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What I've Been Reading
1. Love, Life, Goethe: Lessons of the Imagination from the Great German Poet, by John Armstrong. The author does not demonstrate overwhelming expertise but this is nonetheless not a bad place to start on the most neglected of all the great writers.
2. The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West, by Mark Lilla. Why Schleiermacher really matters, how Kant painted himself into a corner trying to solve the problems laid out by Rousseau, and why it all springs from Hobbes. I found this well above average for its genre, though you must have a taste for Straussian-like books where big ideas clash at the macro level and there is little attempt at any kind of empirical resolution.
3. How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom, by Garry Kasparov. This is a fun book, except that life mostly doesn't imitate chess. Chess is characteristic for its lack of self-deception; it is hard to avoid knowing where you stand in the hierarchy and excuses are few and far between. That's why most chess players are depressed. Kasparov seems to save his self-deception for politics; let's hope he is still alive a year from now.
4. Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, by Richard Rhodes. This favorite book of Jason Kottke is first-rate non-fiction, it is also one of the best books on the Cold War.
5. The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa. One of the best studies of the psychology of political power and the connection between tyranny and the erotic. A fun albeit sometimes harrowing read. Another superb translation by Edith Grossman, might she be the best translator ever?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 13, 2007 at 05:41 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
I don't know Tyler, I'm as big a Vargas Llosa fan as you are, but I didn't finish this one. Perhaps the translation was better than the original.
I am looking forward to Travesuras de la niña mala.
Posted by: John S. at Nov 13, 2007 7:30:04 AM
To me, Chess players do seem somewhat grouchy, but Go players don't. Yet Go is not shy about letting you know where you are in the hierarchy, in no uncertain terms. Go's natural handicap system may in fact make it clearer: I think people were rated 3 dan or 1 dan or whatever centuries before the Chess world came up with ELO ratings. So if you and I are correct that Chess players are grouchy, and I'm correct that Go players aren't, then something other than uncomfortable knowledge of one's position in the hierarchy is probably at work.
There seem to be other personality differences too: I've played in perhaps ten times more Go tournaments than Chess tournaments, but I've still encountered more gross misbehavior in Chess tournaments than in Go tournaments. (There's plenty of gross misbehavior on anonymous Go servers on the Internet, though.)
Posted by: William Newman at Nov 13, 2007 8:41:09 AM
Tyler - the Goethe link does not go to the Goethe book.
Posted by: Boris at Nov 13, 2007 8:50:35 AM
If you like Dark Sun you should read Rhodes' first installment "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." The first half of the book is about the advances in theoretical physics that led to the Bomb and it's easily the most exciting treatment of that era and probably the best science writing I've read.
Posted by: adam at Nov 13, 2007 9:35:49 AM
Just wanted to point out that the link to the Chess book actually goes to "Stillborn God".
Posted by: Rohit at Nov 13, 2007 10:03:54 AM
Reading Grossman's translation of Don Quixote now, which is excellent. Best ever? She's on my all-star team with Pevear and Volokhonsky and John Woods.
Posted by: John Murray at Nov 13, 2007 10:07:31 AM
"The Feast of the Goat" is my second favorite Vargas Llosa novel after "The War of the End of the World".
Posted by: nu at Nov 13, 2007 10:15:19 AM
"Kasparov seems to save his self-deception for politics; let's hope he is still alive a year from now."
He'll be fine. Killing him would be too bad a move in terms of PR.
Posted by: LemmusLemmus at Nov 13, 2007 10:46:28 AM
Even though written by the same author around the same topic, 'Dark Sun' is a totally different book than 'The Making Of The Atomic Bomb". 'Bomb' focused primarily upon the physics, while 'Sun' devotes a lot more time to the politics.
BOTH are outstanding reads.
Posted by: michael at Nov 13, 2007 11:03:28 AM
"Another superb translation by Edith Grossman, might she be the best translator ever?"
For a comment like this to make any sense implies:
1: You've read it in the original language, closely and thoroughly, the way you read a love letter
2: You've read it in translation, in the same manner
3: You have a profound proficiency in both languages, enough that you have a feel for particularities of idiom, phrasing, rhythm of speech, allusions to other work, etc. For example, I've lived a year and a half in Spanish-speaking countries and feel myself to be nowhere close to this level of proficiency.
Given these incredibly steep requirements, I'm always astounded when I read reviews talking about how something is "A superb translation." Do the NYT book reviewers really have enough Homeric Greek to know whether Fagles is better than Lattimore? This seems unlikely.
All that said, do you really mean it's a "superb translation?" Or do you mean that it reads superbly, in translation?
Posted by: Shane at Nov 13, 2007 1:36:39 PM
"All that said, do you really mean it's a "superb translation?" Or do you mean that it reads superbly, in translation?"
Perhaps he means both. A book that “reads superbly in translation” almost certainly means it’s a superb translation. This is because few books are improved by translation. So for a book to read superbly in translation means two things; it must have been superbly written in its original language, and it must not have lost much in the translation, meaning it is a superb translation.
Posted by: Mason at Nov 13, 2007 2:40:21 PM
I second (or third) on Rhodes's book on the Atom Bomb - excellent.
Posted by: dearieme at Nov 13, 2007 2:58:06 PM
So for a book to read superbly in translation means two things; it must have been superbly written in its original language, and it must not have lost much in the translation, meaning it is a superb translation.
Another possibility is that the translator is a much better writer than the original author.
I'm thinking of Goethe translating William Gibson novels into German. Wouldn't the translated books be great? Much better than the originals.
Posted by: doctorpat at Nov 13, 2007 8:57:11 PM
My vote for best translator has to go to Thomas Cleary. His translations of the Avatamsaka sutra and the Blue cliff record are revelatory. I'm also impressed by the fact that he can translate from classical Japanese and Sanskrit...
Isaac Crawford
Blogging in Yemen
www.isaharr.com
Posted by: Isaac Crawford at Nov 14, 2007 4:20:30 AM
Posted by: 鑽石 at Apr 2, 2008 11:20:41 PM
