Emerging Writers Network

Anonymous Reviewing

Quinn Dalton's recent book, Bulletproof Girl, has apparently received a negative review from Kirkus (home of the you pay, we review, policy) and while she understands some might not jump up and down, hailing her work as one for the ages, she wanted to understand more about the reviewer as he/she had particular issues with repetitive domestic aspects of her stories.  The problem Quinn encountered is Kirkus doesn't state who the reviewer is.  Quinn's response can be found at MediaBistro, as she did a substantial amount of research into articles about anonymous reviewing.

I know both Scott @ Conversational Reading and Kassia @ Booksquare (and possibly others I've not caught up to yet) have posted about this, but here is my own two cents ...

For the past five years plus now, I've been writing book reviews for each book that I read - first emailing them to a list of readers, and then eventually adding them to a website, and even more recently, also adding them to this site.  I have been approached by around a dozen people over that time asking if I'd like help and I've always said no thank you for the same reason - I wanted my site to be one that readers could visit and after reading my reviews of four or five books they've also read, come to a conclusion about my tastes.

Not everybody agrees with me in regards to what makes good writing, storytelling, etc.  I know of at least four people who are in my network, specifically to make sure they stay away from books that I describe liking for certain reasons.  But, I'd like to think that I have a consistency that allows somebody to come over and find lesser known authors and see that I've said similar things about their work, as better known authors they already know they enjoy.

When I read certain book review pages, I look for that same consistency.  The name James Wood pops up frequently in the Lit. Blogosphere - for some positively, and others negatively, but there seems to be an agreement between the two sides that he has a vision of good writing and he follows it in his reviewing from book to book - once you understand his vision versus your own tastes, his writing become very valuable.

So, I suppose I'm piling on to the beatings Kirkus is already receiving, but I do not like anonymous reviewing at all, and don't read them.

E-Panel: Directors of Reading Series

The following is an E-Panel of Directors of Reading Series. As more and more authors are trying to find way of publicizing their books, getting out and doing readings at well attended readings seems to be more and more important.

Those participating in this E-Panel are:

Sherrie Flick – Gist Street

www.giststreet.org

Erin Keane– inKY Reading Series

www.inkyreadingseries.com

Mike Kelleher – Just Buffalo

www.justbuffalo.org

Nita Noveno/Caroline Berger – Sunday Salon

www.sundaysalon.com

Kerri Sonnenberg/J. Seldess – The Discrete Series

www.lavamatic.con/discrete

Dan:

Hello there, thank you for agreeing to spend some time answering questions about you and your reading series.

Sherrie Flick - Gist Street:

Hi Dan. Thanks for asking.

Erin Keane - inKY Reading Series:

Thanks for asking me, Dan. What a great idea, I’m looking forward to learning from other directors.

Nita Noveno - Sunday Salon:

Sure thing.

Dan:

Let’s start by asking how you ended up being the director or co-director of your series? Did you start it yourself? Take it over?

Sherrie Flick - Gist Street:

We started Gist Street from scratch. I was sort of floundering after living in Pittsburgh for two years and wasn't finding the creative community that I'd always managed to tap into in other places. My new-found and now dear friend the sculptor James Simon offered up his studio space and said, "Go. The first reading is in March [2001]." My long-time friend, the talented poet Nancy Krygowski agreed to be assistant director (greet people

at the door and buy the pizza), and my husband the playwright Rick Schweikert agreed to be in charge of operations, which mainly meant beer and wine acquistion (fixing broken stuff, and dealing with my neurosis). And that's how it all started. Later I got the title of director because I'm the border collie of the crew.

Erin Keane - inKY Reading Series:

InKY began with an idea for a one-off event by a classmate, and the three of us (Nicole Wilson, Pam Steele, and me) spun it into a monthly event. Nicole ended up moving to Colorado, so that left Pam and me in charge.

Mike Kelleher - Just Buffalo:

I came to Buffalo from NYC in 1997 to study in the SUNY Buffalo Poetics Program. My landlord at the time, Debora Ott, was the founder of Just Buffalo, a literary center that had been in existence since 1975. Ted Pearson, who had just moved to Detroit, had been running a series called “Writers at Work,” for several years. When I met Debora, she told me she needed someone to take over the series. I ran that series as well as a writing contest part time for several years while in grad school, until funding for both dried up. In the meantime, my job grew into the full-time position of Artistic Director. Now, in addition to literary programs, I run workshops, publicity, marketing, and I edit a weekly literary column in Artvoice (a local alternative paper) under the aegis of Just Buffalo.

