Something that is driving me a little batty about "The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura" (in Putas asesinas) is trying to work out the chronology of Connie's pregnancy. She was impregnated by the Preacher, who then left, and later she was a hooker in New York and met Bittrich and came back to MedellÃn and started acting in porn movies; but some of the movies are made while she is pregnant, and there's no indication that she has a child when she's in NYC. The only way that would work is if she lived with the Preacher and got pregnant after she had come back from New York and started working for Bittrich; but I thought the narrator said that was not the case. -- No that's wrong, he says "Abandoned by my imbecile father, here's Connie, with Doris and Mónica Farr" -- but that doesn't include anything about the abandonment (or the liaison) preceding the acting career.
A couple of translation things -- I think this uncredited (uncredited? I cannot find the translator's name on it) English translation in the New Yorker does the story some violence by breaking it up into paragraphs and sections. The original story is all one paragraph and it's characterized by a really driving, insistent force of pulling the reader along -- really difficult to put down. I'm trying to do a translation all in one paragraph, don't yet know if I'll be able to communicate that effect in English. Is this a typo? When Connie and Mónica get together with Bittrich,
* No, not a typo: As Rick points out in comments, "rodar los dados" and "golpe de los dados" both refer to the act of rolling dice.
posted evening of Saturday, May 8th, 2010
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One of RB's books had a more definite date for when Lalo Cura was born but the chronology becomes more muddled actually.
It's unfortunate that the New Yorker's online version of the story did not credit Chris Andrews as the translator. Though they did run an interview with Andrews about the story.
I'm very surprised to know that the Lalo Cura story unfolds in one paragraph in the original. It really affects the rhythm of reading it. I agree that Andrews's (or the editor's) decision to split it into paragraphs is unforgivable. I hope that when they collect it in book form, they would retain its original form.
posted morning of May 9th, 2010 by Rise
Aha! Thanks for the link, Rise.
posted morning of May 9th, 2010 by Jeremy
It doesn't seem like a typo to me. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of the book with me and read it too long ago, but it sounds like some sort of metaphorical reference to either destiny or luck (specially because "rodar los dados"--"roll the dice"--would not make sense otherwise).
BTW, is the gender confusion ("el artista prusiana y los putas latinoamericanas") in the original? I don't remember it.
posted evening of May 9th, 2010 by Rick
No, that's poor copying on my part -- it's "el artista prusiano y las putas latinoamericanas".
I didn't know about "rodar los dados" -- I was trying to make "rodar los dedos" mean that they were holding hands... and "golpe de los dedos" mean footsteps on the pavement.
posted evening of May 9th, 2010 by Jeremy
...and indeed, apparently "golpe de los dados" is also a roll of the dice. It would help if the dictionary I'm using mentioned that "dados"=dice...
posted evening of May 9th, 2010 by Jeremy
Hmmm, as a spanish english interpreter (*not* translator) I have run across that before. I once groused at how little I liked Laura Esquivel's version of Malinche. I'd taken it out of the library and they presented me with the English version.
Somebody suggested I get the spanish version and I actually got them both and read them side by side. This messing around with the paragraphs is a real problem; it interrupted the flow of the narration and *harshened* the shadowing. I couldn't understand the logic on many of the decisions. In fact, I went translating the spanish in my head and comparing it to the translation. There were only two or three words or grammar choices I would have changed on each page. But the sum of them was to take a harsh book about a harsh time and turn it into an ugly book about an ugly time. And it was enough to turn me, a historical realist, away from the book.
Recently I read about a french author (Anne Golon) and remembered a comment made to me about Jules Verne. Apparently good translations of Anne's historical works (Angelique) do/did not exist. In Golon's case wiki states that a number of characters and paragraphs were excised from the american books. This was the case with Verne; I don't know if new translations have been done in this decade. I think I'm going to brush up my french to read Verne and Golon in the original.
posted morning of May 10th, 2010 by Kier Salmon
Hi Kier! The funny thing about this story, I think Andrews' translation is much less ugly than the original -- it is a brutal, ugly story. The paragraph breaks in the translation give you space to process the images and arrange them in your mind, where in the original it's just filth, filth, filth piling in on top of the other filth -- for instance in the section where Lalo is describing some of the films from Bittrich's catalog, and swerving back and forth between the porn imagery and broad, cryptic observations about Latin America, and then shifting abruptly to an account of how the actors are mostly dead now, of AIDS and crime... Because there is no interruption all this piles up in your cortex and the effect of reading the story is extremely raw and harsh.
posted morning of May 10th, 2010 by Jeremy
Your welcome, Jeremy. I discovered the link from biblioklept.
posted evening of May 10th, 2010 by rise
