Taccuino di traduzione

"Più la storia s'avvicina ai nostri tempi, e più alle fusioni di due civiltà attraverso la carne si sostituisce quella attraverso la carta. Alle invasioni le traduzioni." Cesare Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere: 1940, 11 gennaio

25/01/2007

Sorpresa!

Joe Queenan, critico del NY Times, si è dedicato alla lettura di libri che i critici hanno definito sorprendenti. Non è stata una scelta facile:

These are good times for the astonishable reading public. Among the masterpieces by Orhan Pamuk, who won last year’s Nobel Prize for literature, was “The New Life,” described by The Times Literary Supplement as “an astonishing achievement.” Pamuk’s Nobel coincided with the premiere of a Court TV series based on James Ellroy’s “My Dark Places,” a book that had been quite accurately described by The Philadelphia Inquirer as “astonishing ... original, daring, brilliant.” Not long before, Ayelet Waldman came out with “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits,” which, while apparently not astonishing in and of itself, did include a character that the novelist Andrew Sean Greer described as “astonishing.” Then, Abigail Thomas published “A Three Dog Life,” singled out by Entertainment Weekly as “astonishing,” and an “extraordinary” love story — “Grade: A.” Personally, I find the Grade A business redundant; if a book is astonishing, you’re obviously not going to give it a B.

Qui il resto delle sue avventure.