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BORNTRANSLATED

LiteratureNow

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INTRODUCTION

TheoryofWorldLiteratureNow

TheresawouldreadtheoriginalsandIwouldreadthetranslationsandthetranslationswouldbecometheoriginalsasweread.

—BenLerner,LeavingtheAtochaStation

THELOCATIONOFLITERATURE

There is nothing easier and nothing more contemporary than translation. Nothingeasier because all you have to do is press that translate button at the top of yourInternet browser. Go ahead. Appuyez dès maintenant. There’s nothing morecontemporarybecauseGoogleandGoogleTranslateseem togohand inhand. It’shard to imagine the immediategratificationsof thedigitalagewithout the immediategratifications of digital translation: new words, in a new language, at your service.Translationsaturatesoureverydaycultureof reading,writing,andviewing.Whetheryou’researching the InternetorstreamingavideoonNetflix, languagesseem tobereadily available and more or less interchangeable. Films and books, too, aresaturated by translation, and indeed the lines between established and emergentmedia are not so clear. Consider that many books are released—or as we say,delivered—not only in print, as clothbound or paperback editions, but also inelectronicfilesasDVD,MP3,orKindleeditions.1Pagescanbeheardorswipedaswell as turned, and expanding formats redouble the impression of proliferatingoriginals,eveninasinglelanguage.2But many books do not appear at first only in a single language. Instead, they

appear simultaneously or nearly simultaneously inmultiple languages.They start asworld literature. Of course, long before the twenty-first century there were literaryworksthattraveledfromtheirfirstlanguageintomultiplelanguages,geographies,andnational editions. Yet these travels were relatively slow and initially confined toregional distribution.Take severalwell-knownexamples.The international bestsellerDon Quixote, famous for its exceptionally fast absorption into many languagesystems, took fifty-oneyears, from1605 to1656, to find itsway fromSpanish intofivenational languages;anditwasonlyin1769thatthenovelwaspublishedoutsideof Western Europe.3 The Pilgrim’s Progress, first published in 1678, has beentranslated from English into more than two hundred languages, including eightyAfricanlanguages,butitbeganitsmigrationbeyondEuropeandtheNorthAtlanticin1835.4TheCommunistManifesto’sSwedish,English,Russian,Serbian,andFrench

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editionsfollowedthe1848Germaneditionwithinaspeedytwenty-fouryears;yetthefirst edition printed in a non-European language was the Japanese translation,publishedin1904.5Manyofthemostpopularnovelsoftheeighteenthandnineteenthcenturies,publishedbefore theeraof robust internationalcopyright,were translatedwithin a few weeks or months, sometimes appearing in competing editions in thesame language.6 However, those novels generally circulated within Europe. DanielDefoe’sRobinsonCrusoe,oneofthemostsuccessfulnovelsoftheearlyeighteenthcentury,waspublished inEnglish in 1719andby theendof 1720hadappeared inGerman,French,andDutch.7But itarrived inJapanese, translated throughaDutchedition,in1857.8Thetranslationandcirculationofliteraturetodayishistoricallyunprecedentedonce

we consider how quickly books enter various national markets, small and large,across several continents. While I discuss the translation of several genres ofliterature, including poetry and digital art,my account of translation focuses on thenovel because the novel is the most international genre, measured by worldwidetranslation,andbecausethenoveltodaysolicitsaswellasincorporatestranslation,insubstantialways.9Contemporarynovelsenternewmarketswithexceptionalspeed.By“enter,” Imeanthat theyarepublished indifferenteditions in thesame language(Australian,U.K.,U.S.,British,andSouthAfricanEnglish;or,ArgentineanandIberianSpanish) and in different editions in different languages (French, Mandarin, andHebrew).Examplesfromthepastdecadearetelling.BetweenJulyandDecemberof2005,thephenomenallysuccessfulsixthinstallmentoftheHarryPotterseries,HarryPotter and the Half-Blood Prince, appeared in fifteen languages, includingVietnamese,Afrikaans, andEstonian.10Andevenmore recently: betweenFebruaryand December 2013, J. M. Coetzee’s Childhood of Jesus was published on fivecontinents in nine languages, including Chinese, Polish, and two versions ofPortuguese.11Tobesure, thecirculationand receptionofCoetzee’sbookhasbeendifferent from the circulation and reception ofRowling’s, and that’s to be expected.Rowling’s character-rich fantasy, marketed through films, merchandise, andworldwidedistributionevents,soldarecordnumberofcopies;Coetzee’sslow-movingallegorypromptedspeculationaboutathirdBookerPrize.12Yet there are two surprises. First,Childhood appeared in translation faster than

HarryPotterdid.Infact,Coetzee’snovelinitiallyappearedinDutch,thoughCoetzee,borninSouthAfricaandnowlivinginAustralia,composeshisworksinEnglish.Piracyconcerns delayed the initial translation of Rowling’s novel by twomonths, whereasCoetzee’s novel could be translated, as it were, before it was published in theoriginal.13 Global demand for the Harry Potter novels—fans were clamoring toproduce their own unofficial (and illegal) translations—actually slowed globaldistribution.Thesecondsurprise:globaldemanddrivestranslationonlyuptoapoint.The language of Coetzee’s first edition can be explained personally as well ascommercially.CoetzeehasanongoingrelationshipwithhisDutch translator;hewasraised speakingAfrikaans (closely related toDutch), and he has translated several

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works of Dutch poetry and prose into English.14 And as the story of RobinsonCrusoe’scirculation remindsus, there isa longanddistinguishedhistoryofEnglish-languagenovelstravelingtheworldasDutchbooks.15Payinghomagetothepast,manynovelsdonotsimplyappearintranslation.They

have been written for translation from the start. Adapting a phrase for artworksproducedforthecomputer(“borndigital”), Icall thesenovelsborntranslated.16Likeborn-digitalliterature,whichismadeonorforthecomputer,born-translatedliteratureapproaches translation as medium and origin rather than as afterthought.17Translation is not secondary or incidental to these works. It is a condition of theirproduction. Globalization bears on all writers working in English today. However, itbears on them differently. Someworks of fiction are sure to be translated.Othershope to achieve it. Some novelists are closely tied to the mass market, some toprestige cultures, and others to avant-garde communities. But even those novelistswho don’t plan on translation participate in a literary system attuned to multipleformats, media, and languages. Born-translated novels approach this systemopportunistically.Howdoestranslationshapethenarrativestructureofthecontemporarynovel?18To

begin, we can observe that Coetzee’sChildhood is born translated in at least twoways: it appeared first inDutch, and it pretends to takeplace inSpanish.19 For itsprincipalcharacters,SimónandDavid,Englishisaforeignlanguage.David,ayoungboy,recitesastanzafromaGermansong,butbothheandSimónmistakethesourceofthelyrics.“Whatdoesitmean,Werreitetso?”Davidasks.20“Idon’tknow.Idon’tspeak English,” Simón replies. He doesn’t speakGerman either.21 It turns out thatyou need to have at least a passing acquaintance with a language in order torecognize it as the one you are missing. Simón lacks even that little bit, and thusCoetzeeimaginesaworldinwhichEnglishissodistant,orsoinsignificant,thatitcanbeconfusedwithaneighboringtongue.Inborn-translatednovels,translationfunctionsasathematic,structural,conceptual,

andsometimeseventypographicaldevice.Theseworksarewrittenfortranslation,inthe hope of being translated, but they are also often written as translations,pretendingtotakeplaceinalanguageotherthantheoneinwhichtheyhave,infact,been composed. Sometimes they present themselves as fake or fictional editions:subsequent versions (inEnglish) of an original text (in someother language),whichdoesn’t really exist. They are also frequently written from translation. Pointingbackwardaswellasforward,theypresenttranslationasaspurtoliteraryinnovation,including theirown.Coetzeemakes thispointby incorporatinganovelwhoseactualtranslationwascrucial to thedevelopmentofanglophone fiction.Simón is readingaversionofDonQuixote.Cervantes’sworkisitselfafaketranslation,fromArabicintoSpanish, whose four-hundred-year absorption intomany languages has shaped thewritingofsubsequentnovelsthroughouttheworld.ByadoptingsomeofthethematicfeaturesofDonQuixote,ChildhoodofJesus imitates its contentandstructure—aswellasitsreception.

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InCoetzee’simitationofDonQuixote,heattributesauthorshipnottoCervantesbutto“SeñorBenengeli,” thefictionalauthorof thefictionalArabicoriginal.Hethusalsoimitates Jorge Luis Borges’s story, “PierreMenard, Author of theQuixote” (1939).AccordingtoBorges’sfiction,presentedasaposthumousappreciation,Menardwasan underappreciated French writer who created new chapters ofDon Quixote byproducing words that “coincide” perfectly with the words in Cervantes’s novel.22ClaimingthatMenard’schapterswere“verballyidentical”butneverthelessunique,thestory’s narrator presents repetition as a strategy of invention and celebrates thecreative energies of foreign readers.23 With tongue-in-cheek, Borges seems toapplaud the anachronism of Menard’s project, producing a seventeenth-centurySpanishnovel in twentieth-centuryFrance, and seems to suggest that changing thecontext,placingthesamewordsinanewtimeandplace,canbeawayofchangingthework. Embracing this tradition, Coetzee animates the rich conceptual history oftranslation. Moreover, he shows that his Australian novel is indebted, fictionally aswellasliterally,totranslation’spastandtotheliteraturesofArgentinaandSpain.AndofcoursethisisnotCoetzee’sdebtalone,sinceSpanishliteratureoftheGoldenAgewas exported internationally before its English counterpart. Shakespeare probablyreadCervantes,butCervantesisunlikelytohavereadShakespeare.24CoetzeeusesSpanishtoremindusthatEnglishhasnotalwaysbeentheprincipalmediumofliterarycirculationandthatSpanishremainstoday,inthewakeofitsownempire,asourceofmanynational literatures.Coetzee’sEnglish-languagenovelactivates thehistoriesofSpanish, which has functioned variously and sometimes antagonistically as alanguage of colonialism, utopian aspiration, exile, migration, and European linguafranca.25AsCoetzee’snovelshows,then,thereisnothingolderthantranslation.Translation

is the engine rather than the caboose of literary history. Considering for amomentonly the history of literature in English, there would be no Hamlet, no Pilgrim’sProgress,noAbsalom,Absalom!,andnoMrs.Dallowaywithout it.26Yet translationis contemporary because it allows us to consider that the work we are readingincludes subsequent editions as well as previous ones. Encountered on the page,translationannouncesthattheworkisstillarriving:wehavebeforeusalanguageonits way from somewhere else—literature produced for other readers. That istranslation’s paradox: it is contemporary, above all, because it is historical. Intranslation, literature has a past as well as a future. While many books producedtodayseektoenticeoraccommodatetranslation,aimingtoincreasetheiraudiencesandthemarket-shareoftheirpublishers,born-translatedworksarenotablebecausethey highlight the effects of circulation on production.Not only are they quickly andwidely translated, they are also engaged in thinking about that process. Theyincreasetranslation’svisibility,bothhistoricallyandproleptically:theyaretryingtobetranslated,but in importantwaystheyarealsotryingtokeepbeingtranslated.Theyfind ways to register their debts to translation even as they travel into additionallanguages. Most of all, whether or not they manage to circulate globally, today’sborn-translatedworksblockreadersfrombeing“nativereaders,”thosewhoassume

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that the book they are holding was written for them or that the language they areencountering is, in some proprietary or intrinsic way, theirs.27 Refusing to matchlanguage to geography,many contemporary works will seem to occupymore thanone place, to be produced in more than one language, or to address multipleaudiencesatthesametime.Theybuildtranslationintotheirform.WhereasCoetzee’s literary fictions approach translation explicitly, asking readers

toimagineEnglish-languagenovelsthatbeganinSpanish,Portuguese,Afrikaans,andGerman,otherwritersapproachtranslationconceptuallyandsometimesfantastically.Continuing with English-language examples for the moment, we can observe theenormousrangeofapproachesbylookingatthegenrefictionofBritishnovelistChinaMiéville and the visual writing of U.S. novelist Walter Mosley. Miéville is unusualbecauseheusesthestockdevicesofsciencefiction, fantasy,andpoliceproceduralto raise complex questions about the politics of language.28 His most substantialengagementwithtranslationisTheCity,TheCity(2009),inwhichtwonationssharethesameterritorialspace,andcitizenshipisamatterofculturalratherthancorporealtopography.Where you are legally, in the book’s logic, depends on how youwalk,whatyouwear,howyouspeak,whatyouacknowledge,andwhatpassportyouhold.Every place is thus two places, both “the city” and “the city,” though most of theinhabitants have learned to live as if therewere only one. The novel suggests thatpoliticaldisavowal ismanaged inpartby linguisticdisavowal,and thus the fictionofhomogeneity is expressed through heterogeneous syntax. Instead of altering thenovel’sdictionto incorporatethesoundsoreventhevocabularyoftwolanguages,amoretypicalwaytorepresentmultilingualism,Miévillerepresentsabinationalsocietybycreatingabifurcatedsentencestructure.Accidentallyseeingawomanwhoisnotacitizenofhiscountry,thenarrator“lookedcarefully insteadofatherinherforeignstreetatthefaçadesofthenearbyandlocalGunterStrász.…”29Laterhedescribestheexperienceof“standinginanear-desertedpart[ofhisowncity]…surroundedbyabusyunheardthrong.”30Onlyunhearingandunseeing,Miévillesuggests,allowsthecity to appear as one.Making foreignness audible and visible, the novel generatesalternativestotheexperienceofnativereading.Walter Mosley, best known as the author of the hugely successful and widely

translatedEasyRawlinsmysteries, launchedbyDevil inaBlueDress in1990,hasproduced more than thirty-seven books in several genres, including memoir andscience fiction inaddition todetective fiction.Devil inaBlueDressdoesnot reflecton translation and in fact incorporates variations in diction and vernacular dialogue,whichcanmaketranslationdifficult.Butinanongoingseriesofdrawingsthatisalsoaseriesofwritings,subsumedundertheheadingofAlienScript,Mosleyhasextendedhis exploration of subterranean and counterfactual worlds to the exploration ofsubterraneanandcounterfactual languages.The imagescanbeunderstoodbothaspicturesandaswords(figures0.1and0.2).Theworks are not individually titled.All are part of the collective,AlienScript. A

scriptcanbeawritingsystem,asinRomanorCyrillicscript,anditcanalsorefertocinematicor theatrical instructions,as ina filmorplayscript.Mosleyhasproduced

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dozensofthesesheets,andcontinuestoproducethem,andthustheworkisanopenseries. The colors, shapes, and patterns vary, but all of them are made on linednotebook paper. The lines create the structure and retain the impression of writinggeneratedbyhand.

FIGURE0.1ImagefromWalterMosley,AlienScript.

ReprintedbypermissionofWalterMosleyandtheWatkins/LoomisAgency.

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FIGURE0.2ImagefromWalterMosley,AlienScript.

ReprintedbypermissionofWalterMosleyandtheWatkins/LoomisAgency.

Mosley’sscriptsseem“alien” inavarietyofways: thekinetic formsareuncanny;theyarealmostbutnotquitehumanbodies,whichseemtobewearingsomethinglikehuman clothing. They are also alien because they are, literally, outside the bounds:under, over, andon topof the lines.Finally, theyarealienbecause they thwart ourability to read them, or even to isolate their constituent parts. Are we looking atletters?Hieroglyphs?Characters?What is the alphabet fromwhich thiswriting has

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been made? This sense of alien extends beyond Mosley’s work: illegible andunrecognizable,writingbecomesalienwhenreadersproject theirownestrangementonto the pages. Unknown marks or letters will seem to block expressivity. YetMosley’sScriptalsoaffirmsan infiniteexpressivity: there isalwaysanotherpattern,anothercolor,andanothershape.Thework’sfuturityissuggestedbyarecentexhibitof thedrawings, inwhichcuratorLydieDiakhatéplacedeighteenof theAlienScriptpagesnexttonineiterations,indifferentlanguages,ofthefirstparagraphofDevilinaBlueDress.31Formostviewers,at leastoneof those languageswas“alien,”andthusthescriptscouldserveasallegoriesor illustrationsforthetexts.Butthescriptsalso assert their difference from the texts: while the paragraphs register a worldsystem of literatures and the commercial logic of international publishing, the alienscripts—hand-made and irreducible to place or territory—aspire to new systems.While thepagesevokevarious traditions indance, fabric, typography, andpainting,their insouciant forms, at once overflowing and extracted, retro and sci-fi, hint atmooringstocome.

ENGLISHLAST

Embracing fake translation, genre fiction, and visual media, Coetzee, Miéville, andMosley are deploying aesthetic strategies that are used by writers in many otherlanguages. It is not only—or even primarily—English-language novels that addressthemselves tomultiple audiences. In fact, in the invention of born-translated fiction,anglophonewriters are the followers, not the leaders. Thismakes sensewhenweconsiderthatanglophoneworkscansucceedwithoutbeingtranslated.Englishisthedominantlanguageofcommerceandtechnology,atleastforthemoment,andithasthegreatestnumberofreaders,onceweincludesecond-andthird-aswellasfirst-language users throughout the world.32 Those who write in English can thereforeexpect their works to be published in the original and to reach many audiences inEnglish-language editions. But writers in smaller languages, meaning languages forwhichtherearefewerreadersandpublishers,havehadtodependontranslationforsurvival.Translation intoEnglishand intoothermajor languagessuchasFrenchandSpanish has been for some a condition of publication and for many a path totranslation into subsequent national editions. Thosewho publish inmajor languagesalsohavebetteraccesstolucrativeinternationalprizes.33Somewritershavetriedtomitigatetheneedfortranslationbychoosingtowritein

adominant language, if theycan.Wecouldcall thisstrategypreemptive translation.This is in some ways an old strategy. Late Medieval and early modern EuropeanwritersoftencirculatedtheirworkbothinLatinandinvernacularlanguagesinordertoreach secular as well as clerical audiences. A language of commerce andinternationalexchange,readandsometimesspokenacrossmanygeographies,Latinallowed merchants and scholars to communicate without having to manage local

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idioms.34 Eleventh-century Iranian philosophers wrote not in Persian but in Arabic,while Chinese, Japanese, and Korean intellectuals used Chinese for nearly onethousandyears.35Fromtheperspectiveofthepast,itisinsomewaysamisnomertocall this practice translation or even preemptive translation since it is a relativelyrecent assumption that one’s writing language and one’s speaking language wouldnaturallybethesame.Putanotherway,writinginLatinwhilespeakingFrenchisonlyaspeciesoftranslation,orsecond-languageuse,ifwritinginFrenchisthenorm.For most of literary history, written languages such as Greek, Latin, and Arabic

havediverged fromspoken languages,whichwereused forotherpurposes.Peoplewhocouldwrite—veryfewpeople—wouldhavehadafirstlanguageforwritingandafirst languageforspeaking.Periodically, ithasseemed important forwriters toalignthesetwousesoflanguage.Dantewasunusualinhistimebecausehechosetowritean epic in Italian rather than Latin. Preemptive translation, or the division ofwritingandspeakinglanguages,wastheexpectationuntil the lateeighteenthcentury,whichinaugurates theeraofnational languagesand literary traditions.Wearestillpartofthat era. The expectation that the language of writing will match the language ofspeech remains dominant.We can tell that this is so because writing in a secondlanguagehas itsownspecialname, “translingualwriting.”36 This distinctionbetweenfirst-andsecond-languagewritingiscontinuouswiththeRomanticdistinctionbetweennativeandforeign languages.Early-nineteenth-centuryGermanphilosopherFriedrichSchleiermacher famously referred to writing in a second language as a species oftranslation because he believed that writing in the original could take place only inone’sowntongue.37Wecanfindmanyexamplesofpreemptivetranslationinthetwenty-firstcentury.In

2004, contemporary novelist Elif Shafak, who lives in both Istanbul and London,shiftedfromwritingnovelsinherfirstlanguage,Turkish,towritingtheminhersecondlanguage, English. Shafak follows a path—and a rationale—traveled by mid-twentieth-centurywriterVladimirNabokov,whocomposedhisearlynovelsinRussianbutbeganproducingnovelsinEnglish,startingwithLolita,sohecouldpublishinNewYork.38NovelistandpoetJaimeManrique,whowasborninColombiabuthaslivedinthe United States since 1980, publishes his novels in English and his poetry inSpanish.HecallsEnglishhis“publiclanguage.”39English is the languageinwhichhefeelscomfortablewritingforandaboutpublic“conversation,”whereasSpanishishislanguageof “intimacy.”Spanish is hardly aminor tongue, but dominance is relative.ConsiderthecaseofAlbanianwriterandjournalistGazmendKapllani,whocomposeshis books inGreek, a language he learned only as an adult. Kapllani’sworks havesubsequentlyappearedinDanish,English,French,andPolish.LongbasedinAthensbut now living in Boston, Kapllani has said that he may start writing in English.40Manrique’s and Kapllani’s choices reflect a mix of political exigency, aestheticpreference, and economic opportunity. Publishing in two languages concurrently,Manrique’spracticeisreminiscentofthestrategiesdevelopedbytheearly-twentieth-century Indian writer Premchand (the pseudonym of Dhanpat Rai Srivastava), who

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soughttoevadeBritishcolonialcensorsbyproducingeachofhisworksintwooriginallanguages,HindiandUrdu.41Sometimes,preemptivetranslationtakesplaceatthemomentofpublicationrather

than at the moment of composition. Milan Kundera, who wrote many of his best-knownnovelsinCzech,publishedthemfirstinFrenchandhasinrecentyearsclaimedthat he is in fact a “French writer.”42 The translations have come to shape thecompositions:KunderahasusedtheFrencheditionstoupdatetheCzechoriginals.43Elena Botchorichvili, a Georgian writer who lives in Montreal, also publishes hernovelsinFrencheventhoughshewritestheminRussian.SixofBotchorichvili’sbooksappeared in French and several other languages before they appeared in theiroriginallanguage.44BernardoAtxagawriteshisnovels inBasqueandself-translatesthem into Spanish; most of the subsequent translations are based on the Spanisheditions.Anglophone writers who are located outside of the largest centers of publishing,

NewYorkandLondon,havehad to translate too.KenyanwriterNgũgĩwaThiong’ofamouslychosetopublishhisnovels first inGikuyu,buthehasalsopublishedthem,self-translated, in English. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, which features asmatteringof Igbo terms, requiredaglossarywhen itwaspublished in theLondon-basedHeinemannseriesin1962,whileseveralparagraphsofCoetzee’sIntheHeartoftheCountry,firstpublishedinSouthAfricain1977,weretranslatedfromAfrikaansintoEnglishfortheU.K.edition.45Non-anglophonelanguagesthatarewellknownorat least familiar to anglophone readers in regional contexts—consider the use ofmanySpanish,Yiddish,andFrenchwordsinU.S.writing,forexample—oftenrequiretranslation or explication when they appear in anglophone books published outsidethose regions. And it is not only words from other languages but also words fromregional or colonial versions of languages that travel uneasily within dominantlanguages.ThetitleofFerdinandOyono’sfrancophoneAfricannovelUneviedeboy,firstpublishedin1956,makesuseofanEnglishword(boy)thatoperatesdifferentlyin French than it does in English.46 In English editions of the book, the so-calledEnglishwordhashadtobetranslated.47While some novelists expand their audiences by publishing their books in second

languages or by standardizing their vocabulary, others have found ways toaccommodate translation within global languages such as Spanish and French andalsowithinregionallanguagessuchasTurkishandJapanese.LikeCoetzee,Miéville,and Mosley, many build translation into the form of their works, emphasizingtranslation’shistoryandongoing relevancewhile insisting thatanovelcanbelong tomorethanonelanguage.Theyarenotpreemptingtranslationsomuchascourtingit.Sometimestheydoabitofboth.Forexample,NancyHuston,aCalgary-bornwriterwhohas lived inParis for thepast forty years,writesnovels andessays inFrenchand then writes them in English. She publishes her works in both languages, andothers have translated her work into many additional languages. Like Kundera,Huston uses her own translations to revise the originals, and, like Samuel Beckett,

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who produced many of his own works in English and French, she regards bothversionsasoriginaltexts.In1993shewonanawardforfictioninFrenchforanovelshe wrote first in English. Huston thus preempts translation because she operatesboth as author and as translator. But she also treats translation as a species ofproduction,aswhensheargues thatheraward-winningbookshouldbeunderstoodasanoriginal creation.48 In addition, some ofHuston’sworks take translation as aprincipalconcern.TheEnglishversionofthenonfictionbookLosingNorth(2002),forexample, includesanessayabout thedifficultyof translating idiomssuchastheonethatconstitutesthebook’stitle.49The JapanesenovelistHarukiMurakami,whosework hasbeenwidely translated

and who is also an accomplished translator of U.S. fiction, has taken a somewhatdifferenttack:usinghissecondlanguagetocreateanewkindoffirstlanguage.Tobeclear:MurakamisubmitshismanuscriptstohispublisherinJapanese,andhisnovelsfirst appear in that language. But from the start of his career he has deployedtranslation as amethod of composition, in a variety of ways. First, themost literalway: he has claimed that he found his style in Japanese by writing pages first inEnglishandthentranslatingthemintoJapanese.50BystartinginEnglish,hesoughttoavoid the conventional diction and syntax of Japanese literature. In this sense,Murakami’s project is similar to Huston’s and indeed to Beckett’s, except thatMurakamiuseshisadopted language,English,not todepart fromhis first language,Japanese, but to create a less natural version of it. Murakami’s later novels haveinvolvedself-translationofanotherkind:incorporatingcutsmadefortheU.S.editionsin subsequent Japanese editions.51 The later works thus involve a kind of tripletranslation:fromEnglishintoJapaneseintoEnglish,andthenbackintoJapanese.ThesecondwaythatMurakamideploystranslationintheserviceofcompositionis

inhisliberaluseofgenericdevices,historicalreferences,andevenwordsculledfromanglophonepopularculture.InvokingEnglish,hereflectsonthetranslatedsourcesofcontemporaryJapanandgeneratesworksthatcanappealtomultipleaudiences,whorecognize both theme and terminology.52 This is not to say thatMurakami’s novelsappeal toeachaudience in thesameway. Indeed,hisblockbuster,1Q84,publishedin Japan in 2009, has been marketed as romantic fiction in one place and as afuturisticthrillerinanother.53And,paradoxically,thereferencestoanglophoneculture,whiletheymayhelpthebookstravelintoadditionallanguages,donotalwayshelpthebooks travel into English, where thosewords no longer serve the same function.54Murakami also incorporates translation—this is the third way—by emphasizing thedifference among Japanese writing systems, the character-based kanji and thesyllabic hiragana and katakana, to create the impression of multilingualism on thepage. Most notably, he uses katakana, the script in which foreign or “loan” wordstypically appear, to signal a much broader range of nonnormative or eccentricspeech.55Thispracticehasprovedchallengingtohistranslators,sincetheyhavehadtofindanaloguesinsingle-scriptwritingsystemssuchasEnglish,Danish,Norwegian,Polish,andmanyotherEuropeanlanguages.

