Alta Ifland's Blog: Notes on Books

A review of Introduction to Sally

My video review of "Introduction to Sally" by Elizabeth von Arnim (British Library Publishing, 2023) https://youtu.be/KW2Odlz9y3U

A review of The Censor's Notebook

my link text

An interview with CKCU Literary News about my books, my translations and my childhood in Romania

https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/ondem...

A Notebook of Clouds by Pierre Chappuis translated from the French by John Taylor, followed by A Notebook of Ridges by John Taylor

"A Notebook of Clouds" by Pierre Chappuis translated from the French by John Taylor, followed by "A Notebook of Ridges" by John Taylor (Odd Volumes/The Fortnightly Review, 2019)

John Taylor is without a doubt the most prolific American translator of poetry from French into English, and certainly one of the best. He also happens to be one of the most insightful literary critics I know and an impressive poet in his own right. One of his latest translations is "A Notebook of Clouds" by Pierre Chappuis, a Swiss poet and essayist from the same generation with French-language poets Yves Bonnefoy, Jacques Réda and Philippe Jaccottet (another Swiss writer extensively translated by Taylor). "A Notebook of Clouds" comprises verse poems, poetic prose and fragmentary notes, creating a coherent whole in spite of its apparent heteroclite character, a form that is both lyrical and philosophical. The Notebook is literally made of “leftovers” from Taylor’s previous translations of Chappuis, which haven’t made it into the collection Like Bits of Wind: Selected Poetry and Poetic Prose 1974-2013 published by Seagull Books in 2016. Added to these are some other excerpts translated from a second, similar notebook, “Preliminary Notebook for the Notebook of Clouds, 1979-1984.” But the most surprising aspect is the book’s second part, “A Notebook of Ridges,” a long prose poem written by Taylor in response to Chappuis’s “Notebook of Clouds.” Thus, we have a book that contains work by two different authors, the second author being the translator of the first one, and his piece being inspired by the poetic prose of the translated author. "A Notebook of Ridges" delves into Taylor’s childhood memories from the flatlands of Iowa and replicates the philosophical mood of Chapuis’s collection. The dedication, “for Pierre Chappuis, because a cloud sometimes looks like a ridge,” gives us a hint about Taylor’s possible reasons for choosing the ridge: there is an obvious analogy between their shape, but the ridge seems almost like an inverted cloud.

The unusual nature of A Notebook of Clouds is transparent even at the most obvious visual level through changes in font type and size. As for the content, one can find anything from poetic meditations on the names of clouds (“Clouds, cloudlets, halos/stratus, nimbus, cumulus (scholarly pig Latin)”—74) to food descriptions (“Like entangled noodles which, softened and whirling, would come undone little by little in the cooking water”—20 or “Like the crackled film of cream on heated milk, with its bulges, folds, little craters, scars”—36). We don’t have access to the French original, but Taylor’s translation, especially the latter quote, gives us a remarkable phonetic association made of alliterations and assonances. One can almost taste the heated milk cream on one’s tongue.

Taylor’s gift at capturing sound patterns comes across especially when he is forced to translate certain provocative expressions, such as “luminous sphincter”—48 or “nipple-hilled”—21) but also when, through his choices, he allows what one might call “linguistic chance” to create a text that has gained something in translation: “Clocks and Clouds” (49) for what I suppose must have been “Horloges et nuages.”

Anyone interested in contemporary American poetry and essay-writing should read Taylor’s "Notebook of Ridges," not only because it is very good poetry (or poetic prose, depending on the terminology), but because it is a fascinating example of what happens when cultures and languages mix. Although Taylor is American, his writing—at least in this instance—has very little to do with contemporary American poetry. The structure of thinking behind this Notebook is French, while the emotional and linguistic modulations are American. Like the French, Taylor often goes back to a word’s origin in order to meditate on a certain topic: “The etymology of ‘ridge’ runs, like a ridge, from meaning ‘back’ and ‘spine’ to ‘cross,’ ‘curved,’ and ‘crown’” (85).

He posits an association between the word “ridge” and childhood memories and adolescent aspirations, and as a consequence, he takes the reader back to his childhood mornings in Wyoming and summers in Iowa. Attempting to “turn topography into topology” (92), Taylor uses the topos of the “ridge” to reflect on things that are essential to him: his childhood, geography, but also writing itself: “Ideally, writing takes the writer each time out onto a ridge” (91).

