poet rather than time of translation
provides an interesting side-by-side
relationship, through their work or
lives, to Pushkin, the reigning deity
of Russian literature according to
Nabokov.
The third of the book’s intended
purposes is the easiest to achieve,
as Nabokov’s literary diversity is
not a topic of widespread debate.
Its second purpose is most difficult,
since the book contains translations
from several stages of Nabