Finding and Reading International Literature

Back in the mid-nineties, my favorite magazine at the time—The Comics Journal—introduced a new column called "Eurocomics For Dummies". Each month, this column highlighted a different great European comic, and for the first few months I read it with enthusiasm. Then I realized that most of these comics had never been translated into English and most likely would never get translated into English. In other words, the column was doing everything it could to work me up into a frenzy over books I wouldn't ever be able to read without learning another language (French for the most part), an elaborate, journalistic cock-tease, the literary equivalent of a girl who keeps leading you on without letting you get anywhere. And as with that sort of girl, the only real solution to my frustration was to part ways, and I stopped reading the column.

Now, consider the article about Rodrigo Fresán's novel Mantra in the latest issue of The Quarterly Conversation. After reading the article, I really want to read this book but it's only available in Spanish. So how am I to experience its strange world of luchadores and terrorists in modern day Mexico City? Wait, I remember now, I can read Spanish! Alright, so sign me up, let me at it. Then in my excitement I discover that the book isn't available in the US. Okay, that isn't quite true; according to Amazon I can get a used edition for the low, low price of $41.50. Which is a bit more than I'm willing to spend.

This makes me wonder. What is the point of writing an article about a book in an American magazine that's available in a language most Americans can't read and that's not even available in America for those who can? Sure, you might say, how are we supposed to drum up enough interest in these books to bring them to America in the first place without articles like these? Well, okay, but as with Eurocomics for Beginners, most of the time these books will still never get translated and the articles just end up being big cock-teases. For a writer or a magazine editor I can understand the appeal of having articles about books from foreign lands that aren't available here, it's exotic and cool and makes your publication seem cosmopolitan and gives people a glimpse at a different publishing world. And it's nice to know that in other countries publishers pay their writers to go to foreign countries and write, as happened with Argentinian Fresán and six other Latin American writers who were sent around the world to write books about random foreign cities, resulting in Mantra among other works. But as a reader it's frustrating to be turned onto a book you can't read even if you want to. I mean, WTF Quarterly Conversation?

Maybe in the case of Mantra I can do something. I've started a petition. Go sign it. If you're reading this and you're in the publishing industry, bring Mantra to the US. If you're reading this and you have a copy of Mantra, send it to me. (Email for my address.) Please.