BOB DYLAN – NEW BOOK OF ESSAYS, ‘DYLAN AT PLAY’ (also Translation Studies interest)

http://www.examiner.com/bob-dylan-in-national/the-bob-dylan-holiday-gift-guide-no-2-nina-goss-on-the-book-dylan-at-play

Just published is a new collection of essays on Bob Dylan, DYLAN AT PLAY, to which I am privileged to be a contributor. Details:

 Nick Smart and Nina Goss (eds.), Dylan at Play, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (England): Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011, vi + 190 pp., hardback, ISBN 978-1-4438-2974-8

URL (flyer): www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Dylan-at-Play1-4438-2974-9.htm

URL (sample pages): www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/978-1-4438-2974-8-sample.pdf

Click below to see the flyer:

DylanatPlayflyer 

The articles include: “And The Language That He Used: Effective Linguistic Tools in Dylan’s Lyrics”, Ditlev Larsen; “She Might Be in Tangier: Bob Dylan and the Literary” Nick Smart; “No Martyr Is Among Ye Now: Bob Dylan and Religion”, Stephen Hazan Arnoff; “Bob Dylan and the Religious Sense.”, Kim Luisi; “May Your Hands Always Be Busy”, Michael Spreitzhofer a.k.a Mike Hobo; “Dylan Acts His Age”, James Brancato; “But Where Are You Tonight?”, Cynthia Kraman; “Transnational Dylan: Bob Dylan and Some Thoughts about Homes and Homelessness, Nations and Borders, The Whole Wide World, and What’s Real Forever”, David Gaines; “Look Out Your Window and I’ll Be Gone: Dylan’s Art of Abandonment”, Deann Armstrong; “Twenty Musings on Bob Dylan and the Future of Sound”, Stephen Webb; “Planet Waves: Not Too Far Off”, John Hinchey; “Hispanicised Dylan?: Reflections on the Translation of Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, Volume I into Spanish”, Christopher Rollason; “Which People Say is Round”, Nina Goss.

I hope that my own contribution (pp. 147-173), which examines Miquel Izquierdo’s translation of Dylan’s memoir in the context of Translation Studies, will be of interest to scholars in that discipline as well as to Dylan followers.

Note added 13 October 2011: 

The full text of my chapter is now available on-line, on my personal site Yatra and with CSP’s permission, at:

http://yatrarollason.info/files/DylanChronicles.pdf

Note added 21 January 2012:

Some favourable comments on the book, and also on my chapter, can be found at:

http://www.examiner.com/bob-dylan-in-national/the-bob-dylan-holiday-gift-guide-no-2-nina-goss-on-the-book-dylan-at-play

(Harold Lepidus in the Bob Dylan Examiner: “Nina Goss talks about ‘Dylan At Play'”): this is a conversation between Harold and Nina about the book. Harold says he was ‘most intrigued’ by my chapter …

 

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GEORGE ORWELL, SPAIN AND POSTMODERNISM – ‘El País’, 20 August 2011

A new complete edition of George Orwell’s works is now being launched in Spain, as reported in ‘El País’ (20 August 2011, supplement « Babelia », p. 12) by the writer Fernando Savater, in an article entitled ‘Compromiso con la verdad’ (‘Commitment to the truth’) –  www.elpais.com/articulo/portada/George_Orwell/Compromiso/verdad/elpepuculbab/20110820elpbabpor_29/Tes.

Savater stresses the very special political courage that always distinguished the writer born as Eric Blair: ‘Orwell eligió lo más difícil: no escribió para su clientela y contra sus adversarios, sino contra las certidumbres indebidas de su propia clientela política’ (‘Orwell chose the most difficult route: to write not for his own constituency and against his enemies, but against the unjustified certainities of his own political constituency’) – in other words, and most notably in his rejection of Stalinism, against the mistakes of ‘our side’.

The author of the article also makes the telling point: ‘No hay autor más alejado de la posmodernidad que él’ (‘There is no author further removed from postmodernity than he’). It is indeed unlikely that as down-to-earth a writer as Orwell would have had much time for the hyperrelativist and anti-narrativist ideologies of the Derridas and Lyotards, and this observation merits expansion.

The three works now republished in translation in Spain are: A Clergyman’s Daughter, Burmese Days and, appropriately, Homage to Catalonia. Mention of that work should remind us of the seminal place of Orwell’s Spanish Civil War experience in the evolution of his thought. In any case, it is only to the good that as much as possible of this major British and world writer’s work should be made available in a major language.