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Murakami’slongstandingefforttoincorporatehistoriesofliterarycirculationintotheproduction of his Japanese novels can be understood as an effort to insist on thecomparativeoriginsofcontemporaryJapan.ForhisJapanesereaders,heistryingtomakehislanguagelessaccessible,andthustointerferewiththedistinctionbetweennative and nonnative readers. This is not a gesture of exile, or an embrace of theglobal in lieu of the local, so much as an affirmation of translation’s place withinJapanesehistory.Murakami’sinventiveuseofmultiplewritingsystems,counterfactualworlds, and popular genres creates an internal climate of traveling narratives thatoperates in tensionwith the externalmovement of his novels fromone language toanother.56Murakami’s textsmaybe “suited to translation,”ashehassaid,but theyarealsosaturatedbytranslation.57Two additional examples are instructive: one, the Nobel Prize–winner Orhan

Pamuk, who writes in Turkish; the other, the (late) celebrated novelist RobertoBolaño,whowrote inSpanish.58Pamuk’snovelshavemoved fromTurkish intosixtyotherlanguages,including—justtonametheKs—Kannada,Korean,andtwovarietiesof Kurdish. His works began to receive international recognition in 1991 after theFrench translation of The Silent House received the Prix de la découverteeuropéenne.ReadersofPamuk’snovels inTurkishhaveargued thathis laterworkssolicit translation by emphasizing international lineage, postmodern devices, and“Istanbul cosmopolitanism,” whereas the earlier works engaged more substantiallywith theTurkish literary traditionandsocial realism.59 Yet, through various narrativestrategies,Pamuk’slaterworksalsoreflectonglobalcirculation:theyaccommodatetranslationandalso identify translationasasourceof localproduction.Published inTurkeyin2002andintheUnitedStatesin2004,Snow featurescharacterswho,likemany readers, lack information about regional histories; it considersTurkey’s debtsboth to European and to Ottoman influences; and it presents social and culturaldifferences through dialogue rather than through idiolect. Strangers are usefulbecause they allow Pamuk to make the description of regional history part of thenovel’s story: something a character learns rather than a feature of omniscientnarration. Registering multiple sources is useful because Pamuk can show thatTurkish literature is, at least in part, embedded in other literatures and culturaltraditions. Dialogue is useful, as Gloria Fisk notes, because characters point atdifferences in ways that can be understood by readers unfamiliar with regionalcontexts or variations in diction.60 Pamuk presents his readers with details aboutTurkey’spast,andheraisesquestionsabout thehistorical reliabilityof thosedetailsand their interpretation by various characters. Readers are thus asked to engagedirectlywiththephenomenonofworldliterature:itstendencytomakeguidebooksorcultural primers out of literary works from representative spaces. The process ofovergeneralizationhasaspecialresonanceforPamuk’swriting,whichreturnsoftentothe complex geopolitical history of Turkey and especially of Istanbul, a city literallydividedbetweenEuropeandAsia.ThetranslatedqualityofPamuk’swritingcanthusbeunderstoodbothasaneffort toreachaudiencesbeyondTurkeyandasaneffort

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toinsistonmultipleaudienceswithinTurkey.61Iwant topausesomewhatmoredeliberatelyoverRobertoBolaño’s fiction,which

hasbeenenormouslysuccessfulinmultiplelanguages.ItwouldbedifficulttosaythattheextensivecirculationofBolaño’sworkanimatedhisstrategiesofproductionsincehewrotehismajornovelsinaverycompressedperiod,between1993andhisdeathin 2003.62 Like many of the English-language writers I have discussed so far, hisaddress to multiple audiences seems to reflect a mixture of literary, political,personal, and commercial impulses. Among these are his attunement to themultilingualism of his first language, Spanish; his effort to consider geopoliticalrelationships of various scales, such as those between Mexico and other LatinAmerican countries, Europe, and the United States; and his engagement withtransnationalliterarymovementswhosepoets,critics,andwritersappearasfictionalcharacters inmanyof hisworks.Bolañowasborn inChile, lived formany years inMexico City, and produced his novels in Spain. Readers of his Spanish-languageeditions have noted that his diction is not reducible to Chilean,Mexican, or IberianSpanish.Hisnovelsseem translated, inpartbecause theycombineseveral regionalidiomsandseemtohavenoonenativetongue.However, Bolaño alsomanages to communicatemultilingualism spatially, visually,

andnarratively.63TheSavageDetectives,thenovelthatbroughtBolañotoworldwideattention when it captured two prestigious Spanish prizes in 1998, moves acrossseveralcontinentswhileplacingitsactioninlocationsthatfunctionattheverysmallestscale:theparkbench,thelawn,theperambulatedstreet,thehotelroom,thementalhealthclinic,andthebar,totakeonlyafewexamples.64Theremaybemanynationsin the text, but the text doesn’t treat the nation as the most important or mostcoherentunitofbelonging.Severalof thenovel’splaces, forall their smallness,arealso vague. They don’t really fit the logic of civic nomenclature. Where is a parkbench?Where isa lawn?What languagedotheirdenizensspeak?Bolañoturnstheglobalnovelon itsheadbyreplacingtheprincipleofexpansion(a largerwhole)withtheprincipleofextraction(unclassifiableparts).Thisisoneofthewaysthathiswork,for all its attention to Mexico City, appears to resist the idea of a unique regionalaudience.

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FIGURE0.3RenderingsoffiguresfromRobertoBolaño,TheSavageDetectives,translatedbyNatashaWimmer

(NewYork:Picador,2007),398.

Inaddition,SavageDetectives involvesforseveralhundredpageswhatappear tobeinterviewtranscripts,whosefirstaudience,thepersonaskingthequestions,isnotrepresented. Readers of this long section are second readers, always overhearingratherthanhearing.65Thiscreatestheimpressionofanarrativethatistakingplaceinat least two locations: the location of the interview and the location of thetranscription.And then thereare the translationsbuilt into thenovel’sconversations.The interviewer is searching for information about two poet-heroes, but the poet-heroes are searching for information about an older poet, Cesárea Tinajero, whomthey honor as their inspiration.When they find one of her poems, it consists of anapparently multilingual title, “Sión,” and a series of graphic lines, which Bolañoreproducesonthepage(figure0.3).TheSavageDetectivesofferssomepossiblemeaningsfor thepoem’sheading, in

Spanish,German,French,Hebrew,andEnglish,butthepossibilitiesareopen-ended,like “Zion” itself,proverbiallyaplace thathasnot yet come.The lines,according totheyoungpoets, tell severalpossible stories.66Theyare translatablebecause theyconsist of visual images; they also seem to dramatize translation insofar as theyrepresentashiporamathematicalvectoron itswaysomewhereelse.The linesofthepoem,asliterallinesonthepage,deflatepoetry’susualemphasisonwordswhileat thesametimedrawingattention tometaphor (graphicandpoetic lines/líneas, forexample). In the title’s invocationofvarious languagesandspacesof the future, thepoemappears tobeborn translated:notsomuchawork forall readersasaworkforotherreaders.©

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FIGURE0.4RenderingsoffiguresfromRobertoBolaño,TheSavageDetectives,translatedbyNatashaWimmer

(NewYork:Picador,2007),648.

Finally, in the very last section of the novel, Bolaño returns to several themes oftranslation, one in which he pits popular knowledge of Mexico City’s slang againstrecondite knowledge of poetic terminology; and another inwhich characters amusethemselves by translating pictures into stories, much as they did with the earlierpoem. In both cases we are asked to consider that translation operates withinlanguagesandliteraryhistoriesaswellasbetweenthem.Thefinalwordsofthenovelareanimagethatcanbeunderstoodinseveralways(figure0.4).Itisaboxmadeofdashed lines; a windowwith a broken or unfinished frame; and a container whoseoutsidepermeatesitsinside.Translatable,thisimageisalsoasymboloftranslation.Itresemblesthebookweareholding.Bolaño’s emphasis on “the border”—the book’s border, the border between plot

and form, and the border between theUnited States andMexico—reminds us thatborn-translatednovelsarenotproduced fromnowhere foreverywhere. In fact, theyareoftenvery local in theirapproaches to translationand thepoliticsof translation.The text may engage with the regional history of languages even as the bookcirculatesintomanyeditions.67ThereisanenormousandgrowingcriticalliteratureoneachofthefournovelistsI’vediscussedinthissection,andIwon’tdojusticetothathere.Instead,mybriefandtelescopicaccountofnon-anglophonewritingismeanttodemonstrate the various strategies of born-translated fiction in other languages; toexploresomeofthereasonsforthosestrategies;and,finally,tosuggestbycontrasthowborn-translatedfictioninEnglishbothfollowsanddivergesfromitsneighbors.

ENGLISHNOW

Anglophone novels are more likely than novels in other languages to appear intranslation: more works are translated out of English than out of any otherlanguage.68However,manyEnglish-languageworks encountermultiple audiences—andareproduced inmultiplenationaleditions—before theyeven leaveEnglish.This

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will be true of other global languages, such asPortuguese and especially Spanish,which are also often published inmore than one place and involvemultiple nationalversions.But theEnglish language isdispersed likenoother: it isa first,second,orthird language used in the largest number of countries. As Pascale Casanova haspersuasivelyargued,this iswhat itmeanstobetheworld’sdominant language.It isnotamatterofcountingfirst-languageor“native”speakers.Rather, it isamatterofcounting both first-language speakers and all of the “plurilingual speakers who‘choose’ it.”69 To write in English for global audiences, therefore, is to write for aheterogeneousgroupofreaders:thosewhoareproficientinseverallanguages,thosewhomaybe less-than-proficient inEnglish,and thosewhomaybeproficient inoneversion of English but not proficient in another. This diversity creates an enormousrange of English-language geographies, writers, and audiences. It alsomeans thatreaders of English-language texts are likely to have very different experiences: thework will be foreign, strange, or difficult to some; it will be familiar to others.Anglophone novelists are thusmanaging comparative beginnings from the start andmustfindwaystoregisterinternalmultilingualism(withinEnglish)evenastheirworkstraveloutintoadditionalnationallanguages(beyondEnglish).70Inaddition,Englishisnotonlyasourceoftranslations,thelanguagefromwhichtranslationsoftenbegin,itisalsothemostfrequentmediumoftranslations,thelanguagethroughwhichtextsinother languagesmove intoyetadditional languages. In thissense,English-languagewriting is, like writing in other languages, an object of globalization; but it is also,unlikewritinginotherlanguages,crucialtoglobalization’smachinery,bothbecauseofits role indigitalmediaandcommerceandbecauseof its roleasamediator,withinpublishing,betweenotherliterarycultures.71Infact,whileanglophonewritersinNewYorkandLondonmayhavethoughtabout

orevencriticizedtheconditionsofliteraryglobalization,onlyrecentlyhavetheybeguntothinkofthemselvesassubjecttothoseconditions.TodayEnglish-languagewritersin theUnitedStatesandBritainare facedwith theunprecedented corn-modificationand “global networking” of intellectual spaces such as universities, and theconsolidation of publishing into a smaller number of international units. Not evenEnglish-languagewriters, it turns out, can imagine audiences only in one language.This has led to a new emphasis, within the anglophone novel, on the histories andinstitutions of literary circulation, from the uneven distribution of literacy (JamaicaKincaid), to the production of anthologies (Caryl Phillips), to international artcompetitions in the present (Amy Waldman) and Pacific trade routes of the earlyeighteenthcentury(DavidMitchell).AsI’vesuggested,English-languagewriterswhooperate furthest from the centers of publishing have had to address multipleaudiences for some time. This is true as well for many migrant writers, who maycompose in several languages and whose political and literary affiliations oftendiverge. Indeed, affiliation complicates composition since writers addressing manyplaces are less likely to believe that language confers belonging, or that belonginglimits language.Theyaremore likelytoassumethat the languageofwritingandthelanguage of speaking do not necessarily overlap. The increasing use of English by

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writersforwhomEnglishisnotafirstoronlylanguagehasexertednewpressureonlongstandingassumptionsabout “native”competency, theRomanticbelief that thosewho are born into a language, as it were, are the rightful or natural users of thatlanguage.Born-translatednovelsinEnglishoftenfocusongeographiesinwhichEnglishisnot

theprincipal tongue.Theseworkspurposefullybreakwith theuniqueassignmentoflanguages,geographies,andstatesinwhichoneplaceis imaginedtocorrespondtoone languageandonepeople,whoare theusers of that language.Born-translatedworks articulate this break by extending, sometimes radically, the practice of self-translation, a term that translation specialists have often limited to authors whoproducebothanoriginalworkandthetranslationofthatoriginalwork.Self-translationhas opened up in two directions. First, it now includes works that pretend to betranslated.72 Coetzee’s Childhood is “self-translated” from the perspective ofnarrationbecauseitseemstobetakingplaceinSpanish;anditisalsoself-translatedfrom the perspective of book history because it was published first in Dutch. TheEnglisheditionappearstobeatributarytotheSpanishandtheDutch.Second,self-translation now includes works that contain translation within them by incorporatingmultipleeditionsormultipleversions.Theseworksarenottranslatedinthesenseofcombiningormovingbetweenseparatenationalliteratures.Instead,theyaskreaderstoconsiderthatliteratures,aswehaveknownthem,arealreadycombined.73In the novels I discuss in this project, self-translation involves pretending towrite

fiction in another tongue (Coetzee andMiéville); presenting English-languageworksas translations of some other language, some other version of language, or someothermedium(KincaidandMohsinHamid); reflectingonEnglish literature’sdebts tootherlanguagesandliterarytraditions(MitchellandWaldman);andinvitingtranslatorsto regard themselves as authors and collaborators (Kazuo Ishiguro; Young-HaeChang Heavy Industries; and Adam Thirlwell). Many English-language writers drawattention to the unevenness of the global marketplace—and sometimes try toremediate that unevenness—by welcoming translation, by devising strategies ofmultilingualism that can survive global circulation, and by emphasizing translation’scrucial role in the development of the English-language novel.74 Reflecting oncirculation at a global scale, born-translated novels introduce newontologies of thework.Theyimplynewunderstandingsofliterature’splaceandemphasizenewobjectsofanalysissuchasthechapter, thepage,theedition, the illustration, thescript,andthemedium.Novelshavealwaysreflectedontheirownlanguages,anditshouldn’tbesurprising

thatthesurgeintranslationwouldleadnovelstoreflectonfutureandpastlanguagestoo.However,anacknowledgmentoftranslation’scentralrole—asspur,problem,andopportunity—has to change what the anglophone novel is. Literature in dominantlanguages tends to “forget” that it has benefitted from literary works in otherlanguages.75Born-translated fiction, therefore, engages in aproject of unforgetting.Fictionisnotaloneinthatproject.Asymptote,adigital journal launchedin2011,hasfollowed this path by seekingout translations fromsmaller languages into dominant

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languages—English, but not only English—and by publishing both original andtranslation so that first and subsequent languages are readily available to thereader.76 The emphasis is not on the foreignization of the word, in which a single-language edition tries to retain the impression or the quality of a prior language.77Instead it is on the foreignization of the form, in which the history of translation ispreserved through the presence of two or more texts. For scholars, unforgettingtranslation means that, instead of organizing literary histories according to thecitizenship of authors, as the Library of Congress does, wemight organize literaryhistories according to the languages and versions of language in which a work isread, whether as original, translation, edition, adaptation, or collaboration. A workwouldthusappearseveraltimes, ineachofthehistoriesinwhichithasapresence,andsomeofthosehistorieswouldextendwellbeyondliteraryfictionandthemediumof print. To be sure, fieldswill seem to get bigger, butwewill have to imagineourframes,afterBolaño,aswindowsmadeofdashedratherthansolidlines.Allowing books to count as part of several traditions andmedia has the salutary

effect of tipping the balance of literary history from writers to readers, from alanguage’s natives to its users, and from single to multiple chronologies. The tiptoward circulation also tips back: thinking about overlapping literary histories allowsus to consider how reception alters the work, and what it is that readers read.Literatureproducedindominantlanguagesbecomespartofliteraryhistoriesinotherlanguages. Literature produced in smaller languages continues to have a place inthose histories, but its uptake by other literatures also has to be registered. Someworkswill not travel into new languages, and the history of translationwill have toinclude both works that reach multiple audiences and works that do not. LikeAsymptote’s effort to make English-language readers aware of a much greaternumber of works from many nondominant languages, literary histories that includeadaptation, rewriting,and translationmakeroomforunheralded traditionswhilealsocreatingtheconditionsformoreexpansiveheralding.Toapproachthefutureofclassificationfromthehistoryofmultilingualcirculationis

to recognize that anglophone writing operates in many languages, even when itappears tobeoperatingonly inEnglish.Thenovel theoristM.M.Bakhtinmade thispointlongago,whenhearguedthatthe“unityofaliterarylanguageisnotaunityofasingle, closed language system, but is rather a highly specific unity of several‘languages’ that haveestablished contact andmutual recognitionwitheachother.”78Writingof themodernEuropeannovel(pre-1900),Bakhtinmeansthatwhatwetaketobe thedistinctivenationalvoiceofanyone tradition inEurope in fact involves theexplicit and implicit negotiation of several different regional languages as well asversionsoflanguage(poetic,ordinary,official).Intheearlytwenty-firstcentury,whencontact among languages is not only generic and regional but also multiregional,continental, and planetary, multilingualism within a single language operates at aneven greater scale. For Bakhtin, internal multilingualism does not undercut thepossibility of national languages because national language–users who live in arelatively containedgeographic area canbeexpected to achieve some fluencywith

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the significant contact languages. However, when so-called national languagesoperateatgreatdistances,as theydo inEnglish,andwhen theyoperatealongsideother strong literary traditions, as they do in India, the Caribbean, and the UnitedStates, the expectation of common fluency both across versions of the nationallanguageandwithneighboringlanguageshastochange.Inaddition,viewedfromtheperspective of migration, the concept of literary belonging may have outlived itsusefulness. European novels of the nineteenth century belonged to their nationallanguages,oroftenthoughttheydid.Butatearliermoments,Bakhtinargues,literaryconsciousnesshasbeen constitutively “bilingual,” inspiredbya relationshipbetweenlanguageseven if those languagesdidnotappear,simultaneouslyor literally,on thepage.TheLatinword inAncientRome,Bakhtinasserts, “viewed itself in the lightoftheGreekword,”which produced an “exteriorizing” style.79 Today’s born-translatednovel,ratherthanexpandbelonging,strivestokeepbelonginginplay.Itdoesthisbyimplyingthatthebookweareholdingbeginsinseverallanguages.

IMAGINEDCOMMUNITIESINTRANSLATION

The notion that a book could begin in several languages complicates traditionalmodelsofliteraryhistoryandpoliticalcommunity.Literarycriticshavetoaskhowthemultilingualismofthebookchangesthenationalsingularityofthework.Philosophersofthenationhavetoaskhowthetranslationofliterarytextsintomorelanguagesandfasterthaneverbeforeestablishesnetworksofaffiliationthatarelessexclusiveandless bounded than the nation’s “community of fate.” Generally speaking, we canidentify two paradigms that shape the way we talk about the effect of books onpolitical communities: the paradigm of “possessive collectivism,” which has a longhistory inphilosophy,anthropology,and legal theory,and theparadigmof “imaginedcommunities,”whichBenedictAndersonintroducedin1983andwhichhasbecomesoinfluential in history, literary studies, and many other fields that it operates almosttacitly.80 Where have these theories brought us, and where might we now go inthinkingaboutliterature’sengagementwithconceptionsofthecollective?“Possessive collectivism” extends the idea of possessive individualism to nations

andethnicgroups.81 InQuebecois ideology,anthropologistRichardHandlerexplainsinawell-knownstudy, thenationwasunderstoodasbotha “collectionof individualsanda collective individual,” possessingunique, permanent qualities suchasa “soul,spirit,andpersonality”andhavingthecapacitytoexercisesovereignty,freewill,andchoice.82 Rosemary Coombe has used Handler’s work on nationalist ideology todescribe the effects and underlying assumptions of international copyright. Incopyrightlaw,Coombeargues,“Eachnationorgroupisperceivedasanauthorwhooriginatesaculture from resources that come fromwithinandcan thus layclaim toexclusivepossessionoftheexpressiveworksthatembodyitspersonality.”83Literaryworksbelong to thenationbecause theyare theembodimentof its internalspiritor

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genius,andweknowthenationhasaspiritorgeniusbecauseithasliteraryworkstoshow for it.This isa feedback loop:nationhoodowes its identity toauthorship, butthere is no authorship without nationhood since expressivity belongs to uniqueindividuals who in turn belong to unique groups. Among minorities and colonizedsubjects,possessivecollectivismhashad thepositiveeffectof validating intellectuallaborandjustifyingpoliticalsovereignty.Forourpurposes,possessivecollectivismisnotable because it helps to explain why emphasizing the original production ofartworks tends to affirm national literary histories: original art and original nationsgrow up together. We could speculate, however, that a theory of artworks thatunderstandsactsofeditingandtranslatingasactsofmakingmightaffirmadifferentnorm of literary history and a different conception of the community that literaryhistoryhelpstojustify.Before I push this speculation further, consider Benedict Anderson’s idea of

“imaginedcommunities.”RatherthanrehearseAnderson’snow-classictheory,Iwouldliketomarkanimportantdifferencebetweenhisaccountofliterarynationmakingandthepossessivecollectivismmodel.ItwasAnderson’sinnovationtoarguethattheriseof print culture, especially the rise of novels and newspapers, contributed to thepossibility of imagininganationasa shared, exclusive collectivity amongstrangers.Print culture contributed to this possibility in two structural ways: by creating theimpression of simultaneous reading across space, and by creating the impression,within thenovel, of simultaneityamongpeoplewhonevermeet—an impression thatAndersonmemorably calls theexperienceof “meanwhile.”84 The second impressionstrengthens the first: ifwecanperceive thenovelasacontainer for strangerswhoacttogetherwithoutknowingit,thenwecanimaginethenationasacontainerforus,the readers of that novel, who act together in just the same way—simultaneously,collectively,andinvisibly.AsJonathanCullerhasobservedinanessayonAnderson’swork, it isnotthenovel’scontentorthemebut itsform,itswayofbeingacontainerfor simultaneity among strangers, that creates “a political distinction between friendand foe.”85 Anderson’s model does not imply that the artwork is expressing arepertoire of national characteristics that could be owned; rather, it argues that thenovelrepresents—andgenerates—acommunitybasedonthe imaginedconcurrenceofaction.IfthereisaresidueofpossessivecollectivisminAnderson’smaterialism,itis inhisassumptionthata texthasanoriginal languageandthat thetext’s languagewillcoincidewith the languageof itsreaders.Whathappens,weneedtoask,whenthese languagesarenot thesame?Orwhen there isnooriginal language tospeakof?WecanaddressthesequestionsbyreturningtoAnderson’sproject.Butinsteadof

approachingImaginedCommunitiesasanargument,asothershavedonesowell, Iwant to treat it as an example since it is as an example of world literature thatAnderson’s book coincides, historically and formally, with today’s born-translatednovel.86 Like many contemporary novels, Imagined Communities stages anencounter between literary history and political theory. And like those novels, thestudy functions as a work of world literature both because of its circulation and

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becauseofitsproduction.Asatext,ImaginedCommunitiestakesasitssubjecttheeffects of print culture on the development of nation-states throughout the world.Individualchaptersaredevoted tocasestudiesofsmallcountriessuchasHungary,Thailand, Switzerland, and the Philippines. As a book, Imagined Communities hascirculatedamongmanyofthesesmallcountries,andamongmanylargeonestoo.Itwas first published inEnglish in 1983 and has been translated over the past thirty-some years into at least twenty-seven languages, including Japanese, German,Portuguese, Serbo-Croat, andCatalan. Yet the phenomenal success of Anderson’sprojecthaslednotonlytotranslationandretranslationbutalsotonewproduction.In1991and2006,respectively,AndersonissuedsecondandthirdEnglisheditions,eachofwhichincludesnewmaterialthatrespondstocriticismoftheworkandanalyzesthetransnationalcommunitiesthatthebook’scirculationhashelpedtocreate.Thethirdeditionaddstothebook’ssubjectmatter—howprintculturecontributesto

theimaginationofcommunity—anaccountofhowthetranslationandreceptionofthebookwearereadinghascontributed to the imaginationofcommunities towhich thebook now belongs. In this account we learn that the transnational and multilingualcirculation of Imagined Communities has led Anderson to consider that the globalappealofhisargumentmayhavebeenspurredbyitsowntransnationalbeginnings—that is,byoriginsunderstoodnotsimplyasLondonor theAnglo-Americanacademybut as a transnational conglomerate, the United Kingdom, in which devolution andmulticulturalism offer conflicting models of political history and collective fate.Andersonacknowledgesinthe2006editionthattheoriginalrhetoricofthebookwasborrowedinpartfromdebatesaboutpostcolonialmigrationandthedeclineofempirethat had become especially urgent in theUnitedKingdomof the late seventies andearlyeighties.Fromtheperspectiveof latereditions,weseethatAnderson’s text israther more transnational than we had at first perceived. Yet what I am callingtransnational,thenarrative’sattunementtohistoriesofdevolutionandmulticulturalism,also remains local in an important sense. Regional, semi-metropolitan, Anderson’swork shows us that global disarticulation—belonging to nowhere—is not the onlyalternative to national simultaneity. Moreover, it suggests that the repression oftranslationmaybetied,as it is inAnderson’s text, to therepressionof transnationalimpulseswithinnationalprojects.ThereisnochapterinImaginedCommunitiesthatpresentsitselfasananalysisof

thenoveltoday,buttheafterwordtothethirdeditionissuggestiveabouttranslation’seffectson literaryhistory.Readersbecomepartof thebook’sstoryabouthowprintculture structures imagined communities, and thus the community of the book isshown to exceed the community of the text. In this way Imagined Communitiesshares itsnarrativestructurewithmanyothercontemporarytransnationalworksandresembles edited and translated works from earlier eras.87 As Anderson argues,translationcancontributetotheimaginationofnationalcommunities.ButasAndersondemonstrates, translationputs pressureon the conceptual boundariesbetweenonecommunityandanotherandmayspurtheperceptionofnewcommunitiesaltogether.This insight can be useful for our understanding of world literature. In books

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publishedsince2000,scholarsofworld literaturehave focusedonwhathappens toliteraryworkswhentheytravelintonewliterarysystems.Theemphasisontravelhassoughttoreplacetwoolderdefinitions:theonethatdesignatedliterarymasterpieces,thosebookseveryone in theworldshouldread;andtheonethatdesignated literaryunderdogs,thosebooksproducedoutsideofWesternEuropeandtheUnitedStates.Whereas world literature once referred to a group of “works,” it now refers to a“network,”a“system,”a“republic,”ora“problem.”88Themovement fromaspecificbookshelf of classic or marginalized literary works to the relationship amongmanydifferent bookshelves has drawn attention to the ways bookshelves come to beorganized,andtothewaysandreasonsthatworksmove—ordonotmove—amongthem.Yetthefocusontravel,whiletracinguptakeandrenovationandthereforealsonew emergence, has also tended to emphasize the distinction between literature’sbeginningsanditsafterlives.89Translationappearsaspartofliterature’ssecondact.This understanding of translation is one of Emily Apter’s principal concerns in

AgainstWorldLiteratureandinherearlierstudy,TheTranslationZone.Shecallsforgreaterengagementwith translation in thecalculationof literaryhistoriesataglobalscale.90 Title notwithstanding, in the later book Apter is not really against worldliterature,orevenWorldLiterature.91Sheisinterestedin“whenandwheretranslationhappens,”expandingthecorpusofliteraryworksgeographicallyandlinguistically,andrethinking foundational concepts from the perspective of literary histories beyondEurope.92 But she is against the organization of literature from the perspective ofnational languages and literary histories. And she is against the expansion ofownership, preferring instead “deowned literature,” whose paradigmatic example isthetranslatedbook.93Ofcourse,asApteracknowledges,literaryownershipisnotacreature of world literature studies. The rise of national languages in the earlynineteenthcenturymade itseemnaturalandnecessary for literature tobegin—eventobe “born”—inone language.When theoriesof literarycirculation takenineteenth-centuryEuropeanfictionastheirexamples,astheyoftendo,itmakessensethatthenational model would rule the day.94 But what happens when we turn to newexamples?95Insteadofaskingaboutthecontemporarynovelfromtheperspectiveofworld literature, we might ask about world literature from the perspective of thecontemporarynovel.Inthisbook,Isuggestthatwhatliteratureisnowhastoalterwhatworldliterature

isnow.Once literaryworksbegin in several languagesandseveralplaces, theynolonger conform to the logic of national representation.Many born-translated novelssignal this departure by blocking original languages, invoking multiple scales ofgeography,anddecouplingbirthplacefromcollectivity.Newobjectschangetheshapeas well as the content of world literature. When world literature seems to be acontainer for various national literatures, it privileges source: distinct geographies,countable languages, individual genius, designated readers, and the principle ofpossessive collectivism. When world literature seems instead to be a series ofemerging works, not a product but a process, it privileges target: the analysis of

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convergences and divergences across literary histories.96 The analysis of targetlanguages and literatures involves, paradoxically, an analysis of the past. Literaryscholarshiphastoapproachoperationsthatonceseemedsecondaryorexternal(notonly readingbut also translating)as sourcesof production.97 Takingproductionandcirculationtogether,itisimpossibletoisolatethenoveltodayfromtheothergenresinwhichitsauthorsregularlyparticipate.Manynovelistsarealsoreviewers,translators,anthologists, poets, editors, publishers, graphic designers, journalists, visual artists,intellectual impresarios,andessayists.98 Thishasalwaysbeenso—thenovel is thegenreofmanygenres—buttodaynovelsandnovel-likefictionshavefoundnewwaysto dramatize the relationship among these activities, in which writing, reading,adapting,andtranslatingalltakepart.99Incontemporaryfiction,weseemanyoriginalsthatarealsotranslations.Readers

areaskedtoexperiencethetextasadelayedordetouredobject:abookthatbegansomewhere else. Instead of identification, these texts offer readers partial fluency,approximation,andvirtualunderstanding,fromthesyntacticaltranslationsofMiéville’sThe City, the City and the diegetic translations of Coetzee’s Childhood to theintermedial,collaborative,andserialtranslationsofMosley’sAlienScript,Young-HaeChangHeavyIndustries’digitalnarratives,andAdamThirlwell’s“Multiples.”100Ifworldliterature is to involveasking “whereaparticular textstarts,how itmoves,andwhoendsupreadingit,”asCarolineLevinehasrecentlysuggested,wewillneedtoknowmoreabouthowstartinghaschanged,whenmovementtakesplace,andwhatkindsof practices and chronologies reading has involved.101 Because a work may beproduced several times, through adaptation, rewriting, and translation, we can nolonger assume that its language will always precede its composition and that itsaudiencewillalwaysfollowit.Bychallengingdominantmodelsofliterarysequencing,in which circulation always trails production, literary histories that incorporatetranslation recalculate themeaningsofauthorand translator,originalandderivation,native and foreign, just to name a few of the foundational distinctions that haveshapedworld literature aswe’ve known it.102 Born-translated works, because theyvaluethehistoryandfutureoftranslation,itsconduitsaswellasitsblockages,bringcirculation into view. Rather than dodging translation, they try to keep beingtranslated.

