All posts by CarterHayes

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Reading in Translation

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J.M.G. Le Clézio - DésertLast week, as we rolled south toward Kansas, Mrs. Hayes and I occupied our minds with podcasts. The pillowy ride of the new (to us) full-size Buick sedan and the monotony of eastern Iowa might have lulled us to sleep were it not for The Incomparable, The /Filmcast, Roderick on the Line, and Radiolab. "Translation," last week's Radiolab episode, got me thinking about the books I've read in translation, particularly the book I'm reading right now –  J.MG. Le Clézio's Désert, translated in my edition by C. Dickson.

This is my first modern French novel. I dutifully read, as I'm sure many of you did, Voltaire and Victor Hugo and Guy de Maupassant in high school. I might be forgetting a few. Since I don't speak French, I never read any of them in anything other than English, just like I'm reading Le Clézio. Mostly, reading this book is flying blind. I'm ignorant of any conventions in French literature, and completely reliant on C. Dickson to convey Le Clézio's entire persona as an author – characterization, phrasing, pacing, voice, everything except the plot. If Désert were a film by Godard or Melville I might have more to go on; I wouldn't need a translator to help with anything other than dialogue. But C. Dickson's my only lifeline to the ship Le Clézio is sailing across the Sahara. I'm over halfway through it, and while I can't say if I "get" it yet, I can say with conviction I'm in awe of the writing. Or is it the translation?

I read and translated a little Russian literature in Russian as an undergrad: Pushkin and Akhmatova and Gogol come to mind. I don't speak or read Russian well enough to read a book anything but haltingly, but at one time I got along enough to form a few opinions, mainly about poets. Blok and Akhmatova blew me away. I know enough about Russian literature and culture to have a decent idea of what an author or poet is doing or the society his work is engaging. With the French, I have no idea. (I will be even more lost when I finally get to Ha Jin's War Trash, hopefully by the end of the year.)

It's funny. Some of my favorite authors are those I can only read in translation. Murakami, for example. There are books of his I like better than others, but despite my near-complete ignorance of non-automotive Japan and my total Japanese illiteracy, he is definitely near the top of my list of favorite writers. How much of that do I owe to Murakami, and how much of it to his English translators, Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel? I suppose I could answer that by saying I never recommend anyone read Constance Garnett's translations of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or anybody else. (Please. Read the newer and superior Prevar & Volokhonsky translations.) A good translator gets out of the way and imparts as much of the original author's vision and voice as possible, and a bad one can completely destroy the original while leaving the reader completely unaware of the demolition. The problem is knowing which translator has been at work.

What are you reading?

WGOM Advice

Islands in the Streaming

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When I started my job in the spring I began using streaming music services much more frequently. I used Songza for free until it was bought by Google. After that I started a Beats Music subscription, which I've been really pleased with apart from some gaps in the library (The Beatles being the most glaring, hopefully something that changes since parent company Apple has Beatles rights). I've found myself more engaged with the music I'm listening to over the last several months than I had been in a long time. My much-deeper appreciation of Neil Young and John Fahey is probably the most significant result, but I've also discovered some new albums to love: Randy Weston's Tanjah and Gene Clark's White Light, especially.

I've started making my own playlists on Beats, something I never did with Songza because, really, I never needed to - the options were that extensive - and because users couldn't listen to their own playlists. Most Beats playlists seem to be around an hour or album-length, which I don't plan on sticking to since there's no real format constraint. (The idea of making a "mixtape" for someone else still has its romantic appeal, though.)

At the same time, I'm aware that I don't own any of the new music I'm enjoying. This troubles me in a way that not owning the content I view on Netflix doesn't. I am happy and relieved to not have a living room overrun by a flim collection I will need to update to a new format in ten years, or duplicate onto electronic storage - even when this means that Battlestar Galactica isn't available for me to watch anymore. BSG will come back, I'm sure. And when it comes back, maybe that's a great occasion to watch it again and see how I feel about it with the passage of time.

But the fact that I don't own Harvest or The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death or White Light on CD, or vinyl, or even digitally - yet - troubles me a bit. I think that's because my childhood was one strongly attuned to music, and because my own physical collection of music is a twenty-five year investment and tangible record of my personality and growth. Others would feel the same way about a film collection, I have no doubt, and that's a reflection of their own preferenecs and personality. Still others might not care about either. Their houses are likely less cluttered, or cluttered instead with woodworking tools, or bolts of fabric, or painting supplies, or binders of film negatives, or car parts...

What is your relationship with streaming services - musical, video, or otherwise? How do you feel about renting content instead of owning it? What other factors do you consider when evaluating streaming content or devices for streaming it?

Cup of Coffee

8 August 2014: Last to Know

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Apparently I'm the last person in my office to know that our boss interviewed for another, higher-up position in our school, and that interviews for her position will be starting today.

Since I learned this from the daily building events calendar posted in the elevator, I guess that means I've been left out of the workplace news/gossip circle.

Cup of Coffee

17 June 2014: Shelter from the Idiot Wind

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Last night would have been exciting if I didn't have to get up this morning. (Thank goodness for the AeroPress I keep at the office.) Apparently at least one tornado touched down in the city, and there are power lines and trees down all over the place. On the bus ride in I noted several lovely old trees in city parks were toppled or had their trunks snapped. We escaped mostly unscathed, though I haven't checked the garden yet.

Everything okay down by you, cheaptoy?

WGOM Advice

Tools of the Trade: Coffee

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I initially thought about simply raising this question in the Cup of Coffee. I like a good, strong Cup, so extracting a conversation from the post wasn't something I did lightly. But then I got thinking about all the times I've tried looking for a particular recommendation in a particular thread in the Cup. Sometimes I find it, sometimes I don't. So I thought it was a good idea to feature an occasional stand-alone post on the tools we use to make our hobbies – drinking coffee, homebrewing, cooking, vehicle repair, home improvement, photography, whatever – more enjoyable. Let's collect all the WGOM's best hobbyist practices in one place.

We've been using French presses here at Chez Hayes for years, and for the most part we love the coffee we get from them. My two gripes about French presses are the lack of insulation, which makes it difficult to linger over a cup if you know you'll want a second one, and the thin, brittle glass of the carafe/beaker common to many brands, which is a hazard when combined with slippery dish soap. After several years of good service our (third?) Bodum Chambord broke when Mrs. Hayes was washing it.

I don't mind getting another French press knowing that the glass is going to break at some point. But given this opportunity, I'm thinking about my coffee-making options. I've considered trying an AeroPress, but an AeroPress isn't a solution when you're making coffee for a small group of friends after supper. We have a very serviceable 12-cup percolator (thanks, Michael Ruhlman!) for entertaining larger groups, so what we really need now is something that can make good coffee for 2-4 people.

A further wrinkle: Mrs. Hayes isn't interested in anything too fiddly. Whatever we get has to be fairly straightforward to use. Neither of us can stand the taste of microwaved coffee, which probably rules out cold brewing (which might be too fussy for one of us, anyway).

So, do we keep using a French press and accepting the two-year replacement cycle? What other brewing methods are you folks using?

Miscellaneous

Swept Up by Sochi

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Like Streams, I've been a little to intense in my appetite for curling this year. But I guess it's like getting ready for hibernation – you know you've got to get fat on this while you can, because it's another four long years until the next Olympics. So here's to moderation in everything, including moderation. There will be time to catch up on sleep between now and the end of spring training, right? Continue reading Swept Up by Sochi →