"the work writing itself" -- a divagation

In the previously mentioned (Jan. 9/09 post, essay by Jack Kimball, "Gertrude Stein and the Natural World") a phrase he used stuck with me:

"The work writing itself -- this is the natural, inclusive 'exciting' subject matter of her composition."

Of course the reference is to Stein. While wandering the web, however, and checking in at a blog, Night Hauling, that I've enjoyed for his idiosyncratic and often darkly amusing posts, I found a link to an interview with Helen DeWitt (The Last Samurai)from if: the institute for the future of the book, a site that is currently "migrating to a new server" though the link at Night Hauling is still alive. Though the interview is long, it is highly recommended for anyone curious about what it means to be a groundbreaking writer in the sluggish world of publishing.

DeWitt's most recent novel, Your Name Here, is available via her blog, paperpools, as a pdf download for the modest sum of US$8 using Paypal. Although I hadn't previously known of her work (being more of a poetry hound than a regular pursuer of fiction)her interview prompted me to take the plunge and I now have a copy of the book to read on my computer with no intention of printing the near-600 pages: I'll wait until some savvy publisher gets it into print but meanwhile relish having the pdf version (which is surprisingly easy on the eyes) to read and re-read. Now I also have a copy of The Last Samurai, and am for the moment distracted by its spell also from reading the Gertrude Stein material on hand + related material + "all the other things I read", + the writing waiting to be written -- being so bedazzled by DeWitt's writing both on screen and in print (too) late at night with a vat of tea ever close at hand. (I never do anything at one sitting.)

(Surely all manner of reading/thinking/talking about modern/contemporary/revolutionary writing is on the menu at the GS Cafe.)

Kimball's sentence about "the work writing itself" could as easily apply to DeWitt with her counterpoint composition, serious and brilliant play with language and languages, and a narrative flow that is utterly captivating.

Coincidentally having received in yesterday's mail a CD of Angele Dubeau and La Pieta playing music of Philip glass (Portrait, on Analekta; recorded Nov. 2007 at McGill University) this description of the composer's oeuvre by Lucie Renaud (in translation here by Peter Christensen) struck me as equally descriptive of DeWitt's writing:

". . .he [Glass] treats the notion of time completely differently, not as a continuity but rather as a succession of moments that fall into one another ("une succession d'instants qui se jettent les uns dans les autres") without any relationship of cause and effect." And yet the result is not chaos, but flow -- in both his music and in DeWitt's writing -- with harmonies and shifts and subtle details that create meaning beyond the particulars.

I like the original French ("se jettent les uns dans les autres") for the shade of meaning that (for me) can't quite cross into English. The impossibility of pure equivalency across languages.

The growing pile of work by and about Stein that is stacking up here now leads me also along a path of translation, curious to find out how and where her writing has been translated, and also her own translation work. Two books I've recently received from the amazing online bookseller, Apollinaire's Bookshoppe deal with the act of translation, poetry in particular: Translating Translating Montreal (from pressdust; Montral) and At Alberta, by Nathalie Stephens (BookThug; Toronto) -- the latter being the publishing arm of Apollinaire's Bookshoppe, both the work of Jay Millar who, like Zaphod Beeblebrox, has a third arm, that of being a poet. One of the essays in the Stephens book is "WANT: L'INTRADUISIBLE (DESIRE IN TRANSLATION)" (also the keynote lecture at the annual translation conference 2006 at the University of alberta) which begins, "I will begin with the 'failure of translation.'"

And Translating Translating Montreal includes the theme of collaborative translation, and that takes me back again to Stein, and the work of Barbara Will, whose work-in-progress concerns an intriguing (and mysterious) episode of Stein's war years in France. Will's essay, "Lost in Translation: Stein's Vichy Collaboration" (from MODERNISM/modernity 11:4; 651-668; 2004) begins:

"In 1941, the Jewish-American writer Gertrude Stein embarked on one of the strangest intellectual projects of her life: translating and introducing for an American audience the speeches of Marshal Philippe Petain, head of state of the collaborationist Vichy government."

All this, and more, waiting to be explored.

Also coincidentally (again), Bud Parr at Chekhov's Mistress, a blog that I've been following for years with admiration, wrote a recent post (Jan. 10/09) about a forthcoming discussion (Jan. 23/09) at Housing Works Bookstore (New York): "Poetry in Translation Panel: Has the US Lost Touch with World Literature?"

He will be reporting on the discussion at Words Without Borders, another site where he posts his writing.

Enough for one sitting -- if it were snowing inside as steadily as it has been outside all morning, I'd be knee deep by now in more than books.