NON-TRANSLATIONSTUDIES

This commitment—to keep being translated—doesn’t fit our usual ways of thinkingabouttheportabilityofliteraryworks.Itisconventionaltodistinguishbetweenworksthat impede translation (“untranslatable”)and those that invite it (“translatable”).Butwhatwould itmean foraworkboth to impedeand to inviteat thesame time?Thework that is difficult to translate is celebrated for its engagement with a specificnational language and for its refusal to enter, or enter easily, into the pipeline of

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multinational publishing. The portable work, for its part, is vilified for havingsurrenderedtothatpipeline,exchangingaestheticinnovationforcommercialsuccess,eschewingtheidiosyncrasyofthelocalfortheinterchangeabilityoftheglobal.103 “Inthe global literarymarket therewill be no place for anyBarbaraPyms andNataliaGinzburgs,”TimParkshaswarned.“Shakespearewouldhaveeasedoffthepuns.Anew Jane Austen can forget the Nobel.”104 Global circulation, we are told, breedsliterarydeclineandpolitical lassitude.Literature is thusneverworse thanwhen it is“eminently translatable.”105And it isneverbetter thanwhen it can’tbe translatedatall.106But translation, like world literature, needs to be approached comparatively: the

concepthasahistoryandapresent,anditoperatesdifferentlyacrosslanguagesandliterarycultures.Forexample,thecelebrationoftheuntranslatableisinsomewaysarecentphenomenonintheUnitedStates.Spurredbytheexplosioninworldliteraturestudiesandbynewconditionsofgloballiteraryproduction,itsadvocatesaretryingtohalttheabsorptionofmanyliteraturesintoasuper-sizedEnglish-languagecurriculum.Formanyscholars, theobstructionofcirculation isanecessarystrategyofminorityself-expression. By using nonstandard versions of a national language, a workopposes political and cultural homogenization, both the kind imposed by otherspeakersofthat languageandthekindimposedbytranslatorsandpublishers.BrianLennon,oneofthemoreradicaladvocatesforthisposition,hascalledfor“arenewedemphasis … on idiolectic incommensurability” and what he calls “non-translationstudies.”107Lennonvaluesbooks that refuse toparticipate instandardsof linguistic,typographical, or semiotic accessibility. Themost original books, he argues,will beunpublishable or barely publishable or perhaps only publishable by independentpublishinghouses.Hesuggests, inaddition,thata“strong”versionofnon-translationscholarshipwouldeschew itsownmonolingualismbyproducing “pluralingual”works:scholarshipinlanguagesotherthanEnglishaswellasindividualworksofscholarshipthat incorporate intoEnglish “significantquantitiesofa languageor languagesotherthanEnglish.”108In truth, this turn away from translation is something of a return. The notion that

important literary texts have a distinctive languageand that they are intended for aspecificgroupofcompetentreadershasbeenthereigningintellectualparadigmforatleastthepastcentury.Theexemplaryworksofnon-translationstudiestendtofeatureidiosyncratic diction, portmanteau words, or phrases that gather several nationallanguages intoasinglesentence.DorisSommercalls theseworks“particularist,”bywhichshemeansthattheyaredirectedtoarelativelysmallgroupofreaderswhocanoperateintwooreventhreelanguages.109Particularistwriters,Sommeremphasizes,know their readers, or think they do.110 Additionally, she argues, they know whomthey are excluding: monolingual readers who lack access to multilingual puns thatoperateat the levelof thewordor thephrase.Particularistworksarenotmeant tocirculate globally. Rather, they are meant to be regional and to comment on thespecificrelationshipamong languages in thatregion.Theyarebornuntranslatable in

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thesensethattheydonottravelwellandinfactoftenresistit.111At this point it seems important to acknowledge that the concept of the

untranslatable, itsmeaningsaswellasitspoliticalconsequences,isnotone.Imeanbythisthatitfunctionsdifferentlyacrossvariouslanguagesandthatthosedifferenceshavebeenlargely invisible.Thesedifferencesare important forourunderstandingofwhattheborn-translatednovelistryingtodo.InEnglish,asithasbeenusedrecentlyby Emily Apter, untranslatable texts or concepts involve “semantic units that areirreducible.”112Theycannotcirculateinanotherlanguage,andinfact,asApterputsit,they declare a “ban on passing from one language to another.”113 Untranslatablewords, Apter argues, are often bilingual and denote “shared zones of non-nationalbelonging.”114Theyresist travelbecausetheirmeaningis tiedtothearrangementofphonemesortothehistoricalrelationshipamongspecificlanguages.Thisdefinitionofthe untranslatable fits well with the project of non-translation studies in the UnitedStatesandwiththeidiolect-drivennovelsonwhichithasfocused.In French, as it has been used recently by Barbara Cassin, whoseVocabulaire

européen des philosophies (2004) Apter helped to translate and adapt foranglophone audiences, “untranslatable” means “what one doesn’t stop (not)translating.”115Thedoublenegativeissignificant.Itallowsthestatementtoimplyboth“what one keeps translating” and “what one never finishes translating, or nevermanagestotranslate.”Thesetwoideastogetherproducesomething like,“whatonedoesn’t stop translatingeven thoughonecannot finish translating.”Cassin’s isnotaprinciple of repeated accomplishment (translating over and over) so much as aprincipleofongoingfailure(nottranslating,still).Shewrites inher introductiontotheVocabulaire: “To speak of untranslatables in no way implies that the terms inquestion,orexpressions,thesyntacticalorgrammaticalturns,arenotandcannotbetranslated: the untranslatable is rather what one keeps on (not) translating.”116Cassin’suntranslatablemeanssomething like, “un-translated-able”: that is,unable tobefinishedbeingtranslated.117If we follow the logic of Cassin’s thinking, translatable termswould be words or

concepts forwhich translationcancome toanend,and inwhich translationhasnotyetappeared tobegin.118Thesewordsmayhavecirculated,asallwordshave,buttheydonot register the traceof thatcirculation.Untranslatablewords,on theotherhand,arethoseforwhichtranslationis interminable.Theyexpressnottherefusaloftranslationbut thepersistenceof it.Thesewordsare translatedfromthestart; theyfind ways to dramatize that history; and they carry that history into the future,requiringreaders toengage in translation rather than to imagine that thework,as iffromalatervantage,hasbeentranslated.Insteadofadistinctionbetweentranslationinvited or banned, incorporated or alienated, Cassin points us toward a distinctionbetweentranslationterminableorinterminable,socializedordramatized,managedorongoing.Cassin’s“untranslatables”seemtobenotsimplyborntranslatedbutvirtuallytranslated.Theyhaltbeforetheactual;theyaresolicitousofadditionaltranslation.Literaryworksmaybeuntranslatable, then,because theyaredifficult to translate

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(Apter’s sense) or because they are difficult not to translate (Cassin’s sense). Thefirst version of untranslatable, as I have suggested, has a long history withinpostcolonialandminoritywritingofthepastcentury.Italsohasclosetieswithliterarymodernism.Insomewaystheassociationbetweennon-translationandmodernismisoddsincesomanymodernistwritersservedas translatorsandcreatednewworksoutof the translationandcollageofotherworks.But theprojectofcollageand theturn to the lyric in fiction emphasized the development of a particular language inrelation to other languages and other versions of language. Promoting a sense ofintimacythroughsoundandvoice,manyofthesignalworksofmodernistfictionhaveto be heard as well as read. Scholars have called these works untranslatable notbecause they haven’t been translated but because they seem committed to thehistory and structure of their original language. Beckett’s famous aphorism aboutFinnegansWake,thatthe“writingisnotaboutsomething;itisthatsomethingitself,”helped to produce what is now the standard account of Joycean fiction.119 And ofcourseJamesJoyce’sPortraitof theArtistasaYoungManmakes thispointon itsown behalf when it presents a story about the revitalization of a paralyzed idiom.StephenforgestheuncreatedconscienceofhisracebyteachingtheEnglishhowtospeaktheirlanguage,andbyoutdoingtheEnglishinalanguagethathasneverbeentheirs.BythetimewegettoUlysses,weareofferedtheopportunitytolearnanewvernacular,andindeedthatacquisitioniscrucialtotheplot.ThinkingaboutJoyce,wecan locate twowaysofengagingwith translationwithin

anglophonewriting.120One,whichinvolvesthedescriptionoflanguages,correspondstoApter’semphasisonphonemesandirreducibleparts.Andtheother,whichinvolvesthe narration of languages, corresponds to Cassin’s emphasis on interminableprocess.121 In Joyce, these versions of translation lead in two directions. The firstgenerates a new, oppositional fluency, whereas the second seeks to neutralizefluencyasaprincipleofaggregation.These twogoalsget theirstart inmodernism,andinthissensetheyhavethesamehistory.Buttheydonotsharethesamefuture,having spawned two largely divergent paths in contemporary fiction. The path ofdescriptioncanbetracedfromUlyssestoG.V.Desani’sAllaboutH.Hatterr(1948)and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962) to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’sDictée (1982), Ken Saro-Wiwa’sSozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English (1985), andJunotDíaz’sThisIsHowYouLoseHer(2012).Wecouldeasilychooseotherpointsin the trajectory—Salman Rushdie’sMidnight’s Children (1980) and Zadie Smith’sWhiteTeeth (2000) come immediately tomind—but the ones I’ve selected trace astrikingninety-yearroutefrom1922to2012.InClockworkOrange, a made-up amalgam of Russian and English is meant to

convey the unconscious totalitarianism of the supposedly liberal English state. Therelationship between the two languages, condensed in the narrator’s argot (“therewere three devotchkas sitting at the counter all together, but therewere four of usmalchicks…”), tellsastoryaboutColdWarBritain,and itdoesso inwaysthataredifficult to replicate in other languages.122 In many other twentieth-century works,multilingualism has served to record the political history of language imposition and

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language use; generate a new language; and give shape to an audience whosedistinctiveness is affirmed by the work. Díaz’s stories are exemplary since theydemonstrate some important continuities and divergences from the Joyceanmodel.Takethispassageaboutthenarrator’sbrother’sgirlfriend,Pura:

Purawashername.PuraAdames.PuraMierdawaswhatMamicalledher.OK,fortherecord,Ididn’tthinkPurawassobad;shewasahellofalotbetterthanmostoftheho’smy

brotherhadbroughtaround.Guapísimaashell:tallandindiecita,withhugefeetandanincrediblysoulfulface,butunlikeyouraveragehoodhottiePuraseemednottoknowwhatdowithherfineness,wassincerelylostinallthepulchritude.Atotalcampesina,fromthewaysheheldherselfdowntothewayshetalked,whichwassodemotic I couldn’tunderstandhalfofwhat shesaid—sheusedwords likedeguabinaoandestribao on theregular.She’dtalkyourearoffifyoulether,andwaswaytoohonest:withinaweekshe’dtoldusherwholelifestory.Howherfatherhaddiedwhenshewasyoung;howforanundisclosedsumhermotherhadmarriedheroffat thirteen toastingy fifty-year-old(whichwashowshegother firstson,Nestor);howafteracoupleofyearsofthatterriblenessshegotthechancetojumpfromLasMatasdeFarfántoNewark,broughtoverbyatíawhowantedhertotakecareofherretardedsonandbedriddenhusband;howshehadrunawayfromher,too,becauseshehadn’tcometoNuebaYoltobeaslavetoanyone,notanymore;howshehadspentthenextfour yearsmore or less being blownalongon thewinds of necessity, passing throughNewark,Elizabeth,Paterson,UnionCity,PerthAmboy(wheresomecrazycubanoknockedherupwithhersecondson,Adrian),everybodytakingadvantageofhergoodnature.…123

Threecharacteristicsstandout:First,thebilingualpuns,whichareaccessibleonlytosome readers. Second, the way that bilingualism, or code-switching, is associatednot onlywith a single character but with the narrator, and thuswith thework as awhole.Andthird,theuseofitalicsforsomebutnotalloftheSpanishwords.Díaz’s story performs a kind of reverse assimilation. Instead of translating

Dominican speech into a standardized version of the English language, Díaz asksreaderscomfortablewithstandardizedEnglishtoacquireDominican.124Buthedoesmore than this. Hemakes a new standard. He presents Spanishwords as part ofNew Jersey’s native language. In this gesture, his writing stands out from themultilingualism of most U.S. fiction. JoshuaMiller has used the term “accented” todescribeworksthatregister,throughnonstandardEnglishspelling,thevoicesoftheirimmigrantcharacters.125AccentednovelssuchasHenryRoth’sCall ItSleep (1934)andMoniqueTruong’sBookofSalt(2003)incorporatethesoundsofmigrantspeechandoccasionallywordsfromlanguagesother thanEnglish.Whennon-Englishwordsappear,however,theyappearindialogue.Thewordsseemtobelongtosomeofthecharacters,buttheydonotbelongtothenovel.RothandTruongusewhatappearstobeunaccentedEnglish—oftencalledStandardEnglish—as theprincipal languageoftheirtexts.InDíaz’swork,bycontrast,SpanishandEnglishareinternaltothework.The originality of Spanish, its presence as part of the novel’s primary idiom, isemphasized by selective italicization (the slangwords,deguabinao and estribao, inthe passage above). Neither italicized nor footnoted, words such as “tía” and“indiecita” are local. They are not foreign. Indeed,when the storywas published intheNewYorker,Díazrejectedhousestyle(requiringitalicization)andhelpedtobringaboutanewpolicyatthemagazineinwhichforeignwordsarenolongerdistinguishedtypographically from so-called English ones.126 Díaz’s use of Spanish and English

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togetherisverydifficulttorenderinnewlanguages,andindeedthetextwouldprovedifficult,too,forreadersoftheoriginalwhoarenotacquaintedwithSpanish—orwhocan’trecognizeSpanishatall.Díazcreatesadistinctionbetween thosewhocan read the language—thosewho

are in on the multilingual joke about Pura, for example, which in Dominicanpronunciationsoundslikeputa,meaningwhore—andthosewhoarenot.Butmoretothepoint:hisvocabularyisephemeral.(Thosefamiliarwithmodernistliteraturemightthink of Joyce’s short story “The Boarding House.”) Díaz records words of themoment,“ontheregular”;aswellaswordsontheirwayout,“thewindsofnecessity”;“takingadvantageofhergoodnature.”Called“ThePuraPrinciple,”thestorycapturesa singlemoment, in a regional environment, amonga small groupof friends,whomthe narrator calls his “boys.” In all of theseways,Díaz’swork fits the first path ofnon-translation.However,theactualtranslationofDíaz’sworkoffersaninterestingcodaandpoints

toward the second path. If Díaz writes by describing languages, he translates bynarratingthem,andindeedonemightarguethatthereissomenarrationbuiltintohisdescription.Díazhelped toproduce theSpanishversionofhisaward-winningnovel,The Brief andWondrous Life of Oscar Wao.127 Instead of replicating the Englishversion’spunsatthescaleofeachindividualword,hereplicateswhatthepunsdoatthescaleofthework.ThenovelintranslationretainstherelationshipbetweenEnglishand Spanish but does not always preserve the specificity of Dominican-Americanphrases. Díaz explains in an interview that he began by translating the entire bookintoSpanishandthenreplacedsomeofthosewordswithSpanish-functioningEnglishterms,preserving“thatsortofmultilingualmadness,”asheputsit,butnottheoriginallexicon.128Inthistranslationpractice,DíazissuggestingthattherelationshipbetweenEnglishandSpanishcanbereproducedstructurallyifnotlocally.Therelationship,thatis,isformalandthematicaswellassemantic.IntheSpanishversionofThisIsHowYouLoseHer,Díaz’sstrategyismostreadily

apparent in the translation of the phrase “not anymore,” as in, “she hadn’t come toNuebaYol toabeaslavetoanyone,notanymore.”Asíescomolapierdes insertstheEnglish-soundingphrase,“yano”(“youknow”/“nolonger”):“porqueellanohabíavenidoaNuebaYol a ser esclavadenadie, yano.”129 TheSpanishedition gains abilingualphrase inoneplacewhile losing it inmanyothers.Forexample, thephrase“NueboYol”appearsmorefamiliarintheSpanisheditionthanitdoesintheEnglish.IntheFrenchversion,translatedasGuideduloseramoureux, thetitledisplaysDíaz’sstructural technique, since the American word “loser” has some currency, asAmerican,incolloquialFrench.130Thatphrasealsoretainspartoforiginal’spun(“loseher”/“loser”).However,theFrenchstoriesaddbackitalicization.Spanishtermssuchas“guapísima,” “indiecita,”and“tía,”whicharedistinguishedfrom“deguabinao”and“estribao”intheEnglishversion,appearimported(italicized)intheFrenchedition.131Thetranslationhasdifficultyretainingthereader’sencounterwithwordsthatoperatein two languages (English and Spanish, or English and French) instead of one.ComparethefollowingwiththepassagefromtheU.S.edition:

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Pura,elles’appelait.PuraAdames.PuraMierda,commel’appelaitMami.Bon,jeprécisequejenelatrouvaispassimal;ellevalaitcentfoismieuxquelaplupartdestraînéesque

mon frère avait ramenées.Guapísima en diable: grande et indiecita, des pieds immenses et un visageincroyablementexpressif,maiscontrairementauxautresbeautésduquartier,Purasemblaitnepassavoirquoifairedesesatouts,sincèrementperduedevanttantdecharmes.Unecampesinapurjus,desafaçondeseteniràsafaçondeparler,sipéquenaudequejenepigeaispaslamoitiédecequ’elledisait—elleutilisaitrégulièrementdesmotscommedeguabinoetestribao.Ellebavassaitàn’enplusfinirsionlalaissaitfaire,etelleétaitbeaucouptropspontanée:enmoinsd’unesemaineellenousavaitracontél’histoiredesavie.Quesonpèreétaitmortquandelleétaitpetite;quesamèrel’avaitdonnéeenmariagequandelleavaittreizeans,enéchanged’unesomme inconnue,àunradindecinquantepiges(avecquielleavaiteusonpremier fils,Nestor);qu’aprèsquelquesannéesdecetteatrocitéelleavaiteu l’occasiondequitterLasMatasdeFarfánpourNewark, invitée par une tía qui voulait qu’elle s’occupe de son fils attardé et de sonmari grabataire;qu’elle s’était aussi enfuiedechezelle, parcequ’ellen’était pas venueàNuebaYol pourêtre l’esclavedequiconque,plusjamais.…132

The story depends on the idea that some of the Spanish words also function inEnglish: they are native to New Jersey. This is important to the English editionbecause the story is not, in fact, about foreignness. Just as children expand theirvocabulariesbyreadingmorewidelyandaddingnewtermsto their lexicon, readersofDíaz’s fictionaremeant to learnwordsrather thanto translate them.This isonereasonwhyDíaz’sworkmightbebestunderstoodasregionalratherthanglobal.Itiswritteninonelanguage.

NARRATINGLANGUAGES

Where does a text’smultilingualism reside?WhenCoetzee’sSimónmentions in theEnglish text that “the alphabet” has twenty-seven letters, as it does inSpanish, thenovel is narrating rather than describing languages. Or, when China Miévilledramatically interruptsastatement thatsignalsonenationwithaclause thatsignalsanother, he is registering the presence of foreign languages without representingthemdirectly.YaseminYildizhasproposed thatKafka’smultilingualismhasmore todowithhis“writingonYiddish”thanwiththeso-calledYiddishfeaturesofhisGermanlanguage.133AndTheodorAdorno,inanessaythathasbeenfoundationaltotheoriesof accented writing, acknowledges that it may be foreign ideas or unusual syntax,rather than foreign diction itself, that create the impression of nonnativeexpression.134 In subsequent chapters I present other examples, including DavidMitchell’s references to a writing system of “characters” in a novel produced inRoman script; JamaicaKincaid’s andMohsinHamid’s second-personnarration; andthecollationofeditions inYoung-HaeChangHeavy Industries’digitalnarrative “BustDowntheDoors!”TheexampleIpursueherecomesfromBenLerner’snovelLeavingtheAtochaStation,publishedin2011.Lerner’snovelhasbeenenormouslysuccessfulandhasappeared in several languages, includingGerman,Spanish,French,Dutch,and Italian.Raised in Kansas and now based in Brooklyn, Lernerwon internationalawardsasapoetbeforepublishinghisfirstworkoffiction,whosetitleistakenfroma

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poem by John Ashbery. His background in poetry is notable since Lerner’s fictionstrivestokeeplanguageatadistance.LikeDíaz,Lerner isconcernedwiththerelationshipbetweenSpanishandEnglish,

and for that reasonalonehis novel offers a useful comparison.But thereareotherreasonstoo.Leaving theAtochaStation tells thestoryofayoungAmerican,AdamGordon,whospendsayearinMadridonafellowship.135He’ssupposedtobewritinganepicpoemabouttheSpanishCivilWar,anditispartofthenovel’sironythatAdamthinkstheworldneedsaU.S.poemaboutIberianmilitarismwhiletheUnitedStatesisbusy invading Iraq. At least initially, Adam appears to have minimal command ofSpanish,andmuchoftheplotinvolveshisefforts,first,tofakeproficiencyand,later,to fake ignorance. The novel filters every conversation through the medium of thecharacter’s competence. The impression of multilingualism is achieved not throughidiolect, as in Burgess and Díaz, but through the dilation of possible translations.Multilingualisminthenovelisnotamatterofvoice,theliteraryqualitythatcriticsfromRoland Barthes to Franco Moretti have deemed most sensitive to place.136 It isinstead amatter of form.137 To pick up on the distinction between description andnarrationI’vebeenusing,Lerner’snoveltellsusabouttranslation—howitworks,howit doesn’t work, and many of the meanings it might, theoretically, produce—but itdoesn’trepresenteitheranoriginalphraseoranaccomplishedtranslationatall.Approachedbyasympatheticyoungwomanafterhehasbeenpunchedintheface

forinadvertentlysayingsomethinginappropriate,thenarratorreports:

Shebegantosaysomethingeitheraboutthemoon,theeffectofthemoononthewater,orwasusingthefullmoontoexcuseMiguelortheevening’sgeneraldrama,thoughthemoonwasn’tfull.Herhairwaslong,maybelongerthantheguard’s.Thenshemighthavedescribedswimminginthelakeasachild,orsaidthat lakesremindedherofbeingachild,oraskedmeif I’denjoyedswimmingasachild,orsaidthatwhatshe’dsaidaboutthemoonwaschildish.138

Thenoveldoesn’tchooseamongthenarrator’slinguisticsuppositions.Itasksustoencounter theeffort rather than theachievementof translation.Theconjunction “or”andsubjunctivesyntax(“shemighthavedescribed”)appearfrequentlythroughoutthetext.WhereasDíazwrites in a languagewemight call “nativeNewJersey,” LernermakesEnglish into a foreign language. BothDíaz and Lerner are interested in twokinds of multilingualism: internal multilingualism, the varieties of expression withinEnglish or within Spanish, and external multilingualism, the movement betweenEnglishandSpanish.Theyfinddifferentwaystoputthesetwokindsofmultilingualisminto conversation. Díaz does this by introducing Spanish words that are foreign toNewJerseywhilealsopointingatSpanishwords thatare local.Lernerdoesthisbyasking us to think about English versions of Spanish while he asks us to considerEnglish versions of English, mediated in the novel by instant messaging, poetry,literary criticism, and free indirect discourse. Díaz’s emphasis on description—allthose Spanish and English words on the page—means that his novels are largelyuntranslatable, inApter’s sense.Lerner’sareuntranslatable inCassin’s sense: theyapproachtranslationfromtheperspectiveofreception.

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Lerner is interested in thephenomenonofart’sconsumption,and indeedhisnovelbegins with the narrator watching someone behold a painting in the Prado. Thepainting is reproduced in the novel so that readers too behold what Adam seessomeoneelsebehold.Inthissense,readersareaskedtothinkofthemselvesastheobjectsofthenovel’sattention,orat leastasobjectsofAdam’sattention.Thenovelstages various scenes of reception, which Lerner has described as a strategy of“recontextualization.”139 What the narrator and the reader encounter is someoneelse’s encounter. This is one of the ways that Lerner promotes secondary, ormediated,experience.Inhisprose,Lernerisinterestedintheoperationsoflanguagebut not in what he calls the “surface effects of language,” which he reserves forpoetry.140Instead,heisfocusedonlargerscales,deployingacollageofgenresandcirculatingmaterials fromonegenre intoanother.There is nodirect presentationofvoiceinthenovel,apartfromashortexchangeinvolvinginstantmessaging.Lerner’snovel offers “a blueprint” for translation rather than the product of translation.141Hewingtotheblueprint,Lernerkeepshisnovelfrom(not)beingtranslated.Both Lerner and Díaz are trying to produce works that provincialize English.142

They force readers to grapple with partial fluency, register the arrogance of U.S.monolingualism, and invent strategies for incorporating the several languages,geographies,andaudiencesinwhichtheygettheirstart.Díaz’snovelallowsreadersto learn the diegetic language, whereas Lerner’s does not. Lerner’s novel is lesssanguineaboutcreatingneworiginalsandaboutsoliciting thereader’s intimacywiththetext.Tobeschematicforamoment,wemightsaythatLerner’snovelwelcomestranslations into new languages by translating the original, whereas Díaz’s storiesthemselves alter English but resist absorption by new languages. Díaz’s texts areasserting their place in theworld. Lerner is trying to retract that place. To put it inCasanova’sterms,Lerner’snoveltriestounforgetitsdominance.LeavingtheAtochaStation reflectson thepoliticsof languagebydramatizing receptionandbyextollingthevirtual.Partial fluencybecomesinthenovelaresourceforself-expressionandabasis for civic participation. Because Adam is not a knowing operator, he has todependonwhatmightbethoughtabouthimrather thanonwhathebelieveshimselftobe.OnecouldsaythatLerner’snovelaccommodatestranslationbecauseitavoidsthe

“surfaceeffects”oflanguage.Thataccommodationisbornoutinthenovel’sSpanishedition, which has no trouble retaining the subjunctive quality of Adam’s English-translatedSpanish:“Shebegantosaysomethingeitheraboutthemoon,theeffectofthemoononthewater,orwasusingthefullmoontoexcuseMiguel”becomessimply“Empezóacontarmealgodelaluna,delefectodelalunasobreelagua,outilizabalalunallenaparaexcusaraMiguel.”143However,byrecordingthedistancebetween“theactualwords”inSpanishand“theclaimsmadeontheirbehalf,”asAdamputsitin the U.S. edition, the novel keeps (not) being translated.144 Lerner’s text asksreaderstoconfrontthehistoryandfutureoftranslation,andit invitestranslatorsintothe literary history of the work within the work. At the end of the novel, Adam

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proposestohistranslatorthatthey“swapparts”forapublicreadingofhispoems.145Thismeans,heexplains, that “Teresawouldread theoriginalsand Iwouldread thetranslations and the translations would become the originals as we read.”146 Thetransformation is an effect of reading: the “translations” become the “originals”becausetheyarepresentedfirst.Therearenowtwooriginals,theonesmadebythenarratorandtheonesmade,asitwere,bytheaudience.Originality,Adamimplies,isproduced by listening rather than (only) by writing or speaking. The status of theoriginal,Lernersuggests,dependsnotontheartistbutonthebeholder.In someways thenarrationof languages retreats from the local since vernacular

speechisoftendiminished.Butnarrationalsoinvolvesnewwaysofrepresentingthelocal. We see this in the emphasis on the history and practice of translation, thedistributionof literacy, thegeopolitical institutionsof literature,and theexperienceofpartial fluency.The localnow involves thinkingabout theoriginofaudiencesand themechanisms through which audiences add meaning to books. If we approachuntranslatabilityasthedramatizationoftranslation,thenthemostuntranslatabletextsbecomethose that findways tokeeptranslation fromstopping.Theyare those thatinvite translation rather thanprohibit it. Theengagementwith idiolect is a distinctivetraitofexperimental fiction in the twentiethcentury.147Butexperimental fiction in thetwenty-first century often withdraws from that engagement. Written for multipleaudiences, contemporary novels have developed strategies of multilingualismdesignedfortheforeign,nonfluent,andsemifluentreaderswhowillencounterthem.

