Audio recordings of some of the Lublin papers

[Clément Lévy]

A few corrections that were suggested by two of us:

1) The title of Janos Szekely's translation of /Gravity's Rainbow/, / 
Sulyszivarvany/ would read "Weightrainbow" in English. It is a  
compound word, because "gravity" is in Magyar a somewhat ugly and  
technical word without any moral connotation.

2) The second and final (not the last!) Transit of Venus for our  
generation will occur on June 6, 2012. After that, another 105 years  
will pass before this wonderful conjunction takes place another time.

3) I wrote fussball, and of course I meant soccer. But as you know,  
soccer is a game where every country sends 11 players to compete  
against each other's teams, but in the end, Germany wins. So let's  
write it in German: fussball. May I add that France today is in a  
total mess because politicians keep giving an overestimated value to  
the poor performance of the national team? Those kids are slaves of  
theirs sponsors, and they couldn't go to school long enough to be  
able to react politely to their coach's remarks. I feel sorry for  
them, but their team is far from being the best, with or without  
Anelka. But I don't think anybody should be blamed for their failure  
because they collectively lacked a group dynamic. What Raymond  
Domenech said ("quand ca veut pas, ca veut pas": more formally:  
without any desire, there is no desire) seems quite right to me. And  
without this qualification, French journalists may be able to talk a  
little about real problems in our democracy (massive demos today  
against the pensions' reform, after two humorists were fired from the  
public radio because they used cuss words and made fun of our  
ridiculous and fascistoid president and some of his ministers).

Sorry for the garbled text (i'm using text format, though): in my  
last e-mail you should have read the names of Janos, Sascha  
Poehlmann, the references of the Polish and Magyar translations are / 
Mason i Dixon/, Warszawa, Proszynski i S-ka, 2005 and / 
Sulyszivarvany/, Budapest, Magveto, 2009, and Sascha Poehlmann PhD  
thesis, /Pynchon's Postnational Imagination/ is published by  
Universitaetsverlag Winter, in Heidelberg, andexpected next Fall.

All the best,
Clement

Le 24 juin 10 à 10:13, Clément Lévy a écrit :

> (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
>>
>