22 October 07
Sox Win The ALCS
We watched the game over at our friend Chris’s house, who managed to share the experience with her sister Sue in New England via webcam. At left is an image of Pica, Chris, and me taken early in the game.
Despite the 11-2 score, it was a close game until the end of the 7th when Boston rookie and Yolo County native Dustin Pedroia hit a two-run home run off of Cleveland reliever Rafael Betancourt who had hitherto in the series been lights out. The Red Sox picked up 6 more runs in the 8th to put the game truly out of reach.
20 October 07
Blogger Meetup in Pinole
More on this here. We saw several of these. Before the meetup we did this. Then as we drove home we listened to this.
And for a dissection of Watson’s racist statements published last week, see this.
20 October 07
Drawing Through The Day
A couple nights ago we went to a presentation by artist John Muir Laws at the monthly meeting of the Yolo Audubon Society about his 6-year project to illustrate a new field guide to the Sierra Nevada. His beautiful illustrations inspired me, and today I ended up taking the day off and doing a fair number of drawings, many of them with the new set of pastel pencils. Here is a drawing of a magpie skull with chili peppers.
17 October 07
War and Peace: A New Translation
I’m making slow but delicious progress on War and Peace. A book this long and this good is not to be gobbled, and my reading so far has been limited to before bedtime, already disrupted these days because of post-season baseball (the less said about THAT, the better). Daylight is less and less but when there is any I’m digging and digging in the garden, racing to cage my raised beds against burrowing rodents (and contemplating above-ground cages too against bunnies, ground squirrels, and birds) so I can get my winter vegetables in before it gets too cold (though as Numenius’ brother, who lives in Indiana, said on Sunday night, “cold” is a relative term…). Anyway, as anyone who’s ever dug in a garden knows, there is always at least four times as much dirt as you think, no matter how big (or how small) the hole. It’s slow. And I don’t want to hurt my back, so it’s even slower.
But slow digging gives you ample time to think, and I’ve been thinking a lot about translation lately. I got the Maude and Maude translation of War and Peace out of the library a couple of weeks ago and it’s certainly very readable, comfortable, quaintly archaic with kindly, if slightly pedantic, footnotes (it was published in the early 1940s and features Clifton Fadiman’s comparison of Napoleon’s folly with Hitler’s in a fascinating and prescient foreword). I was then alerted to a translation, published just this week, by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, a translating dynamo couple living in Paris. I bought it yesterday.
A quick dig through a decent library catalog unearths well over 15 English translations (many long out of print) of this book. Why so many? Having worked for a publisher I can picture, and hear in my head, the wrangling that must have gone on in editorial meetings as the Advocate dismissed all previous versions, arguing that this translation would be the best, most complete, most contemporary, most relevant, most true to the original, most poetic, most imbued with the spirit of Tolstoy. It’s a hugely expensive undertaking, and the folks at Knopf must really be expecting people to run out and buy the new translation (list price $39, obviously heavily subsidized by the Borzoi imprint) even if they have an older one (or, if they are Language Hat, several) on their shelf. A gamble. Banking, perhaps, on the stardom of the translators?
Looking, so far, as though it was worth it. Reading Richard Pevear’s account of how they work on a translation as a partnership makes me shudder at the sheer effort involved (she, a native speaker of Russian, does the first pass, closely following the Russian; he then works through it, referring to the Russian throughout, making sure it reads as “English”; they then work together through his version, refining and perfecting it.) (I love her insistence on a phrase Tolstoy used in the Russian describing horses galloping over a bridge, “transparent sounds,” which has consistently been translated as a “thud” or “clang” of hoofs, both of which have perfectly adequate Russian equivalents; Pevear says “transparent sounds” is “pure Tolstoy” and notes how if there hadn’t been two of them working on it it would have gotten overlooked.)
Translation is always a labor of love. I don’t care how much these two got paid for this one: it can never, ever have been enough to compensate them for the three years of their lives that went into it. I haven’t read much so far (dithering between starting at the beginning or continuing on to Austerlitz and beyond and returning to the beginning when I’ve finished the whole novel) but it’s going to get read one way or the other.