NEWVOCABULARIES

Approachingworldliteraturefromtheperspectiveoftranslationmeansconfrontingtheideathatlanguagesarenotreallycountable:theydonotseparateeasilyintodiscreteunits, “like an apple and an orange,” as one scholar has put it, and they are notequivalentunits,aswenoticewhenwecompare the literaturesofglobal languagessuchasEnglishandSpanishwiththoseofsomewhatmorelocalizedlanguagessuchas Japanese andGerman orwith those of evenmore localized languages such asTurkishandSwedish.148Literaturescholarshavegenerally reliedon thedistinctnessof languages. That is howwe organize our literary histories and howwe constructworld literature anthologies and syllabi. A focus on translation and contact amonglanguages, however, implies new scales of literary history and new principles ofliterary belonging. By emphasizing the afterlives of individual works, the uptake ofaesthetic strategies across regions, and generic developments, for example, WaiChee Dimock, Martin Puchner, and Jahan Ramazani have established literarytraditionsbasedonformalandpoliticalaffinityratherthansimultaneityoflanguageorhistoricalperiod.149Inthisbook,Igatheranglophoneworksthataddressthemselvestomultipleaudiences,invitereadingasasourceofmaking,andappeartobe—andtobederivedfrom—translatededitions.Theseworkspointbackwardtothemultilingual

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histories of the novel, including the history of writing in nonnative languages, andforwardtoitsmanypossiblefutures.ThedistinguishedtranslatorEdithGrossmanhassuggestedrecentlythatweneed

anewvocabularyfortalkingabouttherelationshipbetweenoriginalworksandworksin translation.150 This seems right to me. For literary historians, thinking about theseveral editions in which a work appears would involve devoting much moresubstantial attention to the reading of translations. Instead of asking about fidelity,whether the subsequent editionsmatch the original, onemight ask about innovationand about the various institutional and aesthetic frameworks that shape the work’songoingproduction.Examiningallof thetranslationsthatappear inasingleyear, forexample, would allow scholars to consider as part of a literary culture all of thoseworksthatbeganaspartofotherliterarycultures.Oronecouldtrackthetranslationofasingleworkasitmovesoutintonewspaces.151Theseare importantstrategiesfor recovering thehistoriesof translationand reception,and for thinkingabouthow,where,andwhentranslationshavemattered.WhileIwillhaveoccasiontodiscussthetranslationsofsomeworks,especiallyinchapters1,2,and5,thisbookisdevotedtoa different question: how contemporary novels have incorporated translation intoproduction, and what this development does—what it needs to do—to our analyticcategoriesandprocedures.It’snotthatweneedanewvocabularyforreadingworksin translation. We need a new vocabulary for reading works. Instead of choosingbetweenaliteraryhistoryoforiginalsandaliteraryhistoryoftranslations,Iapproachtheseprojectstogether.Wehavetodothisbecausetranslationseedsproductionandisacrucialpartof the literaryecosystem.Wehavetodothisbecausemanynovelstoday address themselves to comparative audiences. There is no literary historywithouttranslation.Neverhasbeen.Buttoday’snovelshaveexpandedtheregisterofself-translationandmultilingualisminunprecedentedways.ThechaptersofBornTranslatedareorganizedconceptually,askingwhathappens

to the signal categoriesof author, reader, original, translation, nation,world, native,and foreignwhenworksappear to begin inmanyplacesandmany languages.Thechaptersarealsoorganizedchronologically.Chapters1and2focusonCoetzeeandIshiguro, whose longstanding engagement with translation can be traced to workspublished in the1970sand1980s.Laterchapters focusonwriterssuchasMitchell,Phillips,Waldman,Hamid,Kincaid,Young-HaeChangHeavyIndustries,andThirlwell,whoseworksfeaturingglobalcirculationandmultipleaudiencesemergedramaticallyin the 1990s and after. Yet concepts drive this story. Chapter 1 shows that born-translated fiction, because it emphasizes ongoing production and multilingualreception, interfereswith thenovel’s traditional roleasan instrumentofmonolingualcollectivity.Italsointerfereswithtraditionalpracticesofclosereading,whichprivilegefluency when they emphasize the text’s smallest possible units: words. However,instead of proposing that born-translated works negate close reading or make itobsolete, I suggest that they direct close reading toward multiple editions of thework, larger units of the text, and units of the text that are also units of the book.Chapter 1 shows how the project of close reading and the usual objects of its

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attention (“details”) are altered by the production of works intended for multipleaudiences.Chapter2turnsfromthequestionofhowwereadtothequestionofwhatweare

reading.What is theobjectwehold inourhands?Bookhistorianshaveasked: Is itthework,orisitsimplyoneversionofthework?Extendingthatquestion,thischapterasks:Howmanybooksconstitute thework?Does theworkconsistofanedition inonelanguage?Ordoesitconsistofalleditions,includingthosethatmaybeproducedinthefuture?Theconceitoftranslationallowscontemporarywriterstoapproachtheirnovels as series or lists of comparative versions. To invoke a distinction made byphilosophers of art, novels that incorporate translation function more likeperformances than like site-specific sculptures. Acknowledging collaboration withtranslators, contemporary writers distance themselves from Romantic models ofindividualityanduniqueness.Born-translatedworksdonotgiveuponuniqueness.Notexactly. Instead of assigning uniqueness to an object’s internal characteristics, theyassign uniqueness to the object’s social properties: the way it relates to differentobjects in thesame language, thesameobject indifferent languages,orobjectsofthesamecolororsizeorlocation.Beginning,inthissense,takesplaceoverandoveragain.Chapters3and4addresstherelationshipbetweenthecharacterofbooksandthe

character of readers. In the first case, I look at novels in which readers seem toconstitutetexts;inthesecondcase,Ilookatnovelsinwhichtextsseemtoconstitutereaders.Chapter3introducestheideaofthe“world-shapednovel,”aworkoffictionthat attributes its aestheticandspatial origins toplanetary circulation rather than tonational,regional,orurbangeographiesassociatedwithonelanguage.Allcollectivesdependonstrategiesof sampling, collating,andcounting.World-shapednovelsaskhow those strategies are altered by migration and other histories of circulation.Whereas chapter 3 asks how audiences contribute to the meanings of aestheticobjects,chapter4askshowaestheticobjectsmake—orclassify—audiences. In thelatterchapter,Iaskwhatitmeans,today,tobea“nativereader,”whenmanybooksappearintranslationfromthestartandwhenmanyreadersoperateinlanguagesthatare different from those that they speak. I consider, first, the concept of nativereading,and,second,howandwhycontemporarynovelsmightchoosetorejectthatconcept.Thechapterexaminesnovelsthatdramatizethepracticalconditionsofbeing—or not being—an audience. Deploying the second-person voice (“you”), thesenovelssuggestthatthemostcompetentreadersintheoriginalwillneedtoapproachtheworksas translations.At theendof thechapter, Iconsider thegeneralizationofthispractice:readingalloriginalsasiftheyareorwillbetranslations.The final chapter considers the irreducible collectivity of the born-translatednovel

as a paradigm for literary history and political belonging. I take as my examplesseveral born-digital works because, self-published and irregularly updated, theyappear in multiple languages and multiple versions of language at the same time.Operatingasseries(manyeditions,eachinadifferentlanguage)andasobjects(oneedition, consisting of different languages), these works reflect on the relationship

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between language and citizenship, testing common definitions of monolingual andmultilingual,nationalandinternational,domesticandforeign.AttheendofthechapterI turn to examples of born-translated literature in print that have integrated digitalpractices.Thesepost-digitalworksdrawattentiontotheembodimentofthebookandtotheinstitutional,technological,andgeopoliticalhistoriesofcirculation.MyepilogueintroducesAdamThirlwell’scollaborativeproject“Multiples,”published

in 2013. Like many of the born-digital works discussed in the previous chapter,Thirlwell’s edition can be understood both as an anthology of individual objects indifferentlanguagesandasananthologyofindividualtranslationsofthesameobject.Eighteenlanguagesappearonitspages.WhileThirlwellseemstopresenttwokindsofserial individuality, individualworksand individual translations, in facthisproject isprofoundly social in a variety of ways, hearkening back to the multilanguageperiodicals of themodernist era and indebted to the coterie publishing of today.152Thirlwell celebrates his translators’ creativity but also dramatizes profounddisagreementsabout translation’spoliticalmeaningsandnormativeprocedures.Thetranslations included in thebook run fromparaphrase, collaboration,andadaptationto homage, imitation, scrupulous transposition, and replacement. As a template forliterary history, “Multiples” testifies to contemporary fiction’s robust uncountability inan age of world literature. Yet, through paratextual essays and visual images thatemphasizetranslationpractices,italsomakesworldliteratureaccountable.Theborn-translatednovelstrivestoembracethisparadox:accountabilitywithoutcountability;aliteratureofglobalcirculationfromtheperspectiveofongoingproduction.

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1CLOSEREADINGATADISTANCE

Yetwhereintheworldcanonehidewhereonewillnotfeelsoiled?WouldhefeelanycleanerinthesnowsofSweden,readingata

distanceabouthispeopleandtheirlatestpranks?

—J.M.Coetzee,Summertime

MAKINGWORLDLITERATURE

Literaryworksthatbeginintranslationrequireanewunderstandingbothofwhatwereadandof howmuch.Pointingat past and future versions,worksmayappearasunfinished collectives: not as one monolingual edition but as many editions inlanguagesasvariedasKorean,Dutch,French,English,Greek,andUrdu.1Readerswillbeableanalyzeonlysomepartscloselybecausefewwillpossessthenecessarycombinationof languagesandbecausethequantityof languagesonewouldneedtoknow continues to grow as subsequent translations appear. In this sense, born-translatedwritingrepelsattentionandimpedesthereader’smasteryorknowledgeofthework.But italsoredirectsattention.There iscertainlynoconsensusaboutwhatclose reading involves, whether the microscopic analysis of a text’s very smallestunits (words) or the macroscopic analysis of its thematic clusters, structuralelements, and narrative devices. Yet born-translated writing modifies both kinds ofcloseness by expanding the notion of what an individual text is. Our interpretiveenergies shift rather than dissipate. The objects of closeness now include anarrative’svisualaswellasverbalqualities,paratextualmaterialssuchastypographyand illustration,andaspectsof thework thatexceed thesinglemonolingualversion.WhatIcall“closereadingatadistance”differsfromtraditional“closereading”intwoprincipal ways:2 it demotes the analysis of idiolect, the privileged object of closereading’s attention, in favor of larger narrative units and even units that seem toexceedthenarrative;anditaddscirculationtothestudyofproductionbyaskingwhatconstitutesthelanguages,boundaries,andmediaofthework.3

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FIGURE1.1TextfromJ.M.Coetzee,DiaryofaBadYear(London:HarvillSecker,2007),25.

Reprintedbypermissionofthepublisher.

We combine these two gestures when we approach literature that seems to bebothanobjectandacollectionofobjects.Assoonasaworkappearsasagroup,wehavetotogglebetweenliteraryhistoryandliterarywork.J.M.Coetzee’s2007novelDiaryofaBadYearsolicitsthisprocedurebyimitatingthevisualformatofinterlinealandfacing-pagetranslation(figure1.1).4Whereastranslationin2013’sChildhoodofJesus is principally amatter of story and literary precedent, inDiary Coetzee has

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built translation into the physical layout of almost every page. Pointing at theembodiment of the text in this dramatic way, Coetzee asks us to consider howcirculation shapes production. More than this, he suggests that understandingcirculationasanagentof productionaltersourmostbasicprinciplesof literaryandpoliticalcollectivity:exclusivebeginnings,thecompletenessofnovelsandnations,andadevelopmentalnarrativethatsequences—andseparates—composition,publication,andreception.Diary of a Bad Year is born translated because it was published in multiple

languagesalmostsimultaneouslyandpremieredinDutchratherthaninEnglish(figure1.2).5 It doesnotbelong toanyonenational,ethnic,or linguistic tradition. It isalsoborn translatedbecause it displays,both fictionallyand formally, itsownmultilingualstart.Formally, thenovelexperimentswithcomparative inventoriessuchas listsandcatalogues;typographically,itinvokesvisualpracticesofcomparisonassociatedwiththe print culture of translation; and thematically, it reflects on gestures of ethical,national, and generic comparison. Because of the novel’s architecture, we have tofollow individual strandsof narrativewhile comparingacross those strands.Weareledtocomparevisuallyaswellasverbally:toconsiderhowaword’sappearanceinaphilosophicalessayatthetopofthepagerelatestoitsappearanceinoneofthetwodiariesprintedbelow,andhow themeaningofan ideachangesas itmovesamongthenovel’smanydiscursiveregisters.Thoseregistersincludeacademicandpopular;public and private; the geopolitical and the neighborhood; oral, written, analog, anddigital; standard and vernacular. Comparison functions, too, as one of the novel’sabiding ethical concerns. The text asks whether transnational enlargement in factenhances or ultimately thwarts our capacity for social responsibility and politicalagency.

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FIGURE1.2FrontcoveroftheDutchtranslationofDiaryofaBadYear,J.M.Coetzee,Dagboekvaneenslechtjaar,translatedbyPeterBergsma(Amsterdam:Cossee,2007).

Reprintedbypermissionofthepublisher.

Theglobalexpansionandincreasedspeedoftranslationhaveledmanynoveliststoaskwhether itremainsusefulorevenaccuratetoassociatetheirworkswithoriginallanguages.Whatdoesitmeantorefertothetextwhentheworkexistsfromthestartin several editions? How does the multilingualism of the book change the way weunderstand the literary and political culture to which the work belongs? These are

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political aswell asaestheticquestions.Forhispart,Coetzeehasbeen reluctant todistinguish between original and translated editions. In a 1977 analysis of GerritAchterberg’s poem “Ballade van de gasfitter,” Coetzee refuses to say whether hisinterpretation relies on the Dutch version of the poem or on his translation of theDutch version into English. He claims that the distinction is irrelevant because “allreading is translation, just as all translation is criticism.”6We could understand thisquip tomean that the process of analyzing the poem in Dutch is analogous to theprocessoftranslatingtheDutchpoemintoEnglish.AndwecouldassociateCoetzeewith the belief that all translation, from any language into any other language, ishistorically, intellectually, and politically equivalent. But in fact in his novels andcriticism, Coetzee has explored the history and politics of translation practices. Hehas associated translation, variously, with projects of colonialism, nationalism, andtransnationalsolidarity.Inhis1988studyofnineteenth-centurySouthAfricanliteraturein English, White Writing, Coetzee examines in scrupulous detail how writersproduced “convincing imitations inEnglish”of speechpatterns fromother languagessuch as Afrikaans. He argues that the representation of language “transfer” fromAfrikaans into English had the effect of assigning a simplified consciousness toAfrikaans-speakingcharacters.7Coetzee often represents non-English speech or writing, but he generally avoids

stylisticmarking such as grammatical inversion or broken diction that would remindreadersofaspecificforeignlanguage.8Thereareatleastthreeconsequencestothischoice.Coetzee’s textscanbemoreeasily translated,since there is littledialectoraccent to be reproduced in another language. He does not associate theconsciousness of a kind of character, where “kind” refers to ethnic community ornationalorigin,withspecificfeaturesoflanguage.AndhecreatesatextinwhichevenEnglish readersareblocked from imaginingadirect, simultaneousencounterwithalanguage that is their own. This last point is crucial: for Coetzee, it has alwaysseemedinappropriate,bothethicallyandhistorically,tosuggestthathiswritingispartof a distinct national-language tradition that emerges from a coherent nationalcommunity.Forthisreason,onecouldsaythatallofCoetzee’sfiction,notonlythoseworks that approach translation thematically or graphically, aspires to comparativebeginnings. Because Coetzee associates linguistic and cultural homogeneity withapartheidnationalism,hisfictionisinsomewaysmostSouthAfrican—mostattentive,thatis,tothehistoryandpoliticsofapartheid—whenitappearsmosttranslated.We can findCoetzee’s ambivalence about national traditions statedmore or less

explicitlythroughouthisinterviews,criticism,andfiction.“Perhaps—isthispossible?—Ihavenomother tongue,”Diary’sessayistconsiders (195).Theprotagonist impliesthathis senseofdiscomfort inanyone language,his sense that inhis voice “someother person (but who?) is being imitated, followed, evenmimicked” (195), can beattributed to the history of colonialism.He imagines thatmiddle-class Indiansmightexperiencesomethingsimilar:

TheremustbemanywhohavedonetheirschoolinginEnglish,whoroutinelyspeakEnglishintheworkplace

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andathome(throwingintheoddlocallocutionforcolouring),whocommandotherlanguagesonlyimperfectly,yetwho,astheylistentothemselvesspeakorastheyreadwhattheyhavewritten,havetheuneasyfeelingthatthereissomethingfalsegoingon.(197)

The falseness that Coetzee hears in his own voice and imagines in the voices ofpostcolonial readers and writers elsewhere does not represent a failure to useEnglishsuccessfully.Tothecontrary:itrepresentsthedifficultyofregistering,asonespeaksorwritesflawlessly, thehistoryofother languages.Asbothacolonialandapostcolonialnation,touseAndrewvanderVlieshelpfulformulation,SouthAfricahascontinuedtostruggleoverwhethernationalbelongingshouldeverbeassociatedwithasingletongue.9Coetzeeengageswiththisstrugglebycreatingworksthatappearinmultiple-language editionswhile also emphasizing the dynamics of translationwithinthose editions. In the remainder of this chapter, I consider how Coetzee’s recentnovelsreflectontherelationshipbetweenliteraryhistoryandpoliticalbelonging,andhow they refine and in someways resist paradigms of possessive collectivism andsimultaneouscommunity.Finally,Isuggestwhynewapproachestocollectivityrequirenewapproachestoreading.

READERS,NOTWRITERS:ELIZABETHCOSTELLOANDSLOWMAN

Fluent from childhood in Afrikaans and English, Coetzee often writes aboutcommunities inwhichpeoplespeakdifferent languagesandsometimesspeakmorethanone language.Nowa resident ofAustralia,wherehehasbecomeyet anotherkind of migrant-settler and where the characters of his recent novels make theirhomes,Coetzeeemphasizes thedifferenceswithin language,suchas theEnglishofCapeTownand theEnglishofAdelaide.However, healmost alwayshandles thesemomentsdiegetically:hetellsusaboutwordsinadditiontodescribingorcitingthemonthepage.Coetzeealsowritesbookreviews,whichhecollects involumeswhosetally now rivals thenumberof his fictionalworks. It is remarkablehowmanyof thereviewspublishedsince2002 focuson thehistories,difficulties,andopportunitiesoftranslation.Inthoseessays,publishedin2007asavolumecalledInnerWorkings—asuggestive title for a book focused largely on translation—Coetzee considers thedifficultyof translating texts thatarewritteneither ina regionalversionofanationallanguageorinmultiplelanguages.10Notonlythetranslationofotherpeople’sbooksbutalsothetranslationofhisown

bookshas filtered intoCoetzee’sproduction. Ina2005essayhe tellsastoryabouthelping his French translator choose among the several equivalents for the Englishword “darkness.”11 To find the word that would best convey the meaning of hisoriginal text, Coetzee reports, he sent the translator to French versions of D. H.Lawrence. Since hemeant his use of “darkness” to evoke the tone of Lawrence’sfiction,heexplains,theFrenchtranslationofhisnovelshouldaboveallsoundliketheFrench translation of Lawrence’s novels. Translation, in this case, becomes both a

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localizingandaglobalizingprocedure: localizingbecauseCoetzee’sLawrentian toneispreserved;globalizingbecauseCoetzee’sLawrentian tone ispreserved—butonlyby conforming to a tradition of francophone translations. Past translations haveestablishedtheconditionsforthefutureofCoetzee’soriginals.WeseethisexplicitlyinDiaryofaBadYear;in2005’sSlowMan,whoseprincipal

characters treat English as a second language; and in 2003’s Elizabeth Costello,named for the fictional writer whose experiences on the international lecture circuitare described in many of the chapters. We see it also in 2009’s Summertime, afictionalmemoir that consists of five transcribed and edited interviews, of which atleasttwoandpossiblythreehavebeentranslatedintoEnglish.Criticsaresometimesreluctant to describe Coetzee’s works as novels since he has made resisting thehistorical and cultural meanings of the novel a persistent feature of his literarycareer.12 Yet, paradoxically, Coetzee’s resistance to the novel may be the bestreason to retain itasbothcontextandclassification forhiswork.Coetzeedoesnotrelinquish novelistic concepts such as agency, collectivity, individuality, development,andaction. Instead, he approaches themas if they no longer function or as if theyneed new functions. The generic oddness of Coetzee’s works, their existence asnovelsthatnolongerunderwritenovel-concepts,mayhelptoexplainwhysomanyofCoetzee’stexts—thosethatlooklikememoirs,thosethatlooklikeessays,andthosethat look likenovels—aremarketedas“fictions,”as ifCoetzeeorhispublishersaretrying to thwartclassificationaltogether.13 In this chapter, I refer toall ofCoetzee’snarrativefictionsas“novels,”emphasizingCoetzee’sfocusonthenovel’selasticityasagenre,itshistoryasamediumofnationalcollectivity,anditsfunction,intranslation,asasourceofcollectivitiesbothsmallerandlargerthanthenation.SlowMan and Diary ask how new technologies of reproduction and prosthesis

transform our sense of the enclosed national community. They are testing two ofBenedictAnderson’scentralclaims:first,that“thebook…isadistinct,self-containedobject, exactly reproduced on a large scale”; and second, that the book’s self-containmentimitatesandevenstimulatestheimaginationofacontained,simultaneouscollectivity.14 Coetzee asks how a translated edition or a spare legmight alter ourconceptions of the individual. As readers will know, the appearance in Coetzee’sfiction of nonfiction genres, self-referential characters, and even novelists is not aninnovation of the late style. His third-person autobiographies, which began withBoyhood in 1997, offer striking, inventive contributions to the tradition of fictionalmemoir.AndthereisCoetzee’sveryfirstnovel,Dusklandsfrom1974,oneofwhoseshort narratives contains what is presented as an English translation of a Dutchdocumentattributed toaneighteenth-centuryexplorernamedJacobusCoetzee.So,translation,metafiction, and biography have been there together in Coetzee’s workformorethanfortyyears.15But intherecentworktherehasbeenadecidedturntotechnologies of writing, to the making of world literature, and to the relationshipbetweenproductionandcirculation.ElizabethCostelloisaclassicexampleofworldliteratureinboththeolderandthe

newersensesoftheterm:itisatoncealiterarymasterpiece,abookproducedbya

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Nobel laureate;and it isa literaryunderdog,abookproducedbyanativeofSouthAfrica who now lives in Australia. It is also a book produced within many literarynetworks: it began in at least four countries—Australia,SouthAfrica,GreatBritain,and the United States—and has now appeared in at least nineteen languages andtwenty-oneeditions.Asatext,ElizabethCostellobuildsonseveraltraditionsofworldfictionwhilealsodescribingthe institutionsofmaking,evaluating,andpromotingthatconstitute world literature today. There are references throughout to worldmasterpiecessuchasJoyce’sUlysses,Kafka’s“ReporttoanAcademy”and“BeforetheLaw,”andthewritingsofEdgarAllanPoeandHarrietBeecherStowe.Therearereferences to realAfricannovelssuchasThePalmWineDrinkardand tomade-upAustralian ones such as The House on Eccles Street, a rewriting ofUlysses thatconstitutesElizabethCostello’sbest-knownwork.Coetzee’sprotagonistisdescribedasa“majorworldwriter”(2).And there is the transnational literarymarketplace,whatwemightcall thegutsof

world literature, represented in brutal anecdotes about the exigencies of bookpublishing, classifying, reviewing, interviewing, prize-receiving, and lecture-giving.These anecdotes arematched to a range of venues, including the lecture hall, thebanquetroom, theseminar table, theacademicconference, thecruiseship,andtheradio station. The venues correspond to a range of geographic locations, includingcollegetownsinPennsylvaniaandMassachusetts,ahotelinAmsterdam,auniversityin Johannesburg, and the shores of Antarctica. Because many of the chapters ofCoetzee’sbookwere firstpresentedaspublic talks, the text’sanecdotesconstituteboth the real and the fictional occasions of Coetzee’s book.Without its audiences,Coetzeeseemstosay,ElizabethCostellowouldneverhavebeenmade.ElizabethCostelloiseverywhereinterestedinthedifferencebetweentheinsideof

literary works—their verbal content—and what appears to us as the outside: thebodiesofwriters,editions,reviewers,critics,andaudiences.AtmanypointsCoetzeewillsuggestthatabook’soutsideiscontinuouswithitsinside,orthatabook’sinsideexistsonlybecauseitsoutsidewastheretocontainit.Inthisvein,ElizabethCostello,the character, will assert that a literary tradition succeeds because it has a“readership,notawritership”(53)andelsewherethatweshouldvalueliteratureandanimals as well as people not by what they seem to be in themselves but by our“engagement”withthem(95–96).Committedtotheembeddednessofbooksamongcommunitiesof readers,Elizabeth tellsa largeaudience, “Thebookweare readingisn’tthebookhethoughthewaswriting”(82).Later,shetellsaclass,“Writersteachusmorethantheyareawareof”(97).Thesemaysoundlikepronouncementsaboutthemetaphoricalnatureofalllanguage—thewayitisalwaysmeaningsomethingelse—buttheyarealsoargumentsforthehistoryandgeographyofbooks.Writersteachusmore than theyareawareofbecause theycannotpossiblyaccount forallof thecommunities,editions,languages,andliteraryhistoriesintowhichabookwilltravel.Anovel’sinside,Coetzeesuggests,isinseparablefromitsembodimentintheworld.Inthissense,abookmightbesaidtohaveseveralinsidesortoproduceitsowninsidemultipletimes.

