Last month on this blog I mentioned an interview in the high-quality literary site known as ReadySteadyBook with Scottish writer Peter Robertson who also lives in Buenos Aires. Peter and I have been corresponding by e-mail and finally had a chance to meet earlier this week over lunch at Al Carbón, which is a rather fine restaurant in the microcentro. (Why did I not bring my camera?)
I was running a few minutes late as I rode the 70 bus from San Telmo across downtown. There’s a certain point with midday traffic in the microcentro that it’s easier and quicker just to get off the bus and walk. Peter was waiting for me at Al Carbón and we then ascended the steps to the upper floor of the restaurant for our meal.
Regular readers of this blog know that I have a rather literary slant. I knew that Peter would be an interesting subject for a post, for which he gave his kind permission. So, I brought out my notebook, though over the course of our very long lunch perhaps Peter asked me more questions than I asked of him. It was one of those engaging, stimulating conversations about literature and culture over wine and a good meal that initiates a new friendship.
Eclectic England
One of the projects that Peter is furiously completing is Eclectic England, a compilation of works by some of the best contemporary writers in England. Eclectic England will be published in the Mad Hatters’ Review on July 1.
Peter’s own experience of living in the East End of London gave rise to the distinguishing aspect of Eclectic England: its multi-ethnicity. The writers chosen for Eclectic England reflect the diversity, the multi-ethnic composition of urban England. Peter said that living in the East End revealed a different London than what he had known previously and he wanted to incorporate that diversity when compiling a selection of writings about contemporary England.
Peter described walking along the street near his apartment in the East End and encountering store windows all in Polish. The mixture was not just Eastern European but also African and Middle Eastern. Peter said that without the experience of living in the East End then this upcoming issue on contemporary English writers likely would consist of more traditional English voices, certainly less “eclectic”.
There is actually so much ground to be covered in Eclectic England that it requires two parts. The first, as I mentioned, will be out on July 1 while the second part will be released in early 2008.
There was a charming delightfulness in Peter’s own voice as he talked about the writers in Eclectic England. While we only had a chance to discuss a few of the many writers appearing in Eclectic England among those are Patience Agbabi, born in Nigeria and raised in London; Aamer Hussein, born in Pakistan but living in Britain since the 1970s; the Iranian born Mimi Khalvati; and George Szirtes, a particularly fascinating Hungarian poet and translator who came to England as a young refugee in the 1950s.
I had to admit to Peter that I wasn’t aware of the tremendous diversity in contemporary English writing. Even as someone very familiar with contemporary American writings, and by American I’m implying the U.S.-centric version of that word (which I only feel the need to clarify since I’m living in South America), I did not realize the diversity of voices in contemporary Britain, but such is my own ignorance. I’m looking forward to reading Eclectic England with the excitement of discovering a world of reading that has remained hidden from me till now.
Eclectic England promises to be a landmark collection of the diversity in contemporary English literature.
Viva Caledonia
Eclectic England isn’t Peter Robertson’s only effort at editing a collection of contemporary writings. Viva Caledonia focuses on twelve contemporary Scottish writers. The ReadySteadyBook interview has a lengthy discussion with Peter about Viva Caledonia that is worth reading. And, of course, diving into the stories, poetry, and the play contained within Viva Caledonia itself is a pleasure.
One of the great benefits served by Eclectic England and Viva Caledonia is that it aids the reader in identifying the best contemporary writing from a particular country. It’s easy to know which writers are the classics, which writers from the 1800s and early 20th century are worth reading, but among readers searching for contemporary writers the task become much more difficult. Even if one can identify good novels, doing the same for short stories and poetry is much more difficult.
Viva Caledonia provides a sampling of the best among Scottish writers while Eclectic England does the same for England.
What about Argentina? What current Argentine writers of short stories and poetry should the world know about?
Literary Translations
As the waiter at Al Carbón refreshed our wine our conversation drifted into a discussion of literary translations. Peter has translated several works from Spanish into English. I particularly enjoyed the brief stories of Juan José Millás that Peter translated. Currently, Peter is translating the Argentine poet Ana Maria Shua into English.
The day before our lunch Peter had visited Uruguay to seek the copyright permission for the translation of a story by Felisberto Hernández. The story is scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of Turnrow, an online literary journal published by the University of Louisiana at Monroe.
