I always approach translated novels with a grain of salt. I have a very smart friend who refuses to read them, because he doesn’t think he can truly get the author’s intent, and while I understand his point of view, I’m not willing to limit myself so severely. I just keep in mind that whatever I’m getting is not as good as the novel is meant to be. Even with foreign films, it’s a bit easier to understand the real intent, because the actors are speaking in the language, and you can sort of see where the subtitles convey the meaning, and where they’re just sort of there. You can get the gist. But with a translated novel, there’s no trace of the original before the translator worked on it, so if something isn’t really conveyed, you’ll never know it.
That said, I really enjoyed Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog (trans. Alison Anderson). Madame Renee Michel is a smart concierge from a rural, lower-class family. She hides her intelligence from the buildings’ wealthy tenants, and smolders at what she believes is the necessity of doing so. Meanwhile, Paloma Josse, a young girl who lives in the building, also hides her intelligence (and precocious cynicism) from her family. Like Madame Michel, she resents those around her for failing to penetrate her facade. But then, Monsieur Kakuro Ozu moves into the building. He is a friendly, open, charismatic Japanese man, and he becomes interested in both Madame Michel and Paloma, and helps them to become notice each other, and (eventually) everybody else. Ultimately, the story ends tragically, but it’s a good, cozy kind of sad.
The novel is about the ways in which intelligence can alienate one from others, but wisdom can reconnect one again.
I didn’t really relate to the intensity of Madame Michel’s class-based inferiority complex. Perhaps my being an American makes this difficult for me to understand. I don’t know that much about France, but am surprised to hear that someone born into an uneducated, rural family, who was able intellectually to rise above their station, would still feel sufficiently constrained by their social class that they would have to pretend to be a moron to avoid offending people. While we’re certainly classist in this country, the ability to converse, read and write with the best of them would permit most people to mobilize upwards without rocking anyone’s world.
Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai is also a novel about the limits of intelligence. I fucking loved this book.
Sibylla has a one-night stand because she can’t think of a polite way to get out of having it, and ends up raising Ludo, a genius with an insatiable hunger for stimulation. Sibylla’s main problem is, she has to make their money by typing boring periodicals into a database, and is paid by the piece, so she must choose between ignoring her restless young son and failing to make rent. They spend a lot of time riding around on the subway, and Sibylla teaches Ludo a number of languages in an attempt to start him on something absorbing that he can then continue on independently. Public school, needless to say, turns out to be a non-starter for Ludo. The first half of the book is narrated by Sibylla, who is a fascinating and entertaining character, the more so because she is not very likable. She seems almost autistic in her inability to truly connect with or become interested in other people, but at the same time, she is anxious not to hurt or offend anyone (thus sleeping with Ludo’s father, rather than risk the social awkwardness of rejecting him).
As Ludo ages, he eventually takes over the narration entirely, and his main desire is to figure out who his father is. He knows that he’s a travel writer, and the second half of the book is concerned entirely with Ludo’s search. While Ludo finds his biological father immediately, he feels no true kinship with the man, and continues to search for a true father, ‘trying on’ six other fascinating men with varying degrees of success. Ultimately, Ludo realizes that his most pressing problem is not forming new deep personal connections, but saving the only one he already has. In the end, Sibylla and Ludo are harmed by their undeniable gifts: they are bored, economically thwarted, and socially isolated. Some of Ludo’s father figures are deeply gifted, others are not, and sadly, those who have the most to offer do not manage to get the most out of life. In The Last Samurai, the world is not a welcoming place for outstanding people.
Earlier, I mentioned my distrust of the ability of translations to truly convey authors’ intent. Sibylla, a scholar of languages, spends much of TLS mourning the limitations of writing only in one language at a time. She believes that in literature of the future, the word used to convey an idea will be the word best suited to the meaning, regardless of which language that word is found in.
Both of these novels dealt with suicide – Paloma carefully plots her own suicide, which she plans to commit on her birthday, unless the world can convince her it’s worth living in by that time. One of Ludo’s fathers commits suicide, and, Sibylla having attempted it in the past, her doing so is a major worry for him. While reading these two novels, I also watched The Bridge, which is a documentary about people throwing themselves off the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s a pretty straightforward documentary, entirely consisting of interviews of the family members of several people who’ve died in this way, and of people who’d thwarted or observed suicides on the bridge. It seemed to me as if most people interviewed either entirely understood the state of mind that leads to suicide, or couldn’t at all comprehend what could possibly lead someone to take their own life. While I’ve certainly never been suicidal (teenage angst and Bell Jar worshiping aside), it surprises me that many people are apparently so unfamiliar with anything approaching suicidal depression that they can’t even imagine it. I found that very refreshing, and was most interested in hearing the interviews with people who were thoroughly mystified by friends or family members having jumped.
Actually, we don’t really know why people commit suicide. This interesting article (via MR), focusing on the high correlation between anorexia and suicides, lists some factors that seem consistent:
In essence, Joiner proposed that people who kill themselves must meet two sets of conditions on top of feeling depressed and hopeless. First, they must have a serious desire to die. This usually comes about when people feel they are an intolerable burden on others, while also feeling isolated from people who might provide a sense of belonging.
Second, and most important, people who succeed in killing themselves must be capable of doing the deed. This may sound obvious, but until Joiner pointed it out, no one had tried to figure out why some people are able to go through with it when most are not. No matter how seriously you want to die, Joiner says, it is not an easy thing to do. The self-preservation instinct is too strong.
I don’t know, though – the doctors quoted in the article explain how anorexia can lead to social isolation and tolerance of pain, which are characteristics that make for successful suicides. But it seems to me that there’s a suicidal impulse behind anorexia itself – I realize that anorexia is more of a control thing than anything, but it seems like slowly starving yourself is on some level a pre-suicide, along the lines of initial shallow razor cuts. The article explains that anorexics tend to be socially isolated because they avoid any situations that will involve eating. But is that perhaps putting the egg before the chicken? Developing anorexia is a good way of avoiding and controlling social interactions.
Also, I feel like in memoirs of attempted suicides, people often speak about the depression being so overwhelming that physical pain simply doesn’t register – or depression being so numbing that the physical pain is a relief, in that at least it’s a feeling of something. It seems like suicide is escaping an absolutely overwhelming and constant emotional pain, and I find it hard to believe that steeling yourself for the temporary physical pain of actually committing the act can be that big of a hurdle.
Speaking of suicide, there’s a new book about the Wittgenstein family out. Wittgenstein was like the Midas of suicides – everyone he encountered seemed to do themselves in. His life could make an excellent indie dark comedy flick.
