comprend pas un mot de français. La pauvre! »
08 June 2007
Dictionnaire du monde germanique
Here it is, folks. The book that's had germanists and germanophiles all over the world salivating with anticipation for the past several years finally has a confirmed release date. After years of delays and one cancellation, I am pleased to report that the momumental Dictionnaire du monde germanique -- a 1000 page encyclopaedia covering historical, cultural, artistic, economic, political, sociological, religious and scientific aspects of the German-speaking civilisation -- will be published by Éditions Bayard on 27 September 2007.
Under the general editorship of Jacques Le Rider (EPHE Sorbonne), Michel Espagne (Normal Sup) and Élisabeth Décultot (CNRS), the book will feature articles written by leading germanists from around the world. Originally scheduled to be published by the Presses universitaires de France in 1999, the book was delayed until 2001, then 2002, and finally cancelled. Eventually there was talk that Bayard would publish it in 2005. 2005 came and still no book. Finally, in June 2005, I had confirmation from Jacques Le Rider himself that Bayard had agreed to publish the book, although the release date remained unconfirmed. In January 2007 Bayard indicated that it would most likely be released some time in Fall 2007, and then on 6 June 2007, the Google Alert that I configured alerted me (it does what it says on the tin!) to the publication date. Priced at 129 Euros, I don't even want to think about what the Canadian retail price will end up being. I had better start saving up...
Fiche technique
Title: Dictionnaire du monde germanique
Sous la direction de Michel Espagne, Elisabeth Décultot et Jacques Le Rider
Publisher: Éditions Bayard
ISBN-10: 2227476524
ISBN-13: 9782227476523
Publication Date: 27 September 2007
Format: Broché, 24 x 17 cm, 1100 pages
Features: Illustrations en noir et blanc, cartes
Retail Price (France): 129 Euros
Retail Price (Canada): To be confirmed
What follows is a preliminary partial list of contributors and article titles, pieced together from information found here and there on the web. I have no idea if all of these will make it into the final product.
François Delpla
Jacques Ehrenfreund
Stéphanie Buchenau
Guillaume Garner
Lutz Winckler
Moussa Sarga
Thomas Serrier
Carlos Herrera
Daniel Baric
Marielle Silhouette
Roland Krebs
Frank Muller
Cécile Schenck
Pierre Monnet (sub-editor of the Mediaeval section of the dictionary)
As time permits, I'll be adding more information to this preview.
15 December 2006
Early Twentieth Century German Culture
As a young up-and-coming amateur germanist, I was thrilled this week to stumble upon Christian Brandstätter Verlag's publishing programme, and more specifically Wien um 1900 | Kunst und Kultur – Fokus der europäischen Moderne (October 2005) and Berlin | Die 20er Jahre (September 2006). Lavishly illustrated and featuring authoratative essays, these two books brilliantly capture the spirit of these dual golden eras that the germanophone world enjoyed before it all went tits up in 1933.
Having been simultaneously published in both German and French (Éditions Hazan), English translations are now coming out in British (Thames & Hudson) and American (Vendome Press) editions. My German skills are not where I would like them to be, so I've picked up the American edition of the Vienna book and the French edition of the Berlin book, and I am loving them. Thank goodness for Canada, where you can easily buy a French edition of a German book if no English publisher has yet got around to translating it.
Wien um 1900 | Kunst und Kultur – Fokus der europäischen Moderne
Vienne fin de siècle (FR)
Vienna 1900 and the Heroes of Modernism (UK)
Vienna 1900: Art, Life, & Culture (US)
Christian Brandstätter, General Editor
With texts by: Hans Bisanz; Marian Bisanz-Prakken; Monika Faber; Peter Gorsen; Daniela Gregori; Hanel Koeck; Richard Kurdiovsky; Rainer Metzger; and Käthe Springer.
From the French publisher:Creuset de seize différentes nations réunies par l'Empire austro-hongrois finissant, Vienne «fin de siècle» a tout à la fois incarné et symbolisé le mythe et l'inextricable imbroglio de cet édifice orgueilleux sur le déclin en 1900. Le paradoxe a voulu que cette ville, synonyme d'apocalypse, à la veille d'être effacée comme capitale impériale par la Première Guerre mondiale, ait dans le vertige de sa chute su définir quelques-uns des axes de la modernité qui ont conditionné tout le XXe siècle. Tel un chant du cygne, l'extraordinaire épanouissement culturel que connaît Vienne alors concerne aussi bien les arts plastiques (avec la Sécession de Gustav Klimt, avec Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, etc.), l'architecture (avec Otto Wagner, Joseph Hoffmnn, Adolf Loos, Joseph Maria Olbrich), la musique (avec Hugo Wolf, Gustav Malder, Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg, Anton . Webern), la littérature (avec Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Karl Kraus, Arthur Schnitzler), la naissance de la psychanalyse (avec Sigmund Freud, Viktor Adler, Wilhelm Reich) ou de nouvelles interrogations philosophiques sur le langage et les images (avec Fritz Mauthner et Ludwig , Wittgenstein). La présente encyclopédie visuelle restitue ces fortes personnalités à travers leurs ouvrages, et les archives photographiques qui ont été conservées, mais aussi les cercles, les groupes, les revues (tel Ver Sacrum), les cafés littéraires, où ce monde culturel se réunissait, le tout commenté dans le détail par les conservateurs et historiens spécialistes de chacune des disciplines.
