“Found in Translation” (Part 1)

There is a fascinating opinion piece in this Sunday’s NY Times from novelist Michael Cunningham, author of “The Hours” and a new book “By Nightfall.” Cunningham’s article is so thought-provoking that I decided to break it up into five parts so we could discuss it this week. Here is part one [bold emphasis added]:

As the author of “Las Horas,” “Die Stunden” and “De Uren” — ostensibly the Spanish, German and Dutch translations of my book “The Hours,” but actually unique works in their own right — I’ve come to understand that all literature is a product of translation. That is, translation is not merely a job assigned to a translator expert in a foreign language, but a long, complex and even profound series of transformations that involve the writer and reader as well. “Translation” as a human act is, like so many human acts, a far more complicated proposition than it may initially seem to be. 

Let’s take as an example one of the most famous lines in literature: “Call me Ishmael.” That, as I suspect you know, is the opening sentence of Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick.” We still recognize that line, after more than 150 years.

Still. “Call me Ishmael.” Three simple words. What’s the big deal?

For one thing, they possess that most fundamental but elusive of all writerly qualities: authority. As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers.

It’s a little like waltzing with a new partner for the first time. Anyone who is able to waltz, or fox-trot, or tango, or perform any sort of dance that requires physical contact with a responsive partner, knows that there is a first moment, on the dance floor, when you assess, automatically, whether the new partner in question can dance at all — and if he or she can in fact dance, how well. You know almost instantly whether you have a novice on your hands, and that if you do, you’ll have to do a fair amount of work just to keep things moving.

Authority is a rather mysterious quality, and it’s almost impossible to parse it for its components. The translator’s first task, then, is to re-render a certain forcefulness that can’t quite be described or explained.

The concept of writer as translator is interesting. It implies that what we write is in some ways preexisting, something I’ve explored here previously:

I ask you to consider the possibility that your story already exists.

It is already there… all 120 pages. From FADE IN to FADE OUT. Written. Rewritten. Edited. Spell-checked. Properly formatted. And ready to go.

The story concept exists already.

The characters exist already.

The plot exists already.

The dialogue exists already.

The themes exist already.

It is there, waiting for you to find, uncover and reveal it.

Our task then becomes — in a way — translating what we envision in our minds onto the printed page. This is related to Cunningham’s second point: that as writers, we have to write with authority. Moreover we have to establish that authority immediately in order to gain a reader’s trust (the waltzing analogy is perfect and I’m now officially stealing it from Mr. Cunningham for all future references to this point).

How do you write with authority? Perhaps most important is to know your story extremely well. Through research, brainstorming plot, developing characters, and wrangling the story into shape, you in effect immerse yourself in that story universe. You become a part of it and it becomes a part of you.

Again it’s helpful to think of story as a preexisting entity because if you experience it as real, then your “re-rendering” of it onto the written page, using Cunningham’s word, is based on something solid and tangible, at least creatively. Perhaps then that’s how we manage “a certain forcefulness that can’t quite be described or explained.”

What do you think of this idea of writer as translator? About the necessity of a writer conveying a sense of authority in their writing, even from the very first sentence of our stories? 

Tomorrow: Part 2 of Cunningham’s opinion piece about writing.

For the NY Times review of Cunningham’s newest book “By Nightfall,” go here.

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