Oh, man, [...] an intellectual. I had to pick an intellectual. They all revert.

Thomas Pynchon, V., New York: Bantam, 1964; 111

Couldn’t have said it better.

From XKCD, via depe

Also, UK publisher Old Street Books released last month the first English translation of Blecher’s Inimi cicatrizate (Scarred Hearts, trans. Henry Howard), advertising it as “a never before translated classic of modern European literature”. So far the book has received mixed reviews, ranging from “a lost classic that did not need to be found…an uneven mix of Thomas Mann and Mills & Boon” (Mark Thwaite, The Independent), to “worthwhile and impressive” (Complete Review) to “a masterpiece, and all the more poignant for being so beadily accurate about human behaviour in extremis” (Paul Bailey in his introduction to the novel).

In related Romanian-literature-in-translation news, the Observer Translation Project is up and running, featuring previously untranslated Romanian fiction (now translated into En/Fr/Ge/It/Sp/Du/Pol) as well as critical essays (En) on the featured writers and on contemporary Romanian lit in general. The first two numbers have been dedicated to Ștefan Bănulescu and Gheorghe Crăciun, respectively. I strongly recommend the excerpt from Crăciun’s Pupa Russa for a lovely account of going to school and learning to read in the People’s Republic of Romania. Kudos to the translator!

AUG. 3
As director one is part teacher, part shrink, part father figure, guru. Is it any wonder then that as the weeks have passed, Scarlett and Penélope have both developed crushes on me? The fragile female heart. I notice poor Javier looking on enviously as the actresses bed me with their eyes, but I’ve explained to the boy that unbridled feminine desire for a cinema icon, particularly one who wears a sneer of cold command, is to be expected. [...] I never like mixing business with pleasure, but I may have to slake the lust of each one in turn to get the film completed.

AUG. 20
Made love with Scarlett and Penélope simultaneously in an effort to keep them happy. Ménage gave me great idea for the climax of the movie. Rebecca kept pounding on the door, and I finally let her in, but those Spanish beds are too small to handle four, and when she joined, I kept getting bounced to the floor.

Excerpts from Woody’s Spanish Diary from the making of Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Hopefully, I’ll get around to seeing it later this week.

I’ll be in Budapest next week, so if you know any:

• nice places to hang out and have a drink
• English bookstores with a good selection of new and/or used books
• vintage clothes stores

please leave a comment here. Any other cool tips about what (not) to do in Budapest?
Thanks!

MGMT, “Time to Pretend”, from Oracular Spectacular, 2007

It’s disco & synth-pop, catchy & kitschty & glam, dancey & anthem-like. Oh, and what lovely lyrics!

Sorry about the streaky version of the video – the official video is unfortunately disabled for embedding. Just listen to the song, ok?

Now back to translating & editing.
Yeah, it’s overwhelming, but what else can I do.
Get jobs in offices, and wake up for the morning commute.

Hell, no!

Now that the idiosyncratic blush is no longer a mystery, we can move on to another particularly perplexing question. Oh yeah, it’s time for another installment of our favorite guessing game.

Literary Detective: Today’s case, boy?
Apprentice: Who described a takeoff in a Comet on Remembrance Sunday? Code: Aeroplanes 1. Looks like a tough case, chief.
Literary Detective: When it’s a comet, it’s always a tough case, boy. Especially when that comet is not exactly a comet. Got it?

Well, some of you have suggested Mark Twain (still, Remembrance Sunday in his times?!), others thought it must be a war poet, e.g. Siegfried Sassoon. But no convincing evidence so far.

Let’s read together this wonderful poem by the wonderful Philip Larkin:

Hurrying to catch my Comet
One dark November day,
Which soon would snatch me from it
To the sunshine of Bombay,
I pondered pages Berkeley
Not three weeks since had heard,
Perceiving Chatto darkly
Through the mirror of the Third.
Crowds, colourless and careworn,
Had made my taxi late,
Yet not till I was airborne
Did I recall the date -
That day when Queen and Minister
And Bands of Guards and all
Still act their solemn-sinister
Wreath – rubbish in Whitehall
It used to make me throw up,
These mawkish nursery games:
O when will England grow up?
- But I outsoar the Tames,
And dwindle off down Auster
To greet Professor Lai
(He once met Morgan Foster),
My contact and my pal.

Philip Larkin, Naturally the Foundation Will Bear Your Expenses, emphases mine.

So Remembrance Day is not explicitly mentioned in the poem – would have been too easy, right? But I hope you will agree that lines 2 & 12-16 are an obvious reference to this specific holiday.

Apparently, I am the first to come up with this answer. This means…oh well, not much, just that I am unofficially great. And that lots of readers will be brought into the welcoming arms of this blog.

Yours truly,

The indefatigable Literary Detective

Most of you have ended up here via search strings containing the words “blush”, “heat”, “water”. Or simply by asking one of the questions in the TLS/Faber quiz (see previous post) – verbatim.

So I decided to lend my expertise in the “blush that heats bath water”- issue, by offering you the following excerpt:

[...] the ancient lady bent to kiss the girls and was alarmed to find that her lips had been mildly burned by a sudden rush of heat to Sufiya Zinobia’s cheek; the burn was bad enough to necessitate twice-daily applications of lip salve for a week.

The affliction was real enough. Miss Shahbanouu, the Parsee ayah whom Bliquis had employed on her return to Karachi, complained on her first day that when she gave Sufiya Zinobia a bath the water had scalded her hands, having been brought close to boiling point by a red flame of embarrassment that spread from the roots of the damaged girl’s hair to the tips of her curling toes.

To speak plainly: Sufiya Zinobia blushed uncontrollably whenever her presence in the world was noticed by others. But she also, I believe, blushed for the world.

Salman Rushdie, Shame, New York: Picador, 1983; p. 124 (emphasis mine)

Have fun with the other questions! And do let me know if you find the answers to Trains 1 & 4, Madhouses 2, Bodily Oddities 4 & 5, Criminals 5.

Yours truly,

The Literary Detective

Whose blush could heat bath water?
Which large fruit squashed two women?
Whose amputated leg was returned in a brown-paper parcel?
Which novel opens with seasick passengers singing for a showbiz evangelist?

And, saving the best for last:
Which light-fingered lesbian was imprisoned in a lunatic asylum?

Anyone up for this lit-quiz? Any suggestions are, of course, welcome.

This is one of the greatest antidepressant songs ever. Arcade Fire, “No Cars Go”, from Neon Bible, 2007.