Nita Noveno - Sunday Salon:

Well, I was finishing up my MFA at the New School and wondered what I should do next.  My advisor/instructor, the poet and essayist, Honor Moore, suggested I start a reading series.  About a week later I was walking past a new bar, Soundz Lounge, in my neighborhood on the Upper West Side.  I went inside and the manager happened to be there so I proposed the reading series and with some negotiating, he agreed.

Kerri Sonnenberg – The Discrete Series:

Another Chicago poet, Jesse Seldess, and I started the Discrete Reading Series in March of 2003. I edited a magazine called Conundrum and he publishes the journal Antennae, and we wanted a live forum for the writers and the kind of work we were publishing: Conundrum was dedicated to publishing innovative poetry and cross-genre writing, and Antennae publishes poetry and other interdisciplinary texts, particularly those connected to music. We didn’t know of another reading series in Chicago presenting work like this, so we decided to start one.

For the past two years Jesse and I have organized the monthly events, sharing all of the tasks involved, from making grant proposals to hosting and mc’ing each event. The timing of this interview occurs just as Jesse is in the process of disengaging from his role as co-director of the series, as he’ll be leaving the country at the end of the summer. I plan to continue to coordinate the series solo.

Radio Open Source

Very late to post this one, but just found out that Radio Open Source will be running a live stream of tonight's episode from 7-8 p.m. EST.  Guests include Maud Newton, Dennis Loy Johnson, and Steve Almond discussing books and summer reads.

Support a Great LitBlog

I'd be stunned to find out that anybody who is visiting here doesn't spend some time daily over at Ron Hogan's Beatrice.  It's one of the first two or three sites I visit daily as Ron has great insight into the publishing world, spends a great deal of time out and about in the NYC area meeting and greeting writers and publishers, and always seems to be ahead of the curve on the next great book or author or event.

Recently, Ron ran a post asking his readers to support Beatrice and in case you might have missed it, I thought I'd run a link to it for you.  It's well worth reading through and considering.  If nothing else, it should be an excuse for you to visit Beatrice, if you haven't already done so.

Reading translations - does it cause you to question?

I recently posed a question to those writers and literary professionals in the EWN about reading translated texts.  The following is the question and the responses that I received:

When you are reading material that has been translated from the original language - do you find yourself questioning a bit more about the story and how it is written than you would otherwise?

Responses:

I rarely read translations. Those I have read were mostly poetry. The translations were very good, but I suspect they do lose a nuance in the process. But no, I do not question the story.

Laurel Johnson

 _____ _____

Depends on the medium. Poetry and fiction always make me wonder if I’m getting “the real deal.” But non-fiction prose, newspaper pieces, etc. I usually accept as information without too many reservations.

W.S. Cross

 _____ _____

Sheesh, I scarcely read any translations (Marquez being the most noteworthy exception): I’ve a hard enough time keeping up with the home-grown typists, never mind those trying to reach me from abroad (another shortcoming of character, alas).

Lee K. Abbott

 _____ _____

Yes. I sometimes wonder about the author’s intentions and whether they have been – whether it is even possible for them to have been – fully realized in translation.

Maryanne Stahl

 _____ _____

No. Although it it’s in French or Latin, I try to read the original. Just curious.

Nicole Mary Kelby

Interview 2005-024: David Karashima

The following is an interview with David Karashima, who translated Hitomi Kanehari’s Hebi ni Piasu into the English version, titled Snakes and Earrings.

Dan:

Hello David, thank you for both answering some questions, and also for translating the questions and responses for my interview with Hitomi.

David:

Thank you for your interest in Snakes and Earrings and also for your interest in the translation process.

Dan:

How did you become a translator?

David:

I first started translating Japanese short stories and excerpts from novels for fun when I was in university. But even before that, when I was in boarding school in the UK, my roommates would ask me to verbally translate my Japanese manga comic books to them, so I guess you can say I've been a "translator" for quite a long time.

Dan:

Is Japanese to English and vice versa the only combination of languages that you do translation between?

David:

Yes.

