HOW TO MAKE YOU FEEL AWKWARD ABOUT MY DIFFERENTLY ABLEDNESS

the 'looking good in pants' summer reading list shouldn't be far off, even if summer doesn't show signs of making it to portland any time soon. unfortunately, i seem to get more reading done when the weather's nice, so if the sun doesn't come out to keep me inside i won't have much chance of getting through a very ambitious list. and that means no insightful musings. so i guess you'd better hope for bright skies.

but this blog couldn't go ahead with its own list before addressing one of the entries on npr's list of indie booksellers' summer reading picks. i was beyond surprised when i saw day for night picked by a bookseller from milwaukee. though it wasn't the surprise i wanted. i'd hoped that there'd been done a translation of kazushige abe's 『アメリカの夜』, a book i recently read by a japanese author i've come to love since being recommended him during a trip to japan last november. ”アメリカの夜” could feasibly be translated as "american night" or maybe "a night in america" depending on context, but, given the content of abe's book (which i'd be happy to analyze at length at request), its title could only be translated to echo the title of truffaut's 1974 film and the term for the cinematographic technique to which the film's title alludes. it's "day for night" or nothing.

please, though, don't think i can't take the taking of the title. like the hard-to-question people at mobylives pointed out last week, a good title is a good title. title matches might cause some marketing and publicity problems, but a title match is not enough a book to damn. and frederick reiken's day for night is probably great. it comes with a great endorsement after all. it should probably go on our list. if just for the title, there's reason to think i'd like it.

my disappointment came rather for the knowledge that there still isn't a single work of abe's available in english. at least one of his has been done in french -- which isn't surprising since there's a french translation of this (via an estonian english professor: "the greatest japanese book ever written. something like philip k. dick meets finnegan's wake.") there's nothing as uniquely frustrating as wanting to recommend an untranslated book or author to someone who doesn't read in its/his/her original language; or, for that matter, to find out that something has been translated but just not into [language] -- in the case of my most immediate reading milieu, english. (or, and maybe this is the worst, to see one author completely dwarfing his more talented neighbor on the shelves at the bookstore.)

to the extent that literature dictates or informs on culture and narrates other contemporary humanities, there's too much to keep losing not to push for a haler pursuit of literature in translation. it's expensive, sure. and people don't really buy literature in english either, you say? maybe, methinks, that's less reason to resign ourselves to fewer good books in translation and more a call to arms to reevaluate how they can be profitably published. melville house in brookyln (it's true, i worship them) is making it happen. this interview with melville house publisher dennis johnson spells out how. finding good translators is a not surprisingly important part of it . . .and damn if dennis isn't classy.

back to abe: he probably won't make it onto many of our readers' own summer reading lists this year. and that won't be out of choice in every case. a shame. i'm expecting another of his books to come back from japan with a friend in a couple of weeks. you'll just have to take my word on that one, too. unless, that is, you read french. bastards.