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Ofcourse,whenonethinksofElizabethCostello’streatmentof interiority, it isnottheinsideofbooksthatfirstcomestomind.Thetwomostinfamouschapters,whichCoetzee presented as the Tanner Lectures at PrincetonUniversity, feature lecturesand post-lecture dinners in which Elizabeth Costello, the honored guest at asumptuousmeal,denounceswhatshecalls the“holocaust”ofanimalslaughter(80).VentriloquizingPlutarch on the subject of eatingmeat, Elizabeth tells her hosts thatshe is “astonished that you can put in your mouth the corpse of a dead animal,astonishedthatyoudonotfinditnastytochewhackedfleshandswallowthejuicesof deathwounds” (83).Elsewhere, shewill say that she is not going to remindheraudience—andthenshedoesremindthem—about“whatisbeingdonetoanimalsatthismomentinproductionfacilities,…inabattoirs,intrawlers,inlaboratories,alloverthe world” (63). She will argue while visiting an undergraduate seminar that therelationshipbetween thesystematicslaughterofJewsand thesystematicslaughterof animals is not simply rhetorical: “theNazis learned how to process bodies,” sheasserts,byimitatingtheproductionmethodsoftheChicagostockyards(97).Coetzeeasksustothinkabouttheworldsystemsthatproducebothdinnerandnovel,andhewillsuggestthatsuchexpansion—fromthenoveltothebook,andfromthedinnertothestockyards—both intensifiesone’sattentionand insomeways limits it.Coetzeepointsreaderstothemechanisms(abattoirsandtrawlers)thattransformanimalsintomeat, to the quotidian and visceral details of the transformed object, to the totalprocessbywhich“corpse”ismystifiedas“dinner,”andtothecomplexgeographiesofproductionthatlinkonekindofslaughtertoanother.Totakeethicalaction,thenovelsuggests,weneedtoknowthatourlunchcomesfromtheslaughterhouse,butethicalaction is stalled—the character of Elizabeth Costello is physically overcome—whenevery intimacy is tainted by the process of enlargement, and by the inevitableconnection of animal slaughter to endless other unseen slaughters such as Nazigenocide.Inthenovel’sfinalchapter,aletter-writerwhogoesby“ElizabethC.”findsshe can no longer think because she is consumed bymetaphors: everything feedsintotoeverythingelse.16Even before its final chapter, Elizabeth Costello offers several images of self-

consumingconsumption: theMoebiusstrip—onecharacter isnamedSusanMoebius—inwhicheveryendalsoservesasabeginning(15); thetraveler’s jetlaggedwatchthatisthreeandalsofifteenhoursout(27);thesexualencounterrememberedasoneperson’s knee fitted into another’s armpit (24).And there is also thewriter’s voice,aboutwhichElizabethCostellomuses, “Only byan ingeniouseconomy…does theorganof ingestion sometimesget tobeused for song” (54).Eachof these imagespointsawayfrompossessivecollectivism:thenotion,asonecharacterproposes,thatAfricannovelsemanatefromAfricanbodies,orthatliterarytextsareexpressiveofapermanent,sharedpast.Instead,Coetzeesuggests,novelsarecollaborativeinsofaraswriters are always addressing their books to future readers aswell as to priorwriters.ButCoetzeeisalsotryingtosaysomethingdifferentaboutbodiesandtexts:insteadoftreatingthemascontainersforauniqueandcoherentinteriority(akindofpersonorliterarywork),hepresentsthemascontainersoffragileandoftenrepulsive

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matter (a kind of animal). At the end of the novel’s first chapter, titled “Realism,”Elizabeth’s son is horrified to consider that what is inside his mother is not herconsciousnessbuther“gullet,pinkandugly,contractingasitswallows,likeapython,drawing thingsdown to thepear-shapedbelly-sac” (34).Hebalksathaving to thinkaboutthebody’smechanisms.“ThatisnotwhereIcomefrom,”hetellshimself.Theson wants to “come from” a person or a nation of sovereign agency, whereasElizabethassociatesindividualitywithnonhumansystemsandsocialrelations(“youinme,Iinyou”[32]).ElizabethCostelloremindsitsreaderspersistentlythattexts,likepeople, have physical substance. The folding of speech into digestion, voice intostomach,production intoconsumption,can lead to futility,as inElizabethC.’s letter.Butdigestioncanalsocreateopportunitiesfornewinspiration,allowingindividualsto“actoutofcharacter”andtoenterthelivesofothercharacters(149,155).Inordertoactoutofcharacter,itishelpfultohaveacharacter,orasenseofone,

inthefirstplace.Notbeingsureofone’s“situation”can leadsimplytovertigo:whatappearsinthenovelasamisfitbetweenrhetoricandcontext(224).Therecanbenowriting, thenovelsuggests,withoutat leastsomeprovisionalsituation.Yet thenovelcontinuallyaskswhatasituationis,andhowmanysituationscount,forwriterswhoseworksstartinseveralplacesandinconversationwithwritersfromothertraditions.Byfocusing on consumption, Coetzee’s novel resists the logic of unique origin thatgovernsmostaccountsofworldliteraryhistory.InElizabethCostello,variouskindsofconsumption intersect, consumption feeds production, and knowing where thingscome fromhas to be establishedmultiple times.Coetzeeasks readers to considerthat national literary histories, like animal slaughter and the Holocaust, are madepossible by a theory of collectivity that privileges the simultaneity of consciousnessover the solidarity of social contact. In the possessive-collectivism and imagined-community paradigms, the uniqueness and coherence of a text’s inside leads to anation-basedmodel of literary history.17 Coetzee suggests an alternativemodel byemphasizing the multiple contexts—and multiple scales—of aesthetic production.Building circulation into his novels, Coetzee registers the unsettling effects of theglobal marketplace, but he registers, too, the several beginnings that circulationmakespossible.ForreadersofElizabethCostello,collectivity isalwaysoutof joint.Likea jetlaggedwatchor aMoebius strip, thenovel places readersbothafter andbefore thenarrativeaction.Agrammaticalstutteron thenovel’ssecondpage takesus from the rhetoric of fiction (“Elizabeth Costello travelled …”) to the rhetoric offiction-making (“… or travels [present tense henceforth]”) (2). By suggesting thatreadershavepromptedthetext’salteration,Coetzeemakesthemagentsaswellasobjectsofthenovel’scommunity.Elizabeth Costello reflects on translation by emphasizing the global itinerary of

novels andnovelists andbydramatizing the transnational origins ofworld literature.SlowMan,whichalsoasks “wherewecomefrom” (52),approaches translationnotthroughthemigrationofbooksbutthroughthemigrationofpeople.Thenovel’smaincharacters, the injuredPaulRaymentandhisnurse,MarijanaJokic, live inAustraliabut began somewhere else. Paul came from France when he was a small child;

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Marijana arrived much more recently from Croatia. Marijana speaks an accentedEnglish: her unusual choice of words indicates that she is translating ideas fromCroatian.Paul,whose thoughtsareoftenpartof thenovel’sdiscourse, isconstantlyselectingEnglishwordsor invokingwords fromother languages.HisEnglishseemsfluent, but he claims that the language feels unnatural to him. Is it becausehe is acharacterinoneofElizabethCostello’snovels,asshetellshimwhensheappearsonthe scene?Or is it, as he tells her, because he is using a language that belong tosomeone,orsomeplace,else?

Asforlanguage,Englishhasneverbeenmineinthewayitisyours.Nothingtodowithfluency.Iamperfectlyfluent,asyoucanhear.ButEnglishcametometoolate.Itdidnotcomewithmymother’smilk.Infactitdidnotcomeatall.PrivatelyIhavealwaysfeltmyselftobeakindofventriloquist’sdummy.ItisnotIwhospeakthelanguage,itisthelanguagethatisspokenthroughme.Itdoesnotcomefrommycore,moncoeur.(197–98).

Paul’s comments are in some ways untranslatable, since they involve both theconsonanceandthedissymmetrybetweentheEnglish“core”(interior)andtheFrench“coeur” (interior,butalsoheart).YetPaul’sexplicit translationofEnglish intoFrenchshoulddrawourattentiontohisimplicittranslationsofFrenchintoEnglishandofonekind of English into another. The appearance of a French phrase serves as areminder that English, at least for the speaker, is a foreign language too.We arereadingananglophonenovel,Coetzeesuggests,butitscharactersarespeakingandthinkingintranslation.Describing languages, as I argue in the introduction, some contemporary novels

useslang,localreferences,foreignwords,andaccenttoexcludeuninitiatedreadersand to welcome those who know, or who canmaster, the text’s idiom.Mastery ispossible:somehaveit,andsomedon’t.Coetzee’snovelleansinanotherdirection.Ituses words in French, Spanish, Croatian, and other tongues—there are at leastseven besides English—to create a general sense of partial fluency. There is nooriginal text to know, and no single vernacular community that could know all of it.Paul is always translating, both in the sense of testing the resources of differentnational languagesand in thesenseof trying tospeak toa targetaudiencewithoutanysourcetocallhisown.Like a good translator, Paul is obsessed with accents, double meanings, and

clichés.Hisattentiontoidiolectmayseemcounterproductiveforanovelinterestedinglobalcirculationsinceitisdifficulttomoveclichésfromonelanguagetoanother.Butthis is exactly the point. The novel doesn’t just repeat clichés (“Like a cat he tellshimself” [1]; “full of beans! he thinks” [6]; and so on); it flags them emphatically.Paul’soverzealousselectionofwords—thewayhe“picksuptheprimlydisapprovingwordoftheday,weighsit,testsit,”orthewayhedubsonecharacter“Mrs.PuttsorPutz” and another “Wayne something-or-other, Bright or Blight” (180, 16, 20)—isolateshimbyemphasizingfluencyattheexpenseofsociability.18Andintruth,forallhisweighingandtesting,Paul’swordsarewornratherthanexpressive.Themorethenovelasksus tonotice thatPaulspeaks“likeabook,”asElizabethCostelloputs it,

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themorewesensethatPaulistryingtocontrollanguageratherthandeployit(230–31).Paradoxically,thelogicoffluencyunderwritesthelogicofexclusion.“YouspeakEnglish like a foreigner,” Elizabeth tells Paul (231). Paul embraces his foreignness,insisting,“iftherewerenoforeignerstherewouldbenonatives.”ButElizabethmeanssomethingelse.Sheisn’ttellinghimtospeakbetter.Sheistellinghimto“speakfromtheheart,”andthusshecountershisclichéswithoneofherown(231). IfwereturnforamomenttoElizabethCostello,wefindthatspeakingfromtheheartcorrespondstoanethicsofhospitality:wearesupposed to livewithnonhumananimals,orotherpeople, not because we know what they are thinking but despite the fact that wedon’t.Communitycannotbepremisedoncommonlanguageoronuniqueexpressivity,Coetzee suggests; instead, it has to be attempted on the basis of partialunderstandingandevenmisunderstanding.BecausePaulvalues fluency,he is relentlessly fixingor lamentingsomeoneelse’s

diction. At one pointMarijana asks him in her English-translatedCroatian if he is a“booksaver,”andherespondsalmostimmediatelythatheisa“bookcollector”(47).But as he suspects and as the novel implies, Paul is in fact more interested inconservationthancollection.Heiscommittedtonaturallanguages,eventhoughwhatpasses for natural language often involves unrecognized translation and theappropriation of other languages. For example, Paul lights on “unstrung” as theperfect termtodescribehisfragileemotionalstate.Thetermappearsseveral timesinthenovel,andPaulsayshehastakenitfromHomer’sIliad(27).However,hehasinfacttakenitfromanEnglishtranslationofHomer’sIliad.TheperfectEnglishwordisaGreekword.Paulisunstrungnotbecausehehaslosthisresolvebutbecausehisaccommodations have become visible. He hasmanaged thus far by passing as anAustralian,whichmeanshedidwhatwasnecessarytofitwitheveryoneelse:“‘That,asfarasIamconcerned,isallthereistoit,tothenational-identitybusiness:whereonepassesandwhereonedoesnot,whereon thecontraryonestandsout.Likeasore thumb, as the English say; or like a stain, as the French say, a stain on thespotless domestic linen’” (197). Paul’s invocation of national idiom, “as the Englishsay” and “as the French say,” reminds us that fitting requires fluency, and hereCoetzee seems to share Paul’s disdain for political collectivities defined by theappearance—and the sounds—of similarity. It is preciselyby remindingus that “theEnglish” have a way of speaking that the novel registers its own multilingualism.Coetzee uses these moments to emphasize circulation as a source of production:PaulisnotEnglish,andheisaddressinghimselftoreaderswhomightnotbeEnglisheither.SlowManassociatespassing—akindof invisible translation—withunmindfulness.

Theproblem,thenovelsuggests,isnotone’ssuccessorfailuretopassbutforgettingthe demand for invisibility to which one has tacitly acceded. While passing cansometimes function as a tactic of appropriation or subversion, here it seems toregistercapitulation:theideathateveryoneshouldlookorsoundthesame.Soundingthesamerequiresanaturallanguage.Lookingthesamerequiresanaturalbody.Paulregisters his desire for naturalnessmost intensivelywhenhe stateshis reasons for

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refusing a prosthesis. After losing part of his leg in a bicycle accident, he says hewants to “feel natural” rather than “look natural” (59). He means by this that hedoesn’twanttothinkabouthisbodyatall.“DidhefeelnaturalbeforetheoccurrenceonMagillRoad?Hehasnoidea.Butperhapsthatiswhatitmeanstofeelnatural:tohavenoidea”(59).CoetzeeassociatesPaul’sdesiretobedisembodied,tobeaselfwithout a body, with his desire for continuity with the past. He wants to beremembered“AsIusedtobe”;hewantshisbookshelvestobedustedbuteverythingto remain “in the same order” (50). He collects nineteenth-century photographsdepictingAustralia’s firstwavesofEnglish and Irishmigration becausehewants topreserve “the lastsurvivors,”bywhichhemeansnotonly “themenandwomenandchildren” whose images are captured but also “the photographs themselves, thephotographicprints” (65). Insomeways,Coetzeeseems tosupportPaul’s “fidelity”to these photographs (65), which display not only the history of Australia’s severalmigrationsbutalso thehistoryof the technology that recorded them. Inotherways,however,Paul’sinstinctforpreservationseemstoobstructMarjiana’sandthenovel’sprojectsofrestoration.In the novel, “restoration” refers to the process of animating objects, people, or

artworksthathaveceasedtofunction.Marijana,adaynurseandformerrefurbisherofpaintings,hasmadetwocareersoutofrevivingdamagedgoods.Herson,Drago,updatesPaul’sphotographsofAustralianhistorybyscanningthemandadding inhisownCroatianancestors;laterheturnsPaul’sbrokenbicycleintoarecumbentsuitabletoPaul’sdamagedleg.Paulisabsolutelysetagainstrestoration,ostensiblybecausehewants thereal thingornothingatall,but reallybecausehedoesn’twant to thinkabout utility. “A recumbent. He has never ridden one before, but he dislikesrecumbentsinstinctively,ashedislikeprostheses,ashedislikesallfakes”(255).Paulisrepulsedbytheideathatabicycleoraselforaworkofartcouldbetransformedbyuse,orbythematerialthatservesasitscontainer.Butinordertobemindful,asElizabeth Costello demands of him, Paul has to acknowledge embodiment. Likepeople,itturnsout,wordshavefunctionratherthancharacter:theycanberestored,andtheycandevelopnewfunctions.Thisistrueforcommunitiestoo.Speakingofthenation, Paul seems to understand that Australian history cannot be as “fixed,immutable”ashewantshisphotographstobe(64).HewonderstoMarijana,“Don’timmigrants have a history of their own?Do you cease to have a historywhen youmove fromonepoint on theglobe toanother?” (49).Thenation’shistory, thenovelsuggests, isalways inneedof restoration.Because immigrantskeeparriving, therecan be no concurrence of action and language, and there can be no finished orcompleted nation. To a simultaneous past, Coetzee prefers a translated present inwhichhistoriesofcirculationremainongoingandformative.

WRITINGINTRANSLATION:DIARYANDSUMMERTIME

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Elizabeth Costello andSlowMan approach translation thematically by focusing ontechnologies and experiences of global circulation, including the global circulation ofpeople.InitstreatmentofEnglishasaforeignlanguage,SlowManrecallsmodernistworks such as Ulysses and Lolita. Yet, emphasizing the role of audiences in theongoingproductionoftheworkandreflectingonthelimitsofindividualityasamodelforexpressivity, it fitswellwithCoetzee’sother recentnovels.Diaryof aBadYearandSummertime approach these concerns formally, asking readers to analyze thephysicalpropertiesofthetextandtoconsiderwhatconstitutestheworkbeforethem.Bothnovelsresisttheprincipleoffluency,orwhatisoftenvalorizedas“readingintheoriginal,”bysuggestingthatonlypartofthework,oranunfinishedwork,isheldinthereader’shands.Theyobstructaccesstoauniquelanguageandrejecttheassociationbetween simultaneity and collectivity by insisting on comparison: in Diary, weencounterparagraphsindifferentgenres;inSummertime,weencounterinterviewsintranslation.Diary presents its essays—this is the fiction—as the work of a famous South

African writer who has been asked to compose a series of “strong opinions” forpublication, first in German and later in French. The writer is called “J. C.” andsometimes “SeñorC.,” so againweare in the presenceof autobiographical fiction.Thepublicationhistoryofthenovel increasestheautobiographicaleffect.Anexcerptwas firstpublished inaJuly2007 issueof theNewYorkReviewofBooks (NYRB),where Coetzee more often appears as a reviewer or commentator than as anovelist.19 In theNYRB, one finds bracing short essays titled “on the origins of thestate,” “on anarchism,” “on democracy,” “on Machiavelli,” and “on terrorism.”Aphoristic in lengthandstyle,theessaysareinterruptedeveryfewparagraphsbyasingleparagraph,printedinboldface,inwhichanarratordescribeshisencounterwitha shapely woman in a short red dress, whom he has met in his building’s laundryroom.Thenarrator’scrassreflectionsontheshortnessofthedress,theshapelinessof the woman, and his own comparative decrepitude provide an odd but welcomecontrasttothedourseriousnessofthepoliticalcompositions.Astheexcerptends,itbecomesclearthatthediarywriteristheessaywriter,andtheshapelywomanintheshortreddresswillbehistypist.TheJulyteasergivestheimpressionthatthelongerbookwillconsistoftwovoices:

oneimpersonal,political,anda littlestilted; theother intimate,solipsistic,anda littlecoarse.Butinthenovel,thereisathirdvoice—thetypist’saccountofherinteractionswith thewriter—and on almost every page at least two and usually three of thesevoicesappear.Eachisseparatedfromtheothersbyathinhorizontalline(figure1.1).At the top, we find the essays; in the middle we find the author’s account of hisinteractionswith the typist; and at the bottom there is the typist’s account of thosesameencounters.What seems in theNYRB excerpt to be a series of political andphilosophicalessaysinterruptedbytheoccasionalparagraphofpersonaldiarycomesinthenovelasamuchmorebalancedstructure,orevenarivalry,inwhichtheessaysand the two diaries vie for our attention and indeed require us to organize ourattentionateveryturn.AVictoriannovelmighthaveorganizedtheseinternaltextsinto

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serialform—essaysfollowedbydiaryfollowedbyseconddiary—butCoetzee’snovelpresents them synchronically, at least on the page. Because most pages areseparated into three sections, our attention is drawn to the paragraphs, whichfunctionaspartsofdifferentnarrativesorganizedbygenreandaspartsofthesamenarrativeorganizedbythebook.Individualwordsmaybeofinteresttous,butitistheparagraph and the grouping of paragraphs that appear as the fundamental units ofattentionandthatremindusofalanguagecirculatingalongsideotherlanguages.While theNYRB excerpt implies that the diary exists as light background for the

strongopinions, the novel gives greater emphasis to the diary’s subjectmatter: thedictating, the typing, and the conversation between author and typist. The novelsuggeststhatthoseprocessesinform,bothstructurallyandthematically,theessays’modelsofsovereigntyandpoliticalaction.Forexample,SeñorC.doesnotwritetheessays—atleastnotinanytraditionalsense.Rather,hescrawlsafewillegiblenotesontoasheafofpapers,dictatesintoataperecorder,andthenhandsbothnotesandtape to his typist,who transfers hiswords onto computer disks, though not beforefixingthemup,assheputsit,“wheretheylackacertainsomething”(29).Theessaysare thus born electronic, both in the analog (audiotape recording) and the digitalsense (microchip). I’ll have more to say about the relationship between translationandtechnologylateron,butfornowlet’ssimplynotethatCoetzee’snovelasksustothink from the start about its status as a reproduced artifact, about the ways thatnarrativesareshapedbycontemporaryandnear-contemporarywritingtechnologies,and about what happens to accounts of the enclosed nation-state—the subject ofmany of the novelist’s essays—when they are played back, invisibly altered, andmechanicallyblendedwithothergenres.

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FIGURE1.3FrontcoverofDiaryofaBadYear,J.M.Coetzee(Melbourne:TextPublishing,2007).

Reprintedbypermissionofthepublisher.

ItisimportanttoCoetzee’sprojectthatthepersonalessayandthediaryaretwoofthegenresweassociatemostcloselywithindividualvoice.Diary’sfirstEnglisheditionencouragesthisassociationbydisplayingaboundnotebookandwordsintypewriterfontonitscover,eventhoughneitherself-containednotebooknortypewriterappearsin the narrative (figure 1.3). Both of these technologies promise whatShakespeareans call “character”: the character of handwriting, the character of a

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typewriter’s unique impression, and the character of an author’s unique expression.But the novel obstructs generic promises of self-revelation by introducing multiplediariesandbymakingthediariespartofthenovel’saction.Additionally,thefactthattheauthor’sessayshavebeendictatedandthentransferredtoacomputermakesitimpossibletoestablishwhethertheessayswearereadingaretheauthor’swordsorthe author’s words altered by the typist’s purposeful editing and the computer’sautomaticcorrections.Thenovelconfirmsthattheessaysarecollaborativeinatleastminorways:forexample,thefourthessaybeginswithareferenceto“talkbackradio”(17),andmanypageslaterwefindoutfromoneofthediariesthattheSouthAfricanAustralian author incorporated this Adelaide idiom at the suggestion of his Filipina-Australiansecretary(51).Thisrecursivecorrectionmakesuswonderwhosefeelings,language,andtonearerepresentedineachsectionofthenovel,andtellsusthattheapparently distinct voices of personal essay and diary are in important wayscollective.We should note that idiomatic distinctions such as “talkback radio” are treated

diegetically, allowing the problem of idiom, if not the precise example, to survivetranslation. And it can be no accident that talkback radio is itself an example ofvernacularculture: it isaspeciesofpopularmedia inwhichhostsand listeners talkandtalkbackincolloquial,oftencolorful language.Thethemeof idiomisaddressedbythenovel’scomparativestructure,whichasksustoconsiderthatthereareseveralways to speak, as it were, on any one page, and by the proliferation of diaries,whoseadditionandrevisionsuggest thesocialnatureof theessayist’s individualism.Therelationshipbetween languageandcommunity is thus treated throughwords, tobesure,but it isalso treated through thephysical layoutof thebookand throughathematic engagementwith topics such as interiority,migration, embeddedness, andsolidarity.Apart fromrepresentingacollaborativeinteriority, theproliferationofdiaries inthe

novel has an important generic effect. It shifts the text’s emphasis frommatters ofpoliticaltheorysuchasglobaleconomy,genocide,andethicalabstractiontomattersofsocialrealismsuchasprivateeconomy,jealousy,andsentiment.Atthesametime,itsuggeststhatsocialrealism, insofarasitemphasizestheembeddednessofsocialagents,exertsastrong,collective—wemightevensay,national—pullon thenovel’santi-national theories.We encounter those anti-national theories in both explicit andimplicit ways. Implicitly, Diary approaches the problem of national containment byinvokingtheproblemofscale:Howdowedeterminetheboundariesofapersonoranation?Theonlypages in thenovel that featureasinglenarrative—theonlypages,that is, thatdisplaywhatappearsasan individual voice—are thoseassigned to theessay “On the Afterlife,” which focuses on the question of the individual soul.Unsurprisingly, the essayist finds “the notion of an individual after-life” unconvincing(154). Central to his critique is the changeability of the self and the self’stransformation through its encounters with other selves. Which version of theindividual, the essayist asks, will the afterlife recognize? These observations aboutthe limitations of individuality as a concept are immediately followed by the second

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partofthenovel,inwhichtheessayisttriestorevisenotonlyhisopinionsbutalsohisrelationshipwith the typist.We learn fromthese laterpages that theearlieressays,including theoneon theafterlife,were influencedby theauthor’sconversationswiththe typist, which were in turn influenced by the typist’s conversations with herboyfriend,whichwereinturninfluencedbytheboyfriend’ssurreptitiousreadingoftheauthor’sessaysandof theauthor’scomputer-borndiary.This isall tosaythateventhepagesthatseemtofeatureasinglevoiceandfocusonanunivocalconceptionoftheselfaremadetofunctionpolyvocally:theyarenotself-contained.Iftheessaysdonot support the uniqueness of the individual, either as a concept or as a narrativedevice, neither do they support theuniquenessof the nation. Thewriter treatswithirony and distaste the assumption “that each person on earth must belong to onenation or another and operate within one or another national economy” (78). Hiscomplaint is in part directed at the so-called naturalness of the assumption, and inpartitisdirectedattheexclusivityandcompetitionthatfollow.Yet,forallitsrejectionofuniquenessinindividualsandnations,thetextfindsroom

for uniqueness in collectivities suchas those formedby the novel’s paragraphsandthose generated between author and typist by the circulation of those paragraphs.Additionally, Coetzee’s affection for social realism—references to Tolstoy andDostoevskyappear throughout thenovel—competeswithhis suspicionof caricatureandnationalcontainers.Thepersistenceofcollectivitybecomes increasinglynotablein the latter part of the novel, where the essayist is no longer committed to theversionofenlargementhehadespousedinhisinitialwritingsandwhereheembracesthesentimentand intimacyof realismeven thoughheoftendisapprovesof realism’sapproachtoenclosedcommunity.Diary begins with sweeping transnational and transhistorical comparisons: the

essayist considers together the U.S. torture of prisoners, South Africa’s violentpreservationofapartheid,andBritain’simpositionofcolonialrule(39–45);elsewhere,hemoves from thesuppressionof indigenouspopulations inAustralia tohistoriesofgenocide inSouthAfricaandtheUnitedStates(107–9).But thenovelendswith thesensethatlarge-scalecomparisons,whileethicallynecessary,aresociallyparalyzing.“Moraltheory,”theessayistopines,“hasneverquiteknownwhattodowithquantity,withnumbers.Iskillingtwopeopleworsethankillingoneperson,forexample?Ifso,howmuchworse?” (204).He thenqueriescomparisonsofquality: “Which isworse,the death of a bird or the death of a human child?” (205). The problem implicit inthesequestions,aproblemthatconcernsCoetzeeinallofhisrecentworldfictions,isnotonlyhowtoordernarrativesofviolencebutwhetherthere isasingleconceptualscale that can comprehend each and every example. Instead of comparison as ameasureofquantity(whichismore?)orquality(whichisworse?),Coetzeesuggeststhatcomparisonmight functionbetter—moreeffectively,moresympathetically—asapractice of irreducible translation in which the heterogeneity among terms leads tooverlappingcollectivesratherthantonocollectiveatall.Inthishedoesnotevadeoreven trump thenationalcontainer.Not really.Aspiring tosolidaritywithoutexclusion,agency without possessiveness, Coetzee’s born-translated works make groups of

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various kinds. For Coetzee, the principle of comparison guarantees only that thosegroupswill have tobegeneratedoverandoveragain.Bycreatinganovel inwhichindividual voices are modified by circulation, Coetzee suggests that transnationalcommunities—liketransnationalnovels—operateatseveralscalesatonce.Summertime, which follows Diary by two years, also solicits comparisons.

