Category: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Links: High-School Reading List Edition

by Mark Athitakis, posted in Edgar Allan Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Margaret Mitchell

Nick Mamatas goes a little over-the-top in critiquing how Edgar Allan Poe is taught in schools. (“Perhaps it’s no surprise that kids shoot up a school when the tolerance quizzes don’t have the desired positive effect on interpersonal relations in the classroom.” Really?) But his defense of Poe’s moral messiness is appreciated.

The staff of the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum has been reduced from eight to a single person.

Baz Luhrmann is all set to ruin film The Great Gatsby. He’s apparently approaching the story as an “epic,” which may suggest he’s still getting around to reading it.

Oh, local-TV-news coverage of books—is there anything you can’t do to make a person squirm? “Looking for a last-minute holiday idea? How about a book?” Yes, never thought of that. Regardless, the notion of a two-minute segment on Jay Parini‘s Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America is pretty impressive. Flabbergasting, even.

Toward a Complete Guide to Haruki Murakami’s Translations of American Writers Into Japanese

by Mark Athitakis, posted in Chris Van Allsburg, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Grace Paley, J.D. Salinger, John Irving, Mark Helprin, Mark Strand, Paul Theroux, Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Tim O'Brien, Truman Capote, Ursula K. Le Guin

Last May I blogged about Haruki Murakami‘s translations of major works by American authors, including The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, and more. At the time I idly speculated about the depth of Murakami’s translation efforts. Today I received a little more clarity. The list below comes courtesy of Naoko Mayuzumi (aka Miss Brolly), based on the Japanese Wikipedia entry for Murakami and her own research.

I’m deeply grateful for the time she took to assemble this; it’s a fascinating list. I’m not surprised that there’s so much Raymond Carver in here, nor is it shocking to see the early-’80s Sudden Fiction collection—both contain plenty of exemplars of the minimalist style that Murakami made his own. But it’s interesting to see a little John Irving thrown in there, and a whole lot of Chris Van Allsburg and Ursula K. Le Guin. I’ve tweaked some of the formatting here, but everything else, including links, comes direct from Mayuzumi.

List of American Books and Essays Translated (from English to Japanese) by Haruki Murakami

Note: The month and year in parentheses indicates the time when the Japanese translation was published in Japan.

By author:

C. D. Bryan:

The Great Dethriffe (published by Shinchosha Publishing Co., Ltd. in November 1987)

Truman Capote:

I Remember Grandpa (published by Bungeishunju Ltd. in March 1988)

One Christmas (published by Bungeishunju Ltd. in December 1989)

A Christmas Memory (published by Bungeishunju Ltd. in November 1990)

Children on Their Birthdays (published by Bungeishunju Ltd. in June 2002)

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (published by Shinchosha Publishing Co., Ltd. in February 2008)

Raymond Carver:

Where I’m Calling From (published by Chuokoron-sha, Inc. in July 1983; includes “Why Don’t You Dance?,” “Tell the Women We’re Going,” “Cathedral,” “Sacks,” “Are You a Doctor?,” “Where I’m Calling From,” “So Much Water So Close to Home,” and “Everything Stuck to Him”)

At Night the Salmon Move (published by Chuokoron-sha, Inc. in July 1985; includes “Feathers,” “The Pheasant,” “Vitamins,” “Put Yourself in My Shoes,” “Jerry and Molly and Sam,” “My Father’s Life,” “At Night the Salmon Move,” “For Semra, with Martial Vigor,” and “You Don’t Know What Love Is”)

A Small, Good Thing (published by Chuokoron-sha, Inc. in April 1989; includes “They Are Not Your Husband,” “Neighbors,” “Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes,” “I Could See the Smallest Things,” “Popular Mechanics,” “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” “A Small, Good Thing,” “The Bridle,” “Boxes,” “Whoever Was Using This Bed,” “Menudo,” and “Elephant”)

Carver Country: The World of Raymond Carver (published by Chuokoron-sha, Inc. in October 1994)