At a philosophical and conceptual level, "A Notebook of Ridges" represents a synthesis between the inspiring poet (Chappuis) and the inspired translator-poet (Taylor), a mixing of “clouds” and “ridges” into a third element. This quote from Japanese introduces—ironically—a third cultural reference and language: “A fluttering fan/in the actor’s rising hand/the ridge of a cloud” (103).

Having been born of a translation from the French, "A Notebook of Ridges"—a poetic work written in English—keeps within itself the record if its origin and goes back to it: “La crête se détache toujours. The ridge always stands out and is ‘detached’” (105).

In the above example, we have a sentence (“La crête se détache toujours”) written in French by an English-speaking author, who then, proceeds to translate it into English. Taylor’s creative impulse is to go back to the origin of his prose poem, an origin that resides not only in the content of "A Notebook of Clouds," but in the language itself in which the latter has been written.

Like Chappuis—and, generally, in the French tradition of fragmentary-poetic-philosophical meditation—Taylor quotes various French writers who have written on the topic at hand, and incorporates their thoughts into his own writing: “Sainte-Beuve forged the image of a ‘brilliant ridge of syllables’ when he was analyzing Chateaubriand’s style” (113); or: “The pauses or blank spaces between fragments, maxims, or notes whose words form, to recall Yves Bonnefoy’s phrase, ‘the ridgeline of a silence’…” (114). It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that "A Notebook of Ridges" is, in its very form and language, the result of a masterful collaboration between two languages and structures of thinking, a hybrid and hybridized Franco-American collection of poetic prose:

“Look and listen in English. Then in French. Then in English once again.
Clearness. Clarity. Clarté. Clarée. Clearness” (127).

Story and Belonging: Reading, Writing and Cultural Appropriation

As someone who was formed by several different cultural traditions and languages, I am very aware of the different ways in which concepts such as "story" and "writing" are framed. For instance, in English one can say “You stole my story!” in order to mean “You stole my life experience”—an absurd claim, since stealing anyone’s life experience would be equivalent to stealing one's body and mind. It used to be that “You stole my story” could only mean “you stole my (published) story”—that is, the word “story” meant an artifact made of words, images, musical notes, etc. The American culture ended up conflating both meanings of “story” (artifact AND experience) and then, in good American tradition, it exported them to the rest of the world.

To begin with, this conflation can only happen in a very materialist culture: if my life experience is transferable, it means that anyone can “use” it, and I can “sell” it—again, a very specific American idea, which started, very likely, in the movie industry where I could “sell” my life “story,” and which by now has been instilled in both readers and writers by the publishing industry. Because of this vision, other concepts that have nothing to do with literature and are specific to American culture are being added to this already-perverted idea of “story.” All these other concepts are time- and space-specific, that is, they happen to reflect the (American) society’s preoccupations at present. Take race, for instance. It is very obvious that the current racial tensions are being abusively transferred onto the topic of "story"--by "abusively" I mean that these are completely different issues, but they have become intermingled for many Anglophone writers. Why? For the simple reason that today in America race relations are on everyone’s mind.

Here, I would ask my fellow American writers to step back for a second and try to imagine being a writer in, say, the Czech Republic, or Japan, or Iceland. All these countries have great literary traditions: the Czechs have given us the greatest modern writer, Kafka; Japan has not only an extremely sophisticated contemporary literature; it has given us the first world novel; and Iceland is probably the country with the highest percentage of readers in the world. None of these countries has a serious reason (at least so far--this may change in the future) to be concerned with race relation But when American writers reframe the discussion about literature in way that makes race and “cultural appropriation” part of its definition, that is, when they redefine what a story is by making the claim that a story “belongs” to the raw material that may have inspired it, that claim affects not only American writers; it affects also Japanese, Icelandic and Czech writers. It affects them because we live in a global world, and publishing industries influence each other—though the influence comes in most cases from the American publishing industry to the rest of the world, and not the other way around.

