Remedios Varo born 100 years ago today

"Photograph of Remedios Varo in her studio painting Farewell, 1958, courtesy of Walter Gruen" from http://www.nmwa.org/clara/search_artist_detail.asp?artist_id=25526

More details & links in this Metafilter post:
http://www.metafilter.com/77476/Otherworldly

from ChinaNews.com

2008年12月17日 星期三

本页位置：首页 → 新闻中心 → 文化新闻

【放大字体】【缩小字体】

20世纪美国头号奇书《万有引力之虹》中译本出版

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2008年12月11日 09:12 来源：东方早报 发表评论

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点击查看其它图片

　　核心提示：在中国翻译家和出版商多年的共同努力下，35年来不停搅动美国文坛，以晦涩、庞杂著称，但又对大众文化影响巨大的后现代经典小说《万有引力之虹》(Gravity's Rainbow)，终于由译林出版社推出了中文版。

　　在中国翻译家和出版商多年的共同努力下，35年来不停搅动美国文坛，以晦涩、庞杂著称，但又对大众文化影响巨大的后现代经典小说《万有引力之虹》(Gravity＇s Rainbow)，终于由译林出版社推出了中文版。

　　大隐士品钦

　　仅就翻译的难度和出版商的决心而言，厚达800余页、77万余字的中译《万有引力之虹》都足以被称作2008年外国文学出版的一大成就。

　　奇书背后必有奇人。《万有引力之虹》的作者托马斯·品钦(Thomas Pynchon)在隐居术方面的修习，与JD.塞林格几乎不相上下。除了小说，他几乎将自己在这个世界上存在过的所有物证统统湮灭，外界能够看到的品钦照 片大概只有两张，其中一张还是他二战从军时模模糊糊的黑白戎装照。

　　1973年，《万有引力之虹》在美国出版，大为轰动，孰料引发次年普利策小说奖的大地震。三人评委会支持给品钦授奖，但11位理事推翻了评委的 决定，裁定此书“无法卒读，浮夸，滥施笔墨，淫亵”。1974年的普利策小说奖因此空缺。而数月后，美国国家图书奖坚持表彰了《万有引力之虹》，没想到品 先生拒绝受奖，最终找他人代领了事。

　　1999年，电影《骇客帝国》中尼奥吞下红色药丸的情节，被公认为导演沃卓斯基兄弟在向《万有引力之虹》致意。

　　小说分四个部分，“零之下”、“戈林赌场的休假”、“在占领区”和“反作用力”。故事发生在1944年圣诞节到1945年9月期间，主要情节是 盟军追查德国人正在制造的威力惊人的导弹，美国中尉泰荣·斯洛索普的一张“性交地图”却出人意料地屡次与德国导弹的轰炸地点吻合。寻找，寻找，所有的人都 在不停地寻找。

　　很有难度的阅读

　　至少在七八年前，坊间已传言译林将推出此书中译本，但在2003年叶华年译品钦的另一部小说《V》出版之后，中国读者又苦等了五年，才有了今天这个文学历险或“阅读自虐”的机会。

　　“自虐”的说法决不算夸张，但这世上知难而上的品钦迷、甚至野心勃勃的品钦本人，必以之为赞辞。厦门大学外文学院副教授刘雪岚曾援引英国批评家托尼·坦纳(Tony Tanner)的话说：“《万有引力之虹》的深奥与恢弘拒绝任何归纳和概括。”

　　刘女士这样形容此书：“它的内容从文艺学、社会学、历史学、心理学到数学、化学、物理学、弹道学、军事学，几乎无所不包；它的文体从哲学沉思、 历史百科、间谍侦探到滑稽喜剧、歌曲民谣乃至戏仿反讽，仿佛无所不能。小说包括73个场景，400多个人物，发生的故事遍及南北美洲、非洲、中亚、东欧和 西欧。涉及的社会阶层包括盟军和轴心国的将军和士兵、科学家、政治家、持工、妓女乃至非洲土人。使用的语言包括英、法、德、拉丁和意大利语等等。”(《美 国全国图书奖获奖小说评论集》，吴冰，郭棲庆主编，外语教学与研究出版社，2001年)

