My Life and Thoughts

Recently I was amazed and delighted to receive an email with the subject line: “Translation of your Moretti-review to the German.” Finally, like Kathy Griffin, I am approaching the level of the D-list “global empire”! The message was from Kevin Vennemann, a novelist and translator upon whose credentials I am unable to comment in any detail since his web page is in German (a language which I am very embarrassed not to know, even though The Confessions of Felix Krull is one of my all-time favorite books). But, see for yourself, he is a good-looking guy.

Kevin Vennemann ©Juliane Henrich	Ein Schritt weiter: Die n+1-Anthologie

“As you might know (I hope so),” Vennemann’s message began, “I am currently working on a translation of several n+1-essays for a n+1-best of-collection to be published with Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt next year.” In fact, this was the first I had heard about a German n+1 anthology. Eager to learn more… (more…)

In October, for reasons discussed in the previous entry, I made a solemn vow not to write any more book reviews. Then what did I do but take on two book reviewing assignments anyway.

The first of these two reviews—about Soul and Other Stories, by the twentieth-century Russian writer Andrei Platonov—is scheduled to run on December 26, in a holiday book section in the New York Sun.

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One of the remarkable things about our society is its insatiable thirst for book reviews. I didn’t fully realize this until I started producing reviews myself. I should perhaps clarify that there is no standard by which I can be called a “big name in the book reviewing community, because I have published a total of four reviews. Nonetheless, I consistently receive 2 or 3 solicitations a month for book reviews, from the most diverse publications. When my ex-potential literary agent decided to move to Dubai to work on a start-up newspaper, her second question (after whether I could sublet her apartment in New York) was whether I would write book reviews for her newspaper in Dubai.

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Sometimes in the course of my day-to-day activities, I just have to pause and think: how does my lived experience differ from that of my colleague, Ian McEwan? Like me, Ian McEwan probably eats breakfast every morning, and wears shoes. Like me, McEwan also has a website: http://ianmcewan.com. The existence of this website proves that someone must be maintaining it (the “first cause” proof); which, in turn, raises the question of what McEwan’s webmaster is like. How do his character, appearance, and biography differ from those of my webmaster? Does he bartend?

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I was totally on time for the reading at Stanford! I knew just where to park my car, and how to get to the Terrace Room. (Seven years of graduate study, my friends.)

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