The Reading Room at the New York Times is working through the new translation, led by Sam Tenenhouse. If you’ve ever wondered whether to read this book, the time might be now… or reread it, in its new English incarnation, the American edition at least set in Tshichold’s Sabon and printed on luscious smooth paper, ragged fore-edges, embossed gold foil neo-Victorian dust jacket, a comfortable but sumptuous brick on your lap for weeks…
Postcript: Ecco has also just published a new translation, by Andrew Bromfield, War and Peace: Original Version. It is essentially Tolstoy’s first draft and much shorter than what he ended up with after three years of revisions. Viking published a version last year by Anthony Briggs. Wow. That editorial meeting discussion must have been really interesting…
15 October 07
Every Hue of Dull
A trip down I-80 yesterday afforded yet another opportunity to reflect on how unimaginative the colors of cars that are available on today’s market. With the exception of midlife-crisis red, one can find almost any color out there, but the color saturation level is, say, no more than 12%. And heaven forbid trying to find a two-tone color scheme.
This New York Times blog post discusses this phenomenon. As commentators suggest, does this have to do with resale value? Or perhaps the desire for camouflage?
14 October 07
Rediscovering the Crowquill
Katherine Tyrrell of Making a Mark has started a new project of reviewing drawing books (and encouraging us all to review them, also). She recently reviewed Jos. A. Smith’s The Pen and Ink Book, which I have sitting on the bookshelf, and I decided to take another look.
( One of the things I like about working in ink is its strength. You have to commit to your line in ink. But that doesn’t mean your line has to be overwhelming; Smith reminded me that using a very fine nib, say a crowquill, with ink can be delicate as well as strong. I hauled out some of my walnut ink from the fridge (the batch I made in 2001 is still going strong) and started dipping.
Drawing a bird a day — and posting it — has given me the chance to become more familiar with bird forms, a practice I welcome and am eager to continue. But I haven’t drawn a while lot else. So yesterday I did some studies of the cats and of Numenius while the baseball game was on…
13 October 07
Falling Apart
Not a good day from the sports point of view. First, some college football:
1. My alma mater team, the Cal Bears, having gone undefeated the first 5 games of the season and reaching the lofty height of being ranked number 2 in the country, a ranking they haven’t had since 1952, were upset by Oregon State 31-28.
2. The UC Davis football team were beaten at home by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo 63-28.
And then baseball:
3. The Red Sox lost to the Cleveland Indians 13-6, the Indians scoring 7 runs in the 11th inning. Ouch. The Indians thus even the best-of-seven series one game to one; the series now moves to Cleveland for three games.
12 October 07
Sweet Caroline
Well, the Red Sox won the first game against the Indians, 10-3. A possible six more games to go, though they hope it’s only four.
(I’m hoping Sabathia shows a bit less respect for the Sox and gives them a stellar pitching performance next time, because he’s a great pitcher and you don’t like to see those ones crumble.)
Good times never seemed so good… SO GOOD! SO GOOD! SO GOOD!
12 October 07
Alert To Campus Pigeons
One of my colleagues this afternoon came in the office and said he had just seen a female peregrine falcon flying overhead south of Wickson Hall where I work. He had never seen a peregrine before on campus. He later checked with Marcel upstairs who confirmed that the perry has been around campus for several weeks, and frequently roosts on top of one of the water towers on the south side of campus.
10 October 07
Things To Do
Seems like no day goes by without someone else suggesting a thing to do or play or see or go to on October 20, a week from Saturday.
There’s Foxy’s Fall Century, which we’d work if we were here. There’s a Book Arts Jam in Los Altos. There’s an Artist Trading Card Workshop in Sacramento. There’s Pacificon.
There is also, dear me, a whole load of planting to do before it gets cold. We had our first real rain last night, and delicious it was too. I’m very, very late — should have done this weeks ago. I bought some Calochortus bulbs at the Arboretum Plant Faire on Saturday and need to get them in the ground, but the beds all need lining too. I at least bought the wire. Now it’s a race. I’m going to be modest this winter in what I plant, but there’s still work to do!!
But on the 20th we’re going to do this instead. If you read Creek Running North and are in the area, you’re invited…