MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

Leipzig was so great! Marco and I were really happy to meet the novelist Kevin Vennemann (our German translator), to whom I had mentioned an abbreviated version of the Krautgarden Loft banana incident, and who subsequently suggested that we meet for a pre-reading dinner in Auerbachs Keller, the basement tavern where Mephistopheles took Faust, and where the sixteenth-century prototypical Dr. Faustus supposedly once transported himself from the basement up to street level, by riding on a diabolically possessed wine barrel. “Terrible place,” Vennemann wrote, “but very… hearty food [original ellipses] made for tourists and probably the best way to keep you from starving once again. They might be serving a lot of kraut as well.”

To be totally honest, my caloric intake isn’t actually anything out of the ordinary, but I was of course delighted to have acquired the reputation of an insatiable devourer of hearty tourist food. Verily my friends, it is better to be feared than loved!

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Because of my abiding interest in our nation’s youth, I was really happy to meet Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig and his girlfriend Sara last month in San Francisco.

Here is a picture where you can see how charming they looked, with their scarves, and also their entrance stickers from the Asian Art Museum. That is a Polo logo on Koenig’s sweater, BTW… but before you go starting the hateration machine on him I just want you to stop for a minute and ask yourself: WIKDI?

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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…)