Hot for Translator

Natasha Wimmer, translator of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives and 2666, is interviewed over at Granta: How much did you have to get absorbed in the atmosphere of the book, and how did you achieve that? NW: If you mean did I have to dim the lights and put on Barry White, I hate to disappoint you. I won’t say that the mood of a scene doesn’t affect me, but I’m not the translating equivalent of a Method actor. And […]

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Ever Read Bolaño While Stoned?

Hey hippie, it’s 420. The Daily Beast lists the best stoner novels and tries to make the point that writers aren’t all about speed and booze. Being high is just not all that remarkable—less suited to literature, our culture suggests, and more suited to movies (some of which, like The Big Lebowski, undoubtedly the most penetrating treatment of the subject, are serious and subtle works of art), television, horrible jam bands (yep, they still exist), rap videos, and various effusions […]

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Bites: Jodorowsky Interview, Amis Worries, Bob Dylan Gets Crazier, New Bolaño Translation, and More

Arthur posted a 2003 interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky.  It’s pretty epic. I think Martin Amis is worried about fading away. Proust, Darwin, and Andy Warhol: all hypochondriacs. First he finds Jesus, then puts out a Christmas album, now, Bob Dylan writes a fucking kids book. Lit Kicks interviews Walter Kirn, who wrote the book that got turned into a movie starring George Clooney. “William Burns” by Roberto Bolaño

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Bites: Bolaño and Borges, Nin on LSD, Nick Cave Photoshopped, the Greatest Metal Tour EVER, and More

  I’ve loved just about every installment of “What Bolaño Read” over at MobyLives.  Today, the late Chilean writers fondness for Jorge Luis Borges. Lit. Anais Nin on LSD’s value at Arthur. I only wished people had had time to study drugs as they studied religion or philosophy and to adapt to this chemical alteration of our bodies. Token magical realism “seems not just forced, but fashionable” says Alastair Harper of the Guardian. Go on over to My Old Kentucky […]

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