>intoxication o’r dizziness<
October 21, 2016 10:33 AM Subscribe
Sounds really interesting, in the way that the Wake is interesting, but I still haven't gotten very far into the Wake after decades of off-and-on trying, so I'm not about to tackle a book based on it that's 1,496 pages long, contains over 1.3 million words, and weighs 13 pounds. But much respect to the translator, and to readers younger and gutsier than I who plunge into it!
posted by languagehat at 11:02 AM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by languagehat at 11:02 AM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
If we go to the cashier and have books weighed up for sale, I point to Proust:
1,267,069 words/3,031 pages/9,609,000 characters
Rated the longest novel ever by the Guinness Book of World Records
I have not read Bottom's Dream, but having at various times dipped into Wake, I think I would prefer re-reading Proust than undertaking Schmidt, if Bottom is akin to Wake.
posted by Postroad at 11:26 AM on October 21, 2016 [2 favorites]
1,267,069 words/3,031 pages/9,609,000 characters
Rated the longest novel ever by the Guinness Book of World Records
I have not read Bottom's Dream, but having at various times dipped into Wake, I think I would prefer re-reading Proust than undertaking Schmidt, if Bottom is akin to Wake.
posted by Postroad at 11:26 AM on October 21, 2016 [2 favorites]
Wow, I liked that! whereas I could never get through two pages of Finnegan's Wake without wishing I could spin it like a frisbee at Joyce himself and have it flap open an instant before it slapped him in the stomach.
I read through the first page almost as quickly as I would a normal novel, and somehow got the action while the word play danced above like rain on a tin roof.
posted by jamjam at 11:41 AM on October 21, 2016 [2 favorites]
I read through the first page almost as quickly as I would a normal novel, and somehow got the action while the word play danced above like rain on a tin roof.
posted by jamjam at 11:41 AM on October 21, 2016 [2 favorites]
Younger me would have been so excited to attempt to read this. I'd like to say older me is wiser but I think, maybe, he's just too tired. Just glancing at the first page made me want to take a nap.
posted by treepour at 1:24 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by treepour at 1:24 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
I've heard this book mentioned once or twice as an untranslatable masterpiece. Pretty cool that it's available in English now. For those of us who'd prefer to read about other people reading it, this blog series, mentioned in the article, looks promising.
Also, MeFi needs more posts that use the "gobbledygookwordmass" tag.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 1:25 PM on October 21, 2016 [3 favorites]
Also, MeFi needs more posts that use the "gobbledygookwordmass" tag.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 1:25 PM on October 21, 2016 [3 favorites]
It’s a pleasant surprise that this has finally been published. I recall reading something about 10-12 years ago to the effect that the translation was all-but complete and would soon see the light of day… I’d feared, wondering about it in the interim, that the whole enterprise might have tragically fallen through at a late stage. Hats off to John E. Woods for his incredible perseverance with the translation, and a toast to the Dalkey Archive for getting it into print.
Having said that, like languagehat and Postroad and treepour, I probably won’t be attempting it myself. Had it actually appeared 10-12 years ago, when I was part-way into Schmidt’s ‘Novella = Comedy’ The School for Atheists, I might’ve bought it. My initial enthusiasm for The School for Atheists also prompted me to get hold of a copy of Schmidt’s Evening Edged in Gold, (which turned out to be an enormous A3-sized tome of a book). Alas, my early zeal for The School faded the further I got into it. The wordplay and the erudition remained dazzlingly impressive throughout, but there were off-puttingly weird elements to it as well, especially the way the main character, an elderly literary man, interacted with a pair of teenage girls, one of them his granddaughter, who were often pruriently described as being barely or half-dressed, and who meanwhile were hanging on admiringly to the much older gent’s every pronouncement.
Having finally finished that book, I made a start to Evening Edged with Gold to find, to my dismay, its subject matter was ‘the enchantment of 15-year-old Marina, child of aging parents, by a band of “licentiate and literary” hippies’. I didn’t finish it, not having much appetite for the Benny Hill Show-like ingredients therein, however fine the rest of it may have been.
I notice that Bottom’s Dream is described as having characters including an older literary man and a teenage girl: while I don’t know if it’s a case of more of the same sort of thing, that does give me pause. Has anyone here read or attempted Zettels Traum? If so, what did you make of it?
posted by misteraitch at 1:52 PM on October 21, 2016 [4 favorites]
Having said that, like languagehat and Postroad and treepour, I probably won’t be attempting it myself. Had it actually appeared 10-12 years ago, when I was part-way into Schmidt’s ‘Novella = Comedy’ The School for Atheists, I might’ve bought it. My initial enthusiasm for The School for Atheists also prompted me to get hold of a copy of Schmidt’s Evening Edged in Gold, (which turned out to be an enormous A3-sized tome of a book). Alas, my early zeal for The School faded the further I got into it. The wordplay and the erudition remained dazzlingly impressive throughout, but there were off-puttingly weird elements to it as well, especially the way the main character, an elderly literary man, interacted with a pair of teenage girls, one of them his granddaughter, who were often pruriently described as being barely or half-dressed, and who meanwhile were hanging on admiringly to the much older gent’s every pronouncement.
