{"id":3878,"date":"2020-07-07T09:27:07","date_gmt":"2020-07-07T13:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/?p=3878"},"modified":"2020-07-07T15:40:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T19:40:00","slug":"impostures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/?p=3878","title":{"rendered":"Impostures"},"content":{"rendered":"

An astonishing book has fallen into my hands and into my life: Michael Cooperson’s Impostures by al-Ḥarĩrĩ: Fifty Rogue’s Tales Translated Fifty Ways<\/b><\/a>. It’s worth recording how that ‘fallen’ transpired: first, a blog post by Victor Mair at Language Log<\/a> (which often delights, often mystifies), which pointed to a Wall Street Journal review by Sam Sacks<\/a> (June 27) and provoked an Amazon order. One of the key hooks in Sacks’ review was reference to maqamat<\/i>, glossed as ‘improvization’ and so directly parallel to a musical form I’m well acquainted with and always seeking broader understanding of<\/a>. There’s also a clear link to my explorations of Oulipo (and OuXpos of various sorts) that are themselves a bit more remotely tied to my wanderings in Benjaminia<\/a>, thus linking several threads of the last 6+ months of reading and thinking. Just what the resulting tissu<\/i> or macramé amounts to, or might lead to next, is less than clear at the moment, but it surely harks back to Douglas Hofstadter’s Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise Of The Music Of Language<\/b><\/a>, and to the grand problems of translation \/übersetzung, ‘over-setting’\/, and thence to ruminations on Culture and the deep complexities of understanding and en- and de-coding. I’m a wanderer in these forests, always open to new delights. And rogue threads are forever finding their way into the macramé, viz. Walt Whitman and Bob Dylan “I contain multitudes”<\/a>. These are all two-bit epiphanies, bits of insight rather than pointers to grand revelations. And mostly probably intransitive, for my own amusement and edification and pleasure. Reason enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An astonishing book has fallen into my hands and into my life: Michael Cooperson’s Impostures by al-Ḥarĩrĩ: Fifty Rogue’s Tales Translated Fifty Ways. It’s worth recording how that ‘fallen’ transpired: first, a blog post by Victor Mair at Language Log (which often delights, often mystifies), which pointed to a Wall Street Journal review by Sam […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,9,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biblio","category-language","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3878"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3886,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3878\/revisions\/3886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}