David M. Smith

Literary translator, Norwegian to English.

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

Maybe someday I'll pull a Walter Benjamin and write a translator's preface that makes no reference whatsoever to the work I've just translated

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

Needless to say that is not what the book is called in Norwegian

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

Google’s AI overview has the Norwegian title as “The Mystery of the Valley Death.”

[SwR @SouthwestReview]

“Knausgaard speculated that, had Lund ‘written in English, he would have been on the level of Thomas Pynchon or whoever. He’s that good.’”

@LOLGluckstadt on THE MYSTERY OF WHAT BEFELL IN THE DITCH by Thure Erik Lund (tr. @smithigans_wake) (@andothertweets)https://t.co/knIFQMgqoZ

[jon repetti @pourfairelevide]

Seeing a lot of deeply condescending “content” recently that’s like “Flannery O’Connor is Dostoyevsky for girls!”

But what if Dostoyevsky is also Dostoyevsky for girls and O’Connor is also O’Connor for boys? What if we all grew up a little bit?

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

Lund’s treatment of the same theme is stranger, more expansive

[Kamran Javadizadeh @kjavadizadeh]

Finally reading Stoner and yes ok I get it

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

I had the occasion to expand a bit on the use of dialect in my Lund translation (thanks @krasznadorkai for the excellent question)

[Boboblomov @krasznadorkai]

@smithigans_wake curious - if I were reading Lund in Norwegian, would the twangy Americanized accent come through? Or is he using some Norwegian version of such that simply translates best as that?

Does that make sense? Been curious feels odd for him to use it for rural nords

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

@krasznadorkai because you risk domesticating the text, but that orality is so central to the book’s linguistic landscape that I decided the risk was worth it. Lund encouraged me to use whatever dialect as long as I imparted a certain musical quality to the sentences. I can say I did my best!

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

@krasznadorkai his jargony, intellectual written register and the dialectal, oral register. And I find that they do clash as well in the original.

I happen to come from Georgia and Southern US English is the one dialect I feel I can plausibly recreate. It’s a difficult line to straddle…

[Valerie Stivers @valerie_reads]

"Throughout 'Ditch,' Lund writes restlessly in pursuit of linguistic invention, the kind that Anglo fiction seems to have largely abandoned." @gustophagus for @unherd.

This reminds me of how much our vocabularies are shrinking. I have a nerdishly literary speaking register, often mispronounced, too, because words I've only heard in books come to me in casual conversation. (@KlassicalKat_88). I also spent my childhood trying to memorize dictionary words or "SAT" words as if this were a route to a successful adult life.

My teenagers, who don't read and truly have perhaps half my vocabulary routinely yell at me for using words "no one knows!!!!" The Globo-culture Lund reviles, indeed.

https://t.co/SPgKpLIXtD

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

@RiseUpReader quiet desperation

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

from "Armand V. Footnotes to an Unexcavated Novel" by Dag Solstad (tr. Steven T. Murray)

[Alec MacGillis @AlecMacGillis]

"The following is hard for people to hear, especially those in the arts, but here goes. You very likely have nothing additive to say about politics. Most opinions are correct but banal, or distinctive but wrong--while quite a few are both banal and wrong." https://t.co/d81QXFOPKZ

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

@PersonalRecords I KNOW

[Michael Standaert @mstandaert]

Reading this in the evenings the past couple days. Striking that it was originally published in 1999, but still feels pretty fresh https://t.co/gK6dsfbMw3

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

This, and much else, is explained in my afterword. Sincerely, "they" (a.k.a. the translator)

[Christian TeBordo @xtebordo]

usually i'm shitposting when i make fun of brodernists, but i won't even consider reading 'the mystery of what befell in the ditch' unless one of them can explain where the direct object went, because i worry they didn't notice it was missing in the first place.

[And Other Stories @andothertweets]

We were thrilled to see David M. Smith’s (@smithigans_wake) translation of Thure Erik Lund’s THE MYSTERY OF WHAT BEFELL IN THE DITCH reviewed by Sukhdev Sandhu in the @guardian at the weekend.

‘A universal story of modernity and its discontents’

https://t.co/4QwNiMU0Cx

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

My ALTA49 haul. Thanks @Powells, @motherfoucaults, Word Virus and Annie Bloom’s Books—everyone check them out if you’re in Portland!

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

Every. Damn. Year. 🥲

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

Missing all my friends from ALTA already 😢

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

Amen! "[A] universal story of modernity and its discontents ... prescient about the 'language forms' that digital capitalism requires – the data and information, the 'demonic and inhuman' scientism, the fear of allegory." https://t.co/youmQdWoCw

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

@realMattKParker @andothertweets @nordicnovellas 🫡

[David M. Smith @smithigans_wake]

Knausgård said it couldn't be translated. Somebody had to try, anyway! My translation of Thure Erik Lund’s sprawling, unholy mess of a novel is upon us. Thanks to Thure Erik Lund, NORLA, @andothertweets, @nordicnovellas and so many others for paving the way.