Having finally finished that book, I made a start to Evening Edged with Gold to find, to my dismay, its subject matter was ‘the enchantment of 15-year-old Marina, child of aging parents, by a band of “licentiate and literary” hippies’. I didn’t finish it, not having much appetite for the Benny Hill Show-like ingredients therein, however fine the rest of it may have been.
I notice that Bottom’s Dream is described as having characters including an older literary man and a teenage girl: while I don’t know if it’s a case of more of the same sort of thing, that does give me pause. Has anyone here read or attempted Zettels Traum? If so, what did you make of it?
posted by misteraitch at 1:52 PM on October 21, 2016 [4 favorites]
Maybe there is some underlying subconscious activity happening here with extremely long, dense, and language mangling novels. One of the themes in Finnegans Wake is the main character's (HCE) possible incestuous interest in his young daughter Isobel (a younger version of his wife ALP.) I will admit that FW is my favorite book, as I have read it three times. A week ago I purchased Bottom's Dream. I like challenges. But then maybe does this mean I have some weird subconscious thing going on with long, dense, language mangling novels? I hope not...
posted by njohnson23 at 2:09 PM on October 21, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 2:09 PM on October 21, 2016 [2 favorites]
“licentiate and literary” hippies’ would be both an excellent user name and a pretty good metric of fiction to avoid.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:11 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:11 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
Warning: I have not read Finnegan's Wake or Schmidt, so I may be blowing gas, but...
I think there are authors who are so sui generis that copying them (or even "building on their legacy") is a very fraught act. I'm currently listening to an audiobook of Alan Moore's Jerusalem, and I was enjoying his hat-tips to Joycean wordplay that fills the book (and the long, run-on, and distressing (to modern ears) adjective-soaked sentences), but I've hit a chapter that is trying for full-on Finnegan's Wake, and... it's honestly bad. It's particularly bad in audiobook, where it's a choice between puzzling out the words for sense or parsing the sentences for meaning, but mostly I'm thinking "when you aim at Royalty, you must kill them on the first shot," and that chapter just reads like sad Joyce fanfic. They should swap the chapter for a copy of Ulysses and leave it at that. Joyce doesn't need imitators; that's part of what makes Joyce Joyce.
It's also what makes Proust Proust, by the way. The only person who has come close to doing a good job of "being inspired by Proust" is Anthony Powell and A Dance to the Music of Time, which comes close in scope and page count to Marcel's mountain, but Powell turns the central conceit inside out -- Nick keenly observes the world around him, obsessively marking the comings and goings and doings of his circle and society while keeping his internal life discretely veiled, while Marcel views the whole world through the lens of his close and obsessive observation of the intense hothouse of his inner life. The only reason Powell makes it work is that he turns Proust inside out; if he hadn't, you would just read Proust again.
Anyway, it seems to me that, if you haven't read Joyce, you should read Joyce. If you have read Joyce, reading Joyce again instead of Schmidt might be a wise course.
On the other hand, I kind of like the idea of a 13-pound book. You could put legs on it and have a literal "coffee table book."
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:06 PM on October 21, 2016 [6 favorites]
I think there are authors who are so sui generis that copying them (or even "building on their legacy") is a very fraught act. I'm currently listening to an audiobook of Alan Moore's Jerusalem, and I was enjoying his hat-tips to Joycean wordplay that fills the book (and the long, run-on, and distressing (to modern ears) adjective-soaked sentences), but I've hit a chapter that is trying for full-on Finnegan's Wake, and... it's honestly bad. It's particularly bad in audiobook, where it's a choice between puzzling out the words for sense or parsing the sentences for meaning, but mostly I'm thinking "when you aim at Royalty, you must kill them on the first shot," and that chapter just reads like sad Joyce fanfic. They should swap the chapter for a copy of Ulysses and leave it at that. Joyce doesn't need imitators; that's part of what makes Joyce Joyce.
It's also what makes Proust Proust, by the way. The only person who has come close to doing a good job of "being inspired by Proust" is Anthony Powell and A Dance to the Music of Time, which comes close in scope and page count to Marcel's mountain, but Powell turns the central conceit inside out -- Nick keenly observes the world around him, obsessively marking the comings and goings and doings of his circle and society while keeping his internal life discretely veiled, while Marcel views the whole world through the lens of his close and obsessive observation of the intense hothouse of his inner life. The only reason Powell makes it work is that he turns Proust inside out; if he hadn't, you would just read Proust again.
Anyway, it seems to me that, if you haven't read Joyce, you should read Joyce. If you have read Joyce, reading Joyce again instead of Schmidt might be a wise course.
On the other hand, I kind of like the idea of a 13-pound book. You could put legs on it and have a literal "coffee table book."
