Natalia Ginzburg – Megin Jiménez

January 23, 2019

2018 Books, #11-15

11. The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky, trans. from German by Tim Mohr (Europa Editions, 2011)

Bronsky, who is German by way of Russia (former USSR), pulls off that very difficult task of creating a convincing, totally unlikeable narrator, who is also compelling, often funny, and eventually even elicits sympathy from the reader. I read several reviews of this book after I finished to see what others thought, and no reviewer contends with the novel as a whole, most are focused on the first half, which is comic and fairly light. The last third or so takes a different turn in tone, and even in writing style. This book illuminated for me the problem with endings, how the right ending isn’t always apparent. (And how readers are forgiving of inadequate endings if the first half makes enough of an impact. I felt this way about Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, which won the Booker and got a lot of love a couple of years ago: it was powerful but incomplete. A masterpiece for me is when the ending shines a spotlight on the narrative as a whole. The ending feels absolutely right and is unforgettable.) I still haven’t made up my mind about this book as a whole, the ending seems more appropriate the longer I’ve ruminated on it.

Provenance: I received it as part of my Kickstarter prize for helping fund the awesome Bookselling Without Borders project that promotes fiction in translation in the U.S.
Fate: Passed on to a friend.

12. La perra by Pilar Quintana (Random House, 2018)

A slim, tense little novella. I think this is the only Latin American novel I’ve read that’s set in a poverty-stricken environment (in Colombia). Quintana handles issues of race and class subtly and deftly. Heartbreaking and difficult to read.

Provenance: Borrowed from my friend Lydia, who works at World Editions, the small press that will be publishing a version in English!

13. Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg, translated from Italian by Jenny McPhee (NYRB Classics, 2017, original in 1963)

This memoir is a slightly awkward blend of Ginzburg’s affectionate memories of her eccentric family, particularly her father, and then the terrible ways fascism and World War II split everything apart in Italy, particularly in her Jewish, highly political household. Although it was grimmer, I enjoyed the second half more, where Ginzburg herself emerges a bit more (though she’s trying to hide throughout it). The premise of the “family lexicon” – the songs and funny sayings that characterized her parents and siblings – are also a major translation challenge, which wasn’t always met. (I wrote more about this here.)

Provenance: Van Stockum bookstore in Leiden (R.I.P.)
Fate: Can’t remember. Possibly still kicking around the apartment, or maybe passed on to a friend.

14. Viviane by Julia Deck, translated from the French by Linda Coverdale (The New Press, 2014)

Another slim, tense little novella, like a pen-and-ink drawing. In another writer’s hands, there could have been much more back story, but the spare approach works. Merges psychological drama with the traditional murder mystery, almost ironically, I think. It was a good read, but I have to say I didn’t think much about it afterwards.

15. The Everything Wine Book: A Complete Guide to the World of Wine by David White (Everything, 2014)

I suppose this sort of book doesn’t really belong on a literary-type book list, but the completist in me wants “credit” for having read it all, and also I would recommend it! (I’m not counting cookbooks, btw.) I got it because I wanted to understand those complicated French wine labels, which kept me from ever choosing a French wine as I never knew what I was getting into. This is a friendly, not-at-all snobby guide to wine regions, the history of wine, types of grapes, etc. It made me both appreciative and more adventurous with my wine choices.

Provenance: Bought at the clearance sale when the Van Stockum bookstore in Leiden closed (RIP)
Fate: On the keeper shelf!

May 20, 2018

Thoughts on Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon (NYRB edition)

It’s bold to assert there was something lost in the translation of this memoir without having access to the source text and only basic knowledge of Italian. However, having translated since I could read, basically, and working as a professional translator I know enough to sympathize with the hard translation problems faced by Jenny McPhee, that translator, which don’t have satisfactory solutions. Ginzburg sets up the songs, expressions, and rhymes that characterized her parents and siblings as the framework for her story of growing up in Turin in the 1920s. Schoolyard chants, lyrics from old songs, jokes: texts that have a richness and particularity that are inextricable from the language they’re composed in. McPhee makes a valiant effort, but the results, rather than being charming, or funny or familiar, as is intended, are alienating to an English-speaking reader. They didn’t bring me closer, as a reader, to the people being affectionately, though honestly, recalled. There are also many mentions of Italian political and cultural figures that are obscure to non-Italian readers – for example, intellectuals involved in the anti-Fascist movement who are close friends of the Ginzburg’s parents.

The second half of the memoir, while much more serious and upsetting, is a better read. The kids are all grown up and facing the rise of fascism, anti-Semitism and World Word Two. Ginzburg’s father is arrested, and a brother has to flee the country. Her husband dies in prison, while their brilliant friend, the poet Cesare Pavese, commits suicide. Ginzburg and her young children are exiled to the countryside. The writing becomes more fluid, more direct and more analytical. While Ginzburg’s intention was primarily to draw a family portrait and obscure herself, I found the times she reveals her own thoughts, attitudes and experiences the most compelling.

Regarding the problems inherent in translating texts that rhyme, texts with cultural and historical associations, etc., an imperfect solution is to provide the source text in the end notes. More context concerning the family’s anti-Fascist friends, their place in Italian political history would have also been welcome as end notes, too, as Ginzburg does not reveal any of this background information, only their names and relationship to her family.

On the whole, I wouldn’t dissuade anyone from picking up this book, and I would definitely read other work by Ginzburg. The spare, unflinching descriptions of Turin during the war are powerful, and her portrait of Pavese is haunting. There is also a warm and a full understanding of her mother, an expansive depiction of a positive, kind woman facing hardship and choosing to remain kind.

March 12, 2018February 1, 2021

The postwar period was a time when everyone believed himself to be a poet and a politician. Everyone thought he could, or rather should, write poetry about any and all subjects since for so many years the world had been silenced and paralyzed, reality being something stuck behind glass–vitreous, crystalline, mute, and immobile. Novelists and poets had been starved of words during the fascist years. So many had been forbidden to use words, and the few who’d been able to use them were forced to choose them very carefully from the slim pickings that remained. During fascism, poets found themselves expressing only an arid, shut-off, cryptic dream world. Now, once more, many words were in circulation and reality appeared to be at everyone’s fingertips. So those who had been starved dedicated themselves to harvesting the words with delight. And the harvest was ubiquitous because everyone wanted to take part in it. The result was a confused mixing up of the languages of poetry and politics. Reality revealed itself to be complex and enigmatic, as indecipherable and obscure as the world of dreams. And it revealed itself to still be behind glass–the illusion that the glass had been broken, ephemeral. Dejected and disheartened, many soon retreated, sank back into a bitter starvation and profound silence. The postwar period, then, was very sad and full of dejection after the joyful harvest of its early days. Many pulled away and isolated themselves again, either within their dream worlds or in whatever random job they’d taken in a hurry in order to earn a living, jobs that seemed insignificant and dreary after so much hullabaloo. In any case, everyone soon forgot that brief, illusory moment of shared existence. Certainly, for many years, no one worked at the job he’d planned on and trained for, everyone believing that they could and must do a thousand jobs all at once. And much time passed before everyone took back upon his shoulders his profession and accepted the burden, the exhaustion, and the loneliness of the daily grind, which is the only way we have of participating in each other’s lives, each of us lost and trapped in our own parallel solitude.

Natalia Ginzburg, from Family Lexicon, trans. Jenny McPhee. I like how this is like a fairytale, or a Biblical story. World weary, though and disappointing. I had hoped for more than the daily grind!