Two criminals are taking a walk deep in the woods one dark night.
“Boy, it sure is creepy out here,” says the first outlaw.“How do you think I feel?” asks his companion. “I have to walk back alone.”
'Typeset Hopes and Dreams' exhibit
The National Museum of Taiwan Literature has an exhibit running through 2 March, Typeset Hopes and Dreams: Exhibition on Contemporary Czech Literature; see also Shelley Shan's Taipei Times article, NMTL hosts Czech exhibit.
Apparently: "Many of items in the exhibition are displayed in Asia for the first time, including Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal's typewriter" -- how can one resist ?
Kafka translations
In this week's Times Literary Supplement Ian Ellison reviews (paywalled) Dix versions de Kafka by Maïa Hruska, writing:
Maïa Hruska unravels the intricate backstories of ten of the earliest translations of the work of Franz Kafka out of its original German and into other languages; and the book is an elegant reflection on how the act of translation itself brings about Kafkaesque diversions.See also the Grasset publicity page as well as this (French) Q & A at Radio Prague International.
This sounds fascinating; I hope to get to see it soon -- and that it makes it into English soon as well. (Hruska apparently works for The Wylie Agency (and is also listed as a client), so it wouldn't be surprising to see this picked up by a large publisher.)
Winston Churchill literary revival
In the Sunday Times Johanna Thomas-Corr reports that:
The sprawling literary estate of Britain’s great wartime prime minister is getting a new lease of life thanks to a private equity-backed media company.Yes, the (many, many) works of Winston Churchill -- who was, after all, awarded the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature ("for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values") -- may well soon be coming to bookstores near you -- and, hey, given that even the Collected Works are apparently hard to come by (and in any case problematic -- see here), maybe we should be ... thrilled ?
The private equiteers behind it are Portland Literary(touting themselves as: "Long term guardians of exceptional literary works"), who formed a PLC a couple of months ago, Portland Churchill Ltd. and are now apparently raring to go:
“Churchill wrote dozens of volumes of non-fiction,” says Josh Grabiner. “We are excited at the opportunity of helping to bring new readers to his body of work.”I suspect it will take quite a lot 'to bring new readers to his body of work', but who knows ? After all, Portland Literary takes: "a holistic approach to bodies of literary work to maximise long-term royalty streams through investment, development and thoughtful management", so how could they fail ?
They even have ... ideas:
They haven’t ruled out children’s comic books of Churchill’s work or even video games or virtual reality experiences.Personally, I'd rather see a revival of the other Winston Churchill -- a bestselling writer in his day; see e.g. -- but I guess he doesn't have the ... name recognition ? he once had
