MCLC: Asymptote summer 2012 issue

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: <editors at asymptotejournal.com>
Subject: Asymptote summer 2012 issue
***********************************************************

Announcing Asymptote's Blockbuster Summer Issue:

Our new issue has just been released and is up here:
http://asymptotejournal.com <http://asymptotejournal.com/>

Chinese highlights:

* A Sinophone "20 under 40"---in English. In May 2012, Unitas Magazine
compiled a list of the 20 best Sinophone writers under 40. As it is the
first attempt at such a list by any literary journal in the
Chinese-speaking world, we are proud to present a comprehensive
translation in Asymptote (the first ten here, and the next ten in our
October 2012 issue).

Members of the And Other Stories Chinese reading group (from the US, the
UK, China, and Singapore) stepped forward to translate these essays--which
were then presented within 3 months of the release of Unitas's "20 under
40". 

The first ten essays, accompanied by lists of recommended work, introduce:
Gan Yaoming (Taiwan), Wang Congwei (Taiwan), Gao Yifeng (Taiwan), Zhang
Yixuan (Taiwan), Lu Min (China), Xu Rongzhe (Taiwan), Zhang Yaosheng
(Taiwan), Wenren Yueyue (Hong Kong), A Yi (China) and Gong Wanhui
(Malaysia).

Please spread word of this project in support of this undertaking--a
logistical feat--and certainly of great value to western readers.

* "The Pocketwatch," a new translation of a Huang Chunming story (by
Howard Goldblatt)

* Translations of Yang Mu's poetry (by Arthur Sze and Michelle Yeh)

* Translations of Ye Mimi's poetry (by Steve Bradbury)

* Dylan Suher essay on Qian Zhongshu, that also serves as a review of
Humans, Beasts and Ghosts: The Collected Short Stories of Qian Zhongshu
(translated by Christopher G. Rea)

"It is sometimes said that Leibniz was the last man who knew everything.
This is perhaps true for the West; for the East, it was certainly Qian
Zhongshu."

This wonderful essay has been additionally translated into Italian by
Riccardo Moratto.

* In addition to the above content associated with Chinese, two works have
been chosen to be translated into Chinese. They are:

(1) An excerpt of Lebanese author Dominique Eddé's "Kite," translated into
English by Ros Schwartz, and further translated into Chinese by Francis Li
Zhuoxiong, better known as the critically acclaimed Golden Melody Award
winner responsible for many Karen Mok songs.

(2) Moroccan writer Abdellah Taïa's open letter to his family,
"Homosexuality Explained To My Mother" translated into English by Riccardo
Moratto, and further translated into Chinese by Li Kuo-cheng as "向母親解釋同
性戀“.

* Finally, this issue marks the start of our journal's partnership with
Unitas Magazine. (Details in the mailer below.)
 
Our official mailer follows. (If you prefer not to wait for the MCLC
announcement to be informed, then please go on to our website and sign up
for the mailing list to know the moment our issues are released.
Alternatively, our Facebook page is at
http://www.facebook.com/asymptotejournal
<http://www.facebook.com/asymptotejournal%20> --please join us there!
Thank you all for your support.)

MAILER

[Our official mailer, if you're interested, is also up online here:
http://asymptotejournal.com/view_edm.php?id=7
<http://asymptotejournal.com/view_edm.php?id=7%20%20>   ]

Superhero movies and summer seem destined to go together, as if the desire
to escape scorching heat were merely a suggestion to escape the
world-as-is into a cooler, brighter realm where salvation comes swooping
down with fists of principles and gleaming capes. In quite a different
way—but, we think, even more satisfyingly—Asymptote too is a flashy team
of superheroes, zipping around the world to seek out the best unpublished
translations to offer as salvation or pleasure or whatever it is one seeks
in literature and art.

Our blockbuster issue highlights two literatures in particular, with a
special feature on contemporary Romanian poetry and parts one and two of
the list of 20 best Sinophone writers under 40 as originally compiled by
Taiwan's Unitas Magazine. There is also Efraín Bartolomé's Ocosingo War
Diary, a singular piece of poetic non-fiction that is here accompanied by
an effects-heavy audio recording; Abdellah Taïa's provocative
"Homosexuality Explained to My Mother," a brave letter as much directed to
the author's beloved mother as to Morocco, his motherland; and a slideshow
of works by artist Nina Katchadourian. You may have seen Katchadourian's
"Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style" which went viral earlier
this year. Her enchanting "Sorted Books" are often just as funny and
Asymptote presents a selection of these playful juxtapositions of book
covers spelling out the shortest of stories.

