One More Thing Read online

  The new translation of Don Quixote wasn’t read by readers, but by everyone. For the first time since Spain at the turn of the seventeenth century, it became not-strange for a friend or a neighbor to snort out loud with an involuntary laugh over an image from Don Quixote or for someone to say on a second date, “You know how in Don Quixote when …?” out of an attempt to connect, not an attempt to impress.

  Some even said the translation was “like poetry.”

  In the wake of Don Quixote’s unexpected and outsize success, J. C. Audetat moved to Paris—or, as he renamed it in his mind, almost-Paris—to live the life of an almost-famous almost-poet.

  He found that if he stuck to the right neighborhoods, drank a glass of something hot or cold, and squinted a bit, the Paris in his eyes would look pretty much the way he had always imagined Paris was meant to look. Which was no small thing.

  He took a small apartment and spent the days in cafés, idly turning minor thoughts back and forth in his mind and waiting to be interrupted.

  In the moments between the interruptions, Audetat wrote poetry. When he finished something, he submitted it to literary magazines and journals, and by and large they published it, and by and large, those who reviewed poetry praised it.

  And that was it.

  Maybe that was all being a great poet meant, in his time.

  Or maybe he simply wasn’t a great poet.

  Each thought calmed and agitated him in equal measure.

  Audetat let the afternoons slip away from his table at the Café de Flore while he passed the time with the rarefied nonwriting he had waited for the chance to do his entire life.

  He asked to receive his mail at the cafe—a spectacularly inconvenient option he had chosen purely for show that brilliantly burnished the almost-Paris image of both Audetat and the café. Most of the packages contained dusty hardcovers that seemed to have been FedExed directly from medieval Spain, Post-it’ed in man-made colors with shyly formal suggestions that “perhaps this might spark your brilliant imagination with regards to a Quixote follow-up.”

  The only value of these unopenably dull manuscripts was as a conversation starter.

  Hey, what’s that?

  This?

  Then Audetat got his chance to explain who he was and what he had done so far. He sharpened his monologue by the day as he explained again and again why it was so funny that none of these supposedly sophisticated people could understand something that clearly came naturally to his audience right here at the Café de Flore: that Don Quixote stood as apart from the rest of its era as the Mona Lisa did from its own now irrelevant contemporaries in that long hallway of the Louvre. There was a spark of the current running through each of those works—so to speak, of course, expanded Audetat; the two works, in fact, had far more in common with each other than with their contemporaries.

  Let’s say the Mona Lisa is your favorite painting. Okay? So what’s your second-favorite painting? Is it another Italian portrait from 1504? See, the hands that were up are coming down. You’re laughing, but you get what I mean. Okay, so, similarly …

  All the tourists would listen, rapt, inspired, flattered. While they never had read any other literature from medieval Spain, they had often been to the Louvre as recently as that day, and they were always happy to learn that it wasn’t their fault that they hadn’t remembered anything in the entire museum other than the Mona Lisa.

  But while Audetat was getting better and better at talking about the biggest question he faced, when the café closed each night, he found he still wasn’t any closer to answering it.

  How does one follow up Don Quixote? Even—especially—if you’re just the translator?

  He once again ran through and extended the shelf of Spanish-language literature he had been browsing in his mind.

  Gabriel García Márquez?

  The original translations were still good, relevant, powerful.

  Borges?

  He loved Borges, but it didn’t feel destined for a major translation. It was, perhaps, too cool to catch fire; it seemed expressly written to be discovered in a lightless nook of a library or basement or, best, basement library. Plus, Audetat knew, part of the fun of loving Borges was in being one of the few to love Borges and in passionately recommending him to people who you secretly knew probably wouldn’t like him as much as you did.

  Neruda?

  Pablo Neruda was about as pretty and pure as poetry could get, understandably and deservedly timeless and popular. But anyone who had ever ordered tacos could translate Neruda without much help. Nothing much to do there.

  Lorca?

  Vargas Llosa?

  Eh.

  He looked out the café window at the colorful leaves and scarves dotted across the girls of almost-Paris in October and wondered if he would translate anything at all. All that held his true interest right now was this scene in front of him and the desire he had, heightened as it was by living in an age that is supposed to know better, to be a part of it, to disappear into that sentimental idea of the life of the Paris writer that the rational side of him knew had expired long before he had arrived. Sad that he could never live in the Paris he remembered once dreaming of in his youth, he let his mind wander off across life and literature until it settled almost independently on the gnawing notion that perhaps the most true and timeless version of Paris, for everyone, might be a version of this one—the Paris filtered through remembered dreams.

  Then he knew what to write next.

  “No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs that touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me … Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? … And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.”

  — REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST, MARCEL PROUST, TRANS. C. K. SCOTT MONCRIEFF

  “In the instant that this crumble-soaked softness touched my tongue, everything stopped, and the entirety of the world became this feeling that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had encircled and then invaded my senses. A feeling isolated, detached, with no hint or suggestion of its origin. And at once, the million misdirections of life had become irrelevant to me, its disasters innocuous to me, its brevity illusory to me—this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling one with a priceless essence. Except that this essence was not in me—it was me … Where did it come from? What did it mean? How could I steal it and keep it? … Just as suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which my aunt Léonie used to give me when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, on Sunday mornings at Combray, dipping it first in her own cup of tea. (On those mornings, I didn’t go out before mass.) The sight of that little madeleine had brought up nothing to me before I tasted it. And then, all—and all from my cup of tea.”

  — THE SEARCH FOR LOST TIME, MARCEL PROUST, TRANS. J. C. AUDETAT

  Everyone who had ever said that they wanted to read Proust “someday” found that someday had arrived, as Proust shot from deep in the middle of the alphabetized classics sections to the front shelf of top sellers.

  It is an inside joke of history that its most exciting adventures inevitably end their careers as homework. Beheadings, rebellions, thousand-year wars, i
ncest on the royal throne, electricity, art, opera, dogs in outer space. By this, the once-pop writings of Proust—like those of Cervantes before—had been quietly serving out an indefinite sentence in homework bins for generations. But now, Proust’s words were back to what they were originally intended to be: once again, kids cheated on their homework so they would have more time to read Proust.

  “As a work of literature, simply beautiful … As a feat of translation, a thrilling surprise in a field that is, by definition, not prone to many surprises.”9

  “Like the tea-soaked crumbs of its famous madeleine, J. C. Audetat’s vibrant new translation of Proust brings the full power of the past surging back towards us at full, thrilling force.”10

  “Audetat blows the cookie crumbs off Proust and introduces him—nearly a hundred years after his death—as the voice not only of his era, but of ours.”11

  “In its cracked-out vitality, Audetat’s translation blows the reader backward in his chair like he’s the guy in that iconic Hitachi Maxell speaker ad from the 1980s, except swap out that subwoofer for a madeleine with an electric current jamming through it.”12

  “As delicious as a madeline [sic] cookie!”13

  There was no reason, once people thought about it, that an American poet who could translate Spanish, and who lived in Paris, might not be capable of translating a work of French as well. But no one had thought to expect it, and so the surprise revelation that he knew two languages well enough to turn their respective masterpieces into modern translations of now-unparalleled quality meant that the work exhilarated not only on its merits but additionally for its audacity. The imagined picture of J. C. Audetat, famed popularizer of Don Quixote, casually huddled with his old-fashioned paper and pens in the midst of the beeping and buzzing cafés of modern Paris to bring Proust back into the modern mind, itself became an irresistible image that floated above the new classic like an invisible book jacket and built further, unprecedented anticipation for what was to follow.

  Which was … what?

  He started writing poetry again, but it didn’t come as easily. It was hard now to get past the self-consciousness—the silliness, really—of being such a well-established adult applying himself, seriously, to such a youthful joy.

  A poet? Was that something to call oneself? Was that something to be?

  He carried his old notebooks of poetry to the Café de Flore to see what he could learn. For hours, the notebooks sat on the table, and Audetat sat in dread. He wasn’t sure if he was hoping he would find it good, or bad, or which he feared more.

  When he finally opened the notebooks, he found that he liked his old poetry. Loved it, even. It was young, unlike Audetat, and it was unafraid to be seen as foolish, unlike Audetat. But he also knew when he saw the poems that he wasn’t a poet anymore.

  At least he had been one, once.

  Maybe the timing just hadn’t been right. Maybe in the past, it would have been something. Maybe in the future, it would be something.

  Now it was now, and now what?

  Translator’s block: Does that exist? wondered Audetat.

  Audetat left almost-Paris, reasoning that no one there would care too much about the English translator of Proust, and set out on a university tour of the United States. He spoke about the art of translation to full, grand auditoriums everywhere he went, the ones normally reserved only for visiting dignitaries and the most profane comedians of the day.

  People didn’t know exactly how many languages Audetat spoke (his college transcripts revealed Latin, but no other clues) and that mystery had become part of his legend. But the one language that he spoke unquestionably well, in public and in private, was the off-the-cuff vernacular of his day.

  “What’s next?” was the most anticipated question at Audetat’s lectures. It was usually the last question, too, as if the rooms somehow always had the collective intelligence to save their best question for the end.

  “I have no idea,” Audetat would say. “Any suggestions?” He cupped a hand to his ear, knowing the audience would enjoy getting the last laugh.

  “Anna Karenina!” “The Odyssey!” “Confucius! No—Mao!”

  “Some … interesting suggestions,” Audetat would say dryly, to more laughter. “All present some challenges. Anyway. Thank you so much for coming. See you at the bar.”

