This week our writer’s bring you the latest news from the United Kingdom, Argentina, and Mexico. In the UK, Oxford Translation Day welcomed past Asymptote contributor Sophie Hughes to talk about her Booker-shortlisted translation of Fernanda Melchor’s Hurrican Season. In Argentina, the rising cases of COVID-19 have prompted the Fundación Filba to organize virtual classes with well-known Latin American writers. In Mexico, booksellers are finding innovative solutions to reach readers as the stores remain closed. Read on to find out more!
Andreea Scridon, Assistant Editor, reporting from the United Kingdom
Every year, research center Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation hosts Oxford Translation Day, consisting of workshops, readings, and talks, as a prelude of sorts to the award of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize on the June 13, at its home base of St. Anne’s College, Oxford.
Given this year’s unusual global situation, Oxford Translation Day is taking place online over the span of several weeks. We are particularly looking forward to Asymptote contributor Sophie Hughes’s talk on her Booker-shortlisted translation of Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season (Fitzcarraldo Editions), which we’ve featured here and here, on June 13. Another event that seems particularly intriguing is poet and translator A.E. Stallings’s discussion of two contemporary Greek female poets, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke and Kiki Dimoula, also on June 13.
The good news is that you don’t have to be in Oxford to participate this time! Stay tuned on the OCCT website to see video recordings and summaries of the events, and read a dispatch of an Oxford Translation Day from a few years ago by Asymptote contributor Theophilus Kwek to get in the mood.
Allison Braden, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Argentina
In Argentina, the latter half of May has seen a steep jump in the number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus: On May 17, 263 new cases were reported. On May 22, that number rose to 718. It comes as little surprise that the World Health Organization announced Tuesday that the Americas are the new epicenter of the virus, as Latin American countries’ rates of new infections have overtaken those of Europe and the United States. Argentina is bordered by two countries facing some of the most severe outbreaks in the region: Chile is expected to register twelve thousand deaths by August, while Brazil’s death toll is anticipated to reach a staggering one hundred and twenty-five thousand in the same time period.
All this to say, it looks unlikely that literary and cultural events will resume in the near term, as most Argentines remain at home. Many are taking the opportunity to review and sort their book collections. They’re discovering mountains of books that are collecting dust and will likely never be read again—sepultados, or buried, as Fundación Filba says.
The foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Buenos Aires, promotes literature in the country, primarily through a popular festival. Now, they’ve refocused their efforts and are offering a roster of virtual classes, featuring all-star instructors like Chilean writer María José Ferrada and Argentine writer Betina González. They’ve also launched a campaign to circulate those old books: #FilbaPasaLibros has organized safe drop-off locations, now and for when restrictions lift, and encourages people to donate their old books, which will be sent to libraries that need them. The initiative is rooted in our present, unique situation, but it also instills a hope in the future: that one day, we will again visit public libraries. We’ll touch books that others once held and read words that have so moved those who came before.
Josefina Massot, Assistant Managing Editor, reporting from Argentina
Last April, as I watched a pesky virus lay waste to cultural events around the globe, I was none too worried about the Buenos Aires Book Fair: pair porteños’ bibliophilia with our equally famed hubris, and it’d be on—we’d never jeopardize FILBA’s world-class status by fully cancelling. Whether it would pay off was a whole other matter, considering it’d be the first time in forty-five years that we’d have to go virtual. This would be challenging for anyone, and here’s the other thing about porteños (nay, Argentines at large): we’re touchy-feely folk. Would we sign up for chats and online events if we couldn’t rub shoulders with the authors, I wondered; if, wine gods forbid, we couldn’t raise our foam cups at one of those raging after-parties; if, worst of all, we couldn’t sniff or stroke or ogle the books we yearned for (I wasn’t kidding about the philia)? Turns out, we would.
Granted, not in our usual numbers. Each year for the past few years, about a million people have attended the fair and had access to well over fifteen hundred activities. This year, from late April to mid-May, roughly one hundred and eighty thousand people visited FILBA’s website, and the fair hit four hundred and fifty thousand followers on social media; videos on its YouTube channel were played just north of fifty thousand times, and about one hundred cultural events took place online (not too shabby for a last-ditch save). Adding names to numbers, the most popular hits across platforms included a reading by author and editor Hernán Casciari, another one by poet, essayist, and priest Hugo Mujica, an old audio interview with Adolfo Bioy Casares, and vintage pictures of Maria Elena Walsh.
These last two fan favorites might strike one as out of place—or rather, out of time, seeing as they’re long gone literary icons. Therein, however, lies the genius of FILBA 46.0: instead of scrambling to create fast-paced, last-minute content (footage that would’ve been trendy but by the same token, fleeting), its organizers focused on retrieving and remastering the classics. In fact, over half the posts or videos shared online were archival: not just images or interviews but keynote speeches, debates, and celebrations from fairs past. Because if one thing defines porteños above all, it’s our good ol’ nostalgia.
Andrew Adair, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Mexico
As “to-be-read” piles dwindle and Zoom fatigue sets in, Mexico City has seen a stabilization in new cases and deaths for a straight week now, which could lead to a change from Red to Orange in the stoplight system being implemented in the government’s “Gradual Plan Toward a New Normal.” Still, bookstores are not listed in any of the stoplight’s four colors (a source of frustration for many), meaning the road back to casual perusal in the surviving bookstores will be decided by their owners. From there, it’s anyone’s guess if readers will be eager to partake in the (now) pastime of picking up and flipping through potential purchases.
Some used bookstores have done an admirable job of moving online, employing their Twitter and Instagram accounts to maximum effect by promoting their rarest or most popular editions, with discounts, taking orders via DM, and packaging them for delivery by bike every few days. Of course, tech-savvy or not, their survival will be at the mercy of the virus’s spread and the government’s response. As was put so eloquently by José Luis Escalera, founder of Profética Casa de Lectura, in a virtual chat organized by MetaBooks last week, “Like diabetics and those with chronic illnesses, independent bookstores already had trouble surviving and now, with the coronavirus, our probability of death has risen.”
*****
Read more on the Asymptote blog: