Small, independent, or university presses get little glory. These publishers are generally not in the business in order to make heaps of money or attain celebrity status. Books are selected with much thought and care but probably with little hope they will ever make it onto a bestseller list.

Literary prizes, however, can sometimes boost a publisher’s reputation and affect sales. Take, for instance, the Nobel Prize for literature. The Nobel committee tends to bestow its awards upon relatively unknown authors, at least to readers in the United States. This, as you can imagine, generates a lot of interest and curiosity. When French writer J.M.G. Le Clézio won Read the rest of this entry »

The blog Cafebook recently discussed Georges Perec (1936-1982), one of the most innovative French writers of recent times. I live much of the year in Nice, so after I read the post, I walked down the street to Fnac and picked up his short novel Les Choses (Things, 1965). As I soon found out, it’s a book best read on a couch when the air is warm and the wind is blowing gently through a window and when there’s nothing better to do than ponder big ideas—in this case, youth and freedom and the curious pull toward security, comfort, and beautiful objects.

Why read this book? It’s intellectual without being pretentious. It talks about serious ideas, though in a simple, fascinating story. It takes place in the 1960s but is concerned with something interesting to think about during today’s global economic downturn—the culture of consumption.

I was grateful to Cafebook, written by Emma Zucchi, for talking about Perec, who died of lung cancer at the age of 45. Les Choses, his first book, was a big success in France and translated into numerous languages.

In the United States Perec has a loyal following, and the translated version, Things, is published by David R. Godine. In this era of best sellers and declining midlists, it’s great to see a foreign writer continue to fascinate Americans. Thanks, Godine, for publishing Things!

Even if you don’t speak French, here is a video that gives a glimpse of Perec and his mannered but entrancing mode of expression. In the video Perec, just 30 years old and dressed in a suit, discusses Les Choses.

For those who speak French, here’s part 2.

Literature in translation has long been regarded as a remote and economically challenging niche in American publishing. There is a common perception, both in the United States and abroad, that American readers simply cannot be bothered with books that don’t originate in English.

Horace Engdahl, a Swedish literary historian and critic, who presides over the Nobel Prize jury, caused quite an uproar last fall when he remarked to the Associated Press that American authors were not in real contention for the most prestigious international award in literature. “The US is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature . . . That ignorance is restraining.” Indeed, the Nobel Prize has not gone to an American author since Toni Morrison received it in 1993.

A week after Engdahl’s inflammatory comments, the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. Le Clézio’s books, it so happens, are not widely available in translation in the United States. The Prospector (1993), a translation of Le Clézio’s Le Chercheur d’or (Gallimard, 1985), is published by David R. Godine, Inc., a small, independent press in Boston whose recently launched series, Verba Mundi, features some of the most prominent names in world literature. (Other publishers of recent Le Clézio translations include the University of Chicago Press, The University of Nebraska Press, and Curbstone Press.)

Is it only the so-called provincialism of American readers that’s to blame for the stunted growth of literature in translation in the United States? Champions of the neglected genre point out that the lack of multilingualism among American editors (by comparison to their European counterparts) makes it hard for them to judge with confidence which foreign language works have promise. Others note that translated works are seldom backed by vigorous marketing efforts—such that lackluster sales become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Next week I will revisit the question of “focused, long-range editorial vision,” the principle upon which Europa Editions is founded.

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