Translations always stiffen a story — local settings blur into blank spots on a foreign map, characters are stripped of their cultural context, and a narrator’s conversation with a reader is distilled of comfortable connotations.
While I felt compelled to finish Haruki Murakami’s hyped novel, I skipped pages without missing much, and wondered why, if 1Q84 gets Nobel Prize buzz, Stephen King hasn’t won plenty of Pulitzers. (Murakami’s device of name-dropping obscure symphonies and Russian lit would mean more if one was trying to get laid in a Brooklyn cafe, and the last Pirates of the Caribbean was harshly criticized, not high-fived, for having characters without clear motivation.)
Maybe I would have enjoyed 1Q84 more in its original Japanese.
While carrying a €100 notepad and an iPhone appeals to neither my cents nor sensibility, a notebook titled “NOW OR NEVER” feels romantic, like the unrealized dreams it could contain: the thoughts of an Albanian heroine of the novel that’s floated through my head for four years, bicycling by bamboo waterwheels while touring Guangxi Zhuangzu, and the beauty of the thousands of things thousands of dollars might do to my face while playing with needles in 90210.
So Ayn Rand actually intended for her novels to work as right-wing political propaganda. But I’m so over the products of an amazing mind being hijacked by people who assume Ayn was and rhymes with “man,” who have no idea that Alisa Rosenbaum was a Jewish chick who watched her family ruined by the Russian Revolution, escaped to New York in her early 20s during the late, frothy 1920s, and would write for days straight without sleep or food, but with her little helper Benzedrine.
But WWJD? Jesus would make vaguely Buddhist, subtly commie comments, flip over tables in temples, and curse his disciples.
“These Machines Kill Fascists” pencils are charming, and somewhat ironically, because the un-techie tool makes me long for a little anti-democracy, for an Age of Innocence, for when the barrier to entering the public world of written word went beyond access to an online email machine.
In The Mood For Love (the original Chinese title is 花樣年華/花样年华, which translates literally into “the age of blossoms,” a Chinese metaphor for the fleeting time of youth, beauty, and love) is like Age of Innocence mashed with Mad Men, set in Hong Kong.
“This panel, featuring architects and critics Michael Rotondi, Craig Hodgetts, and Sylvia Lavin, will look at Lautner’s work, assessing its impact on the thinking and practice of architecture. It will be followed by a conversation on architectural preservation, featuring Frank Preusser, LACMA’s Conservation Scientist, and Christopher Carr, Vice President of The John Lautner Foundation. The conversation will be moderated by Nicholas Olsberg, archivist, cultural historian, and co-curator of the 2008 exhibition Between Earth and Heaven, the Architecture of John Lautner.”
Sounds dangerously dry, but any man who imagined worlds like this wills that sort of worship.
Plus, I really want to grab a matcha green tea boba — almond milk, please — from Urth Caffe…
Bag Snob has to hand it to Fendi: they’ve been killing it lately, thanks to their color-blocking acumen and high level of creativity. And as of now, we are officially swooning!
Beauty Snob has discovered that Natura Bissé’s eye makeup remover works just as well our old stand-by, but without the oil-slick aftermath – because it’s oil-free!
Bag Snob thanks you, Elie Tahari, for getting us out of our tweed-and-chainstrap rut. You’ve given us the total Chanel vibe with none of the copycat trappings.
