I primarily write nonfiction. Research, reflection, and spending time with ideas are important to me. So, this is how I spend most of my time writing – in thought.
ADAM MORRISAnd these are universal relational matters, not necessarily particular to any country.
More Adam Morris Quotes
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The Brazilian national identity is not one of João Gilberto Noll primary concerns. This does not mean social critique is absent: race, gender, and class relations are considered in Quiet Creature.
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If João Gilberto Noll were writing in French or German or even Russian, it’s likely he’d be more broadly translated.
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When I think about literature, I think about it in the three languages I read easily – English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
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Strength and power in fiction is being able to resist these intoxicating voices, recognizing that they are the signatures of other writers and not one’s own.
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The authors I prefer are all very different and are not limited to certain genres or even certain time periods.
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Even my editor at Melville House, who championed the project form the outset, told me she was surprised by the response. After this, editors began asking my opinion about which Latin American writers ought to be translated.
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I am not one of those translators who think that working closely with the writer will yield the best translation.
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I translated the novel and still it remains a mystery as to how exactly how this works. Noll thinks more like an experimental filmmaker than a novelist.
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An easy example would be the Portuguese escuridão:
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This makes his writing very pleasing to read: João Gilberto Noll pays attention to detail, but only to certain details. And it’s never easy to foresee which details will send the narrator or the plot in an unsuspected direction.
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The fiction I’ve written and published is certainly inflected by the work of authors I was reading or translating at the time.
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One that actually relates to all Latin American literature: that is, not every author is interested in being a representative of his or her national culture on the global stage.
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Still, I considered it a tremendous injustice that Noll had not been more widely translated and was determined to rectify it.
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Unless you count the political backdrop, which in any case is a familiar one to many international readers
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English can be tricky because there are so many false cognates, but sometimes, as long the idea conveyed is not wrong, these false cognates can themselves offer synonyms or lead to a better alternative word or phrase in translation.
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