Peter and I talked a lot about literary translations, a subject of keen interest to me. While the ideal is to read writers in their original language that is simply not possible in many cases, if not most times. Writer in any language deserve to be read and their works deserve to be exposed to other readers and other cultures through translations.
Peter remarked, “People often make the false distinction that a literary translator is not a writer.” He went on to say, “If there’s one thing that a translator must be, then that is a good writer.”
We talked a bit about writers who also are translators. George Szirtes name came up again as a poet who is also a translator. We talked about Paul Auster, an extraordinary writer who started his writing career as a French translator. The mention of Auster led me to raise the name of Lydia Davis, Auster’s first wife, and herself a fiction writer as well as a French translator, most recently known for her translation of Proust. Incidentally, the most famous translator of Proust, C.K. Scott-Moncrieff, was - like Peter - also a Scotsman.
Peter mentioned that a writer of fiction must admit people into the writer’s own inner world whereas a translator can, in a sense, hide behind the original writer. While Peter is doing a large number of translators these days, he doesn’t want to be typecast just as a translator. He knows that one day soon he will write his own fiction.
With regards to literary translations, Peter said, “While a translation can infuse a text with more vigor, more zest, the translation cannot distort the text, cannot be a disservice to the original. As a translator you have to capture the essence of a story.”
In the ReadySteadyBook interview Peter had stated, “I am convinced that the best translations are transformative and can even be improvements on the original texts.” I also agree with that and was reminded of something by Borges where he wrote that you haven’t really read a book until you’ve read the book and all its translations.
One thing that always has intrigued me about translators is their process. One of the most famous living translators is Gregory Rabassa who translated Cortázar’s Rayuela and García Márquez Cien años de soledad into English. Rabassa is known for translating a work as he reads it rather than reading the entire novel first.
Peter commented that the approach to translation probably differs depending upon if the work is a short story, poem, or novel. Small pieces such as stories and poems easily can be read in their entirety whereas a novel, particularly a very long work, may be well suited to translating as one goes.
Place & Culture
We can never get away from the country and culture of our birth. Peter always is described as Scottish even though he left Scotland when he was 18. Educated in England where he lived for 15 years, he also has lived in a number of countries in addition to Argentina, including Norway. In addition, Peter has spent considerable time in Madrid and is a Spanish resident. However, Peter considers Buenos Aires to be his base and has maintained a home in Buenos Aires for eight years.
As Peter said, “You can never get away from your culture, this is who you are, your identity.” In the ReadySteadyBook interview Peter stated, “the cultural values one inherits permeates one’s works and even give rise to it.”
Peter and I talked about being writers in Argentina and how as foreigners, no matter how long we lived in Buenos Aires, we would never be Argentine. I asked Peter if one could write fiction about a place that is not one’s own. He responded, “You have to be moved by something before you can write about it.” He thought that if he wrote about Argentina in fiction then it would have to be the experience of being a foreigner in Argentina.
As we were discussing this topic of a foreigner writing about Buenos Aires, Peter referred me to a review he wrote of Lawrence Thorton’s novel Imagining Argentina: “Indeed, the book’s title, Imagining Argentina, is no misnomer and it soon becomes clear that Thornton, who has never lived in Argentina, fails to engage with this country’s reality.”
Peter also has written other articles relating to Argentina: a review of Tununa Mercado’s memoir In a State of Memory and a review of Colm Tóibín’s early novel The Story of the Night, which is set in Buenos Aires.
Despite not having lived in Scotland since he was 18, Scotland is somehow never very far from Peter either. There’s a fascinating interview that Peter conducted with artist Calum Colvin in which they talk at length about Scottish identity.
Peter is also working on plans to launch an online Scottish literary journal next year. Calum Colvin will be producing artwork for the Scottish journal. But Peter’s interests obviously go beyond Scotland and he also is developing another online literary journal that will be more international in scope.
An Obsession with Words
The plates had long been cleared from our table at Al Carbón and it was approaching 4 pm, only a few porteño businessmen were left in the restaurant. Before we departed, having known that Peter only started writing in the last few years, I asked him if writing was something he always aspired to do or if it emerged recently. He smiled gently and told me about a memory from when he was seven or eight, a book on the shelf, a stanza that he remembered, and said that he had “always been obsessed with words.”
That phrase hung in the air between us, then Peter said, “Isn’t that what it takes to be a writer? An obsession with words.”
