[bypeTeenehalT]

Good interview by Mark Thwaite for Book Depository. I notice that Verhaeghen uses the pronoun "we" when talking about America. Has this Belgian been subsumed by the USA?

I still haven't seen a copy of the book, but maybe the lack of sales are only to do with the fact he is a dreaded Belgian. Maybe the book gives people leafing through it in the bookshop an overpowering impression.

He doesn't give much away about himself. Maybe that's a writer's prerogative to keep an element of private life.

In another interview he describes the process of self-translation:

http://www.splicetoday.com/writing/i...aul-verhaeghen

As you know, translation interests me a great deal. Verhaeghen speaking to Splice Today. Here, he's being more straightforward:

PAUL VERHAEGHEN: The translation! I just bumbled into it. To try to lure publishers into buying the foreign rights, the Flemish Fund for Literature had a few pages translated by a professional. And although this person did an excellent job, I had to swallow hard when I read that translation. It just wasn?t me. So: (a) I realized I apparently had a voice in English; and (b) I stupidly thought that therefore I should do the translation myself. So I applied for the job, and I got hired. It?s not a new book and it?s not a slavish copy. I felt I could take a few liberties here and there, twist sentences around, insert new puns, delete obscure jokes, correct a few mistakes. My English is still not as good as I would want it to be, but I wanted to avoid having a book that read as if it had been translated. In Dutch, my choice of words is very often determined by sound and rhythm. I tried to do that in the translation as well?you have to be able to read it out loud, somehow I feel that?s important. The good thing about translating your own work is that you don?t have to bother with doing the work ?justice?; if something doesn?t work in the translation, off it goes! The author isn?t going to show up on my doorstep with a gun.

I do realize I got tremendously lucky. When is the last time you or anyone of your acquaintances lusted for a Flemish novel in translation, right? To get published in any language is a miracle, to get translated into American is even more unthinkable, and to get some small amount of attention and recognition is utterly fantastic. My older work is not worth translating (I hope it all goes out of print in Dutch soon), and whatever is going on inside my mind right now isn?t worth writing down. At all. So it?s gonna be Omega Minor and that is it. A quarter-million words is enough of an oeuvre anyway.

At another point in the interview, he mentions the untranslatability of some authors, including Boon. But Boon's been given some airing in the English-speaking world. Verhaeghen on Boon:

I would recommend Boon, except that he?s totally unreadable in translation. You have to hail from a particular two-by-three block area of the village of Erembodegem to fully appreciate his craft, I have been told. I hail from two miles down the road, and find him sublime. But all my Dutch friends hate him.

Remember what Eric revealed about Boon in another thread...