Harold Pinter's Nobel Acceptance Speech

Found this on FM radio, am posting it cause it ties with the novel I'm writing

Press play button to listen (total 13 minutes).

Part 1:

Part 2:

Books (not) in translation

A French author writes to me to share his frustration at not being able to find a US or a British publisher to release his bestselling novel in the English language. What else could I say but: "You are not being singled out. English speakers are deprived of most of the books that are written in other languages. More books are translated from the English language than into it." Then I forwarded a link to the recently released data (pdf), which shows that of all books available to English speakers only about 2% are translated from other languages; whereas in Germany 13% of books are translations, in France 27%, in Spain 28%, in Turkey 40% and in Slovenia 70%.

The Guardian had an interesting article on the subject. In it we read that

mainstream publishers have a ready excuse for ignoring literature from around the world. "The idiotic notion is that there's enough being written in English, […] so you don't have to bother." English is so generally spoken that it's possible to read very widely and not notice that you're only reading books written in one language.

The Guardian notes that writers are beginning to realize that in order to enter into the English language world of books they must create in the English language:

Creative writing schools in the UK and America are now seeing writers already published in their own languages enrolling for writing courses in English, a solution to the problems of getting translated.

and

there's even a danger that the dominance of English-language publishing is putting other languages and literary cultures at risk.

I don't see it in quite as dark colors.  I recall this quote I read somewhere in my youth: "The boundaries of our language are the boundaries of our world." Books in other languages will continue to be printed, though perhaps not translated. In my view the real losers are / will be all mono-language speaking readers who are / will be deprived of glimpses into other cultures via books written in languages other than their own.

Authors' earnings

According to a report, Canadian authors' earnings (or lack thereof):

• Authors earned $32,000 on average in 2005. This was second only to “Producers, directors, choreographers, etc.” (who pulled in $43,800). The overall labour force earned $36,300, and the cultural sector labour force earned $32,900. The lowest-paid artists were visual artists and dancers, both of whom earned, on average, less than $14,000.
• Authors were the second-largest field surveyed in terms of numbers, representing 18% of all artists. Musicians and singers had the largest ranks with 24%.
• Eleven percent of authors reported no earnings in 2005.
• Fifty-four percent of authors are female, almost perfectly in line with the percentage across all artistic fields (53%) and slightly higher than the overall labour force (48%). Male authors earned $34,000 on average, while female ones earned only $30,400.
• Forty-one percent of authors were self-employed; the rest were “paid workers.” Self-employed authors earned only $21,400, while the paid workers earned $39,700.
• There were 24,600 authors in the 2006 census, up from 21,100 in 2001 and 15,200 in 1991. Average earnings are dropping, though: authors earned $36,500 in 1990, $35,800 in 2000, and $32,000 in 2005.

Creative stimulants

Witkacy, one of my favorite artists used to fortify his creativity with various stimulants. Whenever he painted or wrote he added a short note on the substance he used in his work. His paintings are particularly interesting for they bear witness to the artist's work. Underneath his signature one finds interesting information, such as date, followed by: "two beers, a shot of vodka and a cigar"; or, "peyote, two bottles of wine, 6 cigarettes", etc.

Well, sometimes I use creative stimulants in my work too, most frequently red wine. I find wine a happy serum that helps deliver satisfying results; yexy written under the influence of wine seems optimistic, as though in a mist. Inspired by Witkacy I tried something more potent and turned to vodka, alas it turned out most unreliable. The next day I opened the text I created to a pint of vodka and found it, well… too creative. Some 80% of words are badly misspelled and to the point that they are quite unintelligible; what makes the text even wackier are the auto-corrections performed by word-processing software. First that comes to mind is that its a classic from the canon of the Klingon Empire, but seeing as I cannot understand it it is probably better that I stick to red wine.

see Witkacy's notes in the corner

What is truth serum?

Here's an article on "truth serum":

The only way that interrogators can tap a man's memory is to ask him. But what if the person is unwilling to spill the beans or, at least, the real ones? If only there were only a way to plug a USB cable to the back of Kasab's head and just download the experiences.

While such technology may be the stuff of science fiction, Indian government officials have announced they will employ another technique that seems to leap from the pages of a 1940s pulp novel: truth serum. Also known as narcoanalysis, administering psychoactive drugs for interrogation purposes has been around for just under a century, but it has been viewed with skepticism from the start. Indeed, the practice is banned in most democracies, and evidence obtained from such an interrogation would have a hard time making it into an American court.

What does the term "truth serum" mean?
That's a term that was used to describe the use of certain drugs, most commonly barbiturates like sodium amytal and sodium pentothal, to try to extract truthful statements from people about their past experiences.  What the term really meant was that the people who used the serum believed that it made people unable to censor themselves and they would just empty their memories into a narrative statement.

A must read for some thriller writers, who far too often rely on "truth serums" to leap forward a story.

300% rise in booksales

Here is proof that one needs to write just the right books for the times:

German media have reported that bookstores nationwide have seen a 300% increase in sales of the book in recent months.

The book: Das Kapital, by Karl Marx.

Quite an achievement considering that at the same time:

* E-book sales rose 73% to $5.2 million.
* Adult mass market rose 6.3% to $65.3 million.
* Children's/YA hardcover rose 0.8% to $86.4 million.
* Professional and scholarly sales slipped 4.4% to $46.3 million.
* Audiobook sales dropped 9.1% to $18.4 million.
* University press paperbacks fell 13.9% to $4.2 million
* Children's/YA paperback fell 14.8% to $43.8 million.
* University press hardcovers dropped 20.4% to $6 million.
* Adult paperback dropped 23% to $95 million.
* Adult hardcover fell 25% to $246.2 million.
* Religious books fell 25.6% to $57.1 million.

Publisher of Das Kapital attributes the huge rise in the book's popularity to:

"The financial crisis brought us a huge bump."

He suggested that it was younger Germans who were buying the book unhappy with the direction their elders had led the country.

"There's a younger generation of academics tackling hard questions and looking to Marx for answers," Mr Schuetrumpf said.

The Capital by Karl Marx is available as a free download (pdf).

Editing books

Found on Good Experience:

The phrase that got me was like a stone in my shoe - noticeable at first, then irritating, then prompting outbursts.

It was "his heart in his mouth."

This is how Follett described a character who was nervous or anxious or frightened. It’s not the most refined metaphor to begin with, but there it was – and then a few pages later, someone else’s heart was in his mouth – and then, next chapter, another heart in another mouth – and again – more hearts, more mouths – until I finally finished the book and thought, just how many times did Follett use that ONE metaphor in a single book?

Which brings me back to the Kindle. Digital technology changes the experience of reading books. What might otherwise have taken hours, to scour the text for an irritating phrase, now takes just a few seconds.

And the answer is: 13. Actually 17, if you count the four instances of “her heart in her mouth.” (It seems that men are, on the whole, a lot hungrier for coronary snacks.)

Unfortunately it happens, it is not something we pay attention too - really, these cliche expression are the least of our problems. By the time we're done with a book we are dog tired. This is why I don't edit my own books, I have a hound for such things - my wife, who bites when she spots these smelly chunks of literary rawhide. My editor said he's never seen a manuscript edited this well...