The Story of My Teeth (20 page)

Finally, I should say that from the initial installments read by the workers in the factory to this final version of the book in English, many things have changed. In fact, the Spanish book is also different from the English one—as has been the case with my previous books, which I revise and rewrite so thoroughly in English that I prefer to conceive of them as versions rather than translations. This English edition, moreover, includes an extra “chapbook” written entirely by my translator, Christina MacSweeney. Her Chronologic is a
map, an index, and a glossary for the book, which both destabilizes the obsolete dictum of the translator’s invisibility and suggests a new way of engaging with translation; one that neither relies on bringing the writer closer to the reader—by simplifying and glossing the translated text—nor on bringing the reader closer to the writer—by means of rendering the text into a kind of “foreign English.” This book began as a collaboration, and I like to think of it as an ongoing one, where every new layer modifies the entire content completely.

Credits

The Story of My Teeth
contains references to many texts, and in most cases these are creatively interpreted, paraphrased, or have been altered slightly through multiple translations. Pg. 16: Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus quote from
The Twelve Caesars,
translated by Robert Graves, Penguin Books, 1957. Pg. 22: Jean Baudrillard quote from
America,
translated by Chris Turner, Verso, 1989. Pg. 27: Cervantes. Pg. 45: Michel Foucault quote from “The Lives of Infamous Men” in
Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume 3,
translated by Robert Hurley, The New Press, 2001. Pg. 52: Michel de Montaigne quote from “Of Experience.” Pg. 55: Charles Lamb quote from
The Life, Letters and Writings of Charles Lamb Volume II,
Pg. 56: G. K. Chesterton quote from “The Appetite of Earth” in
Alarms and Discursions,
Dodd, Mead and Company, 1911. Pg. 71: Marcel Proust quote from
Remembrance of Things Past: Swann’s Way,
translated by C. K. Scott Montcrieff, Henry Bolt, 1922. Pg. 87: Danill Kharms quote based on excerpt from
Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms,
Ardis Publishers, 2007. Pg. 91: Based on a line from Shakespeare’s
Much Ado About Nothing.
Pg. 113: Based on sayings by Vince Lombardi, Cervantes, and unattributed Latin, Chinese, and Spanish proverbs. Pg. 134–135: Walter Benjamin quote based on excerpt from “Theses on the Philosophy of History” in
Illuminations,
Schocken Books, 1968.

About the Translator

CHRISTINA MACSWEENEY
has an
MA
in literary translation from the University of East Anglia and specializes in Latin American fiction. Her translations have previously appeared in a variety of online sites and literary magazines. She has also translated Valeria Luiselli’s novel,
Faces in the Crowd
, and essay collection,
Sidewalks
.

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Allan Kornblum, 1949–2014

Vision is about looking at the world and seeing not what it is, but what it could be. Allan Kornblum’s vision and leadership created Coffee House Press. To celebrate his legacy, every book we publish in 2015 will be in his memory.