bilingual biographies: Ha Jin interview

the new issue of Paris Review includes an interview with Ha Jin, a Chinese author who writes in English. in the interview, he explains his reasons for this, and also gives some clues to written Chinese language. here's a passage from the interview:

INTERVIEWER: "What are the main differences between the two languages?"

HA JIN: "English has more flexibility. It’s a very plastic, very shapeable, very expressive language. In that sense it feels quite natural. The Chinese language is less natural. Written Chinese is not supposed to represent natural speech, and there are many different spoken dialects that correspond to the single written language. The written word will be the same in all dialects, but in speech it is a hundred different words. The written language is like Latin in that sense; it doesn’t have a natural rhythm. The way people talk — you can’t represent that. The accents and the nongrammatical units, you can’t do it. You can’t write in dialect, like you can in English, using a character to represent a certain sound, because each character has a fixed meaning."

here some more passages of the interview, online: The Art of Fiction / Ha Jin

reading these interview passages also made me remember Ha Jin's book "In the Pond" - i read it last year in february, in german, thinking that the original book is in chinese. it was only later, when i looked for his biography while reading, that i realized he is bilingual, and writes in english - and that i thus could have read his original work, which i generally prefer. (link)

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China#1: and to follow the national bestseller research, i just browsed pages, doubting that i would come across a chinese book shop - but here's something that at least gives a taste, with the 'Quotations from Chairman Mao' ranking on #1 of the bestseller list: Chinabooks.
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Inge + Walter Jens: Frau Thomas Mann

behind every great man, there's a great woman...
that's what i thought of when reading this book. "Frau Thomas Mann" ("Mrs. Thomas Mann") sketches the life story of the Mann family, seen from the perspective of the wife of Thomas Mann (the german author who wrote "The Buddenbrooks", "Death in Venice", "The Magic Mountain", and received the nobel prize for literature in 1929).

the book also is a flashback of the last century - it starts in 1880, and moves through 2 world wars. the Manns left germany after the Nazi regime took over, and first fled to Switzerland, then on into the States. throughout all the years, Mrs. Thomas Mann made sure that her husband could focus on his writing, and took care of all worldly chores.

i picked the book after reading the biography of Inge Jens in November ("Incomplete Memory"), who wrote about writing the Mann book in it. fitting to the theme, the "Buddenbrooks" will be up in TV this week.

Germany#1: and following the theme of books and reads around the world, here the bestseller novels in germany 2009. the top ranks belong to Stephanie Meyer and Dan Brown, followed by 2 german authors: Frank Schätzing's eco-thriller "Limit", and Herta Müller (nobel laureate 2009) with "Atemschaukel".
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Alessandro Baricco: Seide

a multi-tongue-book: Alessandro Baricco is Italian. the book starts in France. it is about a man who repeatedly travels to Japan. the original title of the book is "Seta". which means: "Silk" - or "Seide" in German. one of the keys in the story is a letter, written in Japanese, which the main character can't read.

this book also gave an idea for one of my new year resolutions: to read around the world, with books from authors of different nations. so this is: Italy.

Italy#1: and now i just looked for an italian online bookshop - and it turns out, this bookshop splits novels in 2 categories "narrativa italiana" (italian novels) and "narrativa straniera" (foreign novels). haven't seen such a sorting before. maybe a way to give the national authors a bit more grounding?
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