{"id":295486,"date":"2013-11-01T17:24:22","date_gmt":"2013-11-01T17:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2013\/11\/01\/three-percent-66-i-believe-you-have-my-stapler\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:45:04","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:45:04","slug":"three-percent-66-i-believe-you-have-my-stapler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2013\/11\/01\/three-percent-66-i-believe-you-have-my-stapler\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Percent #66: I Believe You Have My Stapler"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this week’s podcast, Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times<\/em> joined us to discuss Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel, Bleeding Edge<\/em>. All three of us are Pynchon fans, and all three of us really liked this latest book. Although, as we talk about, the fact that we experienced a lot of the cultural items Pynchon references makes this a bit odd . . . Like, Pynchon’s watched Office Space<\/em>? He is aware of Pokemon and Beanie Babies?<\/p>\n

In our conversation, we also referenced two images, the first is of the insane military tower in Montauk:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And also, Tom’s beard:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This week’s music, which will make sense when you get to the discussion, is Semisonic’s Closing Time.<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally: Tom wanted to respond to my \u00fcber-pissy comments on the last podcast blog,<\/a> which is only fair. So here’s his final word:<\/p>\n

\n

Ok, fair enough: \u201cintentionally esoteric\u201d was an unfair gut reaction. This is not, however, a straight mea culpa.<\/em> While I admit that you have done, as you said and stressed, \u201clifelong research\u201d on international literature, and that said research has translated (get it?) into unmatched enthusiasm for these books that definitely deserve wider audiences, I do think it\u2019s fair to say that it comes off a bit like two West Village record store employees geeking out over import LP\u2019s from obscure Next Wave bands. Which is fine. But it does\u2014and this is, as devout listeners know, something of a persistent issue of mine\u2014smack, ever-so-slightly, of elitism. I\u2019m not suggesting that in the act of composing the list you intentionally set out to demonstrate that your taste in translated literature is far superior to anyone else\u2019s, or that people who do read and love the books included in _Flavorwire_\u2019s list are flat-out ignorant, but there\u2019s a hint of that sentiment. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The only reason I made the statement in the first place is because I believe that there are tons of books that fall somewhere between the predictable ones on the first list and those on Chad and Stephen\u2019s on the spectrum of translated literature. Books that aren\u2019t in the canon (yet) but that also aren\u2019t so under-appreciated that the average literary reader hasn\u2019t heard of them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

In the end, like Chad or anyone who toils in this poorly-lit corner of publishing or book selling, all I want is for people to 1) know about good books they might like; and 2) read<\/em> those books. The problem with any and all lists is exclusion; working within finite confines, you chose what include, and were thus obligated to exclude others. So it goes. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this week’s podcast, Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times joins us to discuss Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel, “Bleeding Edge.” All three of us are Pynchon fans, and all three of us really like this latest book. Although, as we talk about, the fact that we experienced a lot of the cultural items Pynchon references makes this a bit odd . . . Like, Pynchon’s watched “Office Space”? He is aware of Pokemon and Beanie Babies?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67446],"tags":[53456,27946,7666,4296,40016,30456],"class_list":["post-295486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-three-percent-podcast","tag-bleeding-edge","tag-carolyn-kellogg","tag-chad-w-post","tag-thomas-pynchon","tag-three-percent-podcast","tag-tom-roberge"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295486","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=295486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":330046,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295486\/revisions\/330046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}