An engaging and unabashedly opinionated examination of what translation is and isn't.
For some, translation is the poor cousin of literature, a necessary evil if not an outright travesty―summed up by the old Italian play on words, traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor). For others, translation is the royal road to cross-cultural understanding and literary enrichment. In this nuanced and provocative study, Mark Polizzotti attempts to reframe the debate along more fruitful lines. Eschewing both these easy polarities and the increasingly abstract discourse of translation theory, he brings the main questions into clearer focus: What is the ultimate goal of a translation? What does it mean to label a rendering “faithful”? (Faithful to what?) Is something inevitably lost in translation, and can something also be gained? Does translation matter, and if so, why? Unashamedly opinionated, both a manual and a manifesto, his book invites usto sympathize with the translator not as a “traitor” but as the author's creative partner.
Polizzotti, himself a translator of authors from Patrick Modiano to Gustave Flaubert, explores what translation is and what it isn't, and how it does or doesn't work. Translation, he writes, “skirts the boundaries between art and craft, originality and replication, altruism and commerce, genius and hack work.” In Sympathy for the Traitor, he shows us how to read not only translations but also the act of translation itself, treating it not as a problem to be solved but as an achievement to be celebrated―something, as Goethe put it, “impossible, necessary, and important.”

Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto (Mit Press)

Literature & Fiction

Polizzotti, Mark

History & Criticism

The MIT Press

An engaging and unabashedly opinionated examination of what translation is and isn't.
For some, translation is the poor cousin of literature, a necessary evil if not an outright travesty―summed up by the old Italian play on words, traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor). For others, translation is the royal road to cross-cultural understanding and literary enrichment. In this nuanced and provocative study, Mark Polizzotti attempts to reframe the debate along more fruitful lines. Eschewing both these easy polarities and the increasingly abstract discourse of translation theory, he brings the main questions into clearer focus: What is the ultimate goal of a translation? What does it mean to label a rendering “faithful”? (Faithful to what?) Is something inevitably lost in translation, and can something also be gained? Does translation matter, and if so, why? Unashamedly opinionated, both a manual and a manifesto, his book invites usto sympathize with the translator not as a “traitor” but as the author's creative partner.
Polizzotti, himself a translator of authors from Patrick Modiano to Gustave Flaubert, explores what translation is and what it isn't, and how it does or doesn't work. Translation, he writes, “skirts the boundaries between art and craft, originality and replication, altruism and commerce, genius and hack work.” In Sympathy for the Traitor, he shows us how to read not only translations but also the act of translation itself, treating it not as a problem to be solved but as an achievement to be celebrated―something, as Goethe put it, “impossible, necessary, and important.”

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

An elegant consideration of the Surrealist movement as a global phenomenon and why it continues to resonate &nbsp; Why does Surrealism continue to fascinate us a century after André Breton's Manifesto of Surrrealism? How do we encounter Surrealism today? Mark Polizzotti vibrantly reframes the Surrealist movement in contemporary terms and offers insight into why it continues to inspire makers and consumers of art, literature, and culture. &nbsp; Polizzotti shows how many forms of popular media can thank Surrealism for their existence, including Monty Python, Theatre of the Absurd, and trends in fashion, film, and literature. While discussing the movement's iconic figures--including André Breton, Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Man Ray, and Dorothea Tanning--he also broadens the traditionally French and male-focused narrative, constructing a more diverse and global representation. And he addresses how the Surrealists grappled with ideas that mirror current concerns, including racial and economic injustice, sexual politics, issues of identity, labor unrest, and political activism. Why Surrealism Matters provides a concise, engaging exploration of how, a century later, the "Surrealist revolution" remains as dynamic as ever.

Why Surrealism Matters (Why X Matters Series)

Arts & Photography

Yale University Press

Aptly described by playwright Eugene Ionesco as "one of the four or five great reformers of modern thought", Andre Breton (1896-1966) was the founder and prime mover of Surrealism, the most influential artistic and literary movement of the 20th century. Poet and theorist, artistic impresario and political agitator, Breton was a man of paradoxical character: inspiring one moment, crushingly tyrannical the next; embracing friends like Brunuel, Dali, Duchamp, Miro, Man Ray, Aragon and Eluard, only to exile them as enemies later. From its emergence from Dada after World War I through its culmination in the 1960s, here is the Surrealist world in detail.