Formally,Coetzeepresents a dividedbook: a collation of fragments, transcriptions,translations, and redactions. Instead of the paragraph, Summertime isolates thechapter,eachofwhichappearseitherasan interview inwhichcharactersreflectonpast encounters with the deceased John Coetzee, or as a collection of notebookentriesinwhichJohn,writinginthethird-personvoice,reflectsonhisencounterswithhis father, with neighbors, with the news, andwith popular culture of the 1970s. IfDiary is a novel that takes the shape of amemoir,Summertime is a memoir thattakes the shape of novel. The book is based very loosely on Coetzee’s earlyadulthood,andinthissenseitresemblesandfitswiththefictionalmemoirsBoyhoodandYouth.Butseveralmajorlifeeventshavebeensubstantiallyalteredorevenmadeup,includingtheprincipalconceit:thefactofCoetzee’sdeathandtheexistenceofanEnglish biographerwho has traveled theworld conducting interviewswith the deadauthor’s acquaintances, friends, and former colleagues. Apart from its outrightfictions,Summertimedramatizes theminor fictionsof recounting,editing,projecting,framing, and embellishing that have been crucial to a long tradition of novelisticbiographies. We might think here of Conrad’sHeart of Darkness, with its reportsinside reports,orNabokov’sPaleFire,with itseagerandbumbling interpreter.Likethose works and like many of Coetzee’s earlier novels and novelistic memoirs,Summertime presents genres of individual voice—diary, interview, letter,autobiography—onlytosuggestthatwhatseemsunique,self-contained,andpersonalis in fact collaborative, social, and shaped by other voices. What differentiatesSummertime from other novelistic biographies, however, is its effort to align thecollaborativeinteriorityoftheselfwiththecollaborativeinteriorityofthestate.Eventheinterview,thatgenreofdirectdiscourseandunmediatedquotation,comes

to us altered by transcription, translation, abbreviation, addition, and in one caseparaphrase and dramatization. To be sure, all interviews are shaped by questionsaskedandnot-asked,butCoetzeeemphasizesthatconditionbyincludingthevoiceoftheEnglishbiographer,knowntousonlyasMr.Vincent,andtheinterviewees’queriesabout thenatureandscopeof theconversation.Thetranscripts includeunansweredquestionsandquestionstheintervieweesdeclinetoanswer.BecauseSummertime’sinterviews are organized by name—the table of contents reads “Julia,” “Margot,”“Adriana,” “Martin,” “Sophie”20—we are encouraged to think of each chapter as amonologue: a memoir narrated by a single character (Julia), in the service of amemoir about a single character (John). But in various ways Coetzee implies thateverymonologueisinfactadialogue,evenwhenthereisonlyonevoiceonthepage.We are reminded, often indirectly, that the interviews have been transcribed andedited and that most have been translated in part or in whole from a languageunknown to thebiographer.Sometimes thewordsattributed to individual characters

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have been adjusted or abridged. Each chapter presents, therefore, not only aresponse to the biographer’s questions but also an implicit interpretation of thatresponse. The notebook fragments, too, are dialogues since each fragment isfollowed by a brief, italicized paragraph in which John reflects on the episode andconsidershow itmight beusedeffectively in a futurememoir. Throughout thebookindividualvoiceshavebeenandarealwaysabouttobemodifiedbyothersvoices.Givenalloftheediting,commenting,andotherincursions,verylittleinthetextcan

passfordirectdiscourse:sometimeswearereadingwhatseemslikeatranscriptionof a character’s voice, but laterwe find thatwordshavebeenexcluded, added, oralteredforeffect.Weareinthepresenceofborn-translatedfiction.Thereisnofirstedition because the final object—the biography of Coetzee—has not yet beenproduced, and there is also no original archive because even the interviews havebeen edited, translated, and “fixed up” (87). Patrick Denman Flanery has calledSummertime “a fictional biography in the process of becoming,” and this seemsright.21Flanery’scommentconveyseffectivelyCoetzee’sefforttodisplay—andhaltatmidstream—theprocessofreducingsocialrelationstoauniqueandcoherentperson.We encounter a collection of different voices, including the biographer’s voice, butthereisnoomniscientnarratororframingmechanismtounifythem.In addition, most of the chapters begin in a foreign language. At the end of the

interview with Adriana, we find out that the entire exchange has taken place inPortuguese,inSãoPaulo,Brazil,andinthecompanyofatranslator,SenhoraGross,whoneverspeaksandisneverdescribed(199).Shewill“transcribeourconversationandtidyupthetranslation,”Mr.Vincentexplains.Apartfromthesedirectstatements,therearesomeearlierhintsthatthechapter’sEnglishwordsmaynothaveoriginatedwiththespeaker.Adrianarefersatonepointtotheinterviewer’s“colleague…[who]must be exhausted”; “Yes, I know how it is, being a translator” (173). She referselsewheretoher“badEnglish”andtohersensethat“howwespeakinPortuguese”willbedifferent than“howyouspeak inEnglish”(164–65).Adriana’s interviewis theonlyonethatseemstohavebeentranslatedinitsentirety,butSophie’sandMargot’sremindustoothat,atleastforthem,Englishisaforeigntongue.AformercolleagueinFrenchliteraturewhonowlivesinParis,Sophieinterruptsherselftoask,“canyousaythatinEnglish?”(231).Margot,John’scousin,oftenspeaksinAfrikaansphrasesthatarethenimmediatelytranslatedintoEnglish.Afrikaanswordssheandhersister“throwaroundrathereasily”(115),thebiographertellsus,butEnglishwordshavetobedredgedup,selected,andused:“Hewas—theEnglishwordoccurstoher—ago-getter in a land with few go-getters, a man with plenty of—another English word—spunk,more spunk probably than all his children put together” (106, emphasis inoriginal). Italicizing English as well as Portuguese, French, and Afrikaans, Coetzeepresentsreaderswithananglophonebookthatbeginsinseverallanguages.Thereisno single idiom and no single community of speakers to which the text belongs. InCoetzee’s novel, undoing the repression of the transnationalwithin the national is alinguisticaswellasapoliticalproject.It isalinguisticprojectbecausewearemeanttoseethatitisonlytheinvisibilityoftranslationwithinliteraryhistoriesandtheliterary

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marketplace thatmakesglobal fictionsappear tobeEnglish. It is apolitical projectbecause Coetzee shows that South African governance is accomplished throughagentswhooperatebothinsideandoutsidethestate’sgeography.Thehistoryofthestateinvolvesmanycyclesofmigration,colonization,andviolence.Byemphasizingtranslationasasource,astructure,andanoutcomeofhisfiction,

Coetzee demotes English as the language of South Africa and as the language ofaccess to South Africa while at the same time acknowledging that English is thelanguage of economic and literary circulation. At one point John insists to Adriana,“There isnothingspecialaboutEnglish. It is justone languageamongmany” (161).Coetzeeseemstosupportthisclaim,insofarashistextdecouplesconcurrencefromcollectivity: youdon’t have tobeEnglish to teach it; and thehistoryofSouthAfricacan’tbeall inonelanguage.ButCoetzeealsomodifiesthisclaimandinsomewaysrejects it:what’sspecialaboutEnglish is its functionasa languageofcolonialism,alanguage of upwardmobility for migrants such as Adriana and her children, and alanguage of world literature such as the book we are reading. The dominance ofEnglishisadiegeticaswellasagrammaticalfeatureofthetext.AlloftheinterviewshavebeentranslatedintoEnglish,andthebiographerhimself isEnglish.Thesefactsserve to demonstrate that the language remains historically if not characteristically“special.”However,Coetzeeisnotsuggestingthatthebiographer’sparochialismcanbe attributed simply to his monolingualism. It is not fluency but modesty that thebiographerlacks:heisquicktoassumethat“changingtheformshouldhavenoeffectonthecontent”(91).22ThepointforCoetzeeisnottoprotectandreifytheform.Thepoint is to recognize that translation is both unavoidable and generative: it createssomethingnew.Chronologicallyaswellas linguistically,Summertimehasnosinglebeginning.The

orderofthenarrativedoesnotcorrespondtotheorderoftheplot.Putanotherway,theitinerarypresentedinthetableofcontentsandofferedtothereaderdiffersfromthebiographer’sactual journey.23The fifthchapter, the interviewwithMartin,drawsour attention to this discrepancy by including an exchange in which Mr. Vincentannounces his future plans to interview the four other subjects, three of whomwehave already met (216–17). After Martin, the biographer says he plans to visitMargot,Adriana, Julia, andSophie.But in fact, according to thedatesgivenat theendofeach transcription,hevisitsSophiebeforehevisitsJulia,and then returns toSouthAfricatovisitMargotonceagain.Andofcourse,forus,hehasalreadyvisitedJulia, Margot, and Adriana. By presenting a book made up of several interviewsratherthanonenarrative,Coetzeeallowsthepartstooperatebothindependentlyandcollectively: independently because the inconsistencies are allowed to stand; andcollectively because we can assemble competing versions or editions of the text.Narrativeandplotdivergeinotherwaysaswell.Theorderoftheepisodesrecountedin the interviews does not correspond neatly to the order of John’s life, and thenotebook fragments, which focus on and at first seem to have been written in theearly 1970s, later seem to have been written in 1999 or 2000, the years in whichJohnissaidtohaveaddedhiscommentary.24

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And then there are the seasons. The book’s title promises “summertime,” and insomewaysitdelivers.JuliametJohninthe“summerof1972”(20);Margot’saccountbegins with a summer gathering at the family farm; and all of the pieces focus onwhat the biographer seems to regard as the “summer” of John’s life, the period inwhichheripensasanovelist.25Butmostof the interviewsandbothof thenotebookentries take place in another season, usually winter, and one would hardly call“summery”eitherJohn’sdispositionor thatofanyof thecharacters.Summertime isoneof thosedesignations that seemsnatural—surely, there is nothingmorenaturalthana season?—but turnsout to be contextual, located, andhistorical. TheFrenchedition of the work, L’été de la vie, seems to know this especially well: the titleevokesProustianassociationsbetweenselfandnature,whilethecover—likeProust’snovel—suggeststhatbothselfandnaturearesubjecttoart(comparefigures1.4and1.5). In this light, we need to understand the work’s title, both in English and inFrench, as part of the biographer’s discourse: what he would call it, rather than adenotative classification. It’s hard to imagine Coetzee embracing the kind ofdevelopmental narrative thatweassociatewith theprogressionof seasonsand theseason-like progression of a life. But more than this, “summertime” suggestssomethingaboutgeography,abouttheplanet,andtherelationshipamongonepartoftheplanetandanother.IfaSouthAfricannovelcan’tbeallinonelanguage,Coetzeeseemstosay,itcan’tbeallinoneseasoneither.Comparisonisthusrequiredbytheorderingand reorderingof the chapters, and it is also requiredwithin the chapters.Forexample, the interviewwithMargot takesplace inJune2008,butMr.Vincent isreadingaloudfromanarrativeversionofaprevious interviewheconductedwithhersome sevenmonths earlier. It is not only that there is a discrepancy between thetext’s many seasons and the one declared confidently by the title. It is morefundamental.Foraborn-translatedwork,therecanbenosimultaneityacrossspace.Itisneverthesameseasoneverywhere.

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FIGURE1.4FrontcoverofSummertime,J.M.Coetzee(London:HarvillSecker,2009).

Reprintedbypermissionofthepublisher.

ThegeographyofSummertime is complexanddifficult to describe, andhereweencounterwhatItaketobethechiefpurposeofthework’sborn-translatedstructure.Coetzeeasksreaderstothinkdifferentlyaboutplace,aboutthecollectivitiesattachedto place, and about the limits and opportunities of “reading at a distance” (4).Measured by characters and principal subject matter, thememoir’s ambit is small:including John,we hear about nine or ten people, at themost, andwe learn about

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onlyaverynarrowsliceofthoselives.Theinterviewsfocusonencountersthattookplace in rural South Africa and Cape Town. Yet, if we consider the biographer’sitinerary,thecirclegrowssomewhatlarger.Eachinterviewendsnotonlywithadatebutalsowithalocation,andthusweareinvitedtoreconstructthebiographer’spath.The reader travels from Canada to South Africa, Brazil, Britain, and then finally toFrance, but Mr. Vincent has traveled from Britain to South Africa, then to Brazil,France, Canada, and back to South Africa. In this literal way,Summertime buildscirculationintoproduction:thereisnooriginalplaceofcompositionorcollation.

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FIGURE1.5FrontcoverofL’étédelavie,FrenchtranslationofSummertime,J.M.Coetzee,translatedbyCatherineLaugaduPlessis(Paris:Seuil,2010).

Reprintedbypermissionofthepublisher.

Summertime isaboutSouthAfrica, ifweunderstand this tomean that it isaboutthe local, regional, transnational, andglobalactors thathavegenerated thenation’shistory.Weshouldnote,however,thatitisnotnationsbuttowns,suburbs,andcitiesthat the biographer identifies at the end of each interview: “Kingston, Ontario,”

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“Paris,” “Somerset West, South Africa,” and so on. By emphasizing small units ofgeography and civic space, Coetzee seems to be hewing to his subject’spreferences.We’re told that John finds national and even transnational collectivitiesmuch lessmeaningfulandmuch lessappealing thancollectivities thatoperatewithinnationsoratscalessmallerthanthestate.Hewas“sympathetic”tothenovelistandpolitical organizer Alex La Guma, Sophie explains, “because La Guma was fromCapeTown,notbecausehewasacommunist”(228).Partoftheappealofthecityortown seems to be its intimacy.But another part is its relative detachment from thehistorical trajectories and linguistic uniformity that Coetzee associates with theimaginedcommunityofthenation.Asitunfoldsinthememoir,Coetzee’slifeinCapeTownconsistsoffriendsandacquaintanceswholiveinSouthAfricabutwhoarealsoBrazilian,French,Afrikaans,English,andJewish/Hungarian.CoetzeepresentsCapeTownasacitynotonlyofeducatedcosmopolitans likehimselfandperhapsSophiebutalsoofmigrants,exiles,prisoners,workers,andsettlers.Summertime’ssubtitle,at least in the U.K. edition, promises “scenes from a provincial life.” Placing hiscosmopolitan roster beneath the flag of provincialism,Coetzee suggests thatSouthAfrica’shistory is bothmoreglobal andmore local thanapartheidnationalismcouldpossibly comprehend. Narrowing and varying classifications, Coetzee draws ourattentiontothemicro-historiesofneighborhoodsandtointimaterelationsthatarenotreducibletogeopoliticalarrangements.Atthesametimeweareaskedtonoticethatgeopoliticalarrangementsinformtheworkanditssenseofplacefromtheverystart.Totakethemostdramaticandimmediateexample:thetextbeginsinSouthAfrica

bybeginning in theneighboringcountryofBotswana.Here, inAugust1972,severalAfrikaans-speaking men, probably members of the South African Defense Force,have killed a family of South African refugees. Themen, John’s notebook reports,arrived ina “whiteAmericanmodel” car (3).Evenbeforeweknow the languageofthe killers, the white Americanness of the car implicates the South Africangovernment,whichhasdrawnsupport,rhetoricallyandeconomically,fromtheUnitedStates.We’reasked tounderstand that the violenceof apartheid takesplace—thatis,begins, findsfinancialandpoliticalbacking,andshows itselfmostexplicitly—bothinsideandoutsideSouthAfrica.Atsomepoint,John imagines, the leadersofSouthAfricawill“packtheirbags,shredanyincriminatingevidence,andflyoff toZurichorMonacoorSanDiego,”wheretheyhaveboughthousesandestablishedbusinesseswithobscurenames(5–6).WithSwitzerland in the futureandBotswana in thepast,Summertime sets its South African scene well beyond the geography of a singlestate.Thisiswhy,forJohn,thereisnopossibilityofhiding“inthesnowsofSweden,”and

no comfort in “reading at a distance about his people and their latest pranks” (4).Distance brings neither affective nor ethical detachment. South Africa’s leadersremain “hispeople,”whetherhe liveswith themorbelieves in theirproject.Living inSwedenwouldnotchangethis.Ofcourse,Swedenfunctionssymbolicallyaswellasspatially. It calls tomind a contrasting hemisphere, topography, and climate. But italsoevokesanidealofneutrality:thinkhereofthatcountry’sofficialstatusduringthe

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SecondWorldWaraswellasitscontinuingfunctionashostoftheNobelcommittee,whose conferral of global prestige can create the conditions for local amnesty.Coetzeerejectsboththeidealandthepromise:hemaybewritingfortranslation,buthe is not writing from nowhere. He can’t because he associates global invisibility(“ZurichorMonacoorSanDiego”)withtheveryforceshewisheshecoulddisavow.The initialpagesofSummertime tellus thatNationalParty leaders justify the rule

ofapartheidbynarrowingtheirviewgeographicallyandhistorically,andbyevaluatingactiononlyintermsofself-interest.Bywayofcontrast,wearepresentedwithJohn’sapproach to current events. He thinks comparatively, as we have seen, and herefuses to embrace self-interest—that central tenet of liberal individualism—as amotor either for action or for collectivity. Like Stephen Dedalus at the start ofUlysses, John has returned to his provincial city feeling “soiled” by personal andcollectiveguilt(4).26Wedon’tyetknowofhispersonalguiltbutofhiscollectiveguilt—as one who has benefitted, even indirectly, from the apartheid system—we areimmediatelyaware.Summertime’sopening,then,offerstwomodelsof“readingatadistance.”Thefirstmodel,whichJohndiscards,associatesgeographicalremotenesswithethicalandemotionaldetachment.“Readingatadistance”allowsonetoimaginethatsomeoneelse—notyou!—issoiled.27Thesecondmodel,whichcorresponds tothe structure of John’s analysis, suggests that there is no neutrality and that thosespaces that seem to us distinct or contrasting—winter to our summer—may beintegral to actions at home. Instead of developing some Sweden-like sense ofimpartiality, John has to be attentive to themanyways that inside and outside areestablished. It is therefore important to read at a distance but not in the way thatJohnatfirstimagines.Summertime begins and ends by suggesting that collectivity cannot depend on

affinity. In fact, Coetzee proposes, it has to depend on and is most substantiallytested by the lack of affinity. John is South African not because he shares thegovernment’s values but despite the fact that he doesn’t. Similarly, the book’s finalnotebookentrysuggeststhatJohncanhavearelationshipwithhisailingfatheronlyifheiswillingtosacrificehisownpleasures:“Heisgoingtohavetoabandonsomeofhispersonalprojectsandbeanurse.Alternatively, ifhewillnotbeanurse,hemustannounce to his father: I cannot face the prospect of ministering to you day andnight.Iamgoingtoabandonyou.Goodbye.Oneortheother:thereisnothirdway”(265–66, emphasis in original). We see here Coetzee’s strenuous conception ofethicalduty,inwhichitisnotideasoroutcomesthatjustifycarebuttheobligationtorespondtosomeoneelse’ssuffering.Diaryendsonasimilarnote,with theessayistconfessingthatfictionalcharactersmovehimbythe“accentsofanguish”ratherthanthe “substance of … argument” (175–76). And this fits with his sentiments inElizabethCostelloandSlowMan,inwhichcollectivityisbasedoncontactinsteadofconsciousness.Bybuildingtranslation into its form,Summertimecallson readers toparticipateinaworldinwhichnooneisaltogetherfluent.Thisisnotanargumentforexile, for feeling distant while others feel close. Rather, it is an argument forparticipation without affinity and for a kind of mindfulness about the distances that

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existwithinanycollectivity.

WORLDSONTHEPAGE

Coetzee’s comparative approach, in which we are asked to see how the logic oftransnational circulation places characters, episodes, and even paragraphs withinmultiple containers, suggests new directions for literary critical methodology.Historiansof thenovelwill need toanalyzehowaworkparticipatesnotonly inoneliterary system, the literary system of the language in which it was composed, butalso in the other literary systems in which it has a presence. Because a text maybegin in several places and because itmay continue to travel to numerous regionsand languages, its location and culture will be dynamic and unpredictable. It is nolongersimplyamatterofdetermining,onceandforall,theliteraryculturetowhichaworkbelongs.Born-translatedliteraturesuchasCoetzee’simpliestheintersectionofseveral major methodologies: close reading, book history, and translation studies.BenedictAndersonhashelped toshowus that thehistoryof thenovel requires thehistory of the book. The history of the born-translated novel requires the history ofmanybooks.Thinkingaboutthehistoryofmanybookscanleadinseveraldirections.Wemight

investigatethepublishingconglomerates,regionalmarkets,andadvertisingstrategiesthatmanageanddifferentiate thecirculationofworks throughout theworld.But thehistory of many books also leads to a practice I have called close reading at adistance because it challenges the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsicproperties of the work, draws our attention to the role of global audiences in theproduction of literary fiction, and asks us to consider how literature written for theworldestablishesnewparadigmsofuniqueness.Theoriginalityoftheborn-translatedwork,nolongerexpressiveofasinglelanguageornationalterritory,nowreferstothework’s appearance as editions and translations that function within several literarygeographies.Putanotheraway,thehistoryofmanybookswillneedtoaccountforatext’s multiple beginnings, and for the ways that it participates in and cuts acrossvariouscollectivities.In“TheEthicsofReadingandtheQuestionoftheNovel,”PeterMcDonald has argued that the history of many books should not be seen as oneapproachamongmanybutratheras“anessentialprecondition”forunderstandingtheaestheticstrategiesofworkssuchasDiaryofaBadYear (493).Yet thisapproach,McDonald acknowledges, “obliges us to begin much farther back from Coetzee’sproject inDiary thanmany ‘closereaders’would findcomfortable.” (492).McDonaldisadvocatingakindofclosereadingthat involvessomealternativetoclosereading,or at least somealternative to the close reading performed and approved bymost“closereaders.”Asexamplesofbeginning“fartherback,”McDonaldpointstothecontrastbetween

Coetzee’s ambivalence about generic categories within Diary and the various

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affirmationsofgenreonefindsonthefrontandinsidecoversofthedifferenteditions;totheanalysisofthebooks’severalformatsandtypographies;andtotheconceitofanovelaboutanovelistwhosharesthesameinitialsasthework’sauthor(494–95).McDonald’sapproach involvesacknowledging thatwhat isputativelyoutside the text—its covers, its typography and pagination, its author’s name—informs the inside.Historians of the book have been calling for this acknowledgment for some time.However,thinkingaboutbooksinsteadof“thebook”leadsustonoticeinadditionthatmanyoutsidesleadtomanyinsides,andthatnotalloftheseinsideswillbelegibletoanyonecritic.Forhispart,McDonaldseemsuncertainaboutwhethertheturntothegeopolitics of readers andpublishers—the studyof “who readsandwhopublishes”(492)—negates, alters, or simply supplements traditional reading practices. First,echoinggenerationsofbookhistorians,hesays, “particular readers find themselvesface to face not with the ‘words on the page’ but with a richly coded artifact thatbearswitnesstomultipleintersectinghistories”(490).Butlaterheinsists,“Thepoint,however,isnottoprivilegethebookabovethewordsonthepage”(492).Likemanycontemporarycritics,McDonaldfindshimselfrepeatingafamiliaroppositionbetweenthebookandtheword,betweenthebroadanalysisofliterature’seconomic,political,andphysicalhistoriesandthedeepanalysisofasinglework’srhetoricalproperties.28Insteadofaskingwhetherbooksoccludewords,what ifwewere toaskwhether

booksleadustoprivilege,analyze,orvaluesomethinginthetextotherthanwords?Wemighthavetopaygreaterattentiontotypography,layout,andillustrationaswellastomanythingsthatarenotstrictlyspeaking“onthepage”oronthepagewehavebefore us. Close readingmay involve attention to “details,” as JonathanCuller andJaneGallophaveargued,butwhataredetails?29How largeare they?Howdoweknow when we have attended to them intensively, substantially, or, as we say,deeply?Howwouldourreadingpracticeschange,whatmoreorwhatlesswouldwelearn,ifwefocusedourattentiononlargerunitssuchasthechapterortheeditionoronelementsofthephysicalbooksuchaslinesmovingacrossthepage?Finally,whatifwedefinedclose reading,asJohnGuilloryhasproposed, lessby itsobjects thanbyitspractice,whereitisnotthedeepattentiontowordsbutthedeepattentionitselfthatmattersmost?AsIsuggestedintheprecedingpages,born-translatedworksoftenproceedfrom

thefiction,sometimesthefact,thatreadersareencounteringanoriginaltranslation:aworkthathasbeguninseveral languagesoraworkthathasbeencomposedinonelanguageandthenpublishedinaforeigntongue.Theseworkscan’texpectustoreadand tomaster thewords on the page since, on some level, attending to all of thewordsandallof thepageswould involvereadingmanymoreeditionsthanwecouldholdinourhandsorwouldinvolvereadinganeditionthatdoesn’treallyexist.Insteadtheyaskus to focuson the text’s resistance tomastery—orwhat Icall fluency—bypointing at versions and editions beyond our reach. Foreignness in these worksoperatesdiegetically,narratively,andphysicallymuchmorethanitdoessemantically.Tobesure,manynovelsemphasizenarrativestructureandthemeratherthanidiolectandmetaphor,andclose readersof thoseworksmay find themselvesanalyzing the

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former rather than the latter qualities. But it is nevertheless unexpected andunprecedented to find literary fiction veering away from idiolect in order to veertowardmultilingualism.InDiaryofaBadYear,fluencyisimpedednotbyportmanteauwordsor inventeddictionbutbyamisfitbetweenstoryandphysicalstructure.Onlybythinkingcarefullyabout“thebook”—thewaythewordsareorganizedonthepage,and on different pages—can we analyze “the words” at all. In Summertime, thelocationof the text is irreducible toanyonebeginningorgeography;and in factweare asked to think about the geopolitical, topographic, historical, linguistic, andmeteorologicalrelationsthatgovernthemeaningofplace.Becausethetextstartsincirculation—itliterallybeginsbyreflectingonSouthAfricanviolenceinBotswanaandtheway that violence in Botswana tells us something about the true boundaries ofSouthAfrica—wehavetoconceiveofitscommunityassomethingwediscoverratherthan as a linguistic, territorial, or political entity concurrent with either author orreader.As an intellectual strategy, close reading at a distance overlaps with two major

developmentsintransnationalliterarystudies:firsttheturntowardbooksinthestudyof texts, and, second, the effort to challenge, historicize, transform, and in somecases rejectdominantpracticesof close reading.30Tobesure, theseareseparatedevelopments,sincesomeof thecriticswhocall fornewreadingstrategiesarenotespecially interested inbookhistoryor in thehistoryof translation impliedbyglobalcirculation,andsomeofthoseinterestedinbookhistoryarenotprincipallyinterestedinreadingatall.Butinthefieldofworldliterature,anewattentivenesstobookshaschanged the approach to texts. Perhaps the most influential critic in this regard isFrancoMoretti,whosemodelof“distantreading”involvestrackingthewaygroupsofliteraryworkstravelfromtheirnationaloriginintonewspacesandlanguages.Distantreading calls for new objects of attention, and it imagines collaborations amongscholars rather than one person’s knowledge of every relevant language.However,distant reading presupposes someone else’s traditional close reading of individualworks.Thesyntheticcalculationsat theheartofdistant readingarebasedonotherreaders’analysesofvoiceandidiom,onthecomparisonofnationalliteraryhistories,andontheassumptionthatallliterarytextsbegininauniquelanguage.IfMoretti’sprojectseparatestheanalysisofliterarycirculationfromtheanalysisof

literaryproduction,DanielHack’s relatedapproachsuggests that transnationalbookhistory can coexist with close reading if we hew to linguistic rather than nationalframeworks.31Heshows,forexample,howanineteenth-centuryBritishworksuchasBleak House developed new cultural meanings—new emphases, new ironies, andnewpoliticaluses—when itwasserialized inU.S.antislaveryperiodicals.A text thatpromotedBritish localism through theexclusionofAfricansbecame, in thehandsofsomeAfricanAmerican readers,a text thatcouldbeused topromoteU.S. localismand theabolitionist cause (731).Throughcommentary, dramatization,and rewriting,Hack argues, the “African-Americanization” of Bleak House created “new BleakHouses” (729). Hack calls his methodology “close reading at a distance,” but hisprocedureinvolvessomethingmorelikedistantreadingupclosesinceheisinterested

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above all in the dynamics of reception: how an original text with “intrinsic features”travelsfromonepoliticalcontext toanother,andhowit isdeployedineachof thosecontexts (730). Hack’s method diverges from Moretti’s since Hack does not beginfrom the presumption of a self-contained work moving through time and space.Instead he analyzes several anglophone versions: serialized parts of the novel,rewritingsthatappearascompletelydifferentnovels,anddiscussionsofthenovel inessays and letters. Yet Hack shares Moretti’s emphasis on beginnings anddispersals.Comparing“afterlife”withoriginal,newU.S.versionswiththeversionthatDickenspublishedinBritain,HackfollowsMoretti’sgeneralmodelinwhichtextsstartinoneplaceandthenmoveouttoothers(730).WhatMorettiandHacksharemostofall,ofcourse, isa focusonnineteenth-century fiction.AnovelsuchasBleakHousewas designed to support the logic of national literary history. That is, Dickensmayhave read Frederick Douglass, and Douglass may have read Dickens, as Hackdetails, but the novel provides an argument for—and seems to solicit—serialnationalism.Hackcallsthisfeature“theportabilityofthenovel’slocalism.”32Becausethey affirm national literary histories in order to compare them, distant reading andevendistantreadingupclosemightbebestunderstoodasmethodologiesbothsuitedandindebtedtospecificliteraryworksandkindsofliteraryworks—namely,thosethataffirmlocalismandasharpdistinctionamongliterarygeographies.For our purposes, the key innovation inHack’swork is the principle that readers

mayhavetothinkofanytextasoneversionamongmanyandofliteraryanalysisasadynamicprocessshapedbyplace, contextsof publication,andpolitical climate—aswellasmethod.Itisherethattheturntobooksintransnationalliterarystudiesmostoverlapswithnewtheoriesofreading.Thesetheorieshavecalledforalternativesto“critical distance” and “mastery,” both of which conceive of the reader as adisinterestedauthoritywhostandsoutsideofthetext,comprehendsit,andspeaksitslanguage. Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus have argued that the dominance of“symptomaticreading”hasledcriticstomisswhathappensonthe“surfaces”oftextsortolookalwaysandonlyforwhattextsdonotseemtobesaying.33Theyproposeinstead“surfacereading,”whileTimothyBewesinarelatedessaysuggests“readingwith the grain.”34 Best, Marcus, and Bewes are developing alternatives to“suspicious”reading.35Yeteventhosecriticswhoseektopreservethegeneraltenorof suspicion have tried to uncouple the identification of puzzles in the text from thenotion that one could possibly solve them. Jonathan Culler emphasizes above allattention to the “stubbornness” of texts.36 Among the list of “conflicts” towhich thereader should be attentive, Culler points not only to words but also to syntax,grammar,rhetoric,figure,andexample.37JaneGallop, oneof themost distinguishedpractitioners of close reading, argues

that being “aware of the words chosen” is the best line of defense againstgeneralization, projection, and otherways ofmis- or not-reading.38 Her principle ofregardingeachwordas if itwere“unfamiliar”or insomeway inaccessiblesuggeststhatthereadershouldimagineherselfnotasamasterinterpreterbutasatranslator

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evenwhenshe is reading inanative tongue.BecauseGallopseeks tokeepherselfand her students from comprehending too quickly and from identifying the “sort ofbook” they have before them, she associates the function of closeness with thedisruptionofgroupsandclassifications.39Best,Marcus,Bewes,Culler, andGallop,foralltheirdifferences,agreethatreadersneedtopayattentiontothedetailsoftheliteraryworkandtoresisttheimpulsetomasterit.Howmightborn-translatednovelschangethiscalculus?Firstofall, theyaskusto

think about the history and practice of translation in which the dominance of somelanguages and the relative absence of others contributes to the generalizationswemakeasreaders.Insteadofsuggestingthatalltextsareequallyforeignorunfamiliar,CoetzeesuggeststhatEnglishhasaspecialstatusasalanguageof imperialism,asa mediator of other languages, and as the language of composition for mosttranslated works. Second, born-translated fictions are designed to obstruct thetraditionalalignmentamong language, territory,andnation,and theyoftendosobythwartingourexpectationsabout thephysicalboundariesof thework.They testourconfidence about groups and classifications not only through estranging or puzzlingwords within the text but also through details that operate narratively, thematically,structurally, and paratextually. Because they shift the locus of stubbornness andpuzzlementfromthesmallestunitsof thetext tounitsofvariousscales, theyaskusto analyze closely and deeply a greater range of details than most programmaticversions of close reading have required. And because they feature narratives thatseem to have begun in many different languages, they ask us to think about thepoliticaldynamicsofforeignnessandespeciallyabouttheforeignnessthat is internaltoanymultilingualcollectivity.Naomi Schor’s important study of “reading in detail,” first published more than

twentyyearsago,pointsoutthattheanalysisofdetailshasnotalwaysbeencentraltoliterarycriticismandthatwhatcountsasadetailisnotself-evidentbutoftenhotlydebated,notonlyacrossperiodsbutalsowithinthem.40Schorshowsthattheturntodetailssuchaswords,whichshetracesfromRealistfictionandpaintingonward,wasanimportantcorrectiontothelongstandingemphasisonidealizationandabstraction.Schorsuggeststhatthedenigrationofwhatseemedtobeintellectuallyandtextually“ornamental,”notonlywordsbutalsothemessuchasdomesticityandwomen’slives,was rooted in the exclusion of a whole range of social, sexual, and philosophicaldispositions.41Tospeakfordetails,then,wasalsotospeakfortheidiosyncratic,theeveryday, the feminine, and the inessential. When critics today speak of a literarytext’s“smalldetails,”theyalmostcertainlymeanindividualwords,perhapsespeciallywordsthatseemordinaryratherthandeterminative:articlesandconjunctions,orevenpunctuationmarks.ButSchorsuggests that theemphasisoneverydaywords is justoneaspectofthedetail’srise.Inthelatetwentiethcentury,thedetailoftenmeant,asitdidforJacquesDerrida,paratextratherthantext:“notes,epigraphs,postscriptumsandallmannerofparerga.”42And thedetails of nineteenth-century fictionare oftendiegetic,Schorexplains.Theyareundernoticednotbecause theyaregraphicallyorsyntacticallysmall—likeaword—butbecausetheyarerhetoricallyandsociallysmall:

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ordinary,common,andappearingwithtoomuchfrequency.43If we continue to assume that the most significant details of any text are its

individual words, we may simply reproduce the logic of the ornamental, excludingfromourattentionanyaspectofthetextthatisnotreducibleto“words,”nowcodedas important. Instead, born-translated novels ask us to conceive of details morebroadlyandmorevariouslyasthosepartsofthetext,ofpotentiallyanyscaleorsize,that seemprosaic, beneathnotice, or simplymechanical. Ifwe follow this lead,weattune our reading strategies to the strategies of our literary texts, and weacknowledge that reading strategies can, in effect, produce texts, insofar as, say,readingfortheplotwilltendtosingleoutforpraiseorfornoticethoseworksinwhichplot is emphasized. Understanding details broadly also has the benefit ofacknowledgingthe intellectualhistoryofdetails inwhichexpectationsabout thematicand semantic meaningfulness have changed and continue to change. Because itemphasizes details that have seemed too large, too functional, or too irrelevant tojustifysustainedanalysis,closereadingatadistanceparticipatesinthelongrecoveryof the ornamental, but it does so by deemphasizing the kinds of details we haveassociatedwiththeclosestpracticesofclosereading.Theornamentalisnotinherenttothetext.It isanhistoricalfeatureofreading.Ifwewanttopreservetheideathatclosereadingmeansanalyzingdetailsmeticulouslysoastoavoidgeneralizationandmisapprehension,weneed todirectourmeticulousness toallaspectsof the literarywork, and we will need to understand details to include all of those elements thathavegonewithoutsaying,orwithoutseeing.Weshouldpayattention tosmalldetails,Gallophasproposed,not tounderstand

the textbetterbut to find in the textnewaspectsof its incomprehensibility.To readclosely, forGallop, is toacknowledgeandcultivateour incompleteunderstanding. InSummertime, Coetzee yokes the ethics of incomprehensibility to the politics oftranslation.Wehavetoregardthechapters“asif”theyareforeign—fullofanecdotesthatarepartial, inaccessible,andinneedofcarefulinterpretation—butwealsohaveto regard them as actually foreign: part of the regional, global, and micronationalhistories of South Africa. By dividing the work into unfinished interviews and diaryfragments, Coetzee keeps readers from assembling any kind of coherent “bigpicture,” touseGallop’sphrase:abiographyofJohnCoetzeeorahistoryofSouthAfricainthe1970s.44Wehavetobeclosereadersbecauseweneedtonotice thatthetextdoesn’tfitoneperiod,onenation,oronelanguage.Butitalsodoesn’tfitoneobject,andinthissenseweneedtoreadatadistance.Wehavetothinkaboutthemanyinsidesandoutsidesproducedbythenarrativestructure,theseasons,andthetravelingbiographer.Theclosestofreaders,Coetzeesuggests,aretheSouthAfricanleaderswhorestricttheirattentionsolelytoeventsinSouthAfrica.Instead,Coetzeeproposes,thenovel takesplaceamonganetworkofperipheriesthatare irreduciblebothtonationandtoglobe.Wehavetoconsiderhowthatnetworkchangeswhatweknow of South Africa and how it changes the way we think about South African,Australian,andworld fiction inEnglish.Weneed toadd thehistoryof translation tothehistoryofreadingandthustothinkabouthownovelsthatbegininseveralplaces

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arechangingthewaysthatcommunitiesareimagined.Butwewillalsoneedtothinkabouthowborn-translatedworksunderstandtherelationshipbetweenindividualsandgroups. In the next chapter, we turn to works that gauge various models ofuniqueness,includingthelist,theseries,andtheclone.

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T

2THESERIES,THELIST,ANDTHECLONE

Toanevergreaterdegreetheworkofartreproducedbecomestheworkofartdesignedforreproducibility.

—WalterBenjamin,Illuminations

UNIMAGINABLELARGENESS

HINKINGABOUTworldliterature,weoftenassumethattranslationleadstoculturalaswellaspoliticalhomogenization.1Translation leads toculturalhomogenization, the

argument goes, because readers will learn fewer languages, and texts written fortranslationwilltendtoavoidvernacularreferencesandlinguisticcomplexity.2 It leadstopoliticalhomogenizationbecause theworldmarket requiresstories thateveryonecan share, which means fewer distinctions among political antagonists and socialagents.3 The concern is this: translation is bad forwhat it does tobooks (presentsthemapartfromtheiroriginal languageandcontext);but it isworseforwhat itdoesto authors (encourages them to ignore that language and context). In truth, theeffects of translation will depend on what is being translated, who translates, andwhat happens when translated books are read. Moreover, the meaning of theseeffectswilldependonhowweevaluatesamenessanddifference.Doweassume,forexample, that homogenization is always a negative outcome? To answer thisquestion,wehave toconsidernotonly theglobalproductionandcirculationof textsbutalsoourwaysofthinkingaboutculturalandpoliticaluniqueness.Aswesawinthelastchapter,theideaofnovelsasboundedcontainershasbeen

importanttotheideaofcommunitiesasboundedcontainers.Yetmanycontemporarynovelspresentthemselvesnotasautonomousobjectsbutascopies,grafts,versions,or clones. They are thus not only containers; they are also contained. They aredistinctive in someways,but theyareconjoined inothers.This chapterargues thatthe conceit of linguistic and geographic unoriginality creates new paradigms forcollectivity in the novel. Comparative beginnings change the kind of community thatauthorsandreadersareable to imagine. I takeup theseconcernsby turning to theworkofKazuo Ishiguro,whosenovels havebeen translated fromEnglish intomorethan forty languages andwho haswritten throughout his career about problems ofauthenticity,comparison,andadequation.4Morethananyotherwriterofanglophone

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literaryfiction,Ishigurohasreflectedonandlargelyaffirmedtranslatability.Beginninginthelate1980sandcontinuingthroughthepresentdecade,Ishigurohasapproachedhis writing from the perspective of multilingual reading, in early interviews worryingthat addressing many groups diminishes literary fiction and in later interviewsembracingthechallengeofhavingaudiencesinDenver,Oslo,andKualaLumpur.5 Inaninterviewfrom2001,Ishiguroexplains,“Ihavetoreallyaskmyself,‘Doesthelinehavesubstance?It’snotjustacleverline,isit?Doesitsvaluesurvivetranslation?”6Ishiguro’s fiction can be understood as born translated in a number of different

ways. First, he writes in English while thinking about readers in other languages.7Second,asamigranttoEnglandfromJapanattheageoffive,heisinfactwritingina second language, though he speaks andwrites English fluently, and speaks onlyrudimentaryJapanese.Fromtheperspectiveofearlynineteenth-century theoristsoftranslation, Ishiguro’s language of composition is foreign since it is not the (official)language of his native country. Third, Ishiguro has spoken of his effort to createworks in English that appear to be translated from another language, and thisdynamic is legible at different registers throughout his oeuvre.8 Sometimes this ispresentedliterally:intwoofhisnovelsandseveralofhisshortstories,thecharactersappear tobespeakingJapanese.9Butsometimes this isamatterof tone: the first-person narrators inmany of his other works often speak in a vague or convoluteddiction that can seem like translatese. Finally, in a sense that ismost distinctive ofcontemporary fiction, Ishiguro’s novels areborn translatedbecause theyemphasizethe influence of global circulation on histories of art’s production, because theydecouple the meaning of artworks from the expression of intrinsic cultures, andbecausetheytestthevalueofaestheticoriginalityasabaselineforpoliticalagency.FromTheArtistof theFloatingWorld (1986)andTheUnconsoled (1995) toNeverLetMeGo (2005)andtheshortstorycollectionNocturnes (2009), the transnationalcirculation of art and artists has been a persistent theme. Questions about therelationship between agency and geographic scale have been crucial in all of thenovelstodate,perhapsmostfamouslyinTheRemainsoftheDay(1989),forwhichIshigurowontheBookerPrize.Thischapterbringstogetherananalysisofthatcelebrated,widelydiscussedbook

withananalysisof Ishiguro’smostwell-knownbookaboutoriginality,Never LetMeGo.10TranslationiscrucialtobothnovelssinceitallowsIshigurotoconsiderhowthelogicofindividualityhasshapedboththepoliticsofimperialismandthepoliticsofart,and indeed also to think about how claims for art’s uniqueness have served, ratherthanblocked,imperialism.11Ishigurosuggestsinthesenovelsthatthecommitmenttointrinsiccharacteristics,whetherofnations,persons,orartworks,recapitulatesglobalinequality. Itdoesso, first,byextendingdemocracyonly to theedgesof thenation,and, second, by limiting the value of aesthetic production to the expression of itsinteriority.Ishiguroexploresinsteadothervaluesandothermodelsofcollectivity.InTheRemains of theDay, scalar thinking is invokedmost explicitly through the

conceitof“unimaginable largeness,”whichreferstothenotionthatanysmallaction,

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including the polishing of household silver, needs to assume the same ethical andpolitical significance as the more expansive system of actions in which itparticipates.12 For Ishiguro’s narrator, who invokes the phrase as a dramaticintensifier, largeness refers both to geographic extension (beyond the local) and tosocialconsequence(beyond the individual).Most readersof thenovel find itdifficultto hear in this phrase anything other than Ishiguro’s ironic commentary about thefailings of his ambitious butler. But I argue thatTheRemains of theDay uses thisconcept to emphasize the transformation of international, collective events by local,individual decisions. “Unimaginable largeness” has a multilocal application since itsuggestsnotonlylookingoutward,howmyactionsaffectmanyotherunseenpeople,butalsolookinginward,howtheactionsofmanyunseenpeopleaffectmyactions.InIshiguro’s novel, it is difficult to tell whether understanding actions globally leads togreaterknowledgeoreventogreaterfairness.Butbyencouragingreaderstonoticeboth proximate and distant contexts, Ishiguro registers the multiple containers ofliterarycultureandmediatesbetween interpretivestrategies thatabjurepoliticalandgeographicdistinctionsandthosethattrytopreservethem.Inthestudyofworldliterature,thinkingaboutunimaginablelargenesshasitsuses.

Itallowsustoconsiderhowthewayweunderstandtheuniquenessofbooksrelatesto the waywe understand the uniqueness of communities, and how ourmodels ofliterary culture shape what we need to know about the nature and scale of sociallives. In turn,weneed toallownewwaysof thinkingabout thenatureandscaleofsocial lives to change fundamentally our models of literary culture. Since thedisciplinary protocols of English literary studies are rooted “in a particular nationalethos and ethnos,” asSimonGikandi has suggested, scholars are likely to analyzeevenborn-translatedanglophonetextsaccordingtonationalprinciplesandobjectives.Gikandiasks:“Whatarewegoingtodowiththeseoldercategories—nation,culture,andEnglish—whichfunctionastheabsentstructurethatshapesandyethauntsglobalculture and the idea of literature itself?”13 I do not suggest that Ishiguro’s writingeludes this kind of “absent structure”; on the contrary, it invokes absent structuresoverandoveragain.Yet,by imagininga largenessconstitutedbybooksrather thanby texts, by copies rather than by originals, Ishiguro forces categories such as“nation,culture,andEnglish”tooperatecomparatively.Hechallengesustoseethatanewconceptionof“globalculture,”if it istobesomethingotherthananenlargementofnationalculture,willrequireanewideaofliterature.

THEGEOGRAPHYOFTHEBOOK

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels function as world literature in two principal ways.14 Asobjects, theyarewritten,printed, translated, circulated,and read inseveralplaces.Asnarratives, theydistributeanecdotes intomultiplesystemsand thenconsider theethical consequencesof thatprocess.Thinkingabouthowandwherehisbookswill

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beread,Ishiguroexplains,hasledhimtoemphasize“shape,structure,andvision,”orwhathecalls“architecture,”ratherthan“sentences”and“phrases.”15Ishiguroknowsthat the books he is producing will circulate beyond a single nation and in near-immediatetranslationintomanylanguages.LikeCoetzee,Ishigurohasacknowledgedthe longhistoryofcollaboration inwhichhisnovels takepartandfromwhichhehasbenefited, and he seems to accept and to appreciate that his novels will exist inseverallanguagesandbecomepartofseveralliterarytraditions.16Inanessayabouttranslation, Coetzee tells of helping his Chinese translator with a reference to “theSummer Palace,” which appears in his novel Waiting for the Barbarians.17 Thetranslator had asked whether the phrase alludes to “the Old Summer Palace inBeijing”(144).Coetzeesuggests that thisquestionmaybeunderstood in twoways:as a question about intention (did he produce that allusion on purpose?) or as aquestionabouteffect (do thewordsgenerate thatallusion?).Ultimately,he reflects,“AsforwhetherthewordsinquestiondorefertothepalaceinBeijing,asanauthorIampowerless tosay.Thewordsarewritten; I cannotcontrol theassociations theyawaken”(145).One may assume that Coetzee is simply invoking the “death of the author,”

acknowledging,paceBarthes,thatthemeaningsofhiswordswillproliferatewilly-nillyin the minds of readers.18 But Coetzee is proposing something more specific and,indeed,more limited: thereadershe is thinkingaboutaretranslatorsandthosewhoreadtranslatedworks,andthefuture“associations”heimaginesforthoseworksarenotentirelyarbitrary.Translators,heexplains,havethepowerto“nudge”readers(hisword)towardoneallusionoranother,andphraseswillhavemoreresonanceinsomeculturesthaninothers.Thisattitudeabouttranslation,withitspatentequanimityaboutvariation and collaboration, is quite different from worries about a single “worldliterature” or about source languages infiltrating or overwhelming target languages.Instead,Coetzeeimagines—andinvites—anetworkoftraditions.19The collaboration between writers and translators that Coetzee imagines in his

essayappearsasanextensionof literaryproduction, inwhichcollaboration is therefrom the start. World literature may require a special kind of collaboration so thatscholars can see how a text circulates inmany languages and so that writers canproducebooks inmany languages,butallscholarship reliesonsocialprocesssincewe approach literary texts through established traditions and classifications. This istrueforliteratureaswell,whichdependsoncollaborationthatisbothvisible(editing,publishing,printing,distributing)andlessvisible(buildingonpreviousrepresentations,uses of language).20 This is not to subtract from the strenuous, often globalcollaborations that translationmay require but rather to note that translationmakesliterature’sstatusasacollaborative,oftenglobalenterprisemoredifficulttomiss.Ishigurohasmadeasimilarpointabouttranslation’snetworks:inaninterviewwith

Polish journalistsat theendof2005,heacknowledgesthe influenceonhisworknotonly of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Anton Chekhov, and Leo Tolstoy but also of thetranslator ofDostoyevsky,Chekhov, andTolstoy.Heclaims, “I often think I’vebeen

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greatly influenced by the translator, David Magarshack, who was the favouritetranslatorofRussianwritersinthe1970s.Andoftenwhenpeopleaskmewhomybiginfluencesare, I feel I shouldsayDavidMagarshack,because I think the rhythmofmyownproseisverymuchlikethoseRussiantranslationsthatIread.”21Ishigurovaluesnot just anyDostoyevsky,butMagarshack’sDostoyevsky,andhe

seems to appreciate the idea that his own novels are imitating translations. Wegenerallyassumethatsomeworksofartsuchasplays,films,ornovelshavemultipleiterations(toownabookistoowna“copy”),whileotherssuchaspaintingsorsite-specificsculpturesareuniqueobjects.But,as Ishiguro’scommentssuggest,abookcanbeauniqueobject, too,bothbecause translationscreateseveral versionsofatext and because reception distinguishes the social itinerary of one version fromanother. In the last volume of Marcel Proust’s novel, the narrator tells us that hevalues above all “the first edition of a work,” by which hemeans not one ofmanycopiesfromthepublisher’sfirstimprintbutthesingleversionofthebookinwhichheread the text for the first time.22 In making this distinction, Marcel (the narrator)emphasizeswhathecallsthehistoryofhisownliferatherthan“thepastingeneral.”The bookMarcel read in his youth is a unique object, of which there are not evencopiesinthesamelanguage.Andyethisexperienceisinsomewaysuniversalsinceeveryotherreaderofthatworkwillalsohavehisorherownfirstedition.Todayeachpersoncanhavehisorherown firsteditionofawork,but itmaynotbeaneditionfirstprintedbythepublisheroraneditionwhoselanguagecorrespondstotheoneinwhichtheworkwasoriginallycomposed.Indeed,itmaybemorecorrecttosaythata work of world literature exists in many original languages, especially if we don’twanttosaythatitexistsoriginallyinnone.23The distinction between “tokens” and “types” that Peter McDonald uses in his

discussion of literary editions can be useful here.24 In McDonald’s account, tokensrefer to instances of a work (my own copy of a book) while types refer to theintellectual content of the work (Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go). Building on NoëlCarroll’s theory of artworks in mass culture, McDonald compares book editions totwo other kinds of “multiple instance or type artworks”: film and theater.25 Carrollgroupsbookswithfilmsbecausetheircirculationreliesona“template”(theprint),butMcDonaldgroupsbookswithplaysbecausetheircirculationdependsonmuchmorethanatemplate(onthedecisionsofdirectorsandactors,inthecaseofplays;onthedecisions of editors, cover designers, and typesetters, in the case of books).McDonaldregardsbookeditionsas“separateart-works”becausetheyareproducedby “a creative process, involving interpretive decisions that effect and constrainmeaning.”26Editions in translation,while they surely dependonaprinter’s templateand on the creative acts of designers and typesetters, further complicate the type-tokendynamic:translationsaretokensofasingletype(thework),howevermediatedby theprinter’s template,aswell as tokensof different types (thework indifferentlanguages).Ifweallowthatthecreativeprocessincludesthe“social,political,critical,andinstitutionalhistories”ofabook’spublication,asMcDonaldclaims,aswellasthe

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personalhistoriesofreaderslikeMarcel,asProust,Barthes,andIshiguroclaim,thenthe distinction between “multiple instance or type artworks” and “singular artworks”begins todisappear.27 Legally,of course, translationsareonemore instanceof theauthor’s type; practically they can operate as originals and as copies at the sametime.28Ishigurohasmadetheliteraryconditionsofuniquenessandcomparisonaprincipal

concern inhiswork,but let’s return foramoment to thecaseofJ.K.Rowling.Her“HarryPotter”novels,whichappearinmorethansixty-fivelanguages,haveprompteda range of consumer practices and have been translated not only into hardy, livinglanguagessuchasFrenchandChinesebutalso intoso-calleddead languagessuchasLatinandAncientGreek.Inthisrespecttheycontributetolinguisticdiversityevenifthiswasnottheirauthor’schiefintention.Ofcourse,thevalueandconsequenceoflinguisticdiversityshouldnotbetakenforgranted.Variationisnotinitselfdemocraticor liberal if the demand for authenticity and distinctiveness restricts freedom ratherfacilitates it.Homogenization, theprocessofcreatingsamenessorsimilarity, fits theprojectofuniquenessaswellastheprojectofcomparison.Ishigurowell understands this forked potential.Whereas his interviews show him

thinkingabout theproductionand circulationofworld literature, his novels displayamore indirectapproach: theypresentglobal comparisonasstoryanddiscourse,assomething thatcharactersdo toassess thevalueandconsequenceof theiractions,andassomethingthatreadersdo—orneedtodo—toreflectonthoseassessmentsand to consider the ways that value and consequence can be determined. I havewrittenelsewhereabout the tropeof theecho in Ishiguro’swork: theway that laterscenesorphraseswill sound like,oralmost repeat,earlierscenesorphrases,andthewaythattheserepetitionswill inretrospectseemtohaveprecededormotivatedwhatappearedtobetheoriginals.29Ishigurousescomparativedevicesliketheechoto introduce complex patterns of world circulation. His comparisons create newgroups of themes, persons, and objects, but they also prompt us to examine theshapeandscaleofthatvariety.For this reason above all, I associate Ishiguro’s work with the project of born-

translated writing. The novels register the tension between the writing of worldliterature and the reading protocols we bring to those texts. In literary studies, wegenerallydistinguishbetweenthedisciplinesofnationalliterature,whichtypicallyrefertowhatbooksare,whowrotethem,orwheretheywereproduced,andthedisciplineofcomparativeliterature,whichtypicallyreferstowhatwedowithbooks.Ishiguro’snovelsincorporatecomparison.Theycan’t—anddonottryto—predicttheirfutureastranslatedworks. Thatwould be impossible, asStefanHelgesson has persuasivelyshown.30 But the novels acknowledge the multiple contexts of their making andremaking. They ask to be read across several national and political scenes. Theytrumpanignoble“translatability”notbyresistingtranslationbutbydemandingit.31

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THECOPY,THECLONE

NeverLetMeGo,publishedin2005inSpanish,Danish,Polish,English,German,andseveral other languages, is a book about the value of unoriginal expression. Set insomekindofalternativeEnglandattheendofthetwentiethcentury,thenoveloffersusacollectionofbadcopiesandeccentric interpretations: there isacassette tapethat plays a monotonous pop song called “Never Let Me Go” whose lyrics thenarrator adapts to her own story;32 there is a mediocre television program whosesitcomrelationshipstheadolescentcharacterstakeasrolemodelsforadultbehavior(120); there is themagazine insertwhose glossy image and cheerful rhetoric (“Areyou the dynamic, go-ahead type?”) the narrator’s friend appropriates for her idealfuture (144); there are the drawings of metallic animals, which are said to look“laboured,almost likethey’dbeencopied”(241);andthere isofcoursethenarratorandher friends,allofwhomarehumanclonesbroughtup tobeorgandonors for—whatshallwecallthem?—non-cloned,originalhumans.The narrator, Kathy H., recounts her experiences as a child and adolescent in a

specialschoolsheattendedbeforesheunderstoodtheroleshewouldplayinsociety,andshetellsofherexperienceas“acarer,”onewhotakescareofotherclones(herformer schoolmates, including Tommy and Ruth) after their vital organs have beenharvested and before they die, usually in their late twenties or early thirties. Threenon-clone adults feature in the story: Miss Emily, the school’s headmistress;Madame,avisitortotheschoolwhocarriesawaythebestexamplesofthechildren’sart; and Miss Lucy, who tells the clones, called “students,” that they should knowmore than they do about the future that is planned for them, though she does notultimatelyprovidethat information.Thenovel isdisturbingbecauseof itspremise, tobesure,but it isall themoredisturbingbecauseourknowledgeofKathy’srole,herexistence as a future organ donor and as an accomplice to the organ donationsystem (as a carer, she tells us, she’s good at keeping other clones “calm”), isobscuredbythealeatorystyleandvaguedictionofhernarration(3).Thatnarration,whichencompasses theentirenovel,seems tobeoneof theunoriginalexpressionsthatIshigurowantsustovalue.InKathy’sspeechthereisakindofdoublingbetweenthe novel’s story and the novel’s discourse. And insofar as one critic, no less thanFrankKermode,hasfaultedthenovel’sdiscourseforits“familiar,chattystyle,”KathyH.’sunoriginalityseemstobeIshiguro’stoo.33

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FIGURE2.1FrontcoveroftheJapanesetranslationofNeverLetMeGo,KazuoIshiguro,Watashiohanasanaide,translatedbyTsuchiyaMasao(Tokyo:HayakawaPublishing,2006).

Reprintedbypermissionofthepublisher.

ItisarguablethatIshigurowroteNeverLetMeGoasacritiqueofanthrocentrism,the idea that it is ethical or acceptable to sacrifice nonhumananimals to the needsanddesiresofhumanlife.Atmanypoints in thetextweareaskedtonoticethatanunquestioned hierarchy in which humans are distinguished from animals makes thedonationsystempossible.Tommy’sdrawingsaretellingabouthowthatdistinction is

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preserved.Theysuggest thatstrategiesofabstractionallowustoseesomebodiesasmechanismsandothersasindividuals.LookingcloselyatTommy’spictures,Kathyisunable tosee “animals”atall: “The first impressionwas likeoneyou’dsee ifyoutook the back off a radio set: tiny canals, weaving tendons, miniature screws andwheels were all drawnwith obsessive precision, and only when you held the pageawaycouldyouseeitwassomekindofarmadillo,say,orabird”(187).Thedonationsystemfunctionsbecausethehumansseetheclonesasnon-individuatedorganisms,like radiosorspiders (35),andbecause thehumans fail tosee themselves, too,asradios or spiders. The failure to see is a failure to compare: the humans think thatindividualityisthehighestvalue,andtheyconvincethemselvesthattheyare“notlike”theclones—“notlike”becauseasagrouptheypossessaqualitythattheybelievetheclones do not have (individuality), and “not like” because they believe they areincomparable (onlyaclone is “like”someoneelse) (263).From thebeginningof thenovel, likeness isboth theapexand thenadirofvalue:while it is “natural,”KathyH.claims, toestablishandprefer “yourownkind” (like someandnot likeothers), it isalso“natural”anddesirable,sheargues,nottobethesameasotherpeople(exactlyalike)(4,122–24).ForKathy,tobehumanistobeatyperatherthanatoken.

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FIGURE2.2FrontcoverofNeverLetMeGo,KazuoIshiguro(NewYork:Knopf,2005).

Reprintedbypermissionofthepublisher.

