European Union Prize for Literature: English Translations

The news section of the sidebar usually suffices to keep the literary prize announcements flowing, but the first European Union Prize for Literature deserves a mention. The selection process for this award involves first naming twelve countries to be represented and then choosing a jury for each country. Each winning novelist must have published between 2 and 5 works of fiction, and the book under consideration for the prize must have been published within the past 5 years.

The countries participating in the 2009 prize selection were Austria, Croatia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Sweden. Internationally best-selling Swedish crime novelist Henning Mankell is serving as ambassador for the prize this year. Although English titles are noted for several of the 12 books, I've only been able to find two of the prize winners translated into English:

• The Sweetness of Life by Paulus Hochgatterer, Austria.
  
  
• Longshore Drift by Karen Gillece, Ireland.

Writers from these countries will be eligible for next year's prize: Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. What a fine way to bring writers from all across Europe to an international audience. I'm hoping that prize winners will enjoy wider translation after being honored by the EU Prize for Literature.

Puzzling through Another Wharton Short Story

I may have met my match in the short stories of Edith Wharton. For the second time an ending has left me mystified, unsure if my understanding matches the writer's intention. In "The Portrait," Wharton succeeds in developing several characters through layers of narration, but when the story ends, I wonder if I have grasped the meaning of a key turn in the story.

The portrait in question depicts a corrupt public figure. Members of New York society, gathered and chattering, agree that the picture is the one failure of a great portrait painter. Then the scene shifts, and the painter relates the history of the portrait to a friend, explaining why he did not produce the painting that the subject demanded. It held my interest to the very end, and although I understand the painter's motive in painting a different kind of portrait than his vision of the sitter required, I'm not at all sure what secret the subject's daughter is keeping.

The painter has presented an inaccurate image of the subject in order to respect the sensibility of the man's daughter, who worships her father. I believe the secret refers to her realization that her image of her father does not match the reality of his character, which the painter has been working so hard to avoid in his picture.

Up until I was confused by the cryptic ending, this was an excellent story. The reader should not have to work so hard to piece together the elements of the story at its end. Since this same effect came over me in the previous story from The New York Stories of Edith Wharton, I am beginning to feel something of a numb skull. I've not had this problem with her novels or with the short stories of other writers of the era. Even so, I enjoy these pieces up until the point when Wharton leaves me behind, requiring reflection and deciphering of the code of the stories in manner that I am unaccustomed to as a reader. It's like listening to a speaker of foreign language whose meaning flows easily, and then some idiomatic phrase throws me off entirely.

Despite my lack of fluency in Wharton's literary language of the short story, I will read more of them.

Casey Driessen's Michael Jackson Tribute: Billie Jean on Fiddle

Thank you, Bluegrass Blog for the tip.

Check out music from Driessen's new CD, Oog, at his MySpace page. For innovation, imagination, and energetic style on the fiddle, there's no one like him.

25 Favorite Songs from _American Songwriter Magazine_

The staff of American Songwriter Magazine drew up a list of 25 Of Our Favorite Songs From 1984-2009. On hearing about the list, I had two requirements for legitimacy. In that group we needed to find a song by Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch and one by Darrell Scott. These songwriters do appear on the list, which means it passes the test. Good show, American Songwriter.

Patty Loveless sings Scott's "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive," not the song chosen by American Songwriter, but one of his great songs:



Not to worry, boys and girls, Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" gets the nod (Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic). Put that song alongside country western classics and Prince and Beck, and you have an eclectic and wide-ranging selection.

Tracy Chapman, Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, and Mike Henderson & Chris Stapleton of The Steeldrivers. Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show (co-author with Dylan). I was pleased to see some of the music I listen to today singled out for excellence in songwriting.

Thomas Edison Company Film Clips

Searching for some audio files of old American music, I visited the Library of Congress website and came across a page of early film clips from the Thomas Edison Company, including this 1894 film of Spanish dancer, Carmencita, the first woman to appear before an Edison camera.

New York Stories of Edith Wharton

At last, after starting and putting down five books in a row, I've found one to stick with, The New York Stories of Edith Wharton.

Going outside one's comfort zone, trying new writers and new styles of fiction can lead to worthy discoveries or to some wasted hours. I put aside two mysteries by popular writers, one American, one British; the juvenalia of a modernist British novelist and essayist; some sketches by a pre-modernist German; and a pleasant enough historical novel about the imaginary goings-on in the life of a famous novelist. That's enough experimentation for the time being. With so many flops, one after the other, it seemed time to resort to the tried and true. Thus, Edith Wharton.

Wharton is known to me for her novels, short and long, but this is my first experience of her short stories. "Mrs. Manstey's View" (1891) was Wharton's first published story. It explores the isolation of an elderly woman who lives in a run-down New York City boarding house, and whose view out her upstairs window comprises her primary interest in life. The plot is somewhat irrelevant, and I mean this in a good way. Wharton captures a brief passage of time in the history of a sharply drawn character whose visionary involvement in the mundane view outside her window takes on almost neurasthenic descriptive detail. It's a short, fierce and uncompromising story about a displaced person and her desperate will to hang on to what little she has.

"That Good May Come" is a much longer story, with a larger cast of characters. Poverty also plays a role in this piece, in which a young poet must come to terms with the necessities of supporting his widowed mother and sister. I am sorry to say that the story has a punch line in the last paragraph, and it was lost on me. I did not get it. In order to figure out the reference, involving a person mentioned once in the story, I had to go back and find the earlier occurence of the name and interpret the last paragraph in the context of the earlier anecdote. Ah ha. It still took some interpreting, but the meaning became clear.

Either the story failed or the reader failed, and I believe it was the story, which is too bad, because it was an absorbing read until I was temporarily befuddled by the ending. Still, Wharton's style and characters and representation of old New York are enough to sustain this read. I look forward to the rest of these stories.

More History of American Popular Music & a French Folksong

Several weeks ago I began a project to trace the history of American popular music, reading a book on the subject and stopping to find audio samples online. I'm still stuck in the 16th Century and keep getting distracted, happily distracted, but it may be quite some time before the Twenty-first Century rolls around. Here's an update.

While searching for the sounds of the Genevan Psalter, as sung by French Huguenots on the East Coast of North America in the 1560s (current site of Jacksonville, Florida), I came across this beautiful French folksong of the Renaissance, "Une Jeune Fillette." I believe this clip is from the 1991 Alain Corneau film, Tous les Matins du Monde (All the Mornings of the World).


Arrangement Jordi Savall. Montserrat Figueras (Soprano). Maria Cristina Kiehr (Soprano).

A few videos of songs from the old Genevan Psalter can be found online, although not in French. Psalm 6. The horns give this performance a rich and rewarding musical texture.