Carver’s Dozen (published by Chuokoron-sha, Inc. in December 1994; collected and translated by Haruki Murakami; includes 10 stories [“Fat,” “Nobody Said Anything,” “Are You a Doctor?,” “Collectors,” “So Much Water So Close to Home,” “Why Don’t You Dance?,” “Cathedral”, “Where I’m Calling From”, “A Small, Good Thing,” and “Errand”], 1 essay [“My Father’s Life”], and 2 poems [“Lemonade” and “Late Fragment”])

The Complete Works of Raymond Carver (published by Chuokoron-sha, Inc./Chuokoron-Shinsha, Inc.)
* Volume 1: “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” (February 1991)
* Volume 2: “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (August 1990)
* Volume 3: “Cathedral” (May 1990)
* Volume 4: “Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories” (September 1992)
* Volume 5: “Where Water Comes Together With Other Water / Ultramarine” (September 1997)
* Volume 6: “Elephant / A New Path to the Waterfall” (March 1994)
* Volume 7: “No Heroics, Please” (July 2002)
* Volume 8: “Call if You Need Me” (July 2004)

Raymond Chandler:

The Long Goodbye (published by Hayakawa Publishing Corporation in March 2007)

Bill Crow:

From Birdland to Broadway (published by Shinchosha Publishing Co., Ltd. in January 1996)

Jazz Anecdotes (published by Shinchosha Publishing Co., Ltd. in July 2000)

Terry Farish:

The Cat Who Liked Potato Soup (published by Kodansha Ltd. in November 2005)

F. Scott Fitzgerald:

My Lost City: Personal Essays (published by Chuokoron-sha, Inc. in May 1981)

The Scott Fitzgerald Book (published by TBS-Britannica Co., Ltd. in March 1988; a book by Haruki Murakami about Scott Fitzgerald, but it includes his translations of Fitzgerald’s two essays, “On Your Own” and “The Rich Boy”)

Babylon Revisited (published by Chuokoron-sha, Inc. in April 1996)

The Great Gatsby (published by Chuokoron-Shinsha, Inc. in November 2006)

Jim Fusilli:

The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (published by Shinchosha Publishing Co., Ltd. in February 2008)

Mikal Gilmore:

Shot in the Heart (published by Bungeishunju Ltd. in October 1996)

Mark Helprin:

Swan Lake (published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in December 1991)

John Irving:

Setting Free the Bears (published by Chuokoron-sha, Inc. in May 1986)

Ursula K. Le Guin:

Catwings (published by Kodansha Ltd. in March 1993)

Catwings Return (published by Kodansha Ltd. in December 1993)

Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings (published by Kodansha Ltd. in June 1997)

Jane on her Own (published by Kodansha Ltd. in September 2001)

Tim O’Brien:

The Nuclear Age (published by Bungeishunju Ltd. in October 1989)

The Things They Carried (published by Bungeishunju Ltd. in October 1990)

July, July (published by Bungeishunju Ltd. in March 2004)

Grace Paley:

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (published by Bungeishunju Ltd. in May 1999)

The Little Disturbances of Man (published by Bungeishunju Ltd. in June 2005)

J. D. Salinger:

The Catcher in the Rye (published by Hakusuisha Publishing Co., Ltd. in April 2003)

Mark Strand:

Mr. and Mrs. Baby and Other Stories (published by Chuokoron-sha, Inc. in October 1998)

Paul Theroux:

World’s End and Other Stories (published by Bungeishunju Ltd. in July 1987)

Chris Van Allsburg:

The Wreck of the Zephyr (published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in October 1985)

The Polar Express (published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in December 1987)

The Stranger (published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in August 1989)

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in November 1990)

The Widow’s Broom (published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in June 1993)

The Sweetest Fig (published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in September 1994)

Ben’s Dream (published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in April 1996)

The Wretched Stone (published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in November 2003)

Two Bad Ants (published by Asunaro Shobo in September 2004)

The Garden of Abdul Gasazi (published by Asunaro Shobo in September 2005)


Collections:

