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Essays two : on Proust, translation, foreign languages, and the city of Arles

by Davis, Lydia, 1947-

Format: Print Book 2021
Availability: Available at 5 Libraries 5 of 5 copies

Available (5)
Location Collection Call #
CLP - Main Library Second Floor - Non-fiction PS3554.A9356 A6 2021x
Location  CLP - Main Library
 
Collection  Second Floor - Non-fiction
 
Call Number  PS3554.A9356 A6 2021x
 
 
CLP - Squirrel Hill Non-Fiction Collection PS3554.A9356 A6 2021x
Location  CLP - Squirrel Hill
 
Collection  Non-Fiction Collection
 
Call Number  PS3554.A9356 A6 2021x
 
 
Cooper-Siegel Community Library Non-Fiction 814.6 DAV
Location  Cooper-Siegel Community Library
 
Collection  Non-Fiction
 
Call Number  814.6 DAV
 
 
Mt. Lebanon Public Library Non-Fiction 814 DAVIS Lydia
Location  Mt. Lebanon Public Library
 
Collection  Non-Fiction
 
Call Number  814 DAVIS Lydia
 
 
Sewickley Public Library Nonfiction 814.54 DAV 2021
Location  Sewickley Public Library
 
Collection  Nonfiction
 
Call Number  814.54 DAV 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.

Published Reviews
Booklist Review: "MacArthur Fellow, winner of the Man Booker International Prize, fiction writer, essayist, and translator Davis follows her Essays One: Reading and Writing (2019) with a collection of exacting, entertaining, and instructive reflections on her lifelong preoccupation with other languages. Her passion for words and syntax charges her candid and probing inquiries into the cascading challenges and revelations of translation. In "Twenty-One Pleasures of Translating (And a Silver Lining)," the joys Davis cheekily elucidates include freedom from "the anxiety of invention" that shadows writing one's own work. Exultant in the geekiness of it all, she parses why exactly she delights in the puzzles of translation, the research, and the mission, declaring, "As I translate, I learn." As will the reader as Davis chronicles her intellectual adventures translating Proust and Flaubert; teaching herself Spanish, Dutch, and Norwegian through reading; and turning a nineteenth-century memoir by a Cape Cod ancestor of hers into a long narrative poem. With a closing essay about her fascination with the French city of Arles, Davis' articulation of her literary pursuits and processes will set kindred minds alight."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review: "In this riveting and erudite collection (after Essays One), Davis documents the adventures and challenges of her work as a translator, moving with ease between the technical challenges posed by a complex text and her personal relationship with literature. Several pieces describe her process of translating Proust's Swann's Way into English: "The Child as Writer" provides critical and biographical insight as Davis diagrams the syntax of Proust's "sophisticated and polished" sentences, while in "Proust in His Bedroom," she reads his correspondence and pays a visit to his apartment in Paris. Sections are dedicated to her experience learning Spanish, Dutch, and Norwegian, often through context and logic: In "Learning Bokmal" (an older form of Norwegian), Davis explains how she is exhilarated by "the fact of doing it by myself." In "Translating 'Bob, Son of Battle: The Last Gray Dog of Kenmuir'," Davis describes her desire to keep a book from her childhood from being forgotten, and her project of modernizing the book's language, while "Buzzing, Humming, or Droning" considers the many Madame Bovary translations. Thorough, idiosyncratic, and inimitable, Davis is the kind of intelligent and attentive reader a book is lucky to find. Readers, in turn, are lucky to have this collection, a worthy addition to the Davis canon. Agent: Denise Shannon, Denise Shannon Literary. (Nov.)"
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Additional Information
Subjects Authorship.
Fiction -- Technique.
Writing.
Reading.
Art.
Essays.
Publisher New York :Farrar, Straus and Giroux,2021
Edition First edition.
Other Titles Essays.
Essays 2
Language English
Description xvi, 571 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm
ISBN 9780374148867
0374148864
Other Classic View