An e-mail from Salman Rushdie, or, Electric Flesh: the translating begins...
So I just got an e-mail from Salman Rushdie that reads as follows:
Here's a blurb for Electric Flesh:
This is an astonishing piece of delirious, supercharged prose. It makes one think of Pynchon, of Joyce, of various kinds of Fear and Loathing. It's a short, intense burst of high linguistic voltage, and the translation is simply outstanding. There's nothing much like the zing and heat of ELECTRIC FLESH in these cautious, undercooked times.
It's a nice day, when you get an e-mail from Salman Rushdie (though, of course, I've not ever gotten to meet him, unlike Laila.)
We've also gotten lovely blurbs from Percival Everett and Tom Robbins and it has certainly made me realize that pace Mr. Orthofer and Peder Zane we need all the help we can get when it comes to publishing translations in the United States. These blurbs are basically what gives us our shot at breaking even on these books since we have to sell three times as many units as non-profits like Dalkey Archive—Chad Post was a happy man at the London Book Fair with a surprise NBCC win under his belt—and Archipelago.
Which leads me to this: we're having a devil of a time getting blurbs for another great French book, SuperHip JoliPunk by Camille de Toledo. And I suddenly just thought that, since I'm already using this blog to try to mooch a computer, why not also use it to gather suggestions for blurbers for this? Especially given that the blogosphere has made it pretty clear it wants to see more international writing published in the US. So if a book described as part Naomi Klein, part Hakim Bey, part Upski sounds appealing, check out this sample chapter and fire me and e-mail with ideas...