As Kaija pointed out upon hearing about his death, the one really great thing is that he was able to finally—after post office issues, bad addresses, and a host of other nineteenth century problems—able to get copies of his collection before he passed on.

Below you’ll find more information about his life, but if you want to check out his poetry (in Hardie St. Martin’s wonderful translation), you can get 50% off the list price on by entering the code “darktimes” when you check out.

Here’s a bit from the

Argentine poet Juan Gelman has died aged 83 in Mexico City. He is considered to be one of the greatest authors in Spanish and was awarded the prestigious Cervantes Prize in 2007.

Mr Gelman, a left-wing activist and a guerrilla in Argentina in the 1960s and 1970s, lived in Mexico for 20 years.

He wrote more than 20 books and regular columns for newspapers.

His son and his pregnant daughter-in-law died after being abducted by the military government in the 1970s. [. . .]

But in 2000, he was also able to trace his granddaughter, born before Maria Claudia’s presumed murder. The child had been handed over to a pro-government family in Uruguay.

The reunion was one of the most high profile involving disappeared people in Argentina’s history – fewer than 600 victims of the 1976-83 “dirty war” have been found.

Karl Pohrt, founder of Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor, Mich., died on Wednesday. He was 65. Pohrt was diagnosed with anaplastic thyroid cancer in October 2012 and wrote about his illness on his blog, thereisnogap.com.

In 2009, plunging textbook sales and the economy forced Pohrt to close 29-year-old Shaman Drum, which had been located on the edge of the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor. He also ran the nonprofit Great Lakes Literary Arts Center, which he founded in 2008.

“Karl Pohrt was a true bookman: a bookseller, compulsive reader, and a publisher as well. He had a very strong sense of the material and spiritual value of the reading experience. He was a man with a mission and an unshakeable devotion to the idea that books could transform human beings and the world for the better,” said Bruce Joshua Miller of Miller Trade Marketing in Chicago. “He was the godfather of bookselling in Ann Arbor and Michigan. He’s already missed,” commented Deb Leonard, executive director of the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association.

A memorial service will be held for Pohrt on Sunday, July 14, at 2 p.m. at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, 3257 Lohr Road, Ann Arbor. The family requests that donations be made to the church or to the Children’s Literacy Network.

I don’t think I’m in a mental place where I can properly express myself about Karl’s passing or how much he meant to me. Karl was my partner-in-crime back some years ago when we started the Reading the World program—a special marketing initiative to get independent bookstores to display works in translation throughout the month of May. (Which happens to be World in Translation Month.) We spent a number of days together convincing publishers to go in on our idea, getting booksellers excited, and planning some awesome BEA parties at various consulates. (Including a really swank one at the French Consulate in D.C. And a cool one in the RedCat Theater in L.A.)

I’ll never forget all of the visits to Shaman Drum in Ann Arbor, which was one of the greatest independent bookstores ever. And Karl was one of the greatest managers ever. He assembled an amazing crew of employees, and did more for literature in Ann Arbor than the massive (also now defunct) competitor down the road . . .

And Karl was one of the most well-adjusted people I’ve ever met. A long time buddhist and friend of Gary Snyder, he exuded a certain calm and ease with the world that touched everyone who ever met him.

I hadn’t seen Karl in years. In fact, I think the last time was in 2008(?) when I surprised him by showing up at the special ceremony the University of Michigan held to announced the chair that they had named after him. It was so amazing to see him in, to go out to dinner with him and Gary Snyder and hear about his SDS days . . . And to see all of the wonderful people who came out to celebrate one of the best book people in the world. The days of panels and discussions were interesting, and it was touching to see all the effusive outpourings of praise for Karl—even if he was too modest to fully appreciate this. Still.

Damn. I knew for a while about his cancer, since he wrote about it at in a way that’s human and impressive in its honesty, but I secretly hoped everything would turn out OK. Or that I’d have one last chance to talk with him in Ann Arbor and to see him smile. He was always smiling. But that’s what we always regret when someone important to us dies . . .

I wish the best to his family, and for everyone who knew him, I know we’re all thinking similar things and suffering the fact that the world is a slightly worse place now that Karl isn’t in it.

Sæterbakken was the author of the novels Incubus, The New Testament, Siamese, Self-Control, and Sauermugg (the latter three constituting the “S-trilogy”), and two collections of essays, Aesthetic Bliss and The Evil Eye.

was published by Dalkey a couple years back in Stokes Schwartz’s translation. It was reviewed in the by fellow Dalkey author Jim Krusoe (whose is most hysterical), who had this to say:

First published in 1997, “Siamese” is Saeterbakken’s third novel and the first of his “S” trilogy (because they all start with the letter S), and while the level of barrenness here is fairly stupendous, it seems also to be earned. Edwin, the co-narrator and the former director of an old-age home, has himself come to the end of his life. He is blind, paralyzed, incontinent, self-centered and stuffed with unpleasant opinions that he’s only too happy to share with us and with his wife, Sweetie, the other narrator.

Seated in a chair in a dark room of his apartment on an island of Orbit gum wrappers and dried gum (chewing Orbit is the one pleasure he has left other than torturing his wife), Edwin fulminates and decays. Sweetie comes and goes. There is rumored to be a servant. The building’s superintendent arrives at the start of the book to replace a fluorescent bulb (he also fixes the light in the fridge, gratis, and adjusts the freezer setting). He will return at the end to become a lodger. In between is the struggle between Edwin, fixed like a stone in his chair, and the fluid, ridiculously accommodating Sweetie. Each defines the other.

In other words, we are traveling here though the bleakest territory of Beckett, the haunted compulsions of Thomas Bernhard, the desperation of Saeterbakken’s countryman Knut Hamsun. But missing are Beckett’s closely reasoned wit, Bernhard’s rigor, even Hamsun’s frantic grasping. Instead, Saeterbakken holds up for our edification a nasty and petulant individual who never was all that much fun in the first place.

As it turns out, Kerri Pierce, a recent Rochester transplant and fellow Plübian who has translated including by Nikanor Teratologen, which contains an afterword by Sæterbakken. Since Kerri was a friend of his, I asked her to write something up for us about his passing:

When I got the news that Stig Sæterbakken had committeed suicide, my first thought was—the world is a less interesting place. Although I never met Stig personally, I worked with him on a number of projects. He wrote the Foreword and Afterword to two works I had the joy of translating, Tor Ulvens Replacement and Nikanor Teratologen’s Assisted Living respectively. He was always ready to help if I had a question about a word or phrase and I, in turn, had occasion to help him when he needed someone to proofread a text in English. Over time, I came to consider him a colleague and a friend, as well as a brilliant writer in his own right. It’s strange to think that his last e-mail to me will be left unreturned.

For more information about Sæterbakken, check out and

John Calder called me this afternoon to give me the sad news of Barbara Wright’s death last night, after complications from a hip operation. Barbara was one of the greatest and most influential translators from the French, and was almost as instrumental as John in making available the works of some of the greatest authors of twentieth-century French literature, such as Queneau and Sarraute.

Before she moved from her house on Frognal, and before I left Dalkey Archive, I used to go and have dinner with Barbara Wright every time I was in London. I swear, I could’ve listened to her talk for hours about how she became a translator, about James Laughlin, about John Calder, about the first time she met Beckett . . . Thankfully, I still have a few of the postcards she used to send me along with a special “Tolling Elves 5” brochure that was printed in honor of Raymond Queneau’s centenary and features samples from a few of Barbara’s translations of his work. (Speaking of which, her story about how she invented a few of the pieces in Exercises in Style while translating the book is another classic story . . .)

She was one of the all time great translators, and also one of the kindest people I ever met. She will be greatly missed.

If for nothing else, Updike will be missed for his stature as a true “man of letters.” There are many people like that left in the world.

The has a great overview of his life and work.

For the past 20 years, Mr. Seaver and his wife ran Arcade Publishing, which has endured to become one of the most prominent independent publishers left in the United States, specializing in works by far-flung and underexposed authors from all over the world. But the mission of Arcade, to publish new voices that seemingly flout the wisdom of the marketplace, was one that Mr. Seaver began pursuing decades earlier. [. . .]

During Mr. Seaver’s dozen years at Grove — he eventually became its editor in chief — it mounted many similar challenges to decency statutes, publishing literary but taboo-challenging works like Henry Miller’s autobiographical sex odysseys, Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn; Burroughs’s semi-surreal travelogue of a homosexual junkie, Naked Lunch; and Hubert Selby’s novel Last Exit to Brooklyn, which dealt unflinchingly with drugs, homosexuality and rape. In 1965 Grove published a translation of The Story of O, a 1954 French novel about a woman who gives away her body in slavery to a man.

He also translated more than 50 books from the French, including works by Marguerite Duras.

The Times also included this nice bit from Seaver’s recently complete memoir:

In a recently completed memoir, Mr. Seaver recalled the great literary moment of his youth. It was 1952, he was 25 and he had just finished reading two novels, Molloy and Malone Dies, which he deemed to be masterpieces. He wanted to say so.

“How do you write a meaningful comment on such rich, complex, still undiscovered work, without making a critical fool of yourself?” he wrote. “So make a fool of yourself.”

“Out, damned modesty,” he added. “If conviction means anything, then write from the heart. Slightly less tentatively, I wrote: ‘Samuel Beckett, an Irish writer long established in France, has recently published two novels which, although they defy all commentary, merit the attention of anyone interested in this century’s literature.’ ”

One of the books of 2009 that I’m most looking forward to is her novel Azorno, which New Directions is bringing out this summer. But after reading the quote above (from a skeletal ) I think I’m also going to check out some of her poetry collections, especially Alphabet and Butterfly Valley: A Requiem, both of which are also available from ND.

(The has links to a couple foreign obits of Christensen that look a bit more complete, including from Politiken.)

(Dalkey did end up deciding on a few, including Homage to Czerny, which made the Best Transalted Book longlist. And is doing one as well.)

One of my favorite moments with Gert was when I asked if he’d be willing to come to the U.S. for a reading tour. He politely declined, saying he wasn’t really interested in coming to the States because there’s no where you can smoke in this country. And he wasn’t sure if Red Bull would be as accessible here as it is in Austria . . .

If any English-language obituaries are published, I’ll update this post and link to them below.

Solzhenitsyn is most well known for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (which was part of the first ever Reading the World promotion) and the Gulag Archipelago trilogy.

has a nice overview video on Solzhenitsyn’s life:

Claus produced some 200 works during his career but was best known for his classic, The Sorrow of Belgium—a scathing attack on social injustice, stifling family relationships and Roman Catholic repression in his native Flanders in northern Belgium. [. . .]

Often writing out of anger and guilt, Claus relied on pitiless realism in his work.

“I am a person who is unhappy with things as they stand. We cannot accept the world as it is. Each day we should wake up foaming at the mouth because of the injustice of things,” he said in a magazine interview more than a decade ago. [. . .]

Throughout his life, Claus was a reluctant Belgian despite the increasing adulation at home as one of the prime men of letters in the Dutch language. But he said being from Belgium — the laughingstock of the French and Dutch alike — was a great advantage to his writing since he never was restrained by any sense of grandeur.

In addition to Sorrow of Belgium (which is available from ) , a few of his other titles are available in English translation, and Archipelago has plans to bring out Amazement in a translation by Michael Henry Heim.