Michael Orthofer: commitment

Transcript context

…Yes. Why the appeal of foreign-language fiction to you? What catches you there? Well, in part it also came about — I started the site in 1999. It’s been around a long time. And one of the reasons I started it was because I saw how many people were posting book reviews online. And suddenly you had the possibility of getting book reviews not just from your local paper or from the national magazines but from anywhere in the world. And one of the things that struck me — and this also partly has to do with the timing in American publishing and American book reviewing — is that there was very little coverage of especially translated fiction, which would be much more popular, say, in the 1970s. Suddenly we had reached a real low point, and so I made a conscious effort also to move in that direction. But aside from that, I also find foreign fiction more interesting in a way. It’s not that I find foreign fiction more interesting than American or British fiction. But just — I think it’s better to read from everywhere, from all over the place, rather than one specific locale. What’s your theory of America? Where have we gone wrong? You say correctly there was more interest in foreign fiction in the 1970s, right? We’ve moved away from that. Why has that happened? What’s the institutional failure behind that? You could say lack of someone like you may be part of it, but you’re here now. It’s still the case. A novel comes out in American English, and they try to hide the fact that it was translated, quite often. I’m sure you’ve seen this, or maybe not seen it.…

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