In a world of pre-packaged things, the way we write about anything is, by necessity, genre-specific. Journalism is by essence of its time, and even when it claims to be neutral it still tries in some way to deal with (ie, “fix”) the reality it talks about. Journalism is always second-degree writing (it’s ABOUT something). By contrast, fiction is not of its time. The better it is, the more it transgresses its own space and time. And unlike what many writers seem to believe, fiction is not necessarily about “something.” Like “Seinfeld” (a work of TV fiction), it can be about nothing, yet still be (good) fiction. Fiction re-creates the world, and in this sense it is always first-degree writing. Which brings me—again—to the concept of story in contemporary American culture, as both artifact AND life experience. According to this concept, a story must necessarily be “about something.” When writers accuse each other of “cultural appropriation,” their implicit vision of a story is that of an “about-something:” as such, a story has different “ends” or “goals” than a story based on a vision of literature as re-creation of the world. When you “appropriate,” you use things; when you (re)create, you reshape every single thing.

The fact is that what (we think) a story should do changes each time we reframe the question. For example, Roxana Robinson asks, “To whom does a story belong?”—which has the merit of bringing back the discussion on the terrain of literature. This is a question that has been asked in different ways by writers and literary critics in the past. I will give only one name: Umberto Eco, whose concept of “opera aperta” (open work) means that works of art do not hold a single, enclosed meaning, but rather, as many meanings as readers. What Eco and many other 20th century critics argue is that meaning in art/literature is given both by the reader and the writer, which means that the work belongs (in different ways) to anyone who reads/sees/hears it. My answer is different from both that of Roxana Robinson (it belongs to the writer) and that of certain activists preoccupied with race relations (it belongs to the one who has lived it): it belongs to no one and everyone. By its very essence, a story doesn’t belong. (By the way, “be-long” is a very beautiful word in the English language). People may belong and dwell, stories pass, and the more a story moves through time toward us the greater it is. If it weren’t great, it would belong only to its time and its contemporaries.

One reason many writers of color hate "cultural appropriation" (and these words should be put in quotes because they represent a way of framing literature that is--again--specific to contemporary Anglophone cultures, and therefore, is not universal) is because of "exploitation"--but "exploitation" is invoked--and for good reason--only when a book or its author becomes famous. In other words: exploitation only exists if the publishing industry has framed the discussion already by deciding that it wants certain "stories" on the market." Let’s face it, no one would want to "appropriate" anyone's story if they weren't rewarded for it (and as writers, we all know that being "rewarded" means being published and being paid attention to). So, these days when people yell at each other and accuse each other of "appropriating" one's story it usually means that the thing they care least about is literature. What they really mean is that they are upset because they aren't getting published, or they are upset for the current racial situation in American society. These are two legitimate reasons for being upset, but again, they are entirely different, and they require different approaches. It seems to me that what we need to change is the REALITY in which we live, not the way we frame art/literature. Reality is always time-space specific—our vision of art should go beyond our limited reality. Storytelling is universal, and by attempting to change its concept, American writers are assuming that their (racial) experience is universal—when, in fact, it’s not. The fact is that no one can really appropriate "one's story"--if you "appropriate" it it is no longer the same story. It becomes a different story. I could give many examples of "cultural appropriation" no one gives a damn about. For instance: I grew up in Eastern Europe under communism. Whenever I read an American novel set in Eastern Europe it sounds very phony to me--clearly a cultural appropriation done by someone who cannot really understand life in such a different world. Yet, no one would ever think to blame these authors for cultural appropriation, even though this is exactly what they did. Which means, again, that "exploitation" and "cultural appropriation" have such weight in the current debate only because of the current racial tensions. In fact, “exploitation” of one’s cultural/racial/ethnic identity can only occur, paradoxically, if the people/identity being exploited are enjoying a certain recognition or if their status has changed in a way that could—at least in theory—make the appropriation of this identity beneficial to other groups of people. Logically, if some “white” writers choose to “exploit” the experiences or “stories” of people of other races, doesn’t this mean that there is something to be “gained” by this choice? And if there is something to be gained by impersonating life experiences of people of color, or other minorities, doesn’t this mean that, at least as far as the publishing industry is concerned, the stories of “white people” may have become less “hot” than the stories of non-whites? Personally, I have no idea what the publishing industry favors these days, as the publishing industry and I are not the best of friends. I am simply using logic here: why would anyone want to “exploit” or “appropriate” anyone’s identity/story unless the society rewarded them for it? In fact, this discussion reminds me of a debate years ago when James Frey wrote a very successful “memoir” about having been a drug-addict—which turned out to be fiction. I never read more than two or three lines in that novel, and I don’t know if Frey is black or white, or if race has any place in the book, but I do know that the book’s success was due to the fact that this was one of those so-called “stories of redemption” in which someone with a criminal past is redeemed because they become successful (ie, write a book). There you have it: a story of victimhood and success: the ur-arch of American ideology that all mainstream American publishers want. Or, here is another story of “exploitation:” about ten years ago a man who wrote a “memoir” about being in a Nazi concentration camp, which proved to be fake. Predictably, the discovery resulted in a scandal, though no one talked, as far as I remember, about cultural appropriation. And then, what kind of “appropriation”? If the man was Jewish but not a Holocaust survivor, he “used” the experience of other members of his community, but claimed it was his. If he wasn’t even Jewish, he also “used” the cultural identity of another group. Both the Frey story and that of the fake Holocaust memoir are relevant for our discussion, yet in the current debate references are being made only to African-Americans and Latinos—which, again, proves that the concern is less about literature and more about American’s present—a different topic altogether.

