http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/books/review/michel-houellebecqs-submission.html?
Knausgaard reviews Houellebecq
>I took Huysmans’s best-known book, “Against the Grain,” with me to my daughter’s gymnastics practice and sat on the benches, drinking coffee from a plastic cup and reading while she somersaulted about on the mats below along with perhaps a score of other 10-year-old girls, in a harsh and glaring light as one hit song after another blared out of the public address system.
What did he mean by this?
janitor m8 please
>>7316227
this was really good, thanks for sharing senpai
> The novel closes with him looking forward in time, to the conversion ceremony of his own submission to Islam, a travesty of Huysmans’s conversion to Catholicism, not because François becomes a Muslim rather than a Catholic, but because his submission is pragmatic, without flame, superficial, whereas Huysmans’s was impassioned, anguished, a matter of life and death.
Goddamn hollaback, you absolute madman. . .
Good article.
>rather it is strikingly ordinary, sauntering in a way, slightly disharmonious and irregular in rhythm, untidy even, as if the author lacks full mastery of the language or is unused to writing.
>talking rhythm about a translation
That day a hack reviewed a hack.
>>7316327
I actually read an article the other day about how much the translation improved on Houellebecq's language. Let me see if I can find it...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2015/10/16/michel_houellebecq_a_writer_who_benefits_from_translation.html
"Can Lorin Stein Translate Michel Houellebecq Into a Great Writer?"
>Take, for example, the last lines of the book:
>>Un peu comme cela s’était produit, quelques années auparavant, pour mon père, une nouvelle chance s’offrirait à moi …
>Stein translates it as:
>>Rather like my father a few years before, I’d be given another chance …
>The direct translation of Houellebecq’s phrase above is “much like it happened, a few years before, for my father, a new chance would be given to me.” The halting rhythm seems unnecessary and Stein rightly smoothens it out. Stein also breaks up Houellebecq’s run-on constructions. Where Houellebecq uses one sentence, Stein will make it two. Where Houellebecq uses two sentences, Stein turns it into four.
>Stein’s cleaning up of the text makes it easier to read, but it also changes the flow established by Houellebecq. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Houellebecq might be pleased to see these changes, viewing them as valuable improvements. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he would have preferred his errors to remain. Translation quickly shows itself to be a multibranched decision tree, and these kinds of issues sprout from all sides.
What the hell is this? I never read such a complete misconception of Huysmans' work. Not only this guy seems to admit every two paragraphs he read nothing, he completely misses the point of the book.
>>7316327
>as if the author lacks full mastery of the language or is unused to writing
Kek. He does. Why would he steals from Wikipedia otherwise?
>>7316227
>http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/books/review/michel-houellebecqs-submission.html?
Thanks for sharing sempai
>>7316227
I think the problem is a lack of testosterone. High culture has always been the domain of speakers and thinkers rather than doers, so you get these people who stand for nothing and have no ambitions.
>>7316227
knausgård is literally the biggest shithead in the world. i read about half that first heap of shit paragraph and couldn't go on
>>7316227
>>7316342
I think his impression of it is pretty accurate. What did you disagree with?
>>7316327
I read Houellebecq in french. He's bland as they come.
>>7316227
bump
bempy
>>7320085
what do you not like about the review? I found it interesting.
>>7316337
I'm pretty sure that the "ugliness" of his prose is deliberate.
>>7316227
bump. We don't need to making another Houellebecq thread.
>>7320085
i liked elementary particles in french a lot
how are the limericks translated?
are they good?
>>7316337
>The halting rhythm seems unnecessary and Stein rightly smoothens it out.
>rightly
Regardless of whether or not it comes out better, it's not their right to take liberty with it. This is why I hate translations - you never know, without extensive research, if the translator is taking more liberty than they should with the work.
If Houellebecq's prose is ugly, let it be fucking ugly.
