etc.

Who reads the New Yorker these days? [kottke]

Tinker, noodle, bother, fiddle, fuss, it’s all I seem to be able to do these days. A couple of weeks ago I had one of those really top-notch, high-speed, deliverance weeks at work, when I cleared off the to-do list by the time I went home on Friday and had that airy-high all weekend that comes only from a certain amount of relief. Since then, not so. The to-do list is back to the length of my forearm and every project I begin only gets tinkered/noodled/fussed with, never fully completed. This might have something to do with the stew I’ve been in over my contribution to a forthcoming library publication, my bouts of activity on this have been pissant at best and inefficacious at worst.

But I’ll be taking the weekend off because I have a birthday to celebrate. Birthdays have a way of making you think about how old gets older the older you get. Old was 30 when I was 15, but sitting comfortably on the threshold of 28, not even 70 is seeming old anymore. Celebration will take the form of drinking and feasting with friends, followed by a neighbourhood stroll and picnic in the park, followed by dinner at my folks’, followed by lunch, again in the park, but this time with family and fewer ants and grass stains and such. All over the course of 3 days. I am a lucky person.

I’ve been maintaining a solid non-fiction diet for the last little while and find that the only time I pick up a novel is when one is recommended to me, usually wrapped in boundless praise, by friends, family, colleagues. This one came thusly recommended.

I’m wary of translations. I believe that there are probably some very good and ethical literary translators out there today, but whenever I read a translation, I find myself constantly second-guessing persnickety details: is that an appropriate word in this context? is that what the author really meant? where do you draw the line between conscientious loyalty to the original and minor deviations to ensure that the text works in translation? If I was some sort of language maven, which I am not, I might have some basis for this skepticism. As it is, I’m probably just being over-critical.

While I was vaguely preoccupied with all of these questions while reading this book, I still quite enjoyed it. It’s a story not dissimilar to Stephen King’s The Body (think Stand By Me), but more sensitively recounted. The other thing I was preoccupied with while reading it was what a great film it would make, in the hands of a careful director and unknown actors. So I looked into it and it’s been done, with a writing credit to the author. Which probably accounts for the decent reviews, at least in part. (The film was picked up by Miramax at the Berlin Film Festival, so the media blitz is probably forthcoming.)