Audio recordings of some of the Lublin papers

[Clément Lévy]

(to add a couple two more things that make this thread so happy)

Dear all,

I don't intend to present to you my point on the whole conference,  
nor on every paper that was given in Lublin, as Martin and János  
already gave us a good rendering of its atmosphere, and some opinions  
about most of the essays that were presented. I'll add a few lines to  
what they already wrote, fully conscious that my attempts in  
summarizing very rich and well-informed works of research are limited  
by my irregular use of the notepad.

As János and Mark made clear, Martin Eve made a very precise review  
of quite a lot of the papers presented at the conference:
http://blog.martineve.com/
 From there, scroll down to the notes on the conference, as the  
complete URL cannot be accessed from outside the blog, so it seems.
A-and it was a great conference. Tore, János and I were so pleased to  
meet each other in real life after some e-mails read or exchanged on  
the List… you guys who live in the States also experienced that kind  
of magic!

Zofia Kolbuszewska and the whole organization made a great job in  
making the venue so comfortable. We met lots of local students who  
took us in a nice Biergarten to watch one of the fußball games in a  
nice Biergarten, but a great deal of research was also presented  
here. I agree with János's comments on the papers by Terry Reilly (he  
is wonderful, and gets clear informations on the most paranoid  
questions that Pynchon mentions in his works: Charles Richet in  
Granada '06, and Hans Kammler now, after Nikola Tesla and Death-Ray  
weapons in Munich '08) and Matthew Cissell on Pynchon's position on  
the literary and social field (we also had a talk together about the  
postmodern turn in contemporary critic, and that was wonderful too).  
Sascha Pöhlmann on games in Pynchon's novels did also a delightful  
research, and a very humorous presentation (wii remote control in  
hand, to switch slides).

Oh by the way, one of my most beloved French authors, Jean Echenoz,  
will publish at Les Editions de Minuit next september a biographic  
novel, Des Eclairs (Some Lightnings) whose hero is an engineer whom  
he calls Gregor (as in "One morning Gregor Samsa, etc.") but who is  
inspired from the life of Nikola Tesla. I'll check that novel as soon  
as I can put my hands on it (and I'll let you know). For those among  
you who can read French, here are the first pages: http:// 
leseditionsdeminuit.com/images/3/extrait_2647.pdf

I must add that János made a brilliant presentation of the amount of  
work that his own translation into hungarian needed. Many linguists  
would have agreed with his comments on his mother-tongue, and his  
translation was welcomed in Hungary with much favor from the public,  
as it already sold pretty well (Súlyszivárvány, Budapest: Magvetö,  
2009). Have a look here for the cover art (a shiny black surface on  
which the title, author's name and a penis-shaped oozing banana are  
displayed so that the banana's curved skin takes the place of the  
final y of the title Súlyszivárvány):
http://www.kikotoonline.hu/userfiles/image/konyv/kikoto-konyv- 
sulyszivarvany-borito.jpg

Another translator made a wonderful summary of her work on Mason &  
Dixon: Joanna Urban, who wrote the Polish version of this novel in  
about 8 months, and made a very thorough research on many points that  
were also studied on the List, adding a wonderful footnotes apparatus  
to her translation (Mason i Dixon,  Warszawa: Prószyński i S-ka,  
2005).

It's a pity that the French translator Christophe Claro couldn't make  
it to Lublin. The translators' panel would have been really  
wonderful. I must confess that Piotr Siemion's talk on "The  
Obsolescence of Lot 49" was of course funny and provocative, but he  
had much more to tell about himself than about his text.

Douglas Lannark didn't lecture on translation, but his paper, "From  
V. to IV: Adjusted Addition(s)," began with a wonderful set of  
additions of the numbers that can be read in Pynchon's novels'  
titles. Was this a translation of Pynchon's text into numbers?  
Douglas spoke of Pynchonian experiences in real life, and of  
astrological allusions and correspondances: it was awesome!

The panel called "Pynchon and Politics: Power, Spectacle and  
Transcendance" with papers by Robert J. Lacey, Seán Molloy, and Dara  
Waldron allowed us to enjoy the fruit of their research on power and  
preterition, the two layers of the political discourse in Pynchon's  
œuvre, and on the influence of the spectacular on the political  
aspects of Pynchon's narratives, respectively. These works were dense  
and very stimulating.

The papers that focused on Against the Day, by Jola Feix, Nina  
Engelhardt and Simon de Bourcier were very precise and added a lot to  
what has already been published on the Chums (their progressive  
independance allows a multiplicity of other-dimensional worlds to  
appear in the narrative), on mathematics and their impact on the real  
as well as on the fictional world represented in the novel, and on  
aether and its mythology.

Joanna Freer compared the fantasy induced by drugs in The Crying of  
Lot 49 and Against the Day, and their relation to anarchism. Georgios  
Maragos presented a complete essay on moving pictures in Pynchon's  
novels. Pawel Frelik made an extensive review of cover-arts for  
Pynchon's works and their translations. Tore Rye Andersen's paper on  
Pynchon's works conceived as two trilogies (California novels and  
global novels–V. seems to fall apart from this ensemble) was  
convincing, notably because he based his demonstration on what "world  
literature" means today. Jeff Severs, about women and capitalism in  
Against the Day, let us have a glimpse of his book to be published  
soon. So we'll hear about it more accurately and very soon.

Announcements:
- 3 books:
Jeffrey Severs and Christopher Leise (Eds.). Pynchon's Agains the  
Day: A Corrupted Pilgrim's Guide. Newark: University of Delaware  
Press, forthcoming (2011).
Sascha Pöhlmann. Pynchon's Postnational Imagination. Heidelberg:  
Universitätsverlag Winter, forthcoming (Fall 2010).
Sascha Pöhlmann (Ed.). Against the Grain: Reading Pynchon's  
Counternarratives. Amsterdam: Rodopi, forthcoming (Fall 2010).

-1 International Pynchon Week: June 2012, (Durham University).  
Organization: Matthias Mosch and Richard J. Moss. Note that this will  
be the moment of the second and only Transit of Venus for our  
generation: Many fellow Pynchonites among us in Lublin hope we can  
organize an observation of this great event. Wait for more news to  
come next year.

Clément
>