The Delighted States: A Book of Novels, Romances, & Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents, & Accompanied by ... Illustrations, & a Variety of Helpful Indexes [Paperback]

Adam Thirlwell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0312428294 | ISBN-13: 978-0312428297 | Publication Date: March 30, 2010 | Edition: First Edition

Having slept with a prostitute in Egypt, Gustave Flaubert begins his first novel, Madame Bovary, which influences the minor French novelist Édouard Dujardin, whose novel is read by James Joyce, whose own novel Ulysses will move the Italian novelist Italo Sveno, and later Gertrude Stein, in radical ways. This carousel of influence shows how we devour novels in translation, while often believing that style does not translate. But the history of the novel is the history of style. The Delighted States attempts to solve this conundrum while mapping an imaginary country, a country of readers: The Delighted States.  As a companion, this book comes with a new translation into English of Vladimir Nabokov's "Mademoiselle O."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In his labyrinthine and surprisingly engrossing epic of literary influence and translation, Thirlwell (Politics) provides an idiosyncratic perspective on a wide range of authors and books, from Don Quixote to Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age by Bohumil Hrabal. A leading young British novelist, Thirlwell creates narrative enthusiasm and vividly drawn characters in a welcome departure from the academic approach to this kind of project. His technique is generally conversational rather than thesis driven, and his dips into notoriously tricky works like Ulysses and Tristram Shandy are characterized by impressively observed but plainly written close readings in the vein of the popular literary scholar Harold Bloom. One of Thirlwell's basic conceits is that style is inherently translatable, "even if its translation is not perfect," and he argues this earnestly and convincingly across eras and borders. Some of Thirlwell's arguments will undoubtedly cause debate among critics and readers, such as his defense of Constance Garnett, the original English translator of War and Peace, whose work has been criticized and possibly superseded by recent high-profile translators. However, Thirwell writes more as a reader than as an academic, and his passionate explications of writers from Flaubert to Nabokov is an absolute pleasure. Photos. (Apr. 22)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

Ostensibly devoted to the problem of literary translation, this provocative treatise rambles through the Western canon from Cervantes to Bellow, treating novelists less as subjects than as characters in a sprawling intercontinental epic. Thirlwell revels in the anecdotal (Italo Svevo studied English with James Joyce) and the serendipitous (the French word dada was invented as an equivalent for "hobby-horse," in " Tristram Shandy"); presents indexes whose entries include "hamburgers" and "squiggles"; and lauds digression as the best means of capturing the "serious nothings" of life. While acknowledging the difficulty of conveying the "perpetual giggle" of Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin’s name in any language other than Gogol’s Russian, Thirlwell insists that translation is possible and, to that end, offers his own version of Nabokov’s "Mademoiselle O," evoking the story’s trilingual origins in fittingly verdant prose.
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Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (March 30, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312428294
• ISBN-13: 978-0312428297
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,347,036 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A breath of fresh air, January 12, 2009

By 

Mike Heneberry - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Delighted States: A Book of Novels, Romances, & Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents, & Accompanied by ... Illustrations, & a Variety of Helpful Indexes (Hardcover)

Most writing about literature is pompous, long-winded and self-important. This book is a delightful exception. Thirlwell writes in plain English and shares his ideas about classic authors and their works with infectious enthusatism and simplicity. I don't know that I agreed with everything he says but at least he has something comprehensible to say. I hadn't read a fiction book in 15 years and this got me to go out and read Madame Bovary (which was excellent). Well done.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wot larks!, September 7, 2008

By 

M. Nesbit "One reader" (Daly City, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Delighted States: A Book of Novels, Romances, & Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents, & Accompanied by ... Illustrations, & a Variety of Helpful Indexes (Hardcover)

This book is amusing, intriguing, entertaining.

And what a mine for ideas on what to read next.

Damn! He's about got me ginned up to start reading "Ulysses" again.....

If this is what Thirlwell produces at thirty years of age, long may he live and write!

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Essential, though flawed, August 4, 2008

By 

Ann Marlowe (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Delighted States: A Book of Novels, Romances, & Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents, & Accompanied by ... Illustrations, & a Variety of Helpful Indexes (Hardcover)

The Washington Post review above is accurate, but no matter: The Delighted States is a must-read for any writer, aspiring or practicing. Yes, it's a young man's work, and Thirlwell can be twitty. But every other page or so, there's a startlingly wise line worth the price of the book.