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The current issue of American Book Reviewfeatures a glowing review of Bernard du Boucheron's The Voyage of the Short Serpent. Translated from the French by Hester Velmans, this powerful novel retells the adventures of a sea voyage in the fourteenth century that leads an evangelical group to a lost colony among floating ice and snow.
Critic Dinda Gorlee notes "Bernard du Boucheron should be lauded for his efforts to create this history-based chronicle, The Voyage of the Short Serpent, a prize-winning masterpiece. Hester Velmans, the literary translator, has moved her translation forward to the creative illumination of a kind of co-authorship, jointly with the author. Reading the English translation of the tale of the frozen wasteland of New Thule, with the French original book, Court Serpent, alongside, Velman's suggestive, often insightful, translation fills the readers (and this critic) with nothing less than a great awe of Velman's magical professionalism."
0 Comments on American Book Review Calls THE VOYAGE OF THE SHORT SERPENT a "Prize-Winning Masterpiece" as of 1/1/1900
Nathan Ihara notes the "bleak wisdom" of Bernard du Bucheron's harrowing novel The Voyage of the Short Serpent in the current issue of LA Weekly. Told in an elegant, compulsive, and increasingly unhinged style, Bernard du Boucheron’s award-winning novel is a masterpiece about mutable human morality in inhuman conditions—a story about truth, obsession, and the myth of utopia.
0 Comments on THE VOYAGE OF THE SHORT SERPENT in LA Weekly as of 4/11/2008 10:48:00 AM
Generally speaking, I'm a pretty big fan of Jean Hannah Edelstein. I often read her posts and feel a pang of recognition, albeit by replacing her hi-falutin' titles with the ones I actually read. But this time, the headline writers of the Guardian have gone too far. "Can the novella save literature?" may be both an interesting question and a tongue-in-cheek way of addressing the fact that London's public transport is crammed with crummy freepapers, but it smacks of the terror that seems to riddle the whole world of books like woodworm. Or bookworm.
JHE argues: "the vast majority of new writers - even the very good ones - trying to crack in to publishing with their first novel are inevitably told that times are hard for fiction right now ... the chance of publishers successfully launching a novel by an unknown writer on the reading public are indeed slim in an information culture where we struggle to get through 10 pages without losing focus to the buzz of media white noise. Several hundred pages can feel like too much of a commitment when there is so much information to consume ... And who could deny that the actual experience of reading a long book can feel a little arduous if it doesn't really make your heart sing?"
I think partaking in anything you find rubbish is a pretty poor way of judging that oeuvre. Going to see my sister's childhood orchestra would never have made a classical music fan of anyone, and seeing one Young Vic performance of Hamlet is not the way to judge that theatre is "over". Yes, we are pretty busy these days, and yes, there is a lot going on in terms of the information being fed to us - but how much more do we appreciate sinking into a good book? A thick, good book. Whether it's a Rowling, Clarke, Mitchell or James, a book that requires dedication and commitment is exactly what many people are desperate for at a time where restaurant meals last 45 minutes and you can cross the planet in a day or so.
JHE also suggests that novellas battle dumbing-down charges, because "without exacting quite the level of austerity presented by the task of writing a good short story, novellas challenge writers to use words like wartime rations: with care and thought and the extra level of creative gusto required to ensure that they stretch to make a miniature read that is just as satisfying as something more substantial." Why not encourage full-length novelists to work that way? Neither Lolita nor The Talented Mr Ripley are particularly brief, but neither has a word wasted - unlike some of the sprawling rambles novelists (as opposed to novella-ists) can be inclined towards. And if a reader didn't have to wade through 150 pages of foggy childhood recollection, who knows - 800-page tomes might fly by.
I think the bell for literature has been tolling for a few hundred years now, with no noticeable shift away from books over walking, talking, dancing, playing the piano/Wii, or any of the myriad other options. And since Penguin Towers keeps on ticking over, I think I'll hold off on tearing down my bookshelves for novella racks/computer brain sockets/iron gates to keep away the barbarian hordes. Although since one of them fell down recently, I may have to reinforce the 'tome' section.
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So, to the Reader/Writer Mash-up, held conveniently on the 10th floor of Penguin towers and attended by a motley collection of educators, librarians, metaverse evangelists, poets, game designers and the odd publisher.
The point of the evening, Miranda McKearney from meeting organisers The Reading Agency, told us was to look at the changing nature of reading and writing in a digital age; "The advent of new media is changing the way we all read, and this is especially true of young people."
Then Rose, hilariously described in the programme as 'Young Person' confirmed this by saying that her and her friends all love reading, but all chose different ways to get content. For her it is olde-worlde print and paper books, but many of her friends access manga online, and presumably soon will be doing the same on their mobile phones.
I guess that what I took away from the evening (apart from Rose's brilliantly and spontaneously invented word that I've used as the title of this post) was that as publishers we often preach to the converted, those who already love books and love reading, people like you! We try very hard to sell more books to the same group of readers, rather than trying to deal with the fact that a generation is growing up who want to create content as well as consume it.
My other thought, it is time to retire the word mash-up to refer to the practice of cutting, pasting and remixing words, film, music and any other type of content imaginable. In this digital world of cut and paste, drag and drop, ctrl-c and ctrl-v, mashing up is simply stuff we make and stuff we do.
To sort of illustrate the themes of the evening here's a video which brilliantly encapsulates everything that was discussed and raises several other issues. Effectivity indeed.
The current issue of American Book Review features a glowing review of Bernard du Boucheron's The Voyage of the Short Serpent. Translated from the French by Hester Velmans, this powerful novel retells the adventures of a sea voyage in the fourteenth century that leads an evangelical group to a lost colony among floating ice and snow.
