Better Mendacities: Modernism, Translation, and
Love
A five-part study of twentieth-century experiments with translation, including
works by authors such as Ezra Pound, Louis Zukofsky, James Joyce, Paul Celan, Vladimir
Nabokov, Georges Perec, Jack Spicer, and Ron Silliman. From the proposal:
One of the most vital of the utopian promises suggested by
modernity is the protean concept of translation, the effectiveness of which process stands
as reassurance against alienation from our past and one another. Like modernity's other
promises, this one is most rigorously critiqued by the aesthetic experiments of modernism.
Avant-garde poets and writers of the past century have explored the assumptions underlying
acts of translation and understandings of language itself. Modernism's acceptance of
translation as a continuous regeneration, cautiously seconded by postmodernism in its even
more desperate struggle against imperious monoglotism, represents an argument for
diversity and plurality of thought. In essence, this acceptance is part of an aesthetic
recognition of otherness, and so a gesture of love.
Burning City
Jed Rasula and I are co-editing an anthology on modernist reports of the city experience.
(More details to come.)
Apmonia
Begun in 2000, Apmonia is the Samuel Beckett section of The Modern Word. Allen Ruch and I
are gradually constructing what we hope will be the most thorough and user-friendly web
resource on Beckett. Apmonia offers an archive of information, opinion, and references
related to Beckett texts, biography, theatrical productions, films, criticism, and events.