　　喜欢自虐的还有翻译家。本书主力译者、同样出身厦门大学的张文宇硕士哀叹，为译《万有引力之虹》，41岁的他花去整整三年，丢了博士学位，失去了评职称的机会，“个中艰辛只有自己知道。”他说。

　　但愿这一切都是值得的。

　　康慨

【编辑:张中江】

"I am embarrassed to admit that I have read a book"

[…] it's not often that new work from the fascist genocidal dictator comes to light, which is why military historians and creepy Nazi memorabilia collectors who live in basement apartments are so excited by the discovery of an aircraft concept designed by Nazi engineers near the end of World War II, a design which smacks of exactly the pants-shitting desperation you'd expect Nazis to be feeling at that point in the war:



Here's the desperately insane idea: Dart-shaped gliders equipped with pilots and 1,000 pound bombs would be carried by conventional planes into allied airspace and dropped. The glider pilot would steer the bomb toward its high-priority target -- a factory that printed posters warning G.I.'s about the dangers of venereal disease, for instance -- and at the last minute, release the bomb and activate a balloon which would explode out of the tail and lift the glider to safety, all of which bears a creepy resemblance to certain details in Thomas Pynchon's big, fat novel Gravity's Rainbow. WHOOPS, sorry for the inexcusable lapse into Fancy Ladism, y'all, I am embarrassed to admit that I have read a book. But if the indignant comments occasionally left by Ayn Rand enthusiasts on certain Daily Briefs posts can be believed, I probably didn't understand it, and am also completely retarded, and anyway probably didn't even read it in the first place. […]

from: http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2008/12/daily_briefs_europe_the_forgot.php

"I don’t expect to encounter things that will frustrate the reading process, the way I might in the work of Pynchon"

[…] I suppose I approach a title that I know has been labelled as Y.A. thinking that it’s going to be a more relaxing reading experience—maybe relaxing isn’t the right word, but more pleasurable, perhaps—because I don’t expect to encounter things that will frustrate the reading process, the way I might in the work of Pynchon, say. This isn’t to say that Y.A. fiction can’t be highly cerebral or experimental, just that I presume the author wants to cultivate a relationship with the reader that is more welcoming and, yes, probably more emotional. […]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2008/12/book-bench-read-1.html

mineral evolution & "a Soul in ev'ry stone. . . ."

Kevin Kelly offers an interesting take on "mineral evolution" & links to a recent paper, that may shed some light on a sermon in every stone:

"The theory of "mineral evolution" -- the idea that the Earth's rocks are dynamic "species" which emerged over time, sometimes in concert with living things -- is a radical new idea…"

continues:
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/12/technology_a_ge.php

back in the saddle again

It's official. I re-subscribed to Pynchon-l, I'm reading Pynchon (working through Against the Day and enjoying it), and looking forward to the new novel next year. Maybe I'll start updating this blog.

signed copy of ATD

…from Chronicle of Higher Education:

M.H. Abrams: A Life in Criticism
By JEFFREY J. WILLIAMS

In literary studies, M.H. Abrams is an iconic name. It appeared as "general editor" for 40 years on nearly nine million copies of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, and has also, in a detail that only scholars would know, led the indexes of many a critical book for a half-century. (In fact, one scholar I know cited "Aarlef" just to avoid that custom.) In addition, Abrams, now 95, stamped the study of Romantic literature: His book The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1953) was ranked 25th in the Modern Library's list of the 100 most important nonfiction books of the 20th century, and he was a prime participant in debates over literary theory, especially deconstruction, during the 1970s and 80s.

Last summer I interviewed Abrams — Meyer Howard, but he goes by Mike — at his home in Ithaca, N.Y., up the road from Cornell University, where he has been a professor since 1945 and still goes to his office in Goldwin Smith Hall. Colleagues at Cornell had held a birthday celebration for him, and among the gifts was an inscribed copy of Thomas Pynchon's latest novel. Pynchon had been a student of Abrams's in the 1950s and sent it on. Abrams has the book on the coffee table in his living room.