The donor program continues because the humans believe that the clones lackinteriority,which ismeasured,according toallof thecharacters,by thecapacity forgenuinelove,authenticexpressivity,andartisticoriginality.Thedisdainforthingsthatare“copied”—thenovelisstuddedwiththisword—isubiquitous:ifthechildrenadmireafriend’spoem,theyarenothappyto“copyitdown”butwantinsteadtopossessthemanuscript(14);KathycriticizesRuthfor“thewayyoucopyeverythingthey[theolder

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clones] do” (124); the clones think of themselves as having been “copied at somepoint froma normal person” (139); and so on. In contrast, Kathy andTommy thinkthat if theyare“really,properly in love,” theywillhaveearnedtheright tohavetheirdonations deferred by a couple of years (153); Kathy thinks that the clones, to bemore like “normal” humans, shouldaim for socialmannerisms that are spontaneousrather than imitated (120);andMissEmilybelieves that,byproducingworksofart,thecloneswillshowthattheyare“assensitiveandintelligentasanyordinaryhumanbeing”(261).Clones and non-clones declare the importance of spontaneity, sincerity, and

creative talent. Yet, in the novel, most of the clones do seem to lack intellectualcomplexity, exceptional artistic abilities, and ideas of love that depart from sitcombanality. Inaddition, thecase for theclones’originality ismademoststrenuouslybyMiss Emily, whosemethods—she tries to rally sympathy for her clone-students byorganizingpublicartexhibitions—seemcomicandonsomelevelunconvincing.WhenKathyandTommyvisitMissEmilylateinthenovel,sheexplains:“Wetookawayyourartbecausewethoughtitwouldrevealyoursouls.Ortoputitmorefinely,wedidittoprove you had souls at all” (260, original emphasis). Miss Emily’s efforts, like herargument,onlygosofar:whiletheydo improveconditionsfor theclonechildren,bycreatingschools like theoneKathyandTommyattended, theydonotalteror reallyaimtoalterthedonationsystem.

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FIGURE2.3FrontcoveroftheDutchtranslationofNeverLetMeGo,KazuoIshiguro,Laatmenooitalleen,translatedbyBarthoKrieck(Amsterdam:Eldorado,2006).

Reprintedbypermissionofthepublisher.

But the novel’s critique does not focus on the limits or hypocrisy ofMiss Emily’simprovements.Rather, it focusesonthe logicoforiginalityandRomanticgeniusthatundergirds the beliefs of Miss Emily, of those who control the donor system shetentatively opposes, and of the clones themselves. Kathy H. seems naïve in herinsistence that people “in normal life” don’t derive their mannerisms from popular

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culture(124).Seeingclonesashumansisnotthepoint.Insteadweareurgedtoseehumansasclones.Thatis,weareurgedtoseethatevenhumansproducedthroughbiological reproduction are in some ways copies, and that human culture, full ofcassette tapes and television programs and rumors and paperbacks of DanielDeronda,isalsounoriginal.Itisbyseeingthelikenessbetweenhumanoriginalityandthe novel’s unoriginal objects—Kathy H., the cassette, the song, the televisionprogram, thenarration—thatwe recognize the largenetworksofapproximationandcomparisoninwhichindividualityfunctions.Oneofthenovel’sfinalepisodesinvolvesadiscussionabouttheeponymoussong,

“Never Let Me Go.” Kathy andMadame recall an episode in Kathy’s childhood, inwhich Madame had seen Kathy holding a pillow to her breast and swaying to themusicofa taperecording.At thetimeMadamehad imaginedthat the lyrics(“Neverletmego.Oh,baby,baby.Never letmego…”)express the fearof losingan “oldkind world” to the advance of new technologies (272). For her part, Kathy hadimagined that she was singing to a baby whom she held in her arms (70, 271).Neither“version,”asKathycallsherinterpretation,seemstocorrespondtothesong’s“cocktail-bar” genre, but Kathy doesn’t mind (271, 70). She explains, “Even at thetime,Irealizedthatthiscouldn’tberight,thatthisinterpretationdidn’tfitwiththerestofthelyrics.Butthatwasn’tanissuewithme.ThesongwasaboutwhatIsaid,andIused to listen to it again and again, onmy own, whenever I got the chance” (70).MadamemakesmuchthesamepointinherconversationwithKathy:whilesheknewher interpretation “wasn’t really you, what youwere doing,” it waswhat she “saw”nevertheless(272).ForIshiguro,thepointisnotsimplythatartcanmeananything—that it iswhatyousayorsee—butrather that thecontentofartwillbetransformedby expansive circulation and by the local interpretations that readers impose. LikeKathy H., Ishiguro seems to prefer phenomenology to ontology. He suggests thatworksofart,likepeople,shouldbevaluedforthesociallifetheyhelptoestablish.

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FIGURE2.4FrontcoveroftheSpanishtranslationofNeverLetMeGo,KazuoIshiguro,Nuncameabandones,translatedbyJesúsZulaikaGoicoechea(Barcelona:EditorialAnagrama,2005).

Reprintedbypermissionofthepublisher.

Forthisreason,weneedtounderstandthetitleofthenovelnotsimplyasthenameof a song or as the expression of a sentiment that characters interpret but as areferencetoamaterialobject: thecassette-taperecording,which isalsooneof thenovel’s preeminent “copies.” Early in her story, Kathy distinguishes between twodifferent tapes of the song: “the actual cassette, the one I had back then at

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Hailsham,”andthe“copyofthattape…theoneTommyandIfoundinNorfolkyearsafterwards” (64). Later she acknowledges that there might be two tapes or even“thousands of these [copies] knocking about” (172). In truth, Kathy does not knowwhether the Hailsham and Norfolk tapes are different objects or the same object:whether they are different because the found tape is not “the first edition” that shepossessed at Hailsham, or whether they are the same because both tapes are“tokens”ofasinglealbumorperhapseventhesametoken(theNorfolktapemaybetheHailsham tape). It depends, tobesure,whether it is thecassetteor thealbumthatKathymost values. Itwould seem that she, too, is uncertain.She recalls that,after the Norfolk trip, “I really appreciated having the tape—and that song—backagain.Even then, itwasmainly a nostalgia thing, and today, if I happen to get thetapeoutandlookatit, itbringsbackmemoriesofthatafternooninNorfolkeverybitasmuchasitdoesourHailshamdays”(173).ThetapecanbringbackmemoriesofNorfolkbecause it isasingularobject,and it canbringbackmemoriesofHailshambecauseitisacloneoftheeditionshepossessedasachild.Shehasthetape“backagain” and also has a new tape. As a token, a cassette is one of many copies,perhapsoneofthousands.Anditisacopyofacopy:thecassettewas“originallyanLP”(67),andtheLPwasoriginallya“recording”oftheperformerJudyBridgewater’svoice,andthevoiceisaninterpretationofthesong“NeverLetMeGo.”Insteadof thinkingabout thenovel’scomparisonbetweenhumansandclones,we

could think about its comparison between humans and cassette tapes. The novelintroduces twodifferentwaysof thinkingaboutuniqueness:one that isattributed topeopleandsometimestoworksofartsuchaspoemsanddrawings,andonethatisattributed to objects such as cassette tapes and desk lamps. The first modelassumes thatuniquenessdependsonsincerityandconsistency.According toKathyH., the clonesbelieve that “whenyou saw theperson youwere copied from, you’dgetsomeinsightintowhoyouweredeepdown,andmaybetoo,you’dseesomethingofwhatyourlifeheldinstore”(140,originalemphasis).Inthismodel,individualshavean ontological existence that defines what they are and what they will be; copiessimply inherit that existence.Thesecondmodel attributesuniquenessnot toapriorexistencebut tosocialembeddednessandunpredictable futurity.Consider the “fourdesk-lamps,eachofadifferentcolour,butall thesamedesign” thatKathykeeps inher bedsit, and how she enjoys herself in new towns by “looking for a shop withanotherlamplikethatinitswindow—nottobuy,butjusttocomparewithmyonesathome” (208).Kathydoesn’t value thedesk lamps forwhateachonenormallydoes(shedlight).Insteadshevaluesthembecausetheyconstituteagroup,becausetheyallow her to contemplate similarities and differences, and because they provide anoccasionfornewcomparisons.Kathy’sdesklampsarepartofgroup,butthatgroupis incomplete, and each desk lamp has the potential to join other groups—thosedefinedby,say,colorratherthandesign.Consider,also,Kathy’scassettetapefromNorfolk,whichhasbecomeoneofher“mostpreciouspossessions”notbecauseshelistens to itbutbecause it remindsherofat least twooccasions: theafternoonshespent with Tommy, when they found the tape in a second-hand store, and her

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childhoodatHailsham,whereshewasabsorbedinasong-inspiredfantasy(64).ShevaluestheNorfolktapeinmuchthesamewayasshevaluesanothercassettetape,theoneofdancetunesgiventoherbyRuthtoreplacethelosttapeof“NeverLetMeGo.” Because “the music has nothing to do with anything,” Ruth’s gift is moreimportant toKathyas “anobject” thanasa token (a recording); it isoneofKathy’s“mostpreciouspossessions,”atermsherepeatstwiceinthesamechaptertorefertotwoseparatetapes(76).Inthenovelthepreciousnessofbothtapesisaneffectofthesocialrelationshipstheyhavehelpedtoestablish.

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FIGURE2.5FrontcoveroftheFinnisheditionofNeverLetMeGo,KazuoIshiguro,Oleluonaniaina,translatedbyHeleneBützow(Helsinki:KustannusosakeyhtiöTammi,2005).

Reprintedbypermissionofthepublisher.

If therewereanydoubt that thenovelprivileges thesecondmodelofuniqueness,we might consider the Japanese edition, which features a book-sized image of acassetteonitscover(figure2.1).Thatcoverstandsoutfromthecoversofalloftheotherearlyeditionsof thenovel,mostofwhichdisplayan imageofhumansorwhatappeartobepartsofhumans(figures2.2,2.3,2.4,and2.5).34TheJapanesecover,initsapparentsingularity,raisesseveralquestions,includingthisone:whymightonewish to privilege, as an icon for the novel, the image of a cassette tape over theimageofaperson?Tobegin,wemightreturntoMissEmily’slogic,herideathattheworkofartconveysthesoulofitscreatorandmoreoveraffirmsthatitscreatorhasasoulor, asKathywouldput it, somequality “deepdown” (140). In Ishiguro’snovel,theworkofarthasno“deepdown”:itsmeaningsarecollaborativeandcomparative,and thusaffirm, insteadofasoul, variousnetworksofproductionandconsumption.Ishigurosuggeststhatasongoranovelorapersoncanbeasingularobjectaswellasamultiple-typeobject. Insodoing,heproposes thatuniquenessdependsnotanabsolute quality or a predetermined future but on the potential for comparison andlikeness:allart isacassette tape, forbetteror forworse.Onlybyappreciatingtheunoriginalityofart,Ishigurosuggests,canwechangetheideaofliteratureitself.

THESERIES,THELIST

I want now to bringNever LetMeGo’s emphasis on replication and circulation tobearonIshiguro’smostfamiliartext,TheRemainsoftheDay,whichasksreaderstoconsider not only networks but also scale. The Remains of the Day is usuallydiscussedasanallegoryaboutoneofseveralworld-politicalthemes:theshrinkingofBritain into England, the commodification of English heritage for American tourists,andthehypocrisyofEnglishliberalisminthefaceofcolonialexploitationabroadandanti-Semitismathome.InitiallyIbracketthesethemesandfocusinsteadonthewaysthat the novel arranges them.The Remains of the Day approaches the project ofuniqueness by establishing the relationship between individual anecdotes or actionsandwhat the voluble narrator, Stevens, calls “unimaginable largeness.” This phraseand the ideal of uniqueness it represents will occupy me for the remainder of thechapter. At the end, I return to the question of whether translation leads tohomogenization,andItrytosuggestwhatculturalandpoliticalhomogenizationmightlooklikeinthecontextofIshiguro’swork.Bypresenting individual anecdotes as versionsor explanations ofmore dramatic,

collective events, such as colonialism and the Holocaust,The Remains of the Dayinvokes the principle of enlarged thinking—and in many ways supports it. Stevens

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promotesaBenjaminiananalysisofhistory:hisstoriesshowhowunnoticed,almostinvisible labors facilitatewell-knownachievements,and theydisplay thepastactionsand processes that have led to present-day situations.35 The ideal of enlargedthinkingalsomatchesBenjamin’ssenseoftranslation:hisbeliefthataworkofartwillhavean“afterlife”inanotherlanguage,whichitsauthorcanneitherpredictnorrealize;andhisconceitthattranslationpreservestheoriginalbyhelpingittomature.36Stevensintroducesenlargedthinkingastheenrichment,ratherthantheabstraction,

of ordinary actions. Preparing for the arrival of German, British, American, andFrench statesmen in March 1923, Stevens says he was “only too aware of thepossibility that if any guest were to find his stay at Darlington Hall less thancomfortable, thismighthaverepercussionsofunimaginable largeness”(76–77).Thisidea, that ordinary actions could have extraordinary consequences, is articulated inthe textonat least twoprioroccasions:oncewhen thehousekeeper,MissKenton,remindsStevensthathouseholderrors“maybetrivialinthemselves”butstillpossess“largersignificance” (59);andoncewhenStevens’semployer,LordDarlington,asksStevens to remove his ailing father (Stevens senior) from public duties because anaccidental fall during the dinner service “might jeopardize the success of ourforthcoming conference” (63). Stevens at first attributes the concern about “largersignificance” toMissKenton,buthe lateracknowledges that itmayhavebeenLordDarlington’sphrase(60).However itbegins, thiswayof thinkingstructuresallof theanecdotesthatStevenspresents, inwhichweareaskedtosee individuatedactionsinthecontextofpervasiveconsequences.Themodelhereisthescaleratherthanthenetwork: serving a well-orchestrated dinner contributes directly and uniquely tonegotiatingpeace.Someof the time Ishiguro’snovel takesenlarged thinkingseriouslyandseems to

admire its critical impulse.We learn that themeeting organized by LordDarlingtonaims to convince the British and especially the French to relax the terms of theVersailles treaty.Forreaders,whoknowthat this fictionalvisitwillsoonbefollowedby the Second World War, Stevens’s worry about failed hospitality and unhappyguests intimates two chief “repercussions”: Darlington’s efforts to bring economicstability to Germany could be compromised, and the subsequent effect, whichStevensisnot imaginingherebutwhichsomewouldsayshouldhavebeenimaginedbyhimandothers,thatafailuretomodifytheVersaillestreatycouldleadtoGermanunrest and later tomilitarism and finally to theHolocaust, an unimagined largenesssignaledinthenovelbyananti-Semiticincidentthatimposesitsethicalandemotionalweightonmanyother incidents in the text.Given thishistory, thenoveldoes in factaskustoseebothanalogyandcontiguitybetweentheactofpolishingsilverandtheact of negotiating peace treaties. In a general way, welcoming guests is importantbecauseittriggerssubsequentsocialinteractions;inamorespecificway,welcomingguests to talks about international peace takes on the ethical significance ofalleviatingpoverty,preventingwar,andextendingsympathyacrossnationalborders.Thestakesofalleviation,prevention,andsympathyarelarge,andStevenstransfersthisqualityontothefunctioningofhisemployer’shousehold.

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ThenovelisespeciallypersuasiveinitssupportofenlargedthinkingwhenitoffersexamplesthatreflectpoorlyonStevensandwhenStevensseemsleastawareofthatoutcome.Goodhouseholdservicemayleadtopeacetreaties,butitmayalsoleadtomilitaryaggressionorpoliticalappeasement.WhileStevens’searlyconversationwithLord Darlington about the “larger significance” of the dinner service precedes the1923meeting,alaterconversationaboutpolishingsilverreferstoameetingbetweenLord Halifax and Herr Ribbentrop (eventually, Hitler’s ambassador to Britain) in themiddleof the1930s (135–36).LordDarlington tellsStevens, “By theway,Stevens,LordHalifaxwasjollyimpressedwiththesilvertheothernight.Puthimintoaquiteadifferent frameofmind”(135).Fromthis,Stevensconcludes,“thestateof thesilverhadmadeasmall,butsignificantcontributiontowardstheeasingofrelationsbetweenLord Halifax and Herr Ribbentrop that evening” (136). Enlarged thinking is vital,Ishiguroseemstosuggest,becauseitallowsustoseethatStevens’sactionswereinpart responsible for the friendship between Hitler’s agent and the British foreignminister. Stevens knew at the time that this was a significant occasion, but only inretrospectcanhe(andwe)knowwhatthatsignificancewouldbe.Moreover,whenStevens claims that someactions, including his dismissal of two

Jewish maids in the early 1930s, are simply “trivial”—that they have no “largersignificance”—readers know to think otherwise. Recalling the circumstances thatcaused him to fire the maids, Stevens refers to a “brief, entirely insignificant fewweeks” when Lord Darlington was influenced by British fascists and acknowledges“oneveryminorepisode…whichhasbeenblownupoutofallproportion”(145,137).Of course, blowing things up out of all proportion is just what enlarged thinkingrequires,and it isStevenswhohas taught readershow todoso.Stevens fires theJewishmaidsbecausehethinksheisactingintheserviceofLordDarlington’slargerEuropeanproject.Hefailstoseeorevenreallytoevaluatethequalityofthatproject,andhe fails tosee thathisactionhas itsownsignificance,especially for themaidsand for his relationship with Miss Kenton. Finally, he fails to see that this episodeshedslightonthesignificanceofseveralpreviousanecdotesaboutmodelbutlerswhoignoreorplacateoffensivemasters.WiththestoryabouttheJewishmaids,Ishiguroseems to imply—I am overstating only slightly—that self-abnegation and incuriositylaythegroundworkforgenocide.AndyetitisimportanttonoticethatStevens’scallforenlargedthinkingisnottobe

taken seriously or to be admired all of the time, and thus the ironic reading ofStevens’sphrase is in somewayscorrect. Ishiguro ismaking funofhis character’soverblownrhetoricandabsurdformalitywhileheisneverthelessconstructinganovelthatseems to follow the logicofStevens’sgrammaticalclaim.Putanotherway, thenoveltakes“unimaginablelargeness”seriouslybyvaluinginStevens’sanecdotesboththe sublime and the ridiculous. It is ultimately the ridiculous, Ishiguro suggests, thatallows for new networks of responsibility to emerge. In the novel, the ridiculous isrepresented by the practice of “bantering,” an activity and style of activity thatgenerates inconsistency, playfulness, and surprise. Importantly, bantering appearsnot as the opposite of Benjaminian historicism but rather as its supplement: by

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recognizing paradox, absurdity, and metaphor in the structure of Ishiguro’s novel,readers can see the several large networks in which each of Stevens’s anecdotestakes part. For example, in Stevens’s mind, firing the Jewish maids is exactly likepolishing the silver: both acts are meant to facilitate Lord Darlington’s politicalmaneuverings; Stevens sees them as equivalent parts of that largeness. For us,however, these acts are also parts of other kinds of largeness: a climate of anti-Semitism,or anational strategyof political appeasement. Just asa single text canoperate in several literary cultures, polishing silver can be part of several politicalhistories.Itisnotamatterofchoosingbetweenscaleandnetworkbutofrecognizingthenetworksofvaryingscalesinwhichasingleactionmayparticipate.Banteringintroducesseveralnetworksofmeaning,but italsofocusesattentionon

the process of communication. At the end of the novel, Stevens considers that “inbantering lies thekey tohumanwarmth,” though this isnotbecauseofwhatpeoplesay but because of how they say it (245). Stevens notes earlier that banteringrequiresakindofspeechthatisnot“safelyinoffensive”(15–16).Infact,thesuccessofone’sbanterismeasuredbyitsabilitytocausesurprise;forthisreason,therehastobesomething inconsistentandunpredictable inbantering’sstyle.LikeKathyH. inher interpretationof “NeverLetMeGo,” thosewhobanter refuse tobeconstrainedbytheconsciousnessoflargermeaningsorbythesensethatthereisonlyonelargermeaning.From beginning to end, The Remains of the Day is structured by a parade of

anecdotes. Sometimes this parade seems to constitute a series, and sometimes itseems to be a list. It is a series insofar as the novel follows the chronology of thenarrator’s four-day travelogue and the story he tells about the meaning of hisanecdotes. It is a list, however, insofar it contains the potential for many differentseries, chronologically as well as thematically arranged; insofar as it gestures tofuture comparisons that have not yet been imagined; and insofar as it allows eachanecdote tohave itsownmomentary life.Understood formally, theplotof Ishiguro’snovel emerges in the difference between the professional largeness that Stevenssees and the many qualities of largeness—personal relationships, anti-Semitism,colonialism, political appeasement, the death of a familymember—thatwe see butthathedoesnotevenapprehend.Stevensappliestohisanecdotesatheoryofcomparisonthatissomewhatdifferent

fromtheonethatthenovelasksustoadopt.Thefirsttheory,articulatedbyStevensand reaffirmed at the end of the novel by the nativist liberal Mr. Harry Smith,proposesthateverypersonmustimaginehisorheractionsaspartofalarger,unifiedwhole.ThistheoryallowsStevenstoassertthathiswillingnesstotolerateslightsandignore his personal feelings contributed to the forging of international alliances. Itallows Harry Smith to assert, conversely, that his willingness to speak plainlycontributes toamoredemocratic,egalitarianEngland.Bothof theseassertionsarevaluedinthenovel,buttheyarealsocriticizedfortheirrigidityandfortheirsingularityofscale.Stevensfails tonoticethathisprofessionalrestraintcontributesnotonly tointernationalalliancesbutalsotoanti-Semitism,politicalappeasement,andemotional

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isolation. Harry Smith fails to notice that his speech is premised on the silence ofBritain’s colonial subjects, whose independence he wishes to suppress whileadvocating his own. The largeness that Harry Smith can recognize ends at theborders ofBritain.He claims repeatedly to have “donehis part” (fought in thewar,madehis opinions known, urgedothers to participate in democracy), but it is in hiscommitment toawhole thatextendsonlyas faras thenation thathisconceptionoflargenessmatches thesingle-mindedscale thatStevenspromotes (189).Thenovelthusarticulatesatheoryofcomparisonthatemphasizesthelargenesstowhicheachincident contributes but also refuses thewholeness inwhich each incidentmight becontained.HarrySmith’scommentsattheendofthetextrecallananecdotethatStevenstells

at the beginning about a butler serving in colonial India. According to Stevens, thebutler displays professional dignity by protecting his employer’s guests from theknowledge that a tiger has entered the dining room. The butler is able to alert hisemployer, kill the tiger, and report his successwith such discretion that the guestsnever learn of the tiger’s removal, or even of its presence. Stevens is especiallypleased by the butler’s unflappable manner and by his command of euphemism,whichallowhimtoreportblandlyintheearshotofhisemployer’sgueststhat“dinnerwill be served at the usual time” and without “discernible trace of the recentoccurrence” (36).Surely,we can see—it’s almost a cliché—that there is somethingstronglyallegoricalaboutStevens’sstory:theBritishrulingclassesusedservantsandother subalterns to separate their lives from the proverbial tiger in the dining roomthathadtobekilled,butsoftly,so thatafternoonteacouldcontinueuninterrupted inthe parlor. Stevens offers this anecdote as an example of what we might callprofessional formalism: an ideal of grace under pressure, whichmeansmaintainingone’sroleunderanycondition,nomatterhowalarmingordangerous.Andwhile therepercussions of this ideal will become increasingly visible over the course of thenovel, we learn right away about the butler’s small role in the largeness that wascolonialism.Itisakeyaspectofthenovel’stheoryoflargenessthatStevenswillonlyeverrecognizeonecontextforhisanecdotes,whereasthenovelwillalwaysintimateseveral.TheproblemwithStevens’sethosofenlargedthinking,Ishigurosuggests,isnot that he translates every action and every story but that he fails to translateenough.In thenovelStevenscalls thiskindofpersistent translation “forever reappraising,”

anditisanactivityheresistsbecauseitseemstohimimpossibletofollowapathandevaluate its direction at the same time. It seems “misguided,” he explains, for “abutler with serious aspirations … to be forever reappraising his employer—scrutinizing the latter’s motives, analyzing the implications of his views,” testingwhether“one’sskillswerebeingemployedtoadesirableend”(200).Butthisiswhatthe novel’s structure requires from its readers: a movement between inside andoutside, or between text and book, if you will. On the one hand, we read withStevens, enlarging his anecdotes intomore expansive systems; on the other hand,the more we read as Stevens reads, the more we encounter systems whose

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meanings are obscured by the strategy of symptomatic interpretation. Largeness,whichusuallypromisesdepthor latent content,appears in thisnovelasaperennialsurface. Sharon Marcus has suggested that all symptomatic reading, because itemphasizeswhatisabsentorinvisible,tendstodevalueoroftensimplymisswhatispresent.37ThisiscertainlytheproblemthatStevensoftenfaces,or indeeddoesnotface,aswhenhe identifieshis father’shousekeepingmistakesassignsofapeacetreatythatmightberuinedratherthanassignsofailinghealth.Stevensthinksofhislifeasaseries,whereaswehavetosee itasa list.Aseriesprivilegesonecontextoveranotherandsituateseachactionintermsofanoutcomeorreferent.Thelist,likeagroupofclones,impliesequivalentobjects,evenifthearrangementandcirculationof those objects generates distinctions and new objects. Ishiguro forces us tocompareseveraloutcomes (theHolocaust,Americanization, imperialism)by treatingeach anecdote as part of a list that can be arranged in several ways and whosemeaningswillchangeaccordingtofuturearrangements.The novel’s structure invites readers to think about the relationship between text

and book, as I’ve suggested, because it proposes that enlarged reading—readingglobally—changes not simply the meaning but what I have been calling, afterBenjamin, the life of a novel. Texts, as they exist in the world, are many differentbooks; they are, like Stevens’s anecdotes and Kathy H.’s cassette tape, part ofseveral series—originals not simply in their own culture but in several cultures. Ifthinkingaboutlargenesscanpromoteactsofcomparison,asitdoesforthereaderofIshiguro’s novels, it can also prompt (less retrospectively) acts of production, as itdoesforIshiguroandothernovelistsworkingtoday.AnthonyAppiahmakesarelatedpoint when he remarks in his book on cosmopolitanism that the expansion of U.S.products into world markets can have a variety of dynamic effects, including theeffect of reverse assimilation, such that U.S. products have to accommodate thedesiresandpreferencesofavarietyofworldconsumers.38 In thecaseof Ishiguro,he is accommodating consumers, but he is also challenging our sense ofwhat it isthat consumers consume: What is the work that we are reading? What is thedifferencebetweentheworkand itsmanybooks?What is theappropriatescaleforourreading?Andwhatistherelationshipbetweentheenlargementofethicsandtheenlargementofgeography?Thinking about enlargement does notmeanalways thinking on a planetary scale,

butitdoesmeanacknowledgingthemanyscalesthatrecentglobalizationhashelpedtoproduce.ScholarsofU.S.multilingualismsuchasWernerSollors,MarcShell,andJoshua Miller have made this point about American literature, while the SlavicistHarshaRamhasargued thatRussian translationsofGeorgian literaturecontributedtoregionalarticulationsofSoviet internationalism.39Theseprojectssuggest that it isnot a single “distant reading,” to use FrancoMoretti’s phrase, but a comparison ofclose readings, in many languages and across many geographies, that studies ofworldliteraturemayrequire.40FromhisnovelsaboutJapantohisnovelaboutcloning,Ishigurohasimpliedthatit

is inadequateandunethicaltotreatuniquenessasthedefiningqualityofart,culture,

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andhuman life. InNever LetMeGo, valuing uniqueness leads to killing clones andpreserving people. The Remains of the Day suggests a modification of thatargument: rather than seeing uniqueness as a property of singularmasterpieces oranecdotes or even cultures, we are asked to see it as the property of a work’sappearance, as translation, edition, anthology, or excerpt. Ishiguro proposes thatcomparison, while it elides uniqueness in the service of a larger paradigm, alsogenerates uniqueness, but uniqueness of a different kind: the uniqueness of atranslation, the uniqueness of a cassette tape, and the uniqueness of an allegoryaboutpoliticalappeasement.I offer here, really, twoaccountsof comparison:anaccountofworld literature in

which translation and global circulation create many books out of single texts,transforming old traditions and inaugurating newones; and an account of Ishiguro’snovelsinwhichaprincipleofunoriginalityexpandsthehorizonofsocialrelationships,figuringnewnetworksof localandglobal largeness.Ultimately, Ishiguro’scalculationcomes to this:uniquenesscanpersist in theworldbutonly incomparative forms: intheshapeoftheecho,thecopy,theclone,thelist,theseries,andthetranslation.Thischapterhasexploredhowbooksintranslationconstitutenewkindsofgroups.

The next two chapters consider the relationship between the location of books andthelocationofaudiences.

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