{"id":293166,"date":"2013-02-28T21:10:40","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T21:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2013\/02\/28\/btba-2013-the-canvas-the-books-that-didnt-make-it\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:39:31","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:39:31","slug":"btba-2013-the-canvas-the-books-that-didnt-make-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2013\/02\/28\/btba-2013-the-canvas-the-books-that-didnt-make-it\/","title":{"rendered":"BTBA 2013: &#34;The Canvas&#34; [The Books that DIDN&#39;T Make It]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This one is a bitter pill to swallow . . . Way back in July of 2010, I wrote a post about &#8220;The Next German Book I Want to See Translated&#8221; featuring this video:<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"360\" height=\"203\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.dailymotion.com\/swf\/video\/xdxtne_identity-and-memory-y-author-benjam_creation\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dailymotion.com\/swf\/video\/xdxtne_identity-and-memory-y-author-benjam_creation\" width=\"360\" height=\"203\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p>Well, two-plus years later, on my birthday, Open Letter brought out Benjamin Stein&#8217;s <em>The Canvas<\/em>, a unique, very readable book about three main characters: two who are present in the book and have a showdown at the middle, and a third, who is mostly off-screen, but whose maybe-falsified memoir about the Holocaust sets this conflict in motion. <\/p>\n<p><center><txp_image id=\"912\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>One of the interesting things about Stein that I learned during his extensive U.S. reading tour&#8212;which was insanely successful, and demonstrated just how much this book connected with readers&#8212;was that he appeared at a reading, and knows personally, Binjamin Wilkomirski, the author of the fake Holocaust memoir, <em>Fragments<\/em>, which inspired this novel. <\/p>\n<p>At each of his events, Benjamin would talk about how he wrote this as a way to deal with the idea of Wilkomirski, who created a fake identity for himself&#8212;the man&#8217;s not even Jewish&#8212;and came to completely incorporate this into his worldview and consciousness. It is an intriguing set-up for anyone interested in psychology or the power of fiction, and one that&#8217;s explored marvelously (in my opinion) in <em>The Canvas.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>But alas. No Best Translated Book Award for Benjamin and Brian. <\/p>\n<p>You should still <a href=\"http:\/\/catalog.openletterbooks.org\/authors\/35-#canvas\">buy the book though.<\/a> It&#8217;s damn amazing, and captivating from cover to cover.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ad_banner\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/catalog.openletterbooks.org\/authors\/35-#canvas\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/images\/2012.jpg\"  \/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This one is a bitter pill to swallow . . . Way back in July of 2010, I wrote a post about &#8220;The Next German Book I Want to See Translated&#8221; featuring this video: Well, two-plus years later, on my birthday, Open Letter brought out Benjamin Stein&#8217;s The Canvas, a unique, very readable book about [&hellip;]<\/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":[33756,46996,5706,28166,33766],"class_list":["post-293166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-benjamin-stein","tag-brian-zumhagen","tag-german-literature","tag-open-letter-books","tag-the-canvas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293166","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=293166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334136,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293166\/revisions\/334136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}