As a translator, Davis is known for fidelity, clarity, and, in the case of Proust, decluttering . . . Yet the collection is not, mostly, about problems with other people’s translations but the process of working on her own—a kind of shop talk we’re allowed to listen in on . . . Davis once said in an interview that she would find it ‘almost morally or ethically wrong’ to deliberately impose her own style on a translation. Her scrupulousness is, perhaps, a counterbalance to the translator’s power, and to the peremptory instinct that prompts translation in the first place.” —Elaine Blair, The New York Review of Books
“Whatever the topic, Davis is always superb company: erudite, adventurous, surprising . . . Davis extracts endless thrills from the painstaking process [of translation]. Her essays do a beautiful job of transmitting that satisfaction to the reader . . . A book that contains an incredible amount of life-enhancing morsels.” —Molly Young, The New York Times Book Review
“When Davis breaks down the work of writing, she can be very funny, often at her own expense . . . The pieces in Essays Two brim with daring experiments . . . There is an element of knight-errantry, quest, romantic fatalism as she pursues the elusive foreign language, and often a distant century.” —Ange Mlinko, London Review of Books
"[Essays Two] offers overwhelming proof of the benefits to a writer of a practice of translation . . . [R]eaders with no interest in translation, little taste for essays and zero desire to become writers themselves will nonetheless find themselves burning through its 571 pages with equal parts confusion (What on earth is happening to me?) and relief (Thank God this is happening to me!), and, finally, recognition that the mind we're meeting on the page is awake to the world in ways that feel necessary and new." —Wyatt Mason, The New York Times
"We come away from Essays Two with renewed respect for a writer whose grasp of languages is profound, and whose capacity to shape-shift from one to another is quite exceptional." —Phillip Lopate, The Times Literary Supplement
"[Essays Two is] a guide . . . to new dimensions of thought. Davis makes translation seem like a sublime exercise of mind and self." —Adam Colman, The Boston Globe
"While writing about writing can sometimes wander into theoretical, navel-gazing territory, Davis’s approach here is thrillingly concrete. Several pieces describe, in vivid, granular detail, her process for translating the first volume of Proust. She pops the hood and lets us see how the literary gears turn." —Cornelia Channing, Vulture
“In this riveting and erudite collection, Davis [moves] with ease between the technical challenges posed by a complex text and her personal relationship with literature . . . Thorough, idiosyncratic, and inimitable, Davis is the kind of intelligent and attentive reader a book is lucky to find. Readers, in turn, are lucky to have this collection, a worthy addition to the Davis canon.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“I think a good rule for living is always read Lydia Davis . . . Davis on writing is generous and specific in a way that reveals how much smarter she is than almost everyone without being the least bit alienating.” —Jessie Gaynor, Lit Hub
"A celebration of the beautiful and bewildering intermittences of language . . . Davis is a literary treasure." —Jonathan Russell Clark, Star Tribune
“A vivid portrait of the translating life. Davis is known for both her precise, uber-concise short fiction and her translations of Proust, Flaubert, and others. In this immersive collection, she offers a second (following Essays One) in-depth exploration of foreign languages and the art of translation. . . . For those wondering what translators do and how they do it, this collection is a must.” —Kirkus Reviews
06/01/2021
A master particularly of short-form fiction who was a National Book Award finalist for Varieties of Disturbance: Stories and winner of the Man Booker International Prize for her oeuvre, Davis is also an accomplished translator. Here she collects all her essays on translating Proust, Flaubert, and Michel Leiris; learning a world language through reading; and staying for an extended time in the Van Gogh-brightened city of Arles. With a 25,000-copy first printing.
2021-08-25
A vivid portrait of the translating life.
Davis is known for both her precise, uber-concise short fiction and her translations of Proust, Flaubert, and others. In this immersive collection, she offers a second (following Essays One) in-depth exploration of foreign languages and the art of translation. As a girl, learning German as a second language created a “hunger” in her to find out what words “mean.” The author begins by describing the 21 pleasures she gets from translating, including how it helps with her own writing; she enjoys subsuming herself in the writer and another culture and the pure joyous comfort that comes from it. She prefers beginning a translation without reading the book. Davis had already translated more than 30 French books before undertaking the daunting process, which she describes in luscious detail, of translating Proust’s Swann’s Way. In an essay on learning Spanish, she offers advice on how children should learn a foreign language, explaining how she learned by reading a Spanish translation of Tom Sawyer. Essays on translating “one kind of English to another”—e.g., converting Sidney Brooks’ memoir, Our Village, into a poem—and why she does these as experiments are fascinating. The experience of translating Michel Leiris’ The Rules of the Game“was heady because, for the first time in my translating life, I felt like a conduit through which the original French was effortlessly passing to become, instantly, an English equivalent, even a close English equivalent, in some way identical to the French, as though I had achieved some version of Borges’s Menardian ideal.” Other languages Davis discusses are Dutch, Gascon, and the “two kinds of Norwegian.” Taking on a new translation of the oft-translated Madame Bovary, Davis, the inveterate translator, writes, “the more the better.” Numerous examples of her and others’ translations are included throughout.
For those wondering what translators do and how they do it, this collection is a must.
