Austin Kleon – Page 601

MY RUSSIAN READING LIST

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

HEM READING THE ROOSHIANS

Monday, December 26, 2005

Without [Constance] Garnett, the nineteenth-century “Rooshians,” as Ezra Pound called them, would not have exerted such a rapid influence on the American literature of the early twentieth. In “A Moveable Feast,” Hemingway recounts scouring Sylvia Beach’s shelves for the Russians and finding in them a depth and accomplishment he had never known. Before that, he writes, he was told that Katherine Mansfield was “a good short-story writer, even a great short-story writer,” but now, after reading Chekhov, she seemed to him like “near-beer.” To read the Russians, he said, “was like having a great treasure given to you…”

BUT! Says Richard Pevear:

“Hemingway read Garnett’s Dostoyevsky and he said it influenced him. But Hemingway was just as influenced by Constance Garnett as he was by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Garnett breaks things into simple sentences, she Hemingwayizes Dostoyevsky, if you see what I mean.”

– from “The Translation Wars,” a fantastic article on translating Russian lit written by David Remnick for the Nov. 7, 2005 NEW YORKER

THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Merry Christmas.

ELMORE LEONARD’S 10 RULES OF WRITING

Friday, December 23, 2005

All rules, of course, can be broken:

-adapted from “Easy on the Hooptedoodle,” first published in the NYTimes

click here to hear Dutch read the whole article

LEONARD’S PRESENT PARTICIPLE

Thursday, December 22, 2005

…the essence of Elmore is to be found in his use of the present participle. What this means, in effect, is that he has discovered a way of slowing down and suspending the English sentence – or let’s say the American sentence, because Mr. Leonard is as American as jazz. Instead of writing ‘Warren Ganz III lived up in Manalapan, Palm Beach County’, Mr. Leonard writes: ‘Warren Ganz III, living up in Manalapan, Palm Beach County’. He writes, ‘Bobby saying’, and then opens quotes. He writes, ‘Dawn saying’, and then opens quotes. We are not in the imperfect tense (Dawn was saying) or the present tense (Dawn says) or the historic present (Dawn said). We are in a kind of marijuana tense (Dawn saying), creamy, wandering, weak-verbed. Such sentences seem to open up a lag in time, through which Mr. Leonard easily slides, gaining entry to his players’ hidden minds. He doesn’t just show you what these people say and do. He shows you where they breathe.”

– Martin Amis’ review of RIDING THE RAP