"ad the Metro’s owners carted off the decorations that had lodged within the imagination of young Pynchon"

…from today's New York Times:

Then we combed Valletta, marching up and down the hills looking for evidence of the now-sleepy city’s illustrious past and marveling at the cute Victorian-style balconies. On Strait Street in the heart of the Gut, the entertainment district once frequented by visiting sailors, I was hoping to find the Metro Bar, where a key scene of Pynchon’s unsummarizable “V” takes place. We asked old-timers and were directed to a doorway filled with cinderblocks. The Metro Bar was no more.

Like the New Life Music Hall, the Smiling Prince and the Blue Peter — whose faded signs hung over locked and cobwebbed doors — the Metro had shut down sometime after 1979, when the British naval base closed, and I was left to wonder what lay within. Did it still look, as Pynchon wrote, “like a nobleman’s pied-a-terre applied to mean purposes”? Did “statues of Knights, ladies and Turks” still line the “wide curving flight of marble steps” that led to the second-story dance floor? Or had the Metro’s owners carted off the decorations that had lodged within the imagination of young Pynchon (who presumably visited Valletta during his 1955-57 stint in the Navy)?

Today, all that remains of the Gut’s glory days is a 90-year-old tattoo parlor and a few graybeards who remember the noise and chaos and fun. “But now it’s too quiet here, too quiet,” one of them told us. “If you come at Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, you can bring shotgun and you can shoot and nobody, nobody take notice.”

His nostalgia was palpable, and another Pynchon line seemed apt: “Monuments, buildings, plaques were remembrances only; but in Valletta remembrances seemed almost to live.”

call to action!

Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 11:20:26 -0500 (EST)
From: "John M. Krafft"
Subject: Help wanted


I've been stumped--brain dysfunction or something--by a request
for help that runs as follows:

"on the first page of Eleanor Cook's _Enigmas and Riddles in
Literature_, she writes: 'Literary studies of the riddle are
few and far between. There are studies of the remarkable Old
English riddles. There are studies of riddles in specific
authors: Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Joyce,
Pynchon...' Apparently there is at least one study of
Pynchon's use of the riddle out there. Do you know of it?"

Of course I should, but nothing comes immediately to mind, and
a first, superficial search of my bibliography didn't turn up
anything obvious. Can anyone help?

Thanks.

jmk


- --
John M. Krafft
Miami University–Hamilton / 1601 University Blvd. / Hamilton,
OH 45011-3399
Tel: 513.785.3031 or 513.868.2330
Fax: 513.785.3145
krafftjm@muohio.edu
http://www.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm

Zak Smith's book arrives

And a fine-looking tome it is, even with the rather substantial title, Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow with an engaging and well-worth reading Introduction by Steve Erickson.

3 novels of interest to Pynchon readers

pynchonoid received a fine after-Xmas package, three novels from Soft Skull Press:

The Age of Sinatra by David Ohle
Electric Flesh by Claro (French translator of Pynchon)
H2O by Mark Swartz

We'll write more about them after reading them. Based on previous experience with Soft Skull Press novels, we're looking forward to it.

"the color and the music of this English idiom we are blessed to have inherited"

Note: the "From Thomas Pynchon" at the top of the typewritten letter appears to be hand-written in block capitals and is partially underlined; Atonement is underlined as well in the original:

