Giv­en the promi­nence of “Gats­by” brand men’s hair prod­ucts over there, I can’t claim that F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s doomed lit­er­ary icon of the Amer­i­can Dream goes total­ly unrec­og­nized in Japan. But accord­ing to Haru­ki Muraka­mi, the coun­try’s best-known liv­ing nov­el­ist, “Japan­ese read­ers have nev­er tru­ly appre­ci­at­ed The Great Gats­by.” This he ascribes, in an essay (read it online here) from the new col­lec­tion In Trans­la­tion: Trans­la­tors on Their Work and What It Means, to the dat­ed­ness, despite the excel­lence, of most Japan­ese-lan­guage edi­tions of the book. “Although numer­ous lit­er­ary works might prop­er­ly be called ‘age­less,’ ” he explains, “no trans­la­tion belongs in that cat­e­go­ry. Trans­la­tion, after all, is a mat­ter of  lin­guis­tic tech­nique, which nat­u­ral­ly ages as the par­tic­u­lars of a lan­guage change. Thus, while there are undy­ing works, on prin­ci­ple there can be no undy­ing trans­la­tions.”

Hence his own trans­la­tion of Gats­by, a project he orig­i­nal­ly set for his six­ti­eth birth­day, by which time he hoped his “skill would have improved to the point where [he] could do the job prop­er­ly.” Despite start­ing the trans­la­tion years ahead of sched­ule, he found him­self just wise enough to under­stand the task’s com­plex­i­ty. “At strate­gic moments,” he remem­bers, “I brought my imag­i­na­tive pow­ers as a nov­el­ist into play. One by one, I dug up the slip­pery parts of Fitzgerald’s nov­el, those scat­tered places that had proved elu­sive, and asked myself, If I were the author, how would I have writ­ten this? Painstak­ing­ly, I exam­ined Gats­by’s sol­id trunk and branch­es and dis­sect­ed its beau­ti­ful leaves.” Asked why he chose to trans­late Gats­by, he gave this reply:

When some­one asks, “Which three books have meant the most to you?” I can answer with­out hav­ing to think: The Great Gats­by, Fyo­dor Dostoevsky’s The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov, and Ray­mond Chandler’s The Long Good­bye. All three have been indis­pens­able to me (both as a read­er and as a writer); yet if I were forced to select only one, I would unhesi­tat­ing­ly choose Gats­by.

(Thanks to Gal­l­ey­Cat.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In Search of Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Japan’s Great Post­mod­ernist Nov­el­ist

83 Years of Great Gats­by Book Cov­er Designs: A Pho­to Gallery

The Only Known Footage of the 1926 Film Adap­ta­tion of The Great Gats­by (Which F. Scott Fitzger­ald Hat­ed)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

So every­one knows Hem­ing­way was a bruis­er. Some of the best sto­ries of his macho pos­tur­ing involve fel­low writ­ers. There was, of course, that time he and Wal­lace Stevens slugged it out in Key West. I’ve been told Stevens asked for it, drunk­en­ly telling Hemingway’s sis­ter Ursu­la that her broth­er wrote like a lit­tle boy. I don’t know whose ver­sion of the sto­ry this comes from, but by all accounts, Hem­ing­way knocked the bear of a poet down sev­er­al times. The two made up soon after. Then there’s the sto­ry of Hem­ing­way and James Joyce; the diminu­tive Irish writer appar­ent­ly hid behind his pugna­cious friend when trou­ble loomed.

There are many oth­er such yarns, I’m sure, but one I’ve just learned of shows us a much more pas­sive-aggres­sive side of Papa H. As the John F. Kennedy Pres­i­den­tial Library blog informs us, Hem­ing­way once sent F. Scott Fitzger­ald a type­script of A Farewell to Arms. Fitzger­ald sent back ten pages of edits and com­ments, sign­ing off with “A beau­ti­ful book it is!” You can see Hemingway’s first reac­tion above (signed EH). In lat­er drafts, it seems, he took some of Fitzgerald’s advice to heart.

via @matthiasrascher

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

F. Scott Fitzger­ald in Drag (1916)

James Joyce in Paris: “Deal With Him, Hem­ing­way!”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low  him @jdmagness

Brook­lynites, be apprised: Big Sur Brook­lyn Bridge, Williams­burg’s week-long cel­e­bra­tion of all things Hen­ry Miller, began yes­ter­day and will run until May 19th. If you can’t make it out there, I sug­gest you instead sit down to watch The World of Hen­ry Miller: Reflec­tions on Writ­ing (part two, part three, part four). Shot in the late six­ties by the doc­u­men­tar­i­an Robert Sny­der, oth­er­wise known for his award-win­ning films on Michelan­ge­lo and the world of insects, the film fol­lows Miller, enter­ing his final decade, as he retraces his steps through the lit­er­ary places he’s known, and has rem­i­nis­cence-inten­sive con­ver­sa­tions with the lit­er­ary peo­ple he’s known, reflect­ing all the while on how both shaped his writ­ing.

Alexan­der Nazaryan’s New York­er post, “Hen­ry Miller, Brook­lyn Hater,” writ­ten for the occa­sion of Big Sur Brook­lyn Bridge, goes into some detail about the Trop­ic of Can­cer author’s loathing for his birth­place. Though he would ulti­mate­ly find a kind of peace in Big Sur, only on the move in the thirties—especially as an expa­tri­ate in France, where he worked for the Chica­go Tri­bune’s Paris edi­tion, and Greece, where he stayed with British nov­el­ist Lawrence Durrell—did his writ­ing take its true shape. Miller him­self tells it that way in Reflec­tions on Writ­ing, to friends like Dur­rell, famed diarist Anaïs Nin, and Lawrence Clark Pow­ell, the UCLA librar­i­an Miller thought “rep­re­sen­ta­tive of all that is best in the Amer­i­can tra­di­tion.” Though Sny­der also includes footage of Miller read­ing his work aloud, you can see a bit more in the clip of a Black Spring read­ing just above, and hear half an hour more of the book here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Tom Schiller’s 1975 Jour­ney Through Hen­ry Miller’s Bath­room (NSFW)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.