Blotting paper

A question that is almost always difficult to answer — and in many ways, I think it should be, that something is wrong if it isn’t — is:

What do you write about?

Maybe:

I write about feelings.

or

I write about birds.

or

I write about feelings and birds. » Read the rest of this entry «

Fiction

• Lydia Davis: Break It Down (1986)
• Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky: Memories of the Future (1926-30, tr. from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull with Nikolai Formazov)

Nonfiction

• Eliot Wienberger & Octavio Paz: 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (1987)

Poetry

• Kathleen Pierce: The Ardors (2004)
• Vasko Popa: Homage to the Lame Wolf: Selected Poems (1987, tr. from the Serbian by Charles Simic)

Drama

• Alfred Jarry: Ubu Roi (1896, tr. from the French by Barbara Wright)

If you’re the sort of person (obviously a tolerant, kind one) who reads my end-of-month book recaps, you will notice a preponderance of Dada and Surrealist texts and translations in my reading lists in coming months. Actually, I read a fair number of translations when it comes to fiction, but I’m starting to read more translated poetry and translation-related nonfiction as well. This is a natural outcome of having taken a translation class and a seminar on Dada and Surrealism this semester, plus I’m editing for a translation journal.

So that explains a few things. » Read the rest of this entry «

So, let’s start with a list of the books I read last month.

• Diary of a Madman and Selected Stories, Nikolai Gogol, 1832-42, translated from the Russian by Ronald Wilks (short story collection)
• The Government Inspector, Nikolai Gogol, 1836, translated from the Russian by Ronald Wilks (play)
• Woman in the Dunes, Kōbō Abe, 1962, translated from the Japanese by E Dale Saunders (novel) » Read the rest of this entry «

Neel Chaudhuri wins the Hindu Metroplus Playwright Award 2010! » Read the rest of this entry «

There will be a reading of Swar Thounaojam‘s play Dear Dirty at Crossword on the 25th of March. The readers are Vijay Nair, Spatica Ramanujam, Shashank Purushotham, Sunil Bannur and Sheila Govindaraj. » Read the rest of this entry «

Abhishek Majumdar will be reading from his play An Arrangement of Shoes and be in conversation with Swar Thounaujam at Crossword on the 20th of November. » Read the rest of this entry «

This is the first time, barring a few modest essays, that I write in prose.

It appears to me that there are three distinct literary genres: poetry, which is sung, theatre, which is spoken, and prose, which is written. » Read the rest of this entry «