Once I looked into it, I was taken aback to learn that pretty much nothing by Joao Gilberto Noll was available in English translation.
ADAM MORRISI 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.
More Adam Morris Quotes
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The transcendent aspect of the psychedelic experience is totally absent.
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The main reason I decided to study Latin American literature was because I’d gotten somewhat bored by the American fiction I was reading. I am not drawn to a specific style or aesthetic.
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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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With My Dog-Eyes by Hilda Hilst got more exposure and reached far more readers than I ever expected.
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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.
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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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I am surprised by the word psychedelic. João Gilberto Noll does not accept realism in a straightforward way, but I am more inclined to call Quiet Creature a realist text than I am to call it a psychedelic one.
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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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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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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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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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I am not one of those translators who think that working closely with the writer will yield the best translation.
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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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I realized I had some cultural capital to spend, and I wanted to use it to introduce another author who might be considered a risk by conventional publishers. Michael Noll was at the top of my list.
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