Publication Date: October 2005
ISBN 2754100415
From the British publisher:Fin-de-siècle Vienna was the central gathering point of the European avant-garde and an extraordinary laboratory for new ideas and concepts.
Here is a dazzlingly illustrated (with over 700 illustrations) portrait of this astonishing cultural ferment and its most important protagonists. The contributors discuss Klimt and the artists and architects – among them Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos – who joined him in the ‘Secession’, and reflect on the glories of the Wiener Werkstätte’s crafts, prints, graphic art and fine book production.
Themes range from the compositional logic of such musical pioneers as Hugh Wolf, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schönberg, Alan Berg and Anton Webern to the literary and journalistic life of the Café Griensteidl, the favourite haunt of such luminaries as Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Beer-Hofmann, Hermann Bahr, Peter Altenberg and Karl Kraus.
Further figures integral to the mix include Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism; the dramatist Arthur Schnitzler and his one-act diagnoses of the morbidly cyclical nature of washed-out emotion; Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler and Wilhelm Reich with their masterly insights into the human psyche; and Fritz Mauthner and Ludwig Wittgenstein, pioneers in the philosophy of language.
The book includes a compact but detailed appendix that offers information on the significant figures, institutions and publications of this remarkable period.
Publication Date: August 2006
ISBN 0500513139
From the American Publisher:At the turn of the 20th century, Vienna was one of the most exciting cities on earth--the central gathering spot of the European avant-garde in art, architecture, literature, music, journalism, philosophy, psychiatry, and theater. The dynamic cross-pollination among the revolutionary figures involved--Klimt, Kokoschka, the Wiener Werkstätte, Mahler, Freud, Wittgenstein, and many more--turned the Austrian capital into an extraordinary laboratory for new ideas and concepts. It is where modern was born.
With more than 500 illustrations, Vienna 1900 is a unique, concise portrait of a vibrant world and its most important protagonists.
Publication Date: October 2006
ISBN 0865651752
Sample pages:
Berlin | Die 20er Jahre
Berlin : les années vingt (FR)
Berlin in the Twenties (UK)
Berlin: The Twenties (US)
Rainer Metzger, General Editor
Table of Contents (from the British edition):
1. The City as Parvenu; 2. The November Vanishing Point: Revolution and Reaction; 3. War and Peace: Expressionism and Dada; 4. The Aesthetics of Truth; 5. Unity and Purity: Utopias, Collectives, Futurism; 6. The Modern Metropolis; 7. High Culture; 8. The Truth in Flight: Berlin and the Alternative Modernity; 9. The Argument of the Masses; 10. The Third Reich or: How Was It Possible?
From the French publisher:C'est la République de Weimar au cours des années 1918 à 1933 qui propulsa Berlin au zénith. Ainsi, le
Berlin des années vingt a donné naissance à une culture qui a totalement vécu de la politisation. Il y germait des utopies qui, en cette époque de crise, traçaient des perspectives de progrès. La communication prenait son essor dans les sphères populaires par le biais de la photo, du cinéma, des affiches, de l'agit-prop, du cabaret et des variétés. Grâce à ces techniques, ces millions de Berlinois ne formaient plus une masse mais des citoyens : ils acquéraient à la fois un accès et une dignité à la culture. Ces évolutions venaient de la masse, mais il y avait une avant-garde pour les faire entrer dans les pratiques et les prémices des beaux-arts. Il suffit d'aligner quelques noms, George Grosz, Otto Dix, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, Hannah Höch pour l'aventure Dada ; Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch pour le cinéma et la photographie ; Mies van der Rohe, Moholy-Nagy, Lissitzky pour les grandes conquêtes utopistes ou fonctionnelles de l'architecture, du design et de l'œuvre d'art totale, pour prendre la mesure de ces années de révolutions et de créations tous azimuts.
Publication Date: October 2006
ISBN 2754101128
From the American Publisher:Berlin, a haunting vision of the twentieth century’s first modern city, is a cultural history filled with 400 shockingly fresh and romantic photographs, paintings, and other images.
In the brief years between the twentieth century’s two cataclysmic world wars, the modern metropolis was invented in Berlin. Life in Berlin was a cabaret, and Marlene Dietrich, Thomas Mann, Alfred Einstein, or Joseph Goebbels might be seated at the next table. The avant-garde thrived there. The mass media magnified the impact of everything from fads to political ideas. Subcultures and club cultures nurtured gender-bending fashions and lifestyles. Architects and designers struggled to free themselves from the past. In the background beat the new rhythms of urban experience: the coming and going of the latest planes and trains and automobiles, the clacking of typewriters in vast offices, the jazz band that never sleeps. Berlin: The Twenties is a book for history buffs, travelers, and lovers of modern art and design.
