Essays two : on Proust, translation, foreign languages, and the city of Arles / Lydia Davis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davis, Lydia, 1947- author.

Standardized Title:

Essays. Selections

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Authorship.

Fiction--Technique.

Fiction.

Writing.

Reading.

Art.

Genre:

Essays.

Physical Description:

xvi, 571 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Essays 2

Place of Publication:

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

Summary:

A collection of essays on translation, foreign languages, Proust, and one French city, from the master short-fiction writer and acclaimed translator Lydia Davis. In Essays One, Lydia Davis, who has been called "a magician of self-consciousness" by Jonathan Franzen and "the best prose stylist in America" by Rick Moody, gathered a generous selection of her essays about best writing practices, representations of Jesus, early tourist photographs, and much more. Essays Two collects Davis's writings and talks on her second profession: the art of translation. The award-winning translator from the French reflects on her experience translating Proust ("A work of creation in its own right." -Claire Messud, Newsday), Madame Bovary ("[Flaubert's] masterwork has been given the English translation it deserves." -Kathryn Harrison, The New York Times Book Review), and Michel Leiris ("Magnificent." -Tim Watson, Public Books). She also makes an extended visit to the French city of Arles, and writes about the varied adventures of learning Norwegian, Dutch, and Spanish through reading and translation. Davis, a 2003 MacArthur Fellow and the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize for her fiction, here focuses her unique intelligence and idiosyncratic ways of understanding on the endlessly complex relations between languages. Together with Essays One, this provocative and delightful volume cements her status as one of our most original and beguiling writers.

Contents:

On Translation

Twenty-One Pleasures of Translating (and a Silver Lining) p. 3

Proust

Reading Proust for the First Time: A Blog Post p. 29

Introduction to Swann's Way p. 32

The Child as Writer: The "Steeples" Passage in Swann's Way p. 52

Proust in His Bedroom: An Afterword to Proust's Letters to His Neighbor p. 63

Learning a Foreign Language: Spanish

Reading Las aventuras de Tom Sawyer p. 87

Translating from English into English

An Experiment in Modernizing Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey p. 109

Translating Bob, Son of Battle: The Last Gray Dog of Kenmuir p. 123

From Memoir to Long Poem: Sidney Brooks's Our Village p. 187

Translating Proust

Loaf or Hot-Water Bottle: Closely Translating Proust (Proust Talk I) p. 215

Hammers and Hoofbeats: Rhythms and Syntactical Patterns in Proust's Swann's Way (Proust Talk II) p. 239

An Alphabet (in Progress) of Proust Translation Observations, from Aurore to Zut p. 264

Learning a Foreign Language: Dutch

Before My Morning Coffee: Translating the Very Short Stories of A. L. Snijders p. 309

Translating Michel Leiris

Over the Years: Notes on Translating Michel Leiris's The Rules of the Game p. 391

An Excursion into Gascon

Translating a Gascon Folktale: The Language of Armagnac p. 409

Learning a Foreign Language: Two Kinds of Norwegian

Learning Bokmål by Reading Dag Solstad's Telemark Novel p. 417

Reading a Gunnhild Øyehaug Story in Nynorsk p. 478

On Translation and Madame Bovary

Buzzing, Humming, or Droning: Notes on Translation and Madame Bovary p. 485

One French City

The City of Arles p. 539.

ISBN:

9780374148867

0374148864

OCLC:

1136969222