For some time now I’ve had it in my mind that what some people say about criticism, that the best way to criticize others is to do something better yourself, is in fact correct.
It’s not that I find the recent forays into publishing to be uninspired (in fact, I’m pretty sure I commented on either their comment section or the comment section of another site about how people should publish or get off the pot) but rather that I find them to be uninspiring.
I suppose I could write a post about niching (burrowing deeper into your own niche) but I think I said plenty of relevant things about universes in a recent post. And then there’s that quote from Franzen which I really detest, a version of which goes something like this:
"To keep giving people, the single-digit percentage of people, books they’d value and enjoy.”
http://alcalde.texasexes.org/2011/10/novelist-jonathan-franzen-talks-tv-books-and-social-media/
So, I think it’s best if I keep my distance and let them remain an enemy at the gates.
小團圓's get you small victories. It can sometimes be hard to think big, especially when you have to think galactically big, like at the size of a universe.
For something just slightly more inspiring, there recently was a podcast which discussed “higher-resolution experiences.” It can be found here:
http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4907.html
It still seems set on going down with the ship of “books,” but some of the ideas in there are smart if they can be liberated from dead-as-a-corpse models and thinking.
OR
In other words, literary translators take objects “sometimes” prepared for people and make them “readable” to other people. Translation and interpretation, however, is about fueling communication and interaction. A lot of things rightly labeled transfer are mislabeled translation and interpretation, when their real goal has little or anything to do with what real people would identify as interaction and communication. Interaction as in Human-Computer Interaction or communication like communicating with Siri, but not inter-action or really “communicating with Siri.”
(God, how did that last paragraph sneak in here? Let’s hope I take it out before I publish this. Guess it stays.)
I'm confused by this post. What's your criticism of Paper Republic?
回覆刪除Lucas
Hi, Lucas. Welcome.
回覆刪除I think the criticism is more about Pathlight than Paper Republic. I think PR is an ok website to help get translators together and do lots of other great stuff, potentially.
I think Pathlight is not thinking big enough. Not ambitious enough.
I see this as healthy criticism. It's 2011, with the Internet, the rise of China, tablet computers, e-readers, etc and you've got the only new thing to come out in years trying to bring the culture of 1/5 of the population into English and it turns out it is just a magazine with a few translations. The kind of thing that could have come out at any time over the past 50 years. Like I said, I find it admirable, even inspired, but not inspiring.
As I said in a previous post, Universes, I think China can't really get on the map until it starts competing with the the other universes of attention-suck. Things like sports or world of warcraft or anime. Putting out a magazine feels like making a sandcastle on a mountain on one planet when the other competitors are making galaxies. And as a poet/poetry translator, I know you're far less hostile to the idea of a media becoming a small niche. But to me, books and writing, even all cultural products, are just one way of getting at the real things that translation should be concerned with: like communication, connection, and interaction. Anyway, I tend to ramble in my little corner of the web. Sorry. I wish you guys nothing but the best of luck and more.
Thanks for the quick reply.
回覆刪除In fact, I quite liked your points about universes and narratives and so forth, though perhaps I shouldn't have, as a niche inhabitant? (actually, I'm not sure that poetry is a niche; in terms of people rather than profits, it's an industry so huge, diverse, and diffuse it's hard to reach all the people who care about it. At any rate, niches have their advantages & disadvantages, as with anything).
Also, I'll not only agree that Paper Republic could be a better website (it's a developing idea, of course, and while I contribute to the blog from time to time, I'm not at the core of the group and its business plans), I'll especially agree about how much better Path Light could be--and this before I've seen it! Keep in mind a few things, though: this is a first issue, a trial printed only on paper while the plan for the future is to have a significant web presence, and engage not only in promoting Chinese literature but in new ways of pushing literature publication online. Also, the Paper Republic-appointed English-language editors have not so far ended up with the creative control they thought they were going to have. This is no surprise when dealing with a PRC SOE, but it should also suggest something about why you find it uninspiring.
So, yeah, I'd like something as ambitious culturally and economically as Zhang Yimou's opening number for the '08 Olympics, too, but so far, that's not where People's Literature's priorities--or its budget or aesthetics--lie. Maybe we'll get there one day. The challenge for Paper Republic, I think, is to figure out how to move Path Light in that direction.
Lucas
I think if you include music in the poetry world, and I'm not sure why it's ever left out, then indeed, the poetry population is huge, meaningful and profitable. And if you think about poetry worldwide, instead of only in the context of America, then yes, it is big in terms of readers, writers, and sometimes even profits. But in America at least, the poetry world tends to be very, very small and restrictive. Rappers and other musicians don't seem to be willing to join that world or are they seemingly welcomed in with open arms. Whenever I hear Billy Collins or some other out of touch old person say some horrible thing about how lyrics don't sound good if read without music I want to scream.
回覆刪除No, the poetry world in America is huge, sans rap or music. It's so big there isn't even a shared canon. Think of all the MFA programs. Think of how many submissions journals like the New Yorker or Poetry get each year (over 100,000). In America, the poetry world only seems to be small and restrictive; in reality, it's huge and expansive. If it seems small or restrictive, in part that's because of media campaigns by more profitable industries (fiction publishing, journalism...) that have a vested interest in making the poetry scene look bad.
回覆刪除Lucas