This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books.
Sometimes the smallest detail can change the way you think about the world. This happened to me in 2009, when I read The Original of Laura—which consists of unedited fragments of Vladimir Nabokov’s unfinished last novel—and noticed that, after 35 years of writing in English, the author had still struggled to spell bicycle. I had imagined Nabokov’s leap away from Russian, his native language, as an instantaneous, effortless transformation, but now I realized that it must have been an ongoing struggle—one that enhanced his dazzlingly precise fiction. I thought back to this moment when I read Ross Benjamin’s article in The Atlantic this week, about the “humbling and unexpectedly exhilarating” process of learning a new language.
First, here are five new stories from The Atlantic’s Books section:
- What a cranky new book about progress gets right
- When scarcity blurs the line between right and wrong
- “We Are Not One,” a story by George Packer
- “Love Song to a Tune of Gathering,” a poem by Carson Colenbaugh
- The accidental trailblazers of a new global condition
In his essay, Benjamin, who has translated Franz Kafka’s diaries and other major German-language works into English, tallies up the potential costs of a world in which AirPods can translate between languages in real time. For example: AI translation might accelerate the trend of fewer Americans learning second languages outside the home. One in five U.S. households, however, does speak another language inside the home—and mine was among them. As an aspiring writer with Russian-speaking parents, I was determined from a young age to master English. This is one reason I so admired Nabokov, who wrote 10 excellent books in Russian and then, after fleeing Europe for the United States, nine arguably better ones in English. (He also wrote a poem for The Atlantic in 1941 about switching languages.) Who, after reading Lolita or Pale Fire, would assume that the author spoke English with a foreign accent?
And yet, what made me a near Nabokov completist was not that his English was perfectly assimilated but rather that it was strange and original. Instead of falling back on clichéd idioms, as a native speaker might have done, he pinned down rare and delicate words like the butterflies he collected, and then reassembled them in novel ways. I think he would have liked Benjamin’s description of his own translation work: “Spending my days in the space between English and German has given me a deep appreciation for what’s required to cross a linguistic divide: the mental recalibration, the negotiation between different ways of structuring the world, the humility and curiosity that come with navigating a foreign context.”
Some of Nabokov’s most memorable characters are immigrants struggling greatly with the linguistic and cultural adjustments required of them. I don’t believe that the clumsy, eponymous professor of Pnin, the pedophilic Humbert Humbert of Lolita, or Pale Fire’s mad exile, Charles Kinbote, would have existed if not for the language barrier their creator worked so hard to overcome. Benjamin named several potential casualties of an instant-translation society, including the “inconspicuous yet indispensable” interpreters who have helped connect the world. To this list, I might add misfits like Nabokov, who, in wrestling with a new language, made it noticeably richer.
The Costs of Instant Translation
By Ross Benjamin
AI might soon rob us of the thrill and challenge of cross-cultural conversation.
What to Read
The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf; illustrated by Robert Lawson
The plot of Ferdinand is deceptively simple: A bull who wants only to sit quietly under a tree is mistaken for a fierce beast and sent to a bullfight. There, he refuses combat, instead smelling the flowers in the ring. The tale may seem like a classic misfit story about a boy who doesn’t fit in with his head-butting peers. But unlike many other literary outcasts, Ferdinand is never ashamed to be different; he remains peaceful in a violent world. That was a divisive message when the book was published, with the Spanish Civil War under way and World War II approaching. Critics called Ferdinand communist, fascist, pacifist (as well as anti-pacifist), and emasculating; Adolf Hitler banned it for being “degenerate democratic propaganda.” Today, as many warn of a crisis of masculinity, Ferdinand’s unwavering gentleness feels refreshing. Leaf writes that the bull resisted fighting “no matter what they did”—a level of fortitude that may inspire children, even if some adults are more cynical. — Kate Cray
From our list: 65 essential children’s books
Out Next Week
The Pelican Child: Stories, by Joy Williams
Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century, by W. David Marx
The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning, by Robert Wright
Your Weekend Read
The Great Canadian Ostrich Standoff
By Daniel Engber
The activists had been camping out for months; their numbers sometimes reached into the hundreds. They knew the government was saying that the ostriches had bird flu, but they were convinced that this was cover for some other, bigger scheme. The feds were conspiring with the United Nations and Big Pharma, they said. Small farmers’ rights were being trampled. But Dave and Karen’s birds had other, more powerful friends. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was making calls to Canadian officials; Dr. Oz had offered to evacuate the ostriches to his ranch in Florida.
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The post A Great Author’s Ongoing Struggle appeared first on The Atlantic.