The poetry section offers its own curious juxtapositions, throwing
together Roselyne Sibille's strange and elemental Shadow-World with the
emotional and metaphysical absences experienced by Laura Campmany's
Smoking Angel; or the varying senses of historical and personal time one
gets from the writings of Ernest Wichner and Yang Mu. We are proud to
present work from renowned poet-translators Rosmarie Waldrop, Marilyn
Hacker, and Arthur Sze (in collaboration with Michelle Yeh), as well as
poetry from the Armenian and Farsi, two languages new to Asymptote. We
furthermore could not be more chuffed that all the poetry selections are
accompanied by recorded readings.

Meanwhile, Austria's most famous superhero, Freud, visits his
psychologically troubled sister in an excerpt from Goce Smilevski's new
book Freud's Sister (our first translation from the Macedonian); polymath
super-talent Reif Larsen explores Orhan Pamuk's real-life Museum of
Innocence; and Dylan Suher writes about China's own literary omniscient,
Qian Zhongshu. In Maksym Kurochkin's hit play Kitchen, the Teutonic heroes
of the Nibelungen are transformed into modern-day chefs and dishwashers.
On the limits of heroism, we have Austrian-born Jean Améry, whose
suffering in a Gestapo torture chamber so deeply haunted his days
afterward that he felt unable to live them out. His suicide notes are here
accompanied by a sage essay from his translator Adrian West. Time is also
pressing in two other stories: in Huang Chunming's "The Pocket Watch"
(translated by Howard Goldblatt), a clock breaking down has grave
repercussions, whereas Dominique Eddé's "Kite" (translated into both
English and Chinese) argues that novels are far crueler than watches.

The special feature on Romanian poetry mentioned above offers but a small
slice of a rich and diverse culture, ranging from the lyrical mastery of
Mircea Ivanescu and Denisa Comănescu to the post-surrealism of Gellu Naum
(whose poem appears with a recording by experimental band MARGENTO). This
feature also includes poet-theorist Bogdan Ghiu; political critics Ileana
Mǎlǎncioiu and Mircea Dinescu, whose writings have previously been banned
in Romania; as well as rising stars Radu Vancu, Adina Dabija, and Stefan
Bolea.

We've kept a very special announcement for the end of this note, which
regards the other Feature this issue on Sinophone lit. It marks our formal
partnership with Unitas Magazine <http://unitas.udngroup.com.tw/>, a
Taipei-based print journal begun in 1987 and now very much considered a
leading journal in the Chinese-speaking world. Each Asymptote issue,
starting from this one, will feature content (in English translation) that
first appeared in the Taiwanese literary monthly; in exchange, Unitas
Magazine will also publish original Asymptote content (in Chinese
translation) in their pages, all within 3 months of our issues' release.
Like Nick Fury assembling The Avengers, we feel much stronger now that we
have Unitas on our team–now to figure out which one of us gets to be Iron
Man.

Next up, the October issue will have as its focus original
English-language poetry that engages with the notion of 'foreignness,'
(it's still not too late to submit
<http://asymptotejournal.com/submit.php>!) and our January 2013 feature
seeks essays about the fraught/felicitous relationships between translator
and authors (feel free to pitch us ideas first
<mailto:editors at asymptotejournal.com>)—this is, of course, aside from our
usual rolling submissions across the genres. All this to say: putting
together our issues is much like assembling a team of superheroes: our
contributors turn up in the farthest reaches, seem to possess superhuman
skills, and occasionally (ideally), with some support (financial
<http://asymptotejournal.com/donate.php> or otherwise
<http://asymptotejournal.com/support.php>) from other corners, something
goes BOOM!

-- 
Asymptote <http://asymptotejournal.com/>'s Summer issue proudly presents
the first part of a Sinophone "20 under 40", a special feature on Romanian
poetry, an interview with Abdellah Taïa (the Moroccan author of
"Homosexuality Explained to my Mother"), and a new series of "Sorted
Books" by artist Nina Katchadourian. This edition also features
translations by Marilyn Hacker, Rosmarie Waldrop, and Arthur Sze; new
fiction from the Macedonian; Russian drama; an essay on Qian Zhongshu, and
much, much more here <http://asymptotejournal.com/view_edm.php?id=7>.
Follow us on Facebook here <https://www.facebook.com/Asymptotejournal>.