A new issue of this uniquely ample, innovative, and inclusive international zine!
Editor's Note
Well, hello there, 2013! We barely noticed you starting what with all the exciting developments here at
Asymptote. Not only are we turning two, we're also
celebrating with eight events in seven countries across the globe and launching our first ever
online fundraiser!
Now, you may ask, has this had any effect on the new issue? Only that
it's even more chock-full of awesome! Still, some kidding aside, we
really are proud to give you this, our ninth issue.
For one, we
got to talk to our favorite Francophile, Edmund White, about why Proust
is "a more profound psychologist than Freud". We also have an excerpt
from the new novel by Amélie Nothomb, the Belgian phenom behind
Fear and Trembling;
Life Form
is about yet another cultural clash—this time with an American soldier
in Iraq. But perhaps we are proudest of bringing you the first ever
English translation from Toh EnJoe's 2012 Akutagawa Prize-winning novel,
Harlequin's Butterflies. In the fascinating interview Toh also granted us, the Physics PhD elaborates on his "un-local novels", and how we must cherish the ability to enjoy strange things.
Our
poetry section begins with the blue of the sky in Dagmara Kraus's
gloomerang and ends with the yellow of a mountain in Nicolas Pesquès'
The North Face of Mount Juliau, Six. Inbetween, we have work spanning
diverse eras and geographies, yet the unanimous concern for
place—internal, external, historical, political, psychological—recurs
with force. In Shrikant Verma's Magadh poems, place is marked by the
vagaries of death; Aleš Debeljak's Smugglers is rooted in the Balkans;
and Chuya Nakahara's Goat Songs are embedded in the elements. Many of
the nine poets included in this issue consider just what place is and
how we imagine it—how we encode it in language.
For the first
time, our table of contents now has taster lines by all poets, as well
as teaser images for the visual section. All the more suitable, as this
issue sees the auspicious debut of our new Visual Editor, artist Simon
Morley, who has collected an intriguing group of creators, all of whom
work with text or language in crucial and intriguing ways. Simon Lewty,
for instance, delves into tachygraphy (that's shorthand, FYI) to explore
the act of writing and the nature of learning a language. The wonderful
book artist Johanna Drucker, on the other hand, makes the intriguing
claim that she too is a translator, albeit a graphic one. Performing her
own graphic somersaults on the fiction, creative nonfiction and drama
in our pages is our guest artist from Italy, Michela Caputo, whose
playful, flowing style puts the icing on the cake of this 2nd
anniversary issue.
As usual, there's a ton more, notably a small
feature on the relationship between author and translator, with a
generously personal essay by Howard Goldblatt on his relationship with
Huang Chunming. Reif Larsen, the author of the widely acclaimed T.S.
Spivet (translated into umpteen languages), returns to tell us about the
crucial skills a translator must possess, not only through the
interview he did with his Dutch translator, but also in a Wes Andersonian trailer we will be releasing shortly on our
Facebook page and
Tumblr.
Other highlights include Uljana Wolf and Christian Hawkey's Ilse
Aichinger translation, Dylan Suher's defense of Mo Yan, Vasily
Grossman's visit to Armenia, and Gérard Mace's imagined (?) Museum of
Shadows in Prague.
Before we leave you to discover this splendiferous new issue, we'd like to gently remind you to also check out our
events and our
fundraising campaign (also accessible from our newly revamped Donate
page).
And above all to spread the word, as there's so much more in store:
after our African Feature in the Apr 2013 issue, our first ever Drama
Feature in our July issue (check out the submission guidelines
here), for instance, and an international translation competition that esteemed intellectual Eliot Weinberger
just agreed to judge 2 days ago! (Details to follow.) Remember, you heard it here first.
—The Editors
MORE HERE!!!!!!!!!
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