Current racial tensions are very real and they need to be dealt with--they need to be dealt with in real life, not by reframing the whole concept of literature. If one reframes the whole concept of literature because of racial problems specific to American society one assumes that all societies have the same problems--which is false. In fact, I would say that this act of reframing is imperialist in essence insofar as it attempts to convince the rest of us that it is universal (ie, this is what a "story" should be). As in the past, the consequence of the globalization (ie. “universal-ization”) of the current debate in American culture will be: publishers, writers and agents around the world will start reframing their intentions, and as a result, talented writers will be even more marginalized than before because from now on they can always be accused of cultural appropriation. But how do you define “cultural appropriation” in a global world in which many writers live in more than one country in their lifetime? How about writers—like me—who had to “appropriate” even the language in which they write because they are immigrants from a non-Anglophone country? Or who had to appropriate several languages—I write in two languages that are not my native tongue—and cultures? Writers—like me—who are by their very existence—a monument to cultural appropriation? I’m afraid that most American writers would never address the questions above because American writers (whatever their color) tend to imagine (yes, it needs repeating) that their experience is universal, and since they never immigrate (in the rare instances they do it’s called “ex-patriation,” a difference in lexicology that underlines the difference in framework) and, most importantly, NEVER CHANGE THEIR LANGUAGE, theses questions are (for them) non-existent. Yet they are essential to the rest of the world. For the rest of the world a writer is no longer a representative of a nation or even a language, never mind an ethnic or racial group. It used to be that Dante= Italy=Italian language; Shakespeare=England= English language. But the world has changed: today, Yoko Tawada can equal both Japan and Germany; or, Aleksandar Hemon both Bosnia and the United States. This is evident to the entire world—except the United States. While on the rest of the planet, the vision of literature has progressed from a local space (that of the nation) to a global one (that of the entire world), in the United States the reverse has been happening: now it is considered unacceptable to take on other identities than that of your own ethnic/racial group. This phenomenon, which is framed as "progressive," is, in fact, part of the same tribalism that has taken over American society.

In 19th century France Flaubert was writing stories like “Madame Bovary” and not “The Scarlet Letter” not because (he thought that) it was morally wrong for a Frenchman to write an American story, but because it would have been ridiculous for him to write about something with which he had no experience whatsoever (the American people and their culture). In other words: writers have the freedom (of imagination) to identify with whomever they want, but their imagination has limits—and these limits are simply human. The truth is that no human being can really, fully understand another human being: it is an existential impossibility. But this impossibility doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do it. How and, just as importantly, why we do it would then be the question. Kafka wrote America not because it was a “hot” topic in Czechia during his lifetime, but because he wanted to say something essential about the world and times in which he lived. Of course, an American may find his representation of America unrealistic, or may even think that the act of representation itself is equivalent to a cultural appropriation. To which Kafka could retort that his America has nothing to do with the Americans’ America, in which case, what exactly is being appropriated?