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:06 PM on October 21, 2016 [6 favorites]
Oh, and translating that sort of book calls for a special award; it had to have been a labor of the greatest sort.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:13 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:13 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
translating that sort of book calls for a special award
According to Wikipedia, "Despite its linguistic complexity, Finnegans Wake has been translated into other languages: French,[233] German,[234] Chinese,[235] Japanese,[236] Dutch, Korean, Portuguese, Polish,[237] Greek[238] and Turkish.[239][240]"
I can't even imagine.
posted by hippybear at 3:28 PM on October 21, 2016 [2 favorites]
According to Wikipedia, "Despite its linguistic complexity, Finnegans Wake has been translated into other languages: French,[233] German,[234] Chinese,[235] Japanese,[236] Dutch, Korean, Portuguese, Polish,[237] Greek[238] and Turkish.[239][240]"
I can't even imagine.
posted by hippybear at 3:28 PM on October 21, 2016 [2 favorites]
GenjiAndProust -
As I said above, I'm a sucker for long, dense, language mangling books and I also just got Jerusalem by Moore. Haven't started it yet but I picked it up to find that chapter you were writing about. I read a couple pages and, yes, there is a sort of Joycean attempt going on there. There is a complete audio book version of Finnegans Wake. It was originally around $600. There are versions floating about. But. I wouldn't recommend it. The guy who reads it, reads too fast, and too flat. It's terrible. I learned years ago that you have to read FW aloud, preferably in a group. And you also have to see the text while you listen. The visual quality of the text is also important. It's the "can you see what I am saying" thing going on. My very short time with that chapter in Jerusalem was fine as long as I had the text to see while I read aloud. Audio book readers can make or break a recording. Just my two ¢'s.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:32 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
As I said above, I'm a sucker for long, dense, language mangling books and I also just got Jerusalem by Moore. Haven't started it yet but I picked it up to find that chapter you were writing about. I read a couple pages and, yes, there is a sort of Joycean attempt going on there. There is a complete audio book version of Finnegans Wake. It was originally around $600. There are versions floating about. But. I wouldn't recommend it. The guy who reads it, reads too fast, and too flat. It's terrible. I learned years ago that you have to read FW aloud, preferably in a group. And you also have to see the text while you listen. The visual quality of the text is also important. It's the "can you see what I am saying" thing going on. My very short time with that chapter in Jerusalem was fine as long as I had the text to see while I read aloud. Audio book readers can make or break a recording. Just my two ¢'s.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:32 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
Japanese,[236]
I've long been aware of the Japanese translation of Finnegans Wake, and my only reaction is: Why?
posted by oheso at 11:45 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
I've long been aware of the Japanese translation of Finnegans Wake, and my only reaction is: Why?
posted by oheso at 11:45 PM on October 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
I've long been aware of the Japanese translation of Finnegans Wake, and my only reaction is: Why?
So Japanese people can read it.
posted by stinkfoot at 12:15 AM on October 22, 2016 [5 favorites]
So Japanese people can read it.
posted by stinkfoot at 12:15 AM on October 22, 2016 [5 favorites]
My dad had something of a fixation for Schimdt's works, so we had a few volumes of his kicking around the house when I was of a suitably impressionable age. Despite being equally impressioned by Finnegan's Wake at about the same time, that Schmidt might one day be translated... who'd 'a' thunk it?
posted by progosk at 1:22 PM on October 22, 2016
posted by progosk at 1:22 PM on October 22, 2016
Who was Arno Schmidt and what is Zettels Traum? Some evidentiary fragments… is an interesting compilation of snippets about the book, in which, further to my comment above about having sensed a recurring theme in Schmidt’s work, I see that:
posted by misteraitch at 4:39 AM on October 24, 2016 [3 favorites]
Daniel Pagenstecher […] central narrator of the events in Zettels Traum, lives a scholar-hermit’s existence near a village in Northern Germany, and assists his friend Paul Jacobi, likewise a writer, in the translation of Poe’s works into German. The action is confined to the events of a single summer day. Present are Wilma, Paul Jacobi’s wife, and the Jacobi’s teenage daughter Franziska, who thinks she is in love with the much older Dan.Also included: a picture of the index cards that Schmidt used when composing it and links to (i) a 2010 interview with John E. Woods in which he said he looked forward to retirement after finishing Bottom’s Dream; and (ii) a video of someone leafing through the original German Zettels Traum.
posted by misteraitch at 4:39 AM on October 24, 2016 [3 favorites]
An article in The New Yorker about Bottom's Dream, its author and translator. The article makes me admire Schmidt's formal adventurism, as well as the translator's skill and craft, and completely puts me off reading the book. A book about a fifty something man "flirting" with a teenage girl is not something I'm willing to put any effort into, let alone the amount the book requires.
posted by Kattullus at 2:14 PM on November 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Kattullus at 2:14 PM on November 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by janey47 at 10:39 AM on October 21, 2016