9.6 We Better Laugh About It: Álvaro Enrigue and Maia Gil’Adí

Álvaro Enrigue and critic Maia Gil’Adí begin their conversation considering translation as a living process, one that is internal to the novel form. Álvaro, author of the trippy You Dreamed of Empires, explains how the opening letter to his translator Natasha mirrors the letter to his editor, Teresa, in Spanish, and how both letters become part of the fiction. Fitting for a novel that crosses Nahua and Mayan, Moctezuma and Cortés, Mexican history and the glam rock band T. Rex. The English translation—which Álvaro calls the book of Natasha—is longer, filled with changes and additions and revisions, and so translation becomes “another life for the book.” From the living book to its contents, Maia asks how You Dreamed of Empires blends the gorgeous and the grotesque, slapstick humor and extreme violence, historical detail and mischievous metafictional departures. Álvaro links his work to Season 9’s theme of TECH by pointing out the novel’s longstanding use as a tool to laugh about the powerful, to tell them that what they’re saying is not true, and to articulate politics through contradiction and humor. After discussing the encounter of Moctezuma and Cortés (or really, of their translators, including a very magical bite of cactus) as the moment that changes everything in history, Álvaro makes a surprising historical swerve in his answer to this season’s signature question.

Mentioned in this episode:

Álvaro Enrigue, Sudden Death, You Dreamed of Empires, Now I Surrender
Nahua
Natasha Wimmer
Teresa Ariño, Anagrama
Sergio Pitol, Enrique Vila-Matas, Javier Marías, Roberto Bolaño
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote; Laurence Sterne; Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
Octavio Paz saying New Spain was a kingdom in One Earth, Four or Five Worlds: Reflections on Contemporary History, translated by Helen R. Lane.
Edward Said
Lèse-majesté
T. Rex, “Monolith”
Gonzalo Guerrero
The Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco
José Emilio Pacheco
Michel Foucault
Michelangelo
Saint Paul, Epistle to the Romans
Noam Chomsky
Tlaxcalas

Listen and Read:

Audio: We Better Laugh About It: Álvaro Enrigue and Maia Gil’Adí

Transcript: 9.6 We Better Laugh About It: Álvaro Enrigue and Maia Gil’Adí

11.2 Taking Apart a Metaphor: Dan Sinykin and Sarah Brouillette on the Literary Ecosystem – Novel Dialogue

Our second episode on “The Literary Ecosystem” features scholars of contemporary literary culture Dan Sinykin and Sarah Brouillette in conversation with host Aarthi Vadde. Like the good close readers we all are, we begin by thinking about how the metaphor of the “literary ecosystem” works. Sarah values the way it brings relationships between cultural institutions to the foreground but prefers the base-superstructure model of Marxian critique. Dan, too, moves away from “naturalizing” metaphors although he sees the ecosystem’s potential for pithily naming the interplay of literary production, circulation, and reception.From here the conversation ranges widely as we consider the economic and social forces shaping contemporary literature – be they the conglomeration of publishing houses (see Dan’s Big Fiction) or the impact of platform capitalism upon authorial labor (see Sarah’s Content Machinesand Aarthi’s We the Platform).  We acknowledge the hollowing out of institutions meant to cultivate appreciation for literature and ponder the viability of platforms like Substack for reconstituting a literary sphere. Finally, what would a discussion of the literary ecosystem be without addressing the elephant in the room: AI. We bracket the author scandals to address the supporting players under threat: the translators, the audiobook narrators, the humans who bring books to readers across languages and formats. Come for the literary sociology; stay for the inside scoop on “prompting” a dark romance novel.MentionsMarx – base-superstructure modelBruno Latour – actor-network theorySophie Bishop – Influencer CreepAndrew de Waard –  Derivative MediaPierre Bourdieu – The Rules of Art Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

1. 11.2 Taking Apart a Metaphor: Dan Sinykin and Sarah Brouillette on the Literary Ecosystem 31:19
2. 11.1 Indie Presses and the Literary Ecosystem: Meg Reid and Will Evans 38:10
3. 10.5 The Novel as Instrument: Sinan Antoon and Michael Allan (MAT) 43:59
4. 10.4 Place Presents Itself To You in Fragments: Ivan Vladislavić and Jeanne-Marie Jackson (MAT) 39:55
5. 10.3 Just Slightly Outside the Circle: Peter Orner and Sarah Wasserman (EH) 37:55

Dewey, Amanda. Cover design. You Dreamed of Empires, Álvaro Enrigue, Riverhead Books, 2024. Front cover.