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March 18, 2009

Comments

Thomas

The Greek title is "Another Man", which is not that interesting. "Man", by the way, here means "person" or "human" (anthropos), and not a male.

Lauren

I love comparing international covers. I was just in London and noticed how different their covers are from ours here in America. Sometimes, they have the ability to completely transform the book.

Paul Lamb

Hey, what's up with the 1st person post?

Carl

Mark, I too love the drawing on the paperback. It perfectly and at an instance captures the occassional confidence (the Count cover, the wearing of a suit) belied by the more throrough lack of confidence (the short tie, the frumpled jacket bottom, the overall style of the drawing). I would instantly understand and identify with that figure seeing this on a shelf.

MJ

Happy to see all of this coming to you, after enjoying your blog for so long.

TEV

Hey, thanks Thomas. Not very inspiring, I agree.

And Paul, we like to mix it up here at TEV, but I have always used first person on personal posts and/or posts about Harry.

Thanks, everyone for the kind comments!

Neil S.

The US paperback cover is sorta reminiscent of that Sleeveface meme that's been going around.

The Norwegian one rocks the best, though.

frank publisher

Love the paperback drawing too, instantly attracts me as a user due to its subtleties and style...the UK commercial one is decent enough though. On a book site I use they've got the picture as the greek cover but in English - you should have a word with them to change it because it looks a bit rubbish there! You can find the link here - bookarmy Great book though, loved it!

vasilis

The greek title means "Another man", but with a slightly different connotation than in english. It could be translated "One Other Man" as in "A Different/Strange/Peculiar Man"
It's not that uninspiring Mark, the hidden meaning is lost in translation from Greek to English.

Anyway, congratulations on your greek translation...i'll rush to buy it of course.

mark haskell smith

Love those guys at FONT in Norway. They produce beautiful books and have excellent taste in comic novels.

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TEV DEFINED


  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

SECOND LOOK

  • The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

    Bs

    Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
  • The Rider by Tim Krabbe

    Rider_4

    Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."