Watashitachi No Rinjin, Raymond Carver (Published by Chuokoron-Shinsha, Inc. in March 2009; the title translates to “Our Neighbor, Raymond Carver.” Murakami collected these essays about Carver by nine writers/editors who personally knew him from Remembering Ray: A Composite Biography of Raymond Carver [except “Ridin’ With Ray and the Old Game” by Jon A. Jackson and “Raymond Carver” by Michiko Miyamoto] and translated them [except Miyamoto’s essay which was written in Japanese originally]):

* “Raymond Carver: A Still, Small Voice” by Jay McInerney
* “Raymond Carver Had His Cake and Ate It Too” by Tobias Wolff
* “All-American Nightmares” by Marcus Morton
* “The Days with Ray” by James D. Houston
* “Ridin’ With Ray” by Jon A. Jackson
* “What We Talk About When We Talk About Carver” by David Carpenter
* “Raymond Carver” by Michiko Miyamoto
* “Hope This Finds You Well and All” by Gary Fisketjon
* “Bulletproof” by William Kittredge

And Other Stories―Totteoki No America Shosetsu 12 Hen (published by Bungeishunju Ltd. in September 1988; the title translates to “And Other Stories―12 Treasured American Short Stories.” Five Japanese translators brought their favorite American stories and translated them for this collection.) Murakami translated the following stories:

* “The Moccasin Telegraph” by W. P. Kinsella
* “Thirty-Four Seasons of Winter” by William Kittredge
* “What’s Your Story” by Ronald Sukenick
* “Samuel” by Grace Paley
* “Living” by Grace Paley

Getsuyobi Wa Saiakuda-to Minna Wa Iu Keredo (Published by Chuokoron-Shinsha, Inc. in May 2000; the title translates to “They Call It Stormy Monday.” American short stories and essays collected and translated by Murakami):

* “The Carver Chronicles” by D. T. Max
* “Good Raymond” by Richard Ford
* “The Vietnam In Me” by Tim O’Brien
* “Nogales” by Tim O’Brien
* “Loon Point” by Tim O’Brien
* “John Irving’s (Revised) World” by John Paul Newport
* “I Am A…Genius!” by Thom Jones
* “Secret Agent” by Denis Johnson

Birthday Stories: Selected and Introduced by Haruki Murakami (I think this American edition just contains the original stories in English. The Japanese edition of this book, published by Chuokoron-Shinsha, Inc. in December 2002, contains translations of these American stories by Murakami.)

Murakami Haruki HybLit (published by ALC Inc. in November 2008; a bilingual book containing three stories, selected by Murakami, in English and Japanese: “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien [Japanese translation by Murakami], “A Small, Good Thing” by Raymond Carver [Japanese translation by Murakami], and “Lederhosen” by Haruki Murakami [English translation by Alfred Birnbaum]; “HybLit” in the title is the compound of “hybrid” and “literature”)

Sudden Fiction is translated into Japanese by two translators (Haruki Murakami and Takayoshi Ogawa) and published by Bungeishunju Ltd. in January 1994. The following stories are translated by Murakami:

* “A Sudden Story” by Robert Coover
* “Mother” by Grace Paley
* “The King of Jazz” by Donald Barthelme
* “Reunion” by John Cheever
* “Twirler” by Jane Martin
* “Five Ives” by Roy Blount Jr.
* “Song on Royal Street” by Richard Blessing
* “The Merry Chase” by Gordon Lish
* “Popular Mechanics” Raymond Carver
* “Turning” by Lynda Sexson
* “Say Yes” by Tobias Wolff
* “The Hit Man” by T. Coraghessan Boyle
* “A Questionnaire for Rudolph Gordon” by Jack Matthews
* “I See You Never” by Ray Bradbury
* “The Bank Robbery” by Steven Schutzman
* “Tent Worms” by Tennessee Williams
* “Sitting” by H. E. Francis
* “Dog Life” by Mark Strand
* “The Hatchet Man in the Lighthouse” by William Peden
* “Happy” by Joyce Carol Oates
* “The Anatomy of Desire” by John L’Heureux
* “Class Notes” by Lucas Cooper
* “The Neighbor” by Russell Banks
* “Reading the Paper” by Ron Carlson
* “Speed of Light” by Pat Rushin
* “Gerald’s Song” by Philip F. O’Connor
* “Blind Girls” by Jayne Anne Philips
* “The Signing” by Stephen Dixon
* “The Quail” by Rolf Yngve
* “The Artichoke” by Marilyn Krysl

Links: Playing Catch-up

by Mark Athitakis, posted in F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.D. Salinger, Richard Yates

Was Cincinnati’s “King of the Bootleggers” the model for Jay Gatsby?

