Interview: Olga Zilberbourg

On Reading Translation, The Difference between Writing Fiction and Criticism, and Who We Need to be Reading Now

It has been far too long since the last update to The Isthmus! I am happy to bring you a long-overdue interview with fiction writer and critic, Olga Zilberbourg. Among many other things, Olga is the author of Like Water and Other Stories and co-editor, along with Yelena Furman, of the wonderfully critical blog Punctured Lines.

I've been reading Nabokov's collection, Poems and Problems, and in that book, he argues that writing in one's native language allows access to unresolved childhood issues that form the background hum of our consciousness, and, for that reason, translation can never quite get a poem right. What are your thoughts on translation?

Nabokov was a great teaser, wasn't he? I'm always happy to argue with him. What does it even mean to "get a poem right"? I find the words "right" or "good" completely meaningless when it comes to translation -- or any art. A translator's work is her own -- a product of her own unresolved childhood trauma, perhaps. But I don't fully buy into the language of childhood trauma either. A translator's imagination, as much as a writer's, is first and foremost a function of her reading list. Perhaps traumas are factored into it, but in what relation -- we need social scientists to calculate. I love reading translators. I learn a great deal from them.

He was a great teaser! Perhaps if we look at the original work as presenting a spectrum of possibilities, including translations, then Nabokov's point kind of dissolves. I like the point you make here about the translator's work and her reading list. What do you mean here? I have been thinking a lot lately about just how influential the media we engage informs us in really profound ways. Do you mean something along these lines?

Yes, for sure. The media we engage in and simply all the languages we consume. For instance, I’ve been  following the work of translator Shelley Fairweather-Vega who translates from Russian and Uzbek. She works with many Central Asian authors, and in the past, in the Soviet era and later, many of the Central Asian authors came to English via Russian translations. Shelley makes a great case for why that's a limitation and why we need translators who work directly with Central Asian languages. I loved the collection Amanat: Women's Writing from Kazakhstan that came out last year and that Shelley co-edited. She translated stories from Russian while her translation partner for this book, Zaure Batayeva, worked from Kazakh. It's fascinating to look at the shapes of the stories that were written in two different languages, and to think about what they share in common and what the differences might be.

Unfortunately I am "trapped in the fields and low hills of English" as David Berman said, but music has done this for me in many ways. I remember when Sublime Frequencies started to release all of this fantastic international music that really opened up different sounds and sonic textures I had never been exposed to before. I could only imagine what is out there in terms of literature. I don't know if there is a comparison here worth exploring, but being limited to English has me wondering what I am missing. I'm heartened by your earlier statement of how you've learned from translations and not getting too hung up on "right" readings. There seems to be something of a broader hope here about engaging world literature--in translation--as a way to emphasize our commonalities. Given all your labor with Punctured Lines, you do seem hopeful that art can still do something in the world. Is this true?

I'm looking up Sublime Frequencies over here!

Like Mulder in X-Files, I want to believe (that art does stuff). I love art of the revolutionaries and revolutionary art, writing that breaks boundaries, even though it might be incomprehensible to me -- I have never successfully gotten through more than 50 pages of Ulysses, for instance, but I love that it's out there for me to try again. What I know: art is. Imagination exists; it seems to be a function of our human bodies as much as breathing and sleeping. Literature allows me access to other people's imaginary worlds. It's a kind of sight. I'm lost without it.

Beautifully said! I am with you Ulysses as well. I really love art that breaks boundaries and art produced under incredible political/social pressure, like samizdat, but I wonder how much of the former is possible now? In the first half of the 20th century, there were so many boundaries and it was such an exciting time to be an artist--are there any boundaries left to break? As I am saying this, I am realizing how much of this may be coming from my own position and my own lack of knowing what is being done in places besides the U.S. and W. Europe.

As for boundaries to break, I think there are plenty. Here in the US the majority of the writing and publishing world seems to be as enraptured with the plot as ever, and with the idea that writing can give the readers the illusion of "being there." I think familiar plots are like sugar for the mind -- they give us pleasure that we particularly crave in the times of high stress. (I go to romance novels, particularly feminist science fiction romance.) It's probably related to that old illusion that life has meaning. But say, a writer begins a novel as a coming of age tale, then veers off into a heist narrative, and then concludes with an immigration drama -- then nobody knows what to do with a book like that, with a story that doesn't add up, and we're lucky if a brave independent press will take it up. I go to the independent and university presses for some of the most innovative -- and politically charged -- content.

Would you say that the stories in Like Water & Other Stories consciously tries to push narrative boundaries in this way? Also I think that English-language readers would push many of these boundaries simply by reading literature in translation and having a semblance of how other languages structure the world. What was behind your decision to make Like Water your first English-language collection?