From Thomas Pynchon

Given the British genius for coded utterance, this could all be about something else entirely, impossible on this side of the ocean to appreciate in any nuanced way-- but assuming that it really is about who owns the right to describe using gentian violet for ringworm, for heaven's sake, allow me a gentle suggestion. Oddly enough, most of us who write historical fiction do feel some obligation to accuracy. It is that Ruskin business about "a capacity responsive to the claims of fact, but unoppressed by them." Unless we were actually there, we must turn to people who were, or to letters, contemporary reporting, the Internet until, with luck, we can begin to make a few things of our own up. To discover in the course of research some engaging detail we know can be put into a story where it will do some good can hardly be classed as a felonious acvt-- it is simply what we do. The worst you can call it is a form of primate behavior. Writers are naturally drawn, chimpanzee-like, to the color and the music of this English idiom we are blessed to have inherited. When given the choice we will usually try to use the more vivid and tuneful among its words. I cannot of course speak for Mr. McEwan's method of proceeding, but should be very surprised indeed if something of the sort, even for brief moments, had not occurred during his research for Atonement- Gentian violet! Come on. Who among us could have resisted that one?

Memoirs of the Blitz have borne indispensable witness, and helped later generations know something of the tragedcy and heroism of those days. For Mr. McEwan to have put details from one of them to further creative use, acknowledging this openly and often, and then explaining it clearly and honorably, surely merits not our scolding, but our gratitude.

from Pynchon-L:

Makes the front page of the Telegraph this morning, along with his own
section, with sailor suit pic, of the McEwan full page.

Front page text:

RECLUSE SPEAKS OUT TO DEFEND MCEWAN

By Nigel Reynolds
Arts Correspondent

Thomas Pynchon, who vies with J D Salinger for the title of the
world's most secretive author, has broken his strict rules on privacy
to join a campaign to clear the British Booker Prize-winning novelist
Ian McEwan of charges of plagiarism.

In a move described by his British publisher as "unknown", Pynchon, an
American who is never seen in public, does not give interviews and
whose whereabouts are a closely guarded secret, sent a typed letter to
his British agent yesterday to say that McEwan "merits not our
scolding but our gratitude" for using details from another author's
book.

McEwan has been under fire for copying several details from the
memoirs of a wartime nurse in London for his Booker-nominated novel,
Atonement.

In an extraordinary campaign launched yesterday, many of the world's
best known authors rallied around McEwan, complaining that the future
of historical novel writing was threatened if they could not copy or
borrow details from eyewitnesses to history.

Other novelists backing the author include John Updike, Martin Amis,
Margaret Atwood, Thomas Keneally and Zadie Smith.

They recite their experiences of taking others' material for their
books exclusively in the Daily Telegraph.

climbing the mountain

Learning that the strange and mysterious, potentially mystical, foreign writing on the cover "seal" of Against the Day translates as "Tibetan Government Chamber of Commerce" (as reported on Pynchon-l) reminds me of one of those cartoons where the guy exhausts himself climbing up the mountain to get to the guru who then gives him some useless advice.

I recall the street comedian, used to perform at Venice Beach down south and on Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley, called himself the X-Swami X, "the answer to the perennial question, Why Swami why? No, X-Swami X!"

Savage with hecklers, sometimes he'd have a rocking chair and sit with a big handmade book of jokes and read them, sometimes he was buzzing on something, up and moving around, entertaining the students and others sitting on the steps of the Student Union building, , he was also very adept with hecklers, especially one particular blister-faced psycho who used to stand out there where Telegraph meets Bancroft Way and preach the Gospel, X-Swami X could get that guy wound up pretty tight with his rap about wanting to get "eating pussy on skateboards" adopted as an Olympic sport.

He was already up in his 60s then - at least 20 years since I saw him - so perhaps he's knocking them dead in another dimension by now, out there in the multiverse...

Random House Against the Day web site & contest

...Attention Pynchon readers:

Random House Against the Day minisite offers a competition to win
a rare advance reading copy proof of Against the Day, one of only 77 produced. Be there or be square!

www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon

Moe's on Telegraph Ave. ATD geekfest

All you really need to know is that pynchonoid, that's right,
won the Pynchon triva contest, just barely edging out
fellow traveler Tim Ware, and the two of us left with
the trivia contest prizes, a copy of Against the Day
each.  Then we fucked their girlfriends and stole
their lunch money and blew that pop stand, into the
Berkeley night.


Favorite attendee:  the woman with the conceptual V.
costume

Silliest sight:  4, count 'em, 4 Pynchon lookalikes
with paper bags on their heads a la TRP's The Simpsons
appearance.

Biggest surprise:  very few people, outside of
Pynchon-l, know that TRP niece, Tristan Taormino is
known for her movie about anal sex.

Most frequent web site mention:  The Modern Word

2d most frequent web site mention:
http://pynchonoid.org

link:
http://www.telegraphbooks.com/monday.htm

Against the Day extract in Spanish

...from a friend overseas, notice of "an extract of Against the Day as translated in Spanish. This was posted on the website of Christophe Claro, French translator of Pynch, Gaddis, Vollmann, etc.

http://backfromoz.blogspot.com/2006/11/pynchon-fragmento.html

The extract comes from here:

http://mierdadescalzo.blogspot.com/2006/10/lo-prometido.html"

The French translation of Against the Day is expected in 2007.

AP re Pynchon fans

Fans Still Passionate About Publicity-Shy Thomas Pynchon

Nov. 8 - Zak Smith is a painter, a rebel and an Ivy
Leaguer, a Yale University graduate with a green
mohawk, an apartment of wall-to-wall illustrations and
a passion for comics, classic novels -- and Thomas
Pynchon.

About 10 years ago, Smith had a feeling that he should
try Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow," an instinct
consummated from the very first page. Smith didn't
just read the book, he reread it, marked it up and
went back to it so many times that his paperback copy
is held together by duct tape.

He also began seeing the book in pictures, eventually
drawing hundreds of mostly expressionist sketches --
one for every page of Pynchon's 700-page World War II
novel -- that were exhibited at the Whitney Museum in
2004, now hang in the permanent collection at the
Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and will come out as
a book this fall.

"A lot of the ideas that were in Pynchon were hovering
around in my head -- technology and the future and the
present, true things and science fiction, and making
them into pictures was almost a way to exorcise these
ideas," says the 30-year-old Smith, a resident of
Brooklyn.

Thomas Pynchon doesn't have the readership of Mitch
Albom or Danielle Steel, but he is the rare writer who
inspires such obsession by words alone. For more than
40 years, he has built and sustained a legend through
such encyclopedic novels as "V." and "Gravity's
Rainbow," avoiding all media contact or even publicity
photos. For his new book, the 1,000-page "Against the
Day," publisher Penguin Press didn't even issue a
formal announcement, but assumed, correctly, that
simply including it in the fall catalog would take
care of the job.

"Pynchon fans tend to take his work seriously I think
because, beyond the intrinsically interesting subject
matter and intriguing stories, his books are so rich
and complex, touching on so many topics," says Pynchon
fan Doug Millison, a writer, editor and Web design
consultant based in El Cerrito, Calif.

Pynchon is now 69, but time, and the Internet, have
advanced in his favor. It's been nine years since his
previous novel, "Mason & Dixon," came out, and fans
have fully digitized their passion, building an online
community worthy of an author who as much as anyone
brought a high-tech sensibility to literary fiction.

Numerous Web sites and a "Pynchon News Service" have
been launched, and a team of experts is busy
assembling a Wikipedia-like page for "Against the
Day."

"It will, I predict, quickly become a focus of the
several hundred reader-researchers worldwide who read
Pynchon and write about his works in academic and
popular media," Millison says.

"The Internet has made it easy for Pynchon's academic
critics and lay readers to find each other and sustain
an online discussion that's continued now for over a
decade."

Smith believes that Pynchon readers share a handful of
characteristics, presumably not unlike the author's --
liberal politics, an interest in technology and a
broad and unpredictable range of interests.

Fans, who have gathered to talk Pynchon in London,
Malta and elsewhere, all have their stories of
conversion. Tim Ware, who runs the Web site
www.thomaspynchon.com from Oakland, Calif., recalls
having a hard time getting through "Gravity's
Rainbow," at least the first time around.

