{"id":282286,"date":"2011-02-21T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-21T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/02\/21\/hygiene-and-the-assassin-why-this-book-should-win-the-btba\/"},"modified":"2018-05-04T15:25:04","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T15:25:04","slug":"hygiene-and-the-assassin-why-this-book-should-win-the-btba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/02\/21\/hygiene-and-the-assassin-why-this-book-should-win-the-btba\/","title":{"rendered":"Hygiene and the Assassin [Why This Book Should Win the BTBA]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Similar to years past, we\u2019re going to be featuring each of the 25 titles on the BTBA<\/span> Fiction Longlist<\/a> over the next month plus, but in contrast to previous editions, this year we\u2019re going to try an experiment and frame all write-ups as \u201cwhy this book should win.\u201d Some of these entries will be absurd, some more serious, some very funny, a lot written by people who normally don\u2019t contribute to Three Percent. Overall, the point is to have some fun and give you a bunch of reasons as to why you should read at least a few of the BTBA<\/span> titles.<\/em><\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> for all past and future posts.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hygiene and the Assassin<\/em><\/b> by Amelie Nothomb, translated by Alison Anderson<\/p>\n

Language:<\/b> French
\nCountry:<\/b> France
\nPublisher:<\/b> Europa Editions
\nPages:<\/b> 167<\/p>\n

Why This Book Should Win:<\/b> Europa Editions publishes a ton of translations and deserves a victory; Nothomb was all of 25 when she wrote this; Nothomb has written 20-some-odd books and still doesn\u2019t get the attention she deserves from American readers; She\u2019s coming to Rochester days after the April 29th announcement, and that would be effing awesome if she won; most importantly, she deserves to win because of the passages below and the constant referencing of Celine.<\/p>\n

I wrote today\u2019s post.<\/em><\/p>\n

This novel\u2014Nothomb\u2019s first, publishing in French in 1992, and just now available in English\u2014may be the sharpest, funniest book on this year\u2019s BTBA<\/span> fiction longlist.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the basic set-up: Pretexat Tach (what a name!) is a Nobel Prize winning author, who is a recluse, and who is about to die. Because of his impending death, he agrees to be interviewed by a series of journalists, each one as moronic as the last. Tach tortures each of them in turn, berating them, humiliating them, and coming across as a total prick\u2014but one who, despite (or maybe in part because of) his disgusting appearance, thoughts, and rants, is fairly entertaining.<\/p>\n

Actually, instead of trying to describe the merits of this book\u2014the way the final journalist undoes Tach, the way the plot feels all piecemeal until the last few moments when all the literary traps are sprung and the plot points braided together in a very tense, exciting way\u2014I\u2019m going to stop here and leave you with a couple examples of Tach\u2019s awesome rants (and Nothomb\u2019s stunning ability to come up with these, and Anderson\u2019s skill at translating them).<\/p>\n

Tach on how few people have really read his books:<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are the frog-readers. They make up the vast majority of human readers, and yet I only discovered their existence quite late in life. I am so terribly naive. I thought that everyone read the way I do. For I read the way I eat: that means not only do I need to read, but also, and above all, that reading becomes one of my components and modifies them all. You are not the same person depending on whether you have eaten blood pudding or cavier; nor are you the same person depending on whether you have just read Kant (God help us) or Queneau. Well, when I say \u2018you,\u2019 I should say \u2018I myself and a few others,\u2019 because the majority of people emerge from reading Proust or Simenon in an identical state: they have neither lost a fraction of what they were nor gained a single additional fraction. They have read, that\u2019s all: in the best-case scenario, they know \u2018what it\u2019s about.\u2019 And I\u2019m not exaggerating. How often have I asked intelligent people, \u2018Did this book change you?\u2019 And they look at me, their eyes wide, as if to say, \u2018Why should a book change me?\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cAllow me to express my astonishment, Monsieur Tach: you have just spoken as if you were defending books with a message, and that\u2019s not like you.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not very clever, are you? So are you of the opinion that only books \u2018with a message\u2019 can change an individual? These are the books that are the least likely to change them. The books that have an impact, that transform people, are the other ones\u2014books about desire, or pleasure, books filled with genius, and above all books filled with beauty. Let us take, for example, a great book filled with beauty: Journey to the End of the Night.<\/em> How can you not be transformed after you have read it? Well, the majority of readers manage just that tour de force without difficulty. They will come to you and say, \u2018Oh yes, Celine is magnificent,\u2019 and then they go back to what they were doing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But really, the best section is this one on how Tach\u2019s books are dangerous, how \u201cwriting is harmful\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no comparison. Writing is not as harmful.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cYou obviously don\u2019t know what you\u2019re saying, because you haven\u2019t read me\u2014how could you know? Writing fucks things up at every level: think of the trees they\u2019ve had to cut down for the paper, of all the room they have to find to store the books, the money it costs to print them, and the money it will cost potential readers, and the boredom the readers will feel on reading them, and the guilty conscience of the unfortunate people who buy them and don\u2019t have the courage to read them, and the sadness of the kind imbeciles who do read them but don\u2019t understand a thing, and finally, above all, the fatuousness of the conversations that wil take place after said books have been read or not read. And that\u2019s just the half of it! So don\u2019t go telling me that writing is not harmful.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Similar to years past, we\u2019re going to be featuring each of the 25 titles on the BTBA Fiction Longlist over the next month plus, but in contrast to previous editions, this year we\u2019re going to try an experiment and frame all write-ups as \u201cwhy this book should win.\u201d Some of these entries will be absurd, […]<\/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":[67476],"tags":[17256,7116,37866,37856,8886,3426,38416,37876],"class_list":["post-282286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-alison-anderson","tag-amelie-nothomb","tag-best-translated-book","tag-btba-2011","tag-europa-editions","tag-french-literature","tag-hygiene-and-the-assassin","tag-why-this-book-should-win"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282286","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=282286"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397492,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282286\/revisions\/397492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}