Speaking of F. Scott Fitzgerald and drinking, the resort where he attempted to dry out is open to visitors.

J.D. Salinger turns 90 this week.

There are still a couple of days left in National Buy a Book by a Black Author and Give It to Somebody Not Black Month.

David Robson makes a nice case for Revolutionary Road, but the essay mainly served to remind me of the fine piece that J.R. Jones wrote for the Chicago Reader in 2003 about his relationship with Richard Yates in his later years. Jones’ piece is a lengthy, nicely turned study of what made Yates such an appealing personality, in spite of his much-documented prickliness and compulsions:

Yates went on living…staying in Tuscaloosa after his semester in the Strode House [as a writer-in-residence at the University of Alabama] was up–rent was cheap, and the writing department would pay him a small stipend to read student manuscripts. Whenever I talked to him about his situation he told me he had to make 66 and get on social security. He moved into a spartan two-room apartment near campus, on Alaca Place, and Dan Childress, a writing student who took care of Yates in innumerable ways, helped him buy a used car.
We students were glad to see him stay. He was precise and honest in his responses to our work, and he seemed to take us seriously as writers. He also understood one thing even some of our spouses didn’t–the time demands of the work, the need for long stretches of silence and solitude. “I think it probably is the hardest and loneliest profession in the world,” he told the Transatlantic Review in 1972, “this crazy, obsessive business of trying to be a good writer. None of us ever knows how much time he has left, or how well he’ll be able to use that time, or whether, even if he does use his time well, his work will ever withstand and survive the terrible, inexorable indifference of time itself.” Surely he envied us our time as much as we envied him his talent.

Filming Fitzgerald

by Mark Athitakis, posted in F. Scott Fitzgerald

In advance of the release of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, Variety has a nice piece about Fitzgerald’s complicated relationship with Hollywood, and how hard it’s been to adapt his work for the screen. Among the folks tapped to comment are Gore Vidal and late Fitzgerald scholar Matthew Bruccoli, but the most salient quote about Fitzgerald adaptations comes from the guy in the corner office, Variety editor in chief Peter Bart:

Variety Editor-in-Chief Peter Bart, who was [Robert] Evans’ right-hand man at Paramount [which produced the Robert Redford-starring adaptation of “The Great Gatsby”] and later produced “Islands in the Stream” (1977) from the Hemingway novel, says Hemingway and Fitzgerald pose a trap. “If you rewrite them too greatly, people who loved the books will rise up in arms. You want to capture their great sense of setting, but you have to tamper with them because they’re not structured (for film). What’s seducing about the work is the quality of the prose, and that you can’t translate to film.”

War Stories

by Mark Athitakis, posted in Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Heller, Robert Stone, Tim O'Brien, William Faulkner

At the Oxford University Press blog, Keith Gandal writes something of a, er, call to arms to academic critics to engage more deeply with the subject of literature and war. Gandal is a Northern Illinois University English professor who’s written The Pen and the Gun, which has a great thesis: “Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner were motivated, in their famous postwar novels, not by their experiences of the horrors of war but rather by their failure to have those experiences.”

Gandal figures he knows what’s created the dearth of war stories in academia:

We know why the subjects of war and the military have fallen out of favor, and why most professors in English, as well as history, prefer to oppose war and criticize the military rather than to study them. The Vietnam War changed the meaning of war and of the military in this country, at least on the left, and the cohort of professors that for the most part has dominated and set trends in these fields in the last twenty years is of the generation that came of age during the Vietnam era; most of these professors were students when the huge protest against the war took place, and most of them were against the war.

