Lost in Translation – “Feuchtgebiete” and Cultural Excuse March 2, 2009
The article in the Globe and Mail on the book “Feuchtgebiete” by Charlotte Roche is definitively too wonderful of a material for losses in translation to let it be.
One of my favorite passages (of the article) of literary critic turning grotesk in its cultural determinism is as follows:
“I don’t think we should be too quick to blame the Germans for this particular bit of pseudo-porn; Charlotte Roche is British by birth. This is just typical overcompensating expatriate behaviour. Germans love this kind of scatological thing and she’s trying to out-German them, poor thing. If history has taught us anything, it’s that no good can come of a foreigner trying to out-German the Germans. Not that she’s Austrian or anything, but it’s a pretty bad book.”
This line of argumentation is, to say the least, unique…
[Full article "Porn, pseudo-porn or just bad smut?" by ELIZABETH RENZETTI , TABATHA SOUTHEY and MICHAEL VALPY, Globe and Mail (27 February 2009) available under http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090227.wbkwetlands28/BNStory/globebooks/]