Baboon, stories by Danish writer Naja Marie Aidt

In Baboon, Naja Marie Aidt’s stories are built around the familiar themes of sex, love and desire, yet there is nothing “familiar” about them. The reader is dropped in the middle of each story (the first story of the collection starts with “Suddenly”) without much information about the characters. The pacing is breathless: short sentence follows short sentence at a frantic speed. Written in a minimalist, concise style—brought to us in English through Denise Newman’s beautiful translation--the prose is striking through its clarity, word choice and rhythm. Aidt pushes her characters into a realm half-way between hyper-realism and her own version of surrealism.

The unorthodox sexuality of some of the characters is part of the economy and the strangeness of the overall narratives. In one story, a man who is very much in love with his wife meets another man, and then “something happened.” The pace of the story changes, the reader is sure that the couple will split, but at the end, this expectation is thwarted. In another story, a couple goes to a city where women are in control, but everything seems to be happening in a dream. Other stories, like Candy, in which a couple goes shopping, hide something uncanny under a mundane appearance. This uncanny character, the ambiguity of the settings and the author’s voice give Baboon its originality.

Three Light-Years by Andrea Canobbio

In Andrea Canobbio’s Three Light-Years, the narrator (who makes several discreet appearances at the beginning and the ending of the novel) imagines the three years, which led to his birth, before his mother’s pregnancy. This is the frame, or rather, the pretext of the drama involving two main characters: his father, Claudio, and the woman he falls in love with, Cecilia—both doctors in the same hospital. In intelligent, thoughtful prose—for which we have to thank the translator, Anne Milano Appel—Canobbio takes us through the daily lives of these characters. For a while, Claudio, who is unattached, seems both like a hopeless lover and a voyeur into Cecilia’s life, a recently divorced woman with two growing children. Then, the balance shifts, and Cecilia responds to Claudio’s attentions. When, finally, the reader is led to believe that a relationship between the two is possible, fate intervenes: Claudio is introduced to Silvia, Cecilia’s eccentric sister. The novel’s ending is somewhat ambiguous, yet the narrator gives us subtle hints about how he grew up and who raised him, so we can imagine the outcome of the drama between Claudio, Cecilia and Silvia. This is a novel about contemporary couples, which should resonate with readers everywhere.

My Top Ten Fiction Books for 2014

1. The Art of Joy by Goliarda Sapienza (2013, Italian)
2. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante (2005, Italian)
3. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante (2014, Italian)
4. The Bridge over the Neroch by Leonid Tsypkin (2012, Russian)
5. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka (2006, British)
6. Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim (1995, 1919, British)
7. Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott (2003, 1984, American)
8. Kinder than Solitude by Yiyun Li (2014, American-Chinese)
9. Slow Homecoming by Peter Handke (2009, Austrian)
10. The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tampinar (2014, Turkish)

Steinunn Sigurdardóttir’s Place of the Heart

It took me some time to establish a connection with Steinunn Sigurdardóttir’s novel Place of the Heart, in spite of its elegant yet unpretentious writing, translated with outstanding artfulness by Philip Roughton. The reason is simple: I hate spending time with teenagers bent on destroying themselves with drugs and alcohol, not to mention the risk of AIDS—and this novel forces you to. But the author managed to convince me that her novel is more than worth reading, and the more I read the more enjoyable it became. Its 413 pages are written in Harpa’s voice, a complex character, mother to a delinquent teenager, who had her at the unripe age of sixteen. A single mother working as an assistant nurse, Harpa struggles to save her daughter, Edda, from the downward spiral she’s been caught in, and which could only lead to her death. Edda is a masterfully realized portrait of a teenager out of control: she calls her mother whore, bitch, old cow, tells her to “eat shit,” and threatens to kill her. Possessed by some inner demon, the fifteen-year-old girl shares the company of very dubious characters depicted with lucidity and humor by Sigurdardóttir, and one New Year’s eve she is left for dead—or she tries to commit suicide, we don’t know—half naked, in the snow. Harpa manages to save her life, but the incident leads to a decision she hopes would be life-changing: to move from Reykjavik to her relatives on Iceland’s East coast, and let the marvelous countryside of her childhood heal her daughter.

Thus begins a journey that takes over four hundred pages, and covers 48 hours and half of Iceland. True, the journey is also inward, in Harpa’s mind and soul, and into the past. Besides her best friend, Heidur, who drives them, and Edda, Harpa’s dead mother is also a steady road companion, engaging her in long conversations and refusing to reveal the identity of her real father. Harpa, who bears no resemblance neither to her legal father nor to Icelandic people in general, is, thus, on a double quest: for a “place of the heart” for her daughter; and for her true identity. She hopes to find both at her aunt’s place, Dýrfinna, and that of a cousin who has offered to host Edda. The aunt, the cousin, another aunt and an uncle seen on the road, are all quirky, picturesque, yet angelic in their goodness, characters, and take us to a bygone world populated with tales of ghosts, homemade pies and a natural landscape of uncanny beauty.

The journey is not without perils, as it turns out that Edda’s delinquent friends have been following them, and somewhere, in a parking lot, they pretend that they are taking her with them, but in the end let her go, after giving her a new provision of white powder. Nature is also sometimes a dangerous monster in these remote parts—apocalyptic winds are lashing at their car. Yet, the description of Iceland’s moonlike landscape is one of the best rewards of this novel, and it will make you want to travel. I had just returned from Iceland before reading it, and it was a double pleasure to immerse myself into Sigurdardóttir’s world. The novel’s surprise ending— both the identity of Harpa’s real father and the twist in her love life are unexpected—adds to a truly enjoyable reading experience.

The Art of Joy by Goliarda Sapienza (FSG, 2013). Trans. from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel

When I first saw the 670-page hardcopy of The Art of Joy I was convinced I wouldn't read more than a few pages, never mind finish the entire book. But once I opened it I couldn’t put it down: this isn’t merely a very good novel—an engaging bildungsroman/family saga with memorable characters, spanning the twentieth century from its beginning until the sixties; it is the kind of work that should be taught in schools, together with works by such authors as Simone de Beauvoir or Sibilla Aleramo (famous early twentieth century Italian feminist).

The daughter of two leftist intellectuals (her mother, Maria Giudice, is mentioned in the novel during the heated political discussions of the protagonists), Sapienza projects her unusual upbringing onto the fictional world she has created—a world in which the relations between men and women, the young and the elderly, the rich and the poor, and our idea of (romantic) love are questioned. And yet, to talk about The Art of Joy in ideological terms—i.e., to call it “feminist” or “radically leftist”—would be to cheapen it.

Sapienza has poured her free spirit into her protagonist, Modesta, creating one of the strongest female characters of twentieth-century literature. Early in the novel Modesta may be off-putting, as she resembles the “amoralists” of André Gide’s novels (she doesn’t shy away from anything, including murder), but after she becomes a Brandiforti, and from a dirt-poor orphan she enthrones herself as the leader of this aristocratic Sicilian family, her story becomes highly captivating. Her first love is a woman who happens to be the illegitimate daughter of the nun who had raised her; her second love, the father of said daughter; her third, the son of said father. You may say that this sounds like a soap opera, but it’s one of the most literary novels I’ve ever read. How does Sapienza pull this off? One of her narrative strategies is to write full chapters in dialogue, introducing characters and even events in this way, as if she moved from one dramatic scene to another. The result is that the drama is never separated from the world of ideas, and the characters take shape through their passions and ideas at the same time. Nothing sounds phony in the novel because nothing Modesta does is for shock-value; rather, she doesn’t seem bound by the moral laws of society; she never “transgresses” anything because she doesn’t recognize the law in the first place. Yet, paradoxically, she is very Italian, insofar as she always lets herself be driven by passion, but passion infused with extraordinary intelligence and strength of character.

It may be that the beginning of the novel—which includes the sexual initiation of Modesta as a little girl and a scene of incest—had scared away the publishers. Whatever the reason, The Art of Joy was unpublished for thirty years. Published for the first time in Italy in the late nineties, after the author’s death, it’s only recently that it has started to gather acclaim. True, it would have been even better had it been at least a hundred pages shorter, but don’t be deterred by its length: it’s the kind of novel that one doesn’t need to finish in order to enjoy.




View all my reviews