Hadn't read the "be afraid" profile of Scott Moyers yesterday when I took an audience seat at the "Editors' Buzz Panel," an event that capped a series of seminars sponsored by the office of French Cultural Services, the German Book Office, and the French-American Foundation.
The event was chaired by Bookforum editor Eric Banks, who asked French, German and American editors and publishers to talk about a forthcoming title that they were excited to be publishing--and another that they wished that they were.
But before Banks, looking very dapper in a nicely-fitted canary shirt and giant Swifty Lazar glasses, turned things over to the seven assembled editors and publishers, he asked Moyers--a former Penguin Press editor turned newly-installed rainmaker at Wylie--to talk about how one goes about publishing fiction in translation "successfully."
Moyers, who has the air of a wunderkind who has entered his prime, soon made it clear why New York is nervous about his going all Jackular, adroitly handling both audience expectations (the fiction-in-translation faithful) and reality (pretty bleak).
He noted that a good translation allows U.S. publishers to "elide" the fact that a book was not written English, but, with admirable frankness, called the audience for the usual fare in translation a "gilded ghetto."
He talked about taking stock of one's "armament" when looking to develop an author--anyone or anything that can help build audience slowly, while waiting for that author's big book. He discussed what happened when such a book arrived on his desk, in the form of Sebald's Austerlitz, and how he sought to bring all the elements of publication together with "concussive force."
One must wait a long time for such books, though, and Moyers further noted that the U.S. has been "tragically sundered from the rest of the world" in the last few years (making potential audiences for translation even smaller). Translation nevertheless still has a role in "bringing the news" from far-flung corners.
He advised editors and publishers to "know who your friends are" when thinking about where to start with a book, including developing relationships with translators. Once production begins, "connect with people in the middle": journalists and others who sit between the book and the market. He cautioned editors to "husband your authority" carefully---i.e., don't cry wolf about books that really don't have more than niche potential--and then "bring down the thunder" when something like Austerlitz comes your way.
Moyers ended by saying that "the world is getting, in a way, more monolingual"--he was talking about the decline in U.S. foreign language education, but also, I thought, about English language writing from India and elsewhere, and English-language reliance in places like France and Germany.
As the editors presented their books, the atmosphere in the room was one of an important mission with real potential that faced serious obstacles. It had been expertly husbanded, particularly since the room was filled with people who had heard it all before in one form or another.
So when Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens of Editions P.O.L. talked about the Goncourt-nominated Tom est mort by Marie Darrieussecq; and Houghton's Anjali Singh presented a Romanian novel called White King, with rights sold in 22 countries; and Jo Lendle from DuMont Buchverlag discussed developing author Martin Kluger, there was palpable excitement, since the stakes were very clear.