I agree that reading literature in translation is a great boundary to push for English-language readers. Books coming from different languages and ways of thinking can really expand our notions of narrative expectations and sources of pleasure in literature. I think book groups can be very useful here too -- it's always better to have companionship with potentially challenging material!

Re: LIKE WATER, it's funny, as a critic, I love talking about literature that pushes boundaries, but as a writer, I feel like I'd be paralyzed if I set out to write something that intentionally pushes boundaries. I can devise a narrative experiment and then get hung up after a day's work, because I suddenly lose confidence in the work. I've been wondering whether this is one way in which I have been affected by my gender conditioning. (Women rise to confidence in different ways that other-gendered people, I believe). I can't turn off self-doubt, I can only evade it. I evade it by saying to myself, Well, let's have fun today. Let's see what I can throw down on the page and what sticks.

So, for instance, I have quite a few "concept stories" in the book. I took a few ideas and turned them into little stories. They have no proper scenes per se, but I think they display a character and a way of thinking, an approach to the world. My intention for them is to amplify each other as a group, when a reader goes from one story to another thinking about the world of the implied author.

It's also easier for me to be experimental in my shortest stories than in the longer form. The novel draft that I've just finished is all very traditional scene-based writing. I am trying to sneak in a few things about it that might push some boundaries, but who knows how much of that will remain in the manuscript by the time it's published.

I want to return to this distinction between the writer and the critic, specifically how you approach experimentation as a critic vs. as a writer--this is incredibly interesting. I wonder, along with the conditionings of gender which certainly are in play here, is there something about the analytic mode of critique vs. being entertained or emotionally stimulated in some way. In other words, there is a mind/heart distinction that might be worth talking about. I think the best experimental literature also affects us emotionally, and isn't simply about the experimentation. I think of someone like John Hawkes who I admire and respect as a stylist and as someone that took novel conventions in a new direction, but I don't read him for any kind of cathartic, or emotional resonance. I guess my question is: can you talk a bit about your life as a writer and how it is different to write critically compared to writing narrative? Or, perhaps a better way of approaching this question is, biographically what came first? The criticism or the literary writing?

First, came a diary that I started at the age of nine. I’d tried starting diaries before, but couldn’t keep up because I had been under the impression that I had to write in a diary every single day. Once I gave myself the permission to write whenever I had time and desire, my diary project was off. I kept it up until I was seventeen and came to the US, at which point I decided that I didn’t have time for the diary because I had to be writing letters home. 

The funny thing with my diary, however, was that I very quickly discovered that I couldn’t be totally honest with it. I couldn’t trust it with my most intimate thoughts in part because of a superstition: if I write down my fears, I will make them come true. And the other part was because I had a little brother and a close friend as well as parents who wanted to see what was in my diary, so I was always conscious that whatever I was writing in the diary would be read by others. So very soon I was aware that I was modifying reality, altering it to suit my readership. I started to fictionalize without fully realizing what I was doing.

It’s a tricky habit. Criticism actually doesn’t come easy for me because to reflect on something you first have to be very clear about what it is that you’re reflecting on, and it’s often difficult for me to even achieve plot summary without rewriting the work entirely. I have to make an effort to stick to analyzing what’s actually on the page instead of in my head. 

I know what you mean about the aspect of writing that has an element of superstition to it. There is almost this intuition that writing is somehow incantatory–that what happens on the page may somehow be realized off the page. Also, I don’t know about you, but writing has a very dream-like element to it for me. When I write early in the morning, which is about the only time I have to write these days, what I write seems almost dreamlike to me later in the day. Even if it is critical writing. When I come to the work later in the day, I can’t figure out how I made the associations I did, or “where my head was at” when I wrote. Alright, I have a final question for you that seems more than appropriate given all your work with Punctured Lines: you’ve mentioned the Amanat collection, what other works/authors deserve a wider audience?

I’ll start with a writer who is totally outside of my specialty area, and whom I’ve been reading a lot of lately: Shin Kyung-sook, a South Korean writer. Several of her novels are available in the English translation, and I particularly enjoyed Please Look After Mom, translated by Chi-Young Kim. It has such an effortless quality to it, but then as a writer, I can’t fully grasp how exactly this book works its magic.

For the writing coming from the former Soviet Union, at the top of my list has been Klotsvog, by Margarita Khemlin, in Lisa Hayden’s translation. I’ve also been recommending people to follow translators and publishers that focus on translations. I’ll read anything by Lisa Hayden, Marian Scwartz, Shelley Fairweather-Vega, Katherine E. Young, Sasha Dugdale, Boris Dralyuk. Boris, Sasha, and Katherine are also poets, whose own collections are treasure chests of wonders. And since we’re on the subject of Punctured Lines, I will recommend short stories by my partner in creating and running the blog, Yelena Furman: she is funny and insightful. Yelena doesn’t have a fiction book out yet, but some of her stories are online, and worth seeking out!