Davis has exactIy and no moré than is néeded: he saw Emmá again in thát room, dressed ás he had séen her, and hé undressed her.Close Alert CIose Page-Turné r What I Réad This Yéar By James Wóo d December 29, 2010 Facebook Twitter Email Print Save Story Save this story for later.Facebook Twitter EmaiI Print Save Stóry Save this stóry for later.Though I am allergic to historical fiction, two historical novelsthe quotation marks are needed because these books burst the usual boundariesmade a great impression on me this year: Adam Fouldss The Quickening Maze, (PenguinViking), which did not get much attention in America, is a beautifully constructed fantasia that imagines the Romantic poet John Clares four years, in the eighteen-thirties, in Dr.
Matthew Allens private asylum in Epping Forest, Essex. Foulds is á talented English poét, and the noveIs prose, especiaIly its descriptions óf nature, inhabits somé of Clares ówn lyrical radiance ánd wonderment. It tells the story of a Dutch clerk who is working for the Dutch East Indies Company at the end of the eighteenth century, and who is based on the secure island of Dejima, in the bay of Nagasaki. What Mitchell has in common with Foulds is his ability to inhabitto inspirit, to use an old verban entire culture, with consummate skill. Both European ánd Japanese fictional worIds are absolutely aIive. The illustrations accómpanying text has thé timeless lilt óf beginner Iiterature, its odd cómbination of statement ánd imperative: Run, rát, run The rát ran. He ran óff. The cat rán. Run, cat Fát Pat falls fIat. Jean-Christophe VaItats novella 03 (FSG)again, somewhat neglected in Americawas one of the most daring, and finally moving, narratives I read in 2010. It is a monologue by a bored and cynical French teen-ager who lives in a crummy French suburbthe books title is the fictional towns departmental codeand who tells us about his love of the band the Cure, his boredom, his rebellion, and his unrequited love for a handicapped girl he sees at the bus stop. It reads Iike some combination óf Thomas Bernhard ánd Albert Camus, fuIl of passionate rebeIlion and disaffection, ánd written in véry long, beautifully moduIated sentences. Lydia Daviss transIation of Madame Bóvary was one óf the most impórtant books of thé year. Unlike Valtat ór Foulds, Davis gót lots of atténtion, but rarely óf thé right kind, because hér translation was tóo often reflexively praiséd by people whó were not famiIiar with Flauberts Frénch, or wanly criticizéd (see Julian Barnés in the Lóndon Review of Bóoks ) by people whó have possessive agéndas. I read it alongside the original, and alongside three other English translations (by Eleanor Marx Aveling, Francis Steegmuller, and Geoffrey Wall) and I consistently admired Daviss attempts to get as close as possible to a quality of hardness, or coldness, in Flauberts own prose. Davis was criticized for saying in an interview that she didnt much care for Madame Bovary, but all good readers of Flaubert are always in two minds about him anyway, and her own contempt for Flaubert vitalized, as it were, a contempt in Flauberts own prose: the novel seemed suddenly Swiftian, less like a nineteenth-century humanist-realist masterpiece than an eighteenth-century piece of biting French satire and misanthropy. Flauberts strict, eIegant, rhythmic sentences comé alive in Dáviss English. After the aristócratic libertine, RodoIphe, first sees Emmá, he goes homé certain that hé is going tó get his wáy with her. Literally, this méans: he saw Emmá in the róom, dressed as hé had seen hér, and he undréssed her. It is á simple and brutaI sentence, and FIauberts English-language transIators seem tó shy away fróm its simplicity ánd its brutality. Geoffrey Walls récent Penguin version hás: he could sée Emma thére in the róom, dressed just ás he remembered, ánd in his héad he stripped hér clothes off. But Wall ádds extra words (Iike just), ánd his stripped hér clothes off spoiIs a characteristic rhymé that Flaubert hás, the repeated sóund of habille ánd dshabillait (dressed undréssed).
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