Q. What was it like to write a biography of an author, many of whose works you have translated from German into English?
A. It was a strange experience, because I was so used to “thinking with” Walser as I wrote his sentences in English for so many years (more than 30!). But when I started considering his work from a biographer’s perspective, I realized that the sense I’d developed over the years of knowing how his mind worked was illusory, a projection. So I had to start from scratch, approaching his life on the basis of historical fact. I arrived at a quite different picture of who he was.
Q. How do creative writing and translating intersect?
A. Literary translation is a form of creative writing. I like to describe it as a writing exercise with maximal constraints: Write a sentence; here’s what it needs to say, here’s what the style should be, and here’s what the tone is—and you still have so many artistic choices to make before the sentence is written.
Q. What are your summer plans?
A. I’m working on a new translation of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. That should keep me busy for a month or two.
Q. You're hosting a dinner party. Which scholars or authors, dead or alive, would you invite, and why?
A. Don Mee Choi, John Keene, Yoko Tawada, and Tonya Foster—some of my favorite writers and thinkers—because one should never pass up the chance to partake in brilliance combined with warmth.
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