  Afterward, he’d whisper to the student organizers a question he had learned long ago always had exactly one answer per town—“Is there a bar around here where writers hang out?”—and then headed out to Fox Head Tavern in Iowa City or Bukowksi’s in Boston (which Audetat thought sounded too on the nose to be authentic and was right) and ordered a drink where people would be most likely to start a shy, respectful conversation with him and where he could disappear into his two favorite pastimes: the poetry of everyday conversations and the people who thought he was brilliant.

  After a while, somehow, this got boring, too.

  “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

  — ANNA KARENINA, LEO TOLSTOY, TRANS. RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

  “All happy families are alike.

  “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

  — ANNA KARENINA, LEO TOLSTOY, TRANS. J. C. AUDETAT

  The new translation of Anna Karenina was not a particularly dramatic departure from most major translations that had come before it—and that was part of what made it legendary.

  A nearly thousand-page novel, written originally in the plain-spoken Russian of the nineteenth century and translated into English by a poet who had so far only proven his abilities in the relatively related languages of Spanish and French, would understandably tempt the translator to make a “statement” with it, went the unanimous consensus—something at least somewhat equivalent to the extraordinary challenge.

  But Audetat’s grandest statement was simply the fact of the work itself: the fact that he was somehow able to do this work, and had chosen these works, and that now, on the bestseller lists and bedside tables alike, one could find Don Quixote by Cervantes and The Search for Lost Time by Proust and Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, one stacked on top of the next, all excellent, all relevant, all because of Audetat.

  “Just as Tolstoy had a perfect ear for the language of his day, Audetat has a perfect ear for the language of his.”14

  “Anna Karenina has once again become the modern story it had always been meant to be.”15

  “Admit it: you started Audetat’s Anna Karenina as a hate-read. You wanted a front-row seat to this overdue literary monster-truck pile-up. Who is this Romance-language proficient American—some friendless kid who opted to take both Spanish and French in eighth grade, fine, good for him—to try to delve into eighteenth-century Russian? Admit it: you were excited for Anna Karenina to be his Interiors, his 1941, his Funny People or (depending on your point of view) This Is 40—basically, the one that finally gives you permission to stop waking up in a panic-sweat of misery in the middle of the night to cross-check his Wikipedia bio against your own life and obsess over exactly what they had accomplished by the age you are now. Well, sorry. This motherf***** is as perfect as ever. Come for the hate, but stay for the love. Just don’t read the last few chapters on the F train, or you might be tempted to jump off it.”16

  “The question that must necessarily paralyse the world of writers and readers alike, in the wake of the incomparable artistic and commercial success of J. C. Audetat’s Anna Karenina, is simply: what next? If the past is prologue, we know that one of the greatest books in the history of the world is about to be released and rightfully dominate the planet’s conversation. How can any reader—let alone writer—think of any other question in the meantime?”17

  What other languages did he know? What other interests did he have? What other great books were most worthy, or most ready, or most easily mistaken as such?

  The speculation over the next book J. C. Audetat would introduce to his age itself became a guessing
game with obsessive echoes in the literary world and beyond. Book clubs turned into betting pools. Graphic designers drew up new covers for old classics, just as daydreams. Professors and high-profile fans around the world campaigned exuberantly for their favorite works. A rumored Audetat translation of The Metamorphoses briefly crashed servers at the University of California at Berkeley before it was debunked as a hoax. Philip Roth composed an open letter to the New York Times, humbly requesting that Audetat consider translating Milan Kundera; Michel Houellebecq, apparently knowing no other tone, published a blistering and inexplicably misogynistic open letter to Le Monde, rudely daring Audetat to translate one of his own books, a gambit for attention that went widely ignored. A consortium of undergraduates and professors at Yale University started an online petition for “J. C. Audetat to Translate an Emerging Voice of Color and/or Gender” that received more than 140,000 distinct units of social media approval online.

  The most attention and interest came from a full-page advertisement that ran across many publications and was signed by a notably wide-ranging group that included Bill Clinton, the Aga Khan, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Noam Chomsky, Salman Rushdie, Mos Def, Richard Dawkins, former pope Joseph Ratzinger, and over three hundred prominent others who might at first glance seem to have contradictory or at least divergent agendas. “Dear J. C. Audetat,” it began—as though there could be a pretext of anything either traditional or intimate about this group sending this message in this way—and then proceeded to lay out the case for Audetat that “a true translation of the Koran for the present day could carry a power even beyond the grandness and beauty of the text itself; it might inspire all sides of a fractured world to understand itself better. Consider using the light of your brilliance to brighten the pages of the book that is more discussed while being less understood than any other. We do not intend to place any pressure on the delicate and mysterious force of your talent, but merely to inform you of a way by which the fate of the world may well be moved by the hand that holds your pen.”