Revolution Of The Mind

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Da Capo Press

A portrait of an influential figure in modern culture traces his participation in the Paris Dada group in the 1920s, his seminal experiments with automatic writing, his role in the development of Surrealism, and his encounters with Duchamp, Freud, and Sartre.

Revolution of the Mind: The Life of Andre Breton

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

Founder of the Surrealist movement, André Breton has also come to be recognized as one of the twentieth century's most innovative and influential poets. The inaugural volume in the Poets for the Millennium series, André Breton offers the most comprehensive selection available in English of Breton's poetry, along with a selection of his major prose writings. The translations, a number of which are published here for the first time, are by some of the most notable poets in our language, including David Antin, Paul Auster, Samuel Beckett, Michael Benedikt, Robert Duncan, David Gascoyne, and Charles Simic. This volume also includes an extensive biographical and thematic introduction by Mark Polizzotti, which sets the poems in the context of Breton's life and overall career.

Andre Breton: Selections (Volume 1) (Poets for the Millennium)

BRETON, André

University of California Press

Haunting artwork complements a gentle story about two girls, Helen and her Jewish friend, Lydia, during the Nazi occupation of France, and about love, courage, and betrayal.

Star of Fear, Star of Hope

Children's Books

Hoestlandt, Jo

Walker Co

In this book, Mark Polizzotti examines just what makes the songs on Highway 61 Revisited so affecting, how they work together as a suite, and how lyrics, melody, and arrangements combine to create an unusually potent mix. He blends musical and literary analysis of the songs themselves, biography (where appropriate) and recording information (where helpful). And he focuses on Dylan's mythic presence in the mid-60s, when he emerged from his proletarian incarnation to become the American Rimbaud. The comparison has been made by others, including Dylan, and it illuminates much about his mid-sixties career, for in many respects Highway 61 is rock 'n' roll's answer to A Season in Hell.

Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited (33 1/3)

Music

Continuum

Big Blondes (New Press International Fiction)

Renowned singer Gloire Stella has mysteriously disappeared. When a television producer tries to track her down, Gloire goes on the run. From the cliffs of Brittany to the back alleys of Bombay, Big Blondes is a riotous, nonstop adventure for anyone who has ever wondered whether blondes really do have more fun.

Echenoz, Jean

The New Press

Max Delmarc, age fifty, is a famous concert pianist with two problems: the first is a paralyzing stage fright for which the second, alcohol, is the only treatment. In this unparalleled comedy from the Prix Goncourt–winning French novelist Jean Echenoz, we journey with Max, from the trials of his everyday life, through his untimely death, and on into the afterlife.
After a brief stay in purgatory—part luxury hotel, part minimum security prison, under the supervision of deceased celebrities—Max is cast into an alarmingly familiar partition of hell, “the urban zone,” a dark and cloudy city much like his native Paris on an eternally bad day. Unable to play his beloved piano or stomach his needed drink, Max engages in a hapless struggle to piece his former life back together while searching in vain for the woman he once loved.
An acclaimed bestseller with 50,000 copies sold in France, Piano is a sly, sardonic evocation of Dante and Sartre for the present day, the playful, daring masterpiece of a novelist at the top of his form.

Piano: A Novel

Literary

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Polizzotti, Mark. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Polizzotti, Mark

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Polizzotti, Mark. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto (Mit Press)

Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto (Mit Press)

Why Surrealism Matters (Why X Matters Series)

Revolution Of The Mind

Revolution of the Mind: The Life of Andre Breton

Andre Breton: Selections (Volume 1) (Poets for the Millennium)

Star of Fear, Star of Hope

Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited (33 1/3)

Big Blondes (New Press International Fiction)

Piano: A Novel