Pretty excited about the latest issue of Conjunctions that appeared in my mailbox today. Beckett, Bernhard, Bolaño: a memoir concerning, a poem by, and an excerpt from a forthcoming novel, respectively. Work by Francine Prose, Tim Horvath, Matt Bell, Robert Coover, Can Xue, and William H. Gass! I've only read Barney Rosset's memoir so far, but it's engrossing. Contains some of their correspondence, and Beckett's letters are (no surprise) well written. A passage from one, dated June 25, 1953:"With regard to my work in general I hope you realize what you are letting yourself in for. I do not mean the heart of the matter, which is unlikely to disturb anybody, but certain obscenities of form which may not have struck you in French as they will in English, and which frankly (it is better you should know this before we get going) I am not at all disposed to mitigate. I do not of course realize what is possible in America from this point of view and what is not. Certainly as far as I know such passages, faithfully translated, would not be tolerated in England."
*addendum: Here is a link to Matt Bell's story "His Last Great Gift," online feature at Conjunctions.
0 comments:
Post a Comment