{"id":278076,"date":"2010-05-02T14:13:06","date_gmt":"2010-05-02T14:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2010\/05\/02\/new-european-fiction-pen-world-voices\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T16:40:54","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:40:54","slug":"new-european-fiction-pen-world-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2010\/05\/02\/new-european-fiction-pen-world-voices\/","title":{"rendered":"New European Fiction [PEN World Voices]"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared here<\/a> on the official PEN<\/span> World Voices blog. I still have 2-3 to write . . .<\/em><\/p>\n

Granta editor and former NBCC<\/span> president John Freeman opened up this event talking about how Best European Fiction 2010 served as a sort of print version of the PEN<\/span> World Voices Festival. Containing something like 40 writers from across Europe, the anthology really is expansive in scope and represents a very ambitious missiomcn.<\/p>\n

Colum McCann and Alexandar Hemon kicked off this two-part event discussion the infamous 3% statistic and the need for more translated literature. It\u2019s interesting that both are transplants\u2014Hemon from Bosnia, McCann from Ireland\u2014who have achieved enormous success here in America, which, initially might seem to defy the belief that Americans are anti-international fiction. As McCann pointed out though, the American literary scene really isn\u2019t insular at all\u2014it tends to absorb foreign writers pretty easily. But as Hemon pointed out, it may be open to foreign writers, but it\u2019s fairly insular when it comes to foreign languages.<\/p>\n

Which is the great benefit of the Dalkey anthology\/ongoing \u201cBest European Fiction\u201d project. Even though there are only 350 or so original works of translated fiction and poetry published in the U.S. every year, interested readers can now find out about at least a couple writers from Liechtenstein or Slovenia or wherever.<\/p>\n

Following the McCann-Hemon conversation, valter hugo mae from Portugal, Naja Marie Aidt from Greenland\/Denmark, and Jean-Philippe Toussaint from Belgium\/France all read short pieces of their work to an incredibly enthusiastic crowd. (My estimation is that about 60 people were at Le Poisson Rouge for this event.)<\/p>\n

valter hugo mae\u2019s piece about a woman trying to poison her husband by putting a little cleaning solution in his nightly dinner struck a bit close to home. I was just telling someone yesterday about a time when I was convinced that my now ex-wife was poisoning me. I\u2019m (pretty) sure she wasn\u2019t, but still, thanks to this piece, I guess I can better understand the thrill she might have gotten from slipping a little something into my food?<\/p>\n

Half-kidding, but honestly, the excerpt he read was really excellent, as were the bits by Naja Marie Aidt (I actually met her in Iceland last fall\u2014she\u2019s very charming and wonderful) and Jean-Philippe Toussaint.<\/p>\n

After the readings, the conversation continued touching on issues of whether or not English was taking over the world, what authors from Portugal and Denmark need to be translated, what \u201cEurope\u201d and \u201cEuropean literature\u201d actually mean.<\/p>\n

It was an interesting conversation and overall event, that clearly laid out some of the issues that those of us working in international literature and publishing deal with on a regular basis. And the bits about America\u2019s perceived literary insularity were particularly fascinating. Because I think they\u2019re right\u2014it\u2019s not that the literary scene is anti-foreigners, it\u2019s that the marketplace is anti-language. And although Hemon wanted to avoid the topic of who\u2019s to \u201cblame\u201d for the dismal 3% statistic, it is a valid question to try and unpack, one which resurfaced when he asked the audience why they don\u2019t read more literature in translation.<\/p>\n

The audience really is the key to this whole question, especially now that any reader anywhere in America can order a copy of any published book. Today\u2019s issue is about creating demand. And that\u2019s one of the risks re: reporting on a festival like this. The crowd was electric, the writers all well-received\u2014let\u2019s just hope that this wasn\u2019t a \u201cpreaching to the converted\u201d sort of event. Or at least that these readers will go tell everyone they know how awesome the Liechtenstein literary scene is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared here on the official PEN World Voices blog. I still have 2-3 to write . . . Granta editor and former NBCC president John Freeman opened up this event talking about how Best European Fiction 2010 served as a sort of print version of the PEN World Voices Festival. Containing something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[32276],"class_list":["post-278076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-pen-wv-2010"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":348496,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278076\/revisions\/348496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}