I was confident that I could find an editor and the readership for a translation
ADAM MORRISNoll is highly respected in Brazil, and at the same time divisive, somewhat like Hilda Hilst. Neither of them enjoys the universal acclaim you might associate with Clarice Lispector, whom everyone adores, myself included.
More Adam Morris Quotes
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Dreamlike sequencing is perhaps one of João Gilberto Noll’s most remarkable triumphs in Quiet Creature on the Corner.
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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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Jorge Luis Borges had the soapbox and the authority to complain about this myopic understanding of the duty of Latin American writers
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An easy example would be the Portuguese escuridão:
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English offers both obscurity and dark or darkness, and some translators will tell you the Latinate word is generally reserved for poetic and figurative expressions, while the Germanic word is used for colloquial and idiomatic use.
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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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I only translate authors whose work already interests me as a reader, and that’s a decision I make based on multiple encounters with an author’s work.
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I don’t think there’s anything that I would call essentially Brazilian in João Gilberto Noll work. In that regard, it translates very well to a cosmopolitan audience.
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One of my methods for developing my own voice in fiction, a process I am taking very slowly and deliberately, is through these very intense encounters with certain writers.
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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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Jorge Luis Borges was lamenting a variety of Orientalism that was used to measure the alleged authenticity of Argentine and Latin American writers in the midcentury.
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Reading across three languages is a way for me to diversify my intake as a reader, not to tunnel into certain categories or demographics.
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Some critics have commented that understanding the specific Brazilian political context of the novel is helpful for reading Quiet Creature. This may be true, but it’s not prerequisite for understanding it.
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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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This neglect of a very important Brazilian writer is, in my view, the result of Brazil’s relative isolation from what metropolitan tastemakers.
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