February 3, 2012 – Rebecca L. Walkowitz (Rutgers University) – “Where is Summertime?”

Notice of field related talk – Friday Forum:

Friday, February 3, 2012
4:00 PM, Room 4406

 Rebecca L. Walkowitz

Rutgers University

Where is Summertime?

In a global novel – a novel that aspires to planetary circulation, distributes its plot across distant time zones, and calculates the relationship among actions at a transcontinental scale – it is never the same season everywhere. By asking us to think about the global in this way, J.M. Coetzee’s fictional memoir, Summertime draws our attention to the local, regional, continental, and transcontinental histories of the state. This paper associates Summertime with a new genre of world literature: novels that do not simply appear in translation but have been written for translation from the start. These texts engage formally, thematically, and sometimes typographically in the theory and practice of translation. Born-translated novels ask us to imagine new strategies of reading and new approaches to literary and political collectivity. Coetzee’s work solicits what I call “close reading at a distance.”

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