Publication Date: May 2007
ISBN 0810993295
From the British publisher:Berlin in the 1920s was home to some of the most extraordinary minds of modern times, and was a vigorous melting pot of radical new ideas and concepts in every field. There was a massive boom in popular artforms, including photography and cinema, graphic design and poster art, agitprop and cabaret, which gave all the people of the city a chance to enter the cultural arena. Comprising essays on the key movements and figures of the era, this profusely illustrated book is a highly readable portrait of this astonishing cultural ferment and its most important protagonists.
Publication Date: April 2007
ISBN 0500513546
Sample pages:
16 July 2006
La citation du jour 2006-07-16
Le grand public pense que les livres, comme les oeufs, gagnent à être consommés frais. C'est pour cette raison qu'il choisit toujours la nouveauté. -Goethe (via Heileen)
Goethe is saying that the general public thinks that books, like eggs, should be consumed fresh. For this reason, the average punter tends to choose new releases. Of course the average punter these days isn't likely to choose a book at all, but this idea can be applied to the consumption of culture in general (television, cinema, etc.).
This is as true today as it was in the time of Goethe, particularly in the Anglo-saxon publishing world, where new releases in hardback can be found piled high in supermarket bargain bins just months after publication, thereby making room in the 'proper' bookshops for the next slate of throwaway bestsellers.
In the world of French publishing, hardbacks barely even exist anymore. Most new releases are done in a high-quality trade paperback format, and very often they remain in print for decades after their initial publication. After a year or so many books will also be available in the poche format, which is of a slighly better quality than the Anglo-saxon mass market paperback format. I wouldn't be surprised if the hardback format remains in use in the Anglo-saxon publishing world specifically because it stands up better to the demands of the supermarket bargain bin environment, i.e. an environment where books are chucked about by philistines like so many pieces of worthless tat.
What can you say? You just get the feeling that the written word is treated with more reverence in certain cultures than in others. Different strokes for different folks...
07 February 2006
Media Concentration in Publishing Marches On
Hachette, already the largest publisher in France and New Zealand, and the second largest in the United Kingdom, Australia and Spain, is now the third-largest publisher in the world with today's aquistion of Anglo-American publisher Time Warner Books. The two largest book publishing groups in the world remain the UK's Pearson (Penguin, etc.) and Germany's Bertelsmann (Random House, etc.). Man, if people read books, Europe would control the world!
Speaking of ruling the world, let's talk about about media concentration. After the Vivendi Universal débâcle, Hachette owned such a large share of the publishing market in France that the European Union had to step in and force it to sell off some of its publishing empire. It remained nonetheless the largest French publisher by a comforable margin. American publisher André Schiffrin, the longtime head of Pantheon Books (before they were aquired by Random House and he was eventually forced out), addresses the problems of media concentration and the aquisition of publishers by large conglomerates in his three books L'édition sans éditeurs, The Business of Books and Le contrôle de la parole (all are highly recommened!). He explains the enjeux much better than I can, but I'll briefly convey my issues with the way things are headed.
The first problem is that big business that don't understand publishing expect every book to make a profit. They simply see their shiny new book business as a touch of class and a new profit centre. They are unaquainted with the traditional model of publishing in which a publisher's most successful titles subsidize those that meet with less initial success. Some books will lose money. This is done because it is thought that while an author's first book might not make money, if his career is nutured they can profit from the talent they know he has (they would publish authors they believe in, not rubbish ones that they think might earn them a quick profit) as his reputation grows. They grow his audience, and then the audience will come back and buy his backlist. There was some sense that a book was not just a commodity like another, that it had some value beyond the money it could bring in. Hence, some books would be published simply because the content was deemed to be important, regardless of the potential for profit, present or future. Gallimard is a prime example of this practice, and today they hold the position of the largest independent publisher in France. It has been said that they have the best backlist in the world (Proust, Camus, Gide, Sartre, Cocteau, Beauvoir, etc). All of this is releated to the French concept of the exception culturelle, that culture should somehow be treated differently and not entirely left to the market.
The second problem is that as publishers are bought up and grouped together, there are fewer people deciding on which books will eventually make it into the shops. They could still be making the great decisions and publishing great books. The fact that the power to make those decisions are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands will be reflected in the resultant output. A narrower range of voices get through and the public debate suffers.
All of this having been said, and keeping in mind that I do realise that when we are dealing with huge publicly-traded companies nationality doesn't matter, part of me (the incorrible europhile I suppose) is somehow reassured by the fact that it's Europe that's building these great publishing empires. Hopefully this is less an end to democracy and more a first step to Mark Leonard's better, brighter future.
