Have you read Korrektur by Thomas Bernhard, or the English translation by the late Sophie Wilkins, Correction? If you haven't, come back when you have.

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The ventriloquial narrator of the book, Roithamer,'s text is introduced in the German by ", so Roithamer", which you might translate into English by ", says Roithamer" or ", wrote Roithamer" or ", according to Roithamer", none of which preserves the rhythm of the original. The Bernhard sound is at least as important as the Bernhard content. So Sophie Wilkins renders ", so Roithamer" ", so Roithamer".

"so" is not "so". "Roithamer" is "Roithamer". I wonder how odd this looks to people who don't know German.

posted at: 11:49 | path: /OE | permanent link to this entry

This week Google started to offer an interactive scrolly map of the UK built by machines for, as far as I, machines. There is no orography, no contour lines, no lees, no drainage patterns. Nobody could tell from Google Maps where the railway line I take to work sinks out of bright sunlight into cold fog, never to emerge.

It's like a police map of Glasgow or Algiers, except the invisible map pins mark businesses rather than crime scenes or insurgents.

I'm bored, so I want something disruptive. Multimedia messaging might be more use if you could photograph a mystery vegetable or waterfowl and have it identified. Why can't the service for identifying pop music work for birdsong?

This reminds me to remind myself that I like Messiaen.

posted at: 11:25 | path: /maunderings | permanent link to this entry

Some of the writers who have had most influence on me have vexing near-homonyms, who, I can imagine, are the favourites of some Corin or Calum, or, more literarily, Céline or Colette, somewhere. O'Brien, Edna, sits on the shelves where I would hope for O'Brien, Flann. Sebald with an a has his Sebold with an o.

I hadn't been in a bookshop for about a month when I decided, half an hour in hand, to look for something by Thomas Bernhard in Waterstone's. Anyone who reads The Bookseller will know already that there was no Bernhard. There was, however, plenty of Louis. De. Bernières.

Out of the six of them, only Edna, Sebold and De Bernières are still alive.

posted at: 23:01 | path: /maunderings | permanent link to this entry

The German for banal is banal. I was expecting banell.

posted at: 22:53 | path: /D | permanent link to this entry

The post-independence dictatorships in Indonesia banned traditional farming on terraced slopes because, you see, it reduces the available surface area to what you would have if the land were flat. The greater the slope, the greater the surface area.

posted at: 21:02 | path: /aletheia | permanent link to this entry

The albedo of swan plumage is so high that its wearer is obliged to concentrate vitamin D in its liver, making it the only poisonous waterfowl.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was interviewed for quarter of an hour on the radio today, and he didn't mention swans once, which is impossible, as you will find if you try it yourself.

posted at: 19:44 | path: /aletheia | permanent link to this entry