Captain of the Translators

PWTalks with Edith Grossman

by Adriana Lopez -- Publishers Weekly, 7/25/2005

Mayra Montero's Captain of the Sleepers (see review, p. 42) may at first seem an unlikely project for someone who gets the first call from Gabriel García Márquez, and whose Quixote recently took its place among major versions of the novel. Edith Grossman spoke to us about Montero's erotica, Gabo's guayaberas, and being thought of as a traitor.

You've translated all her novels. Why read Mayra Montero?

If you don't read great fiction, then I feel sympathy for you. She's a bit like Graham Green with his entertainments. She creates a sense of a moral universe. No matter what the characters do there's a cosmic morality that's being betrayed or adhered to.

Is it a challenge to translate erotic writing?

I kid Mayra that smoke comes out of my computer or that my office gets steamed up. But translating erotica isn't different from translating anything else. It's just finding equivalent language that doesn't embarrass me—I mean that does justice to the original. Mayra writes erotic literature that's funny; it's what I think saves any erotica from being pornographic. And there's eroticism in everything she writes. There's not the erotica mind or the novel mind: one sensibility and sexuality comes through in both of them.

Have you ever hung out with García Márquez?

Yes, and he calls me Edit [pronounced AY-deet]. Like most Spanish speakers he doesn't do the th at the end of my name. He's a casual man, never in a shirt and tie, usually in a guayabera. Once I get over the amazement of being in the same room with one of the greatest living writers, I find him lovely and charming and very funny. I have a wonderful time. And he's not pompous, even though every time I see him, still, I want to run up and ask for his autograph.

What was most surprising comment you've gotten on a translation?

There was once this reviewer who wrote about The General and His Labyrinth. He said I made Simón Bolívar sound like a cop from the Bronx. He thought he was too rough. So I called García Márquez and told him and he said "That's perfect! That's exactly how he spoke to his men. He was very foul mouthed... but not to the ladies."

There's an Italian cliché, Traduttore, traditore; Translator, traitor. Any comment?

Well I don't think it's true. If it was, I wouldn't do the work.