What struck me here is that thinking back to my high school and college days (late ’80s and early ’90s), I can recall that a great many novels about war were recommended to me, appearing on supplementary reading lists and the like, but I can’t think of an occasion when they were actually taught as part of the syllabus. I had to find Catch-22 and Going After Cacciato on my own; I never even heard of books like Dog Soldiers until I was out of college. This may speak more to the shortcomings of my schooling, but it’s interesting how rarely war literature made it to the discussion table.

The Bruccoli Files

by Mark Athitakis, posted in F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matthew J. Bruccoli

At the Big Read blog, David Kipen offers an appreciation of Matthew J. Bruccoli, a leading F. Scott Fitzgerald scholar who died of cancer last week. (You can see Bruccoli’s hand throughout the University of South Carolina’s very deep Fitzgerald centennial site). Kipen had invited Bruccoli to record a commentary on The Great Gatsby for the Big Read. He recalls the experience:

“Strivers!”, he cried, nailing for legions of Big Read listeners in one emphatically flung word the generation of ambitious dreamers for whom Gatsby stood in. Around the office even now, at the mention of Matt’s name, it’s a contest between Dan and me to see who can pronounce it with a more faithful New York honk. “Strivers!” The merest hint of an audible “r” is grounds for immediate disqualification.

Bruccoli was a striver too. Like the teenager in the stacks that Salinger and Updike used to fantasize about, Bruccoli was a bookish kid from an unbookish household. One day he wandered sweatily from a stickball game into a candystore, recognized Fitzgerald’s name on a paperback spinner from a radio play the week before, picked up Gatsby, and he was off to the races. If young Matt was anywhere near as good at stickball as he was at reading, the loss to American sport was incalculable.

Over at the Washington Post’s obituary blog—no, really, I honestly think it’s the paper’s best blog—Matt Schudel discusses his experience writing Bruccoli’s obituary. He was working on both Bruccoli’s obit and Jim McKay‘s at the same time, and guess which one got more attention:

It’s curious to note that the death of Jim McKay was all over the news on television, and our online editors were pushing me Saturday to finish the obit and get it on the Web.

One day earlier, no one at the paper asked me about Bruccoli, who wasn’t widely known outside the world of literature, and whose death passed unnoticed by every TV network and most papers. But I’ve already received many comments from people who knew him and his work and who were glad the Post took time to do an original obituary. Not one person has written to me about the much more famous Jim McKay.

American Made

by Mark Athitakis, posted in F. Scott Fitzgerald, Haruki Murakami, J.D. Salinger, Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer who’s deeply influenced by American ones—it’s telling that his upcoming memoir of distance running is titled What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. So it’s not that surprising to hear that in recent years he’s been translating a host of American classics, including The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, The Long Goodbye, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. (Miss Brolly reports on stumbling over a copy of that last book.) Speaking with the Mainichi Daily News (which is apparently running a week’s worth of interviews with the author), Murakami calls out Raymond Chandler for special attention:

“Chandler’s writing style really grabbed me,” he says. “There’s something special about his writing. For years, I’ve always wondered what it was. Even after I’d translated him, though, I’m still wondering what it is that makes him special.”

Murakami’s strong interest in the secret behind that writing style was also evident in the long postscript he wrote for his translation of “The Long Goodbye.” In the afterword, Murakami writes: “Chandler’s creativity lies in the ‘ego set like a black box.'”

If there’s a listing somewhere in English of all the books that Murakami has translated, I can’t find it. But a quick Google shows that his love for American pop culture is evident: He’s translated a book on Pet Sounds and Mikal Gilmore‘s Shot to the Heart.

Heartbreaker

by Mark Athitakis, posted in F. Scott Fitzgerald

As literary memorabilia goes, $5.8 million is a lot to spend. But if you’re interesting in owning the home where F. Scott Fitzgerald learned all about unrequited love, it’s on the market. The mansion in tony Lake Forest, Illinois, as a story in the Chicago Sun-Times points out, was the home of a the King family, whose teenage daughter Genevre was something of a femme fatale for young Fitzgerald: “The romance lasted a few years, but eventually Genevre got tired of toying with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s affections and gave him the boot. He went on to write The Great Gatsby as well as numerous other short stories in which a rich, beautiful, but self-absorbed young woman spurns a lovelorn young man.”