2013 — 3 May: Friday
As seems to be "normal" these days a series of early-morning wake-ups has been terminated by a late one. Makes a nice change apart from that inevitable "the hurrieder I go, the behinder I get" effect. I was over with Mike for yesterday evening's video indulgences, assessing the effect of his brand-new projector bulb (good) and the 1996 film "Beautiful Girls" (excellent). I just happened to have a duplicate1 Blu-ray of this title that has now changed ownership since I noticed his collection only featured the original NTSC DVD.
The sun shines on, so I shall breakfast and then take my welcome little cheque from the guvmint to the nearest facility at which it can be shovelled into my little bank account — technically, it's not a "bank" account as I've transferred my financial allegiance to the last Building Society left standing amidst the financial rubble that is the UK.
I've read shamefully little...
... of the "tens of thousands of pages ... encompassing the hundred-fifty-year golden age of Russian literature" mentioned here in Kevin Mahnken's article. Indeed, I have only one book that I recall was translated by Richard Pevear (that being one of my three variant translations of Bulgakov's extraordinary "The Master and Margarita"). And (whisper it quiet) I still prefer Michael Glenny's earlier translation,2 which I picked up in Royston in 1971 while pretending to be an aeronautical engineering student. However, reading Mahnken's amusing piece inevitably reminds me of various exasperated observations to me made by Christa over many years as she tackled or assessed a huge array of (German) translations. To the point where I typeset for her a couple of viewpoints on the subject.
Although this next quote wasn't one of them, it certainly amused her at the time:
No one can read Russian. That is why their books must be translated. The Russian language is very queer. It is very much like English in many ways, but it has not the jollity of George Gissing or AE Houseman. Go, little translator, and render the big Russian books into your little-mother-tongue.
I found it in an essay called Translation. 'Le Style c'est l'homme' in a 1940 'Everyman' edition of Modern Humour that I picked up3 as a 30p bargain in 1976 from the second-hand bookshop in Penn on one of our regular weekend 'comfort' visits to dear Mama after her bereavement but before she relocated herself to the Midlands.
There were two...
... contenders for my attention in Waterstone's after I'd paid in the cheque, fended off an attempt to open yet another account on the spot before giving me a chance of studying its Ts and Cs, and found a 99p roll of 'pretend' Velcro that will do very well for cable ties. Number #1 was a hardback of the first three Foundation novels that, frankly, would only have been worth getting for the introductory notes and, I fear, they took only a couple of minutes to read. Sorry, Sir Tim. Number #2, however, was reeled in very willingly:
Dr Shaphard's first edition passed me by as I had then yet to fall under Austen's spell. Now, much as my acquisition (noted here) of Taschen's definitive set of Little Nemo material capped my Winsor McCay collecting, I suspect this will do for my Austen. It brings to [pause, while I first eat some late lunch, and then ask a database]...
... fifteen the books I have that contain what could be thought of as meta-information. Spread over a 50-year period, that doesn't strike me as an unreasonable number. Meanwhile, I'm irritated to realise that I've missed the Kermode and Mayo film review show because of all the tedious rune-reading around yesterday's council elections.
I shall nip over to Len to snaffle a cuppa and find out if his new toy is large enough to conceal those two, large animals he calls pets.
You can tell...
... you're getting older when you finally bite the bullet and apply a one-point size increase to the font in your favourite text editor. I'm now using 11-point HE_Terminal, which strikes me as a very clear monospace. Sample:
Dream casting?
Now who wouldn't want to see a 'Star Trek' series with these two fine ladies running things?
Needless to say, I greatly enjoyed "Dead like me", "Wonderfalls", and "Pushing Daisies".