Picking Up a Project, Ten Years Later

In the spring of 1996, I was a disillusioned PhD student who decided to use the MLS I had earned three years earlier and get on with life. I began my first professional position in academic libraries in 1997 but was still occasionally toying with the idea of trying to finish the PhD in comparative literature.

The American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) conference slated for 1998 had a number of attractive attributes: it was being held in Austin, Texas; it was being held jointly with the African Literature Association; and the ACLA had adopted a seminar approach for its conference. Papers were to be arranged in larger groups, and a cohort of scholars would meet together several times instead of just having one-shot panels. My favorite professor at Indiana, Eugene Eoyang, had been one of the forces behind this (at least at the time) novel approach.

I resurrected one of the projects I had been most proud of, sent off the proposal, and was thrilled when it was accepted. The project, entitled “Tangled Tango: The Challenges of Translating Culture,” is an examination of the translation of Manuel Puig’s Boquitas pintadas done by Suzanne Jill Levine. It is a critique of the choices she made in translating – or transforming or shattering and reforming – the cultural references in her version, Heartbreak Tango. (I have posted the paper in the WSU Research Exchange if you're curious, http://hdl.handle.net/2376/2193).

My paper received a mixed reception at the conference. Several senior scholars in attendance were extremely defensive of Levine, and one in particular was trying to be nice as she spoke to me after the panel concluded, but I could see she was clearly taken aback and became extra-condescending when, after handing me one of her cards, I responded in kind, giving her one of the business cards that showed my faculty status (albeit as a librarian), elevating myself from her assumption that I was merely a misguided graduate student.

To be really honest, my pursuit of the PhD was long dead at that point, and I had moved on in a number of ways, but I was 29 years old and had spent a number years on target to finish the PhD before I turned 30. This conference was kind of a last gasp, one last attempt to convince myself I had made the right choice in turning away from literature. A successful experience might have changed everything for me. But I’m glad things have turned out the way they have. While living and working in Massachusetts, I was involved in the Northeast MLA, delivering a paper on Rosario Ferre in Hartford in 2000 and moderating a panel on the Dogma film movement in Toronto in 2001. Since moving to Washington, I have been able to pursue a few more research projects related to literary studies and fiction while prospering in this career I truly enjoy.

Recently, I found myself revisiting some issues related to translation, and out of curiosity began poking around to see if anyone had done anything related to translation and cultural references since my burnout.

Oh. My. Well. I knew it was a good topic, damnit. I have a lot of reading to do, if I so choose.

Interestingly, I’ve turned up a few recent articles raking Levine over some very hot coals, although different ones than I stoked. Basically, Levine has been attacked in some quarters for not being a feminist, or at least not their kind of feminist, which makes me tired, and makes me glad my life in the academy is not caught up in those sorts of petty battles (emphasis on those, ahem), and which puts me in the odd position of feeling sorry for someone who has seriously bugged me for years.

(I really enjoyed one of the essays that goes beyond the feminist angle, though. Andreea Modrea's article uncovered and critiqued Levine’s overabundance of puns, calculating a pattern of usage way above and beyond the original work by Guillermo Cabrera Infante. If you know GCI, you know that is saying a lot. A lot. A whole lot.)

What got me thinking about all of this enough to bother writing it down is that I just ran across a snarky reference to Levine that had been published in 1993. It was just a throw-away line in an intro to an article on a different topic, but I feel mildly vindicated that I wasn’t totally alone in the wilderness in 1998, and mildly annoyed that I had missed finding it back then. Although given that the source of the comment is Douglas Robinson, whose 1991 work The Translator’s Turn was less-than-glowingly reviewed by two giants in translation studies, Rainer Schulte and Andre Lefevre, it wouldn’t have mattered. Citing him wouldn’t have saved me that day with that crowd.

This experience really upset me at the time, more than I would ever admit, and remained firmly stuck in my craw as a reminder of the reasons I am glad I’m not a literature professor. When I first began re-exploring the topic recently, I was struck by some nostalgia and regret, but I think I’m over it now.