Episode 282 – Lance Richardson
Episode 208 – Barbara Epler
Virtual Memories Show 208: Barbara Epler
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“We try to find things that move the walls in our brain about what fiction and poetry can do.”
New Directions publisher Barbara Epler joins the show to talk about her accidental career, the pros and cons of New Directions’ size, the Moneyball aspect of publishing works in translation, surviving a Nobel crush, the importance of secondary rights, the language she most wishes she could read, the novel she promises never to write, the book whose success surprised her the most, where WG Sebald’s work might have gone, and more! This is part of our Festival Neue Literatur series; Barbara is the 2017 recipient of the FNL’s Friedrich Ulfers Prize! Give it a listen!
“We have to make money, but we don’t do anything that overtly looks like it makes money.”
“James Laughlin believed that one of the most important streams of income for New Directions was to get the best poets of the generation who were working in an experimental mode, because of the secondary rights.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Barbara Epler started working at New Directions after graduating from Harvard in 1984, and is now the publisher. The writers Epler has published include such international luminaries as W.G. Sebald, Roberto Bolaño, László Krasznahorkai, Robert Walser, Clarice Lispector, Yoko Tawada, César Aira, Inger Christensen, Franz Kafka, Yoel Hoffmann, Bei Dao, Tomas Tranströmer, Jenny Erpenback, Veza Canetti, Fleur Jaeggy, Raduan Nassar, Joseph Roth, Takashi Hiraide, Alexander Kluge, and Antonio Tabucchi. She has worked with some of the world’s most gifted translators and has served as a judge for the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Awards. In 2015, Poets & Writers awarded Epler their Editor’s Prize and in 2016 Words Without Borders gave her the Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature.
Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at the New Directions offices on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 Microphones
Episode 108 – From Asterix to Zweig
Virtual Memories Show:
Anthea Bell – From Asterix to Zweig
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“There were a lot of books in the school library, and they weren’t in English, and I was mad keen to get at them.”
Renowned literary translator Anthea Bell joins the show to talk about getting her start in foreign languages, the schisms in the world of literary translation, the most challenging authors she’s worked on, the one language she’d love to learn, translating everything from Asterix to Zweig, and more! Give it a listen!
“Heinrich Heine goes into English with almost suspicious ease, but Goethe is very, very difficult.”
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We also talk about where she thinks WG Sebald’s fiction would have gone had he not died so early, why Asterix has never gotten over in America, the one word that’s the bane of her existence for U.S./UK split editions, her worries for the future of translation, her family’s history during the War, and her theory for why Asterix’s druid-pal should keep the name “Getafix”!
“If we had to have the Romantic period — and I do say we did, although I like the Enlightenment a lot better — I say the Germans did it better than anyone.”
We talk about a ton of books in this episode, so here’s a handy guide!
- Le Capitaine Fracasse
- The Little Water Sprite
- The Blindness of the Heart
- The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr
- Austerlitz
- On the Natural History of Destruction
- Apple Acre
- The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
- Death in Venice
- West
- In Times of Fading Light
- Happy are the Happy
- The World of Yesterday
- The Post-Office Girl
- Chess Story
- War and Peace
- The Brothers Karamazov
- How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone
- Metropole
- How to be both
- Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100,000 Words
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:
Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!
About our Guest
Anthea Bell is a freelance translator from German and French. Her translations include works of non-fiction; modern literary and popular fiction; books for young people including the Asterix the Gaul strip cartoon series; and classics by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Freud, Kafka and Stefan Zweig. She has won several translation awards.
Credits: This episode’s music is Where Are We Now? by David Bowie. The conversation was recorded at Ms. Bell’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
