{"id":299986,"date":"2014-12-04T12:30:47","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T12:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2014\/12\/04\/notes-on-some-noteable-danes-btba-judge-katrine-ogaard-jensen\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:39:23","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:39:23","slug":"notes-on-some-noteable-danes-btba-judge-katrine-ogaard-jensen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2014\/12\/04\/notes-on-some-noteable-danes-btba-judge-katrine-ogaard-jensen\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes on Some Noteable Danes \u2013 BTBA Judge Katrine \u00d8gaard Jensen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katrine \u00d8gaard Jensen is an editor-at-large for <\/i>Asymptote<\/a> and the editor-in-chief for <\/i>Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s December. I still have a shit-ton of books left to read for the BTBA<\/span>, and the very thought of writing a blogpost about my favorite contenders is giving me mild anxiety. But, as a Chuang Tzu once wrote (in David Hinton\u2019s excellent translation), \u201csmall fear is fever and worry; great fear is vast and calm.\u201d <\/p>\n

The great fear, in this case, consists in creating a longlist from so many well-designed, well-written, and well-translated books. It\u2019s so frightening that I\u2019m actually okay with it. But here comes the small fear: my two cents about what\u2019s good in the pile of submissions. <\/p>\n


\n <\/center><\/p>\n

I can certainly reveal some of my favorite titles to you, such as Valeria Luiselli\u2019s Faces in the Crowd<\/i><\/a> (trans. by Christina MacSweeney), Roberto Bolano\u2019s A Little Lumpen Novelita<\/i><\/a> (trans. by Natasha Wimmer), Scholastique Mukasonga\u2019s Our Lady of the Nile<\/i><\/a> (trans. by Melanie Mauthner), and Karl Ove Knausgaard\u2019s My Struggle: Book Three<\/i><\/a> (trans. by Don Bartlett), but since all of these titles have already been mentioned several times, I figured my blogging energy would be better spent on two Danish titles that have not yet come up as anybody\u2019s favorites. I will allow my fellow judges the benefit of the doubt, and assume they have yet to read the books I\u2019m about to highlight.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As a Dane, Naja Marie Aidt\u2019s writing has been an inevitable part of my life. I grew up reading and analyzing her short stories in middle and high school classes, and I\u2019ve remained fascinated by her fiction ever since. One of Aidt\u2019s literary fortes is her depiction of distorted human relationships; sometimes conveyed explicitly through master-slave abuse, pedophilia, or snuff (Vandm\u00e6rket, 1993), sometimes portrayed through subtle powerplay and deceit as a matter of routine (Tilgang, 1995). Aidt\u2019s latest short story collection and first book in English, Baboon<\/i><\/a> (Two Lines Press), is no exception:<\/p>\n

\u201cI slowly peeled the clothes off her, and she looked beautiful on the red Persian rug, in the warm light from the fire. She spread her legs. She looked at me with dark, sorrowful eyes. Your sister has a tighter cunt than you. I wonder whether you\u2019re born that way, or if it\u2019s just because she\u2019s so young.\u201d (From Bulbjerg)<\/p>\n

These disturbing tales will potentially stay with you for years; they have certainly haunted me since 2006, when I first read the collection in Danish. Rereading Baboon<\/em> in English was an immense pleasure, thanks to an incredible translation by Denise Newman who managed to capture the beauty of Aidt\u2019s descriptive prose while maintaining a sense of urgency within the lines:<\/p>\n

\u201cSuddenly we found ourselves in the middle of an astonishing landscape: luminous, white sand dunes on all sides, wind swept, small trees twisting under the vast open sky. We gasped joyfully as though coming up for air after being under water too long. We stood there looking around, our eyes blinking after staring at the gravel road in the dark forest for so long. Even the smell was different here, salty and fresh, the sea had to be close by. But we lost our bearings long ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aidt\u2019s talent for combining brutality and beauty is, in my opinion, nothing less than extraordinary. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Another Dane who deserves honorable mention in the BTBA<\/span> is Dorthe Nors. Her short story collection Karate Chop<\/i><\/a> (Graywolf Press\/A Public Space) is a delightfully fast and punchy read, expertly rendered by translator Martin Aitken. Nors\u2019 combination of light language and dark humor is captivating -not only within each individual story, but also in the way the stories complement each other. From the tragicomic self-proclaimed Buddhist, to the man who googles female killers when his wife is asleep, to the heron in Frederiksberg Gardens with mites living in its underfeathers:<\/p>\n

\u201cLast winter I saw one slouching on the back of a bench with its long, scrawny neck. Its feet were completely white and it barely even reacted when I walked past. The way the wind ruffled its neck feathers made me want to go back and sit down next to it. It was the way the suffering had to be drawn out like that, the way herons never really muster the enthusiasm. But I won\u2019t touch birds, alive or dead.\u201d (from “The Heron”)<\/p>\n

Nors\u2019 short story “The Heron” was the first Danish piece to be published in The New Yorker, and it truly does work well as the literary centerpiece of the perfectly unpredictable Karate Chop<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katrine \u00d8gaard Jensen is an editor-at-large for Asymptote and the editor-in-chief for Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art. It\u2019s December. I still have a shit-ton of books left to read for the BTBA, and the very thought of writing a blogpost about my favorite contenders is giving me mild anxiety. But, as a Chuang […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[57276,56756],"class_list":["post-299986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-btba-2015","tag-katrine-ogaard-jensen"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299986","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\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333716,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299986\/revisions\/333716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}