We have an island of tolerable weather here, so I’m going to give you all a slate of book reviews and rush off to complete other things.
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In the McLuhanian read, an adaptation is just the old medium being placed in the new medium wholesale. To an extent, this is true: all adaptations are going to have baggage from their original version. The number of people who declared that they would leave the theater if the sound effects of Wolverine’s claws in the first X-Men movie didn’t match the “snikt” noise used in the comics was mind boggling. Of course, that was stupid. Because “snikt” is a nonsense word and English orthography isn’t 1:1 – if you don’t believe me, just google “ghoti.”
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In short, I have discussed identity as something inscribed upon a person, but the nature of that inscription has been left somewhat blank. That’s primarily due to the complicated nature of identity: people are free to behave as they will, but what we will is somewhat pre-determined. This isn’t to say that we aren’t free to choose things, but that our identity makes it more likely that we will choose different things.
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Headley’s Beowulf is one Beowulf among many, and in many ways, it’s a translator’s translation, a translation not only of the Old English text but of many other English-language translations. And that makes it not only good, but interesting.
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Here’s why: due to a family tradition of just fucking impeccable timing, I recently put a cap on two projects, both of which took an inordinately long time. One is a still-pretty-secret translation project, alluded to elsewhere, which consumed my every free hour for eighteen months, as well as much of my brain power the rest of the time. The other is ten years in the making: a novella, entitled The Horn, the Pencil, and the Ace of Diamonds, forthcoming from us. Is that tacky? Yes. But I promise I’m going somewhere this.
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