If João Gilberto Noll were writing in French or German or even Russian, it’s likely he’d be more broadly translated.
ADAM MORRISJorge Luis Borges had the soapbox and the authority to complain about this myopic understanding of the duty of Latin American writers
More Adam Morris Quotes
-
-
I am not one of those translators who think that working closely with the writer will yield the best translation.
ADAM MORRIS -
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.
ADAM MORRIS -
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.
ADAM MORRIS -
I have a few minor rules for myself but I break them all the time. For example, when translating from Romance languages to English, there is often a choice between a Latinate cognate and a Germanic equivalent.
ADAM MORRIS -
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.
ADAM MORRIS -
Still, I considered it a tremendous injustice that Noll had not been more widely translated and was determined to rectify it.
ADAM MORRIS -
Jorge Luis Borges had the soapbox and the authority to complain about this myopic understanding of the duty of Latin American writers
ADAM MORRIS -
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 MORRIS -
I was confident that I could find an editor and the readership for a translation
ADAM MORRIS -
And these are universal relational matters, not necessarily particular to any country.
ADAM MORRIS -
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.
ADAM MORRIS -
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.
ADAM MORRIS -
Borges, in part to legitimize his own Europhilia, correctly pointed out that expecting writers to engage with these romantic nationalist tropes was arbitrary and limiting, a genre that was demonstrative of its own artificiality.
ADAM MORRIS -
Dreamlike sequencing is perhaps one of João Gilberto Noll’s most remarkable triumphs in Quiet Creature on the Corner.
ADAM MORRIS -
So likewise in João Gilberto Noll, readers shouldn’t expect samba and Carnival and football. The Brazilian national identity is not one of his primary concerns.
ADAM MORRIS