Dan:

Do you do any writing of your own material?

David:

I had (and suppose I still have) ambitions of becoming a novelist, but my first attempt at a novel just fizzled out, and I haven't written anything for about two years now.

Dan:

How well do you believe you need to know the author, and how he/she thinks, before you can translate their material to another language, and still be able to capture what they were trying to express in their native tongue?

David:

I think it definitely helps to know the author, his/her works, and his/her way of thinking, but I also think its possible to produce a good translation even if the only information you have is the original work, as long as you are a good reader.

Book Review 2005-048: Snakes and Earrings

Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara (translated by David Karashima)

Snakes and Earrings references the body piercing that the main characters, Lui, and her boyfriend Ama, revel in.  Ama has his tongue split, like a snake, when he meets Lui for the first time and she immediately decides she’d like to do the same to her own tongue.  The method includes piercing and then stretching the size of the hole with larger and larger rings, until the last bit of tongue towards the tip and can be split.  As Snakes and Earrings is a rather mild means of expressing that process, the result of which is meant to shock, so too is the novel Snakes and Earrings, in regards to the story Hitomi Kanehara seems to want to tell.

Lui is a nineteen year old, who has nothing going in her life to prohibit her from moving right in with Ama shortly after meeting him, even after watching him beat a man to death after a night out at the bar.  When she needs money, she works for an escort service, and is regarded rather highly as she flouts nearly every rule the company has yet is still welcomed back time and time again.  Ama, while sporting red hair, tattoos, earrings, and a forked tongue, is more than happy to settle down and live the life of a married couple, though his immaturity comes through as the reader watches their very stilted relationship of sex and eating and nothing else.

Not long after settling in with Ama, Lui begins to cheat on him with Shiba, the guy who pierces her tongue for her and creates a huge tattoo for her back.  With him she seems to have even less of a relationship.  While she doesn’t tell him of Ama’s killing another man, there are signs that he’s aware.  His interest in Lui stems mainly from the fact that she is a fairly willing masochist.

While this is beginning to sound somewhere between a nighttime soap opera and a woe is my young life series, Kanehara does do a decent job of infusing enough emotion into Lui to avoid the detached youth cliché.  However, there is a lack of depth to the story that surprises one when the book arrives touted as an international bestseller, the author, the youngest ever winner of the Akutagawa Prize, and the book a Borders Original Voices selection.  The book isn’t bad by a long shot, Kanehara creates fairly interesting characters and when she has something to tell about them, writes very well.  It’s just that with only 120 pages, she has less to say than I had hoped for.

3 stars

The Great Discoveries Series

Anybody else stumbled upon W.W. Norton's imprint, Atlas Books, and their Great Discoveries Series?  I'm guessing some have as David Foster Wallace has penned one of the titles - Everything and More:  A Compact History of Infinity. 

I accidentally discovered the series when I found Madison Smartt Bell's Lavoisier in the Year One: The  Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution a few weeks back.  Bell is one of those writers that I'll grab his new book and march to the counter without even peeking inside.  Turned out this was a non-fiction effort, new for Bell besides his work on creative writing.  Lavoisier was involved in the race to uncover the chemical process for combustion back towards the end of the 18th century.  Looking at the pages up front, I disovered that there were another six books in the series already published, including the one by Wallace.  Looking ahead, another five titles are already planned with those being penned by David Leavitt, William T. Vollmann and David Quammen.

Whether or not these titles will appear as projected might be an interesting thing to track, the book by George Johnson was referred to as Hubble and the Measurement of the Universe in books published as recently as 2004, and in fact, is still stated as such on the website.  However, when it came out this week, the title was Miss Leavitt's Stars:  The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe.

It's an interesting idea to bring well known writers of fiction into the series such as Bell, Leavitt, Rebecca Goldstein, and Vollmann and not just scientists, or those like Quammen, who write mainly non-fiction.

Enjoy

Cliff...Edge...Leap

Yep.  Finally, I've come to the realization after a two week stint over at Scott's fantastic LitBlog, Conversational Reading, that manning such a blog daily was something that I would in fact enjoy, so, welcome.

I have no predictions yet as to what this blog may add to the current landscape of LitBlogs you've come to enjoy on a regular basis - hopefully it just continues to give you cause to continue visiting.

Enjoy,

Dan