"I went back and looked again at the first page and
everything just sort of snapped into view, and I
thought, `This guy is a genius,' like those who walked
the Earth in the 19th century," says Ware.

"And I got rather messianic about it, and I wanted my
wife to read it. I started creating an index of all
the characters, because there were so many and it was
so hard to keep track of them."

Millison also was turned on by "Gravity's Rainbow." He
was an Army private -- a company clerk "just like
Radar O'Reilly" -- in Korea in the summer of 1973,
when he read the novel, which came out that year and
won the National Book Award.

"`Gravity's Rainbow' hit me hard, especially the parts
set in Europe during and just after World War II. I'd
never read a writer whose voice on the page came so
close to echoing the sound and feel of the Cold War
'50s and '60s, hip and angry and complex," he says.

"I've read each of the novels at least twice, studying
the text closely both times. I also collect first
editions of Pynchon's novels, and first editions of
the novels for which Pynchon has written endorsements,
cover blurbs or support quotes that have been used in
advertisements."

Charles Hollander, a Baltimore-based "independent
scholar" of Pynchon, first read him as an
undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University. It was
1963, the year Pynchon debuted with "V." Joseph
Heller's "Catch-22" was becoming a counterculture
classic, but Hollander believes that "Catch-22" was
more about the veterans of World War II.

"Pynchon was the guy who wrote for my generation, so
much so I heard people joke at parties that he had a
receiver by which he could read others' late-night
falling asleep thoughts," he says.

"The reason ... (Pynchon) is important to me and his
`fans' is he seems a bit ahead of the curve in seeing
what is important, and what will become the important
issues we are faced with."

He is as remote from the general public as J.D.
Salinger, but Pynchon experts say they care more about
his work than about the man himself, who reportedly
lives in New York with his wife and agent, Melanie
Jackson. Both Hollander and Ware say they know people
friendly with Pynchon who insist he is not "some guy
squirreling away in his attic," according to
Hollander.

"My sources tell me he is pretty social, in his style.
I think he avoids the media because he sees the media
as an arm of the establishment, a means of social
control that he won't be a party to," Hollander says.

"I've stayed away from the cult of personality. I
don't play in that zone," Ware says.

"His reluctance to speak with the press or have his
photograph taken kind of plays into the style of the
novels. There's a lot of mystery and ambiguity in
them, and a lot of mystery and ambiguity about the
author. When you know things about the author, you
begin to insert those feelings into the books. Not
having any information makes the reading experience a
little purer."

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast,
rewritten, or redistributed.

http://us.f347.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=28173&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes

that Book Description

From: "Mike Beiderbhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifecke"
To: "trp"
Subject: A-and
Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 09:09:08 -0600

the blurb on Amazon might have been a tad, just a tad, disengenuous.

Further regards,

Mike


*****************************
Just Browsing?
http://home.comcast.net/~beider19
*****************************

another good report re Against the Day

From: "Mike Beiderbecke"
To: "trp"
Subject: Re: Non-spoilerish first impression of AtD on Modern Word site
Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 09:01:20 -0600

Well,

I have read slightly more than twenty-five pages.

All the hallmarks of what we (or at least I) have come to love
about TRP are there. Weird names, strange songs, frustrating allusions (fact or
fiction?), long paragraphs, ellipsis, long shaggy-doggish things that lead to horrible puns, et cetera.

Closer in style to GR than his other novels, but at the same time incorporating elements that have appeared in his writing both pre- and post-GR.

Perhaps best summed up, IMHO, as a progressive knotting into.....

Regards,

Mike

"the Pynchon we love to read"

Apparently you don't have to read much of Against the Day - this guy writes after having read 25 pages - to realize it's good:

...sez The Modern Word:

Publisher’s Weekly wrote that the novel “glows,” and I know what they mean: like the cover, the book is just white. Pure writing, pure Pynchon. As Pynchonoid wrote, this is “the Pynchon we love to read.” And it is.

Hope they know I was echoing a Salman Rushdie statement re Mason & Dixon.