Elkin’s translation reads exceptionally well as English prose. It conveys the frazzled state of Beauvoir’s hero, a young wife and mother, barely in her thirties, as well as Beauvoir’s attitude toward narrative literature, opposed to the experimental forms of the 50s and 60s, and in favor of fiction that was socially motivated, shamelessly didactic, and set clarity of social vision as its practical task. But that does not entail a retread of mimetic naturalism.
Tag: classic fiction
Remembering Cats Eye
Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1989. I haven’t read The Remains of the Day, the book that won, but it doesn’t matter. Cat’s Eye was robbed. Every sentence in the novel’s 498 pages serves the whole beating heart of it. No word is superfluous. Each one is a mini portal, transporting us and the main character, Elaine, back into memories without warning, exactly as Atwood intended.
The Betrayal of a Beautiful Man: Love and Death in Paris in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room
Giovanni’s Room, a book featuring a man who has chosen not to be free, might be considered James Baldwin’s declaration of independence: the book refuses to accept the usual boundaries of nationality, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality, turning these into open…