Literature

Here centralized are my posts so far on reading and working with literature:

Translating Ingeborg Bachmann's Das dreißigste Jahr into English. She's an extraordinary writer whose work is not as widely known as it deserves to be among English speakers.

Reading W. G. Sebald in English versus reading him in German: some notes. If you've ever wondered why German is so knotty and how English sentences almost never seem as complicated, read this.

David Denby, formerly of the New Yorker, wrote a terrific book on "snark," though its optimism towards Obama and the thought of new civility his presidency might usher in shows how easy it is to be off the mark about these things.