Nabokov’s 'dark dog nipples'

As I’ve been commenting on the role of editors and, to a lesser extent, translators, I was reminded of an anecdote I read many years ago, concerning the translation of one of Vladimir Nabokov’s novels by his son Dmitri. Describing a railway train, the original text, as I recall, referred to ‘a row of dark dog nipples’ on the roofs of the carriages. Dmitri, rather naively, initially offered the translation ‘ventilators’. This was knocked back by the famous father: ‘there are no ventilators on my train’.

‘And another thing…’

I need to try to stop doing this, but I can’t help being irritated by the failure of editors to intervene when a phrase in a text is glaringly wrong. We writers make mistakes occasionally and overlook things: one of the reasons is that the literary industry encourages excess (‘…we need at least 350 pages to make it economic…’) and too seldom pays attention to wordcraft.

I recently bought, too hurriedly, a copy of Name, a short novel by Constance Debré, endorsed on the cover, unfortunately, by Olivia Laing and Colm Tóibín among others. I made it as far as page 35, where I read the narrator’s comment about the bourgeoisie, described as ‘an infinitely large sample of the population’. This isn’t me being picky: it’s sloppy at best.

I don’t understand how a serious writer can describe a sample as infinitely large, but if they do, how a translator can fail to draw attention to it, or a publisher’s editor (or other reader) can overlook it. I can’t read any further, the book goes to a charity shop. Sigh. Rant over.

…then two come along at once

I have two pieces just published:

‘The name’ in The Leafline Magazine 

‘The library of empty books’ in coastlines review.

And a special shout-out for natalye childress, editor of coastlines review, which she sub-titles ‘a journal of documentary poetics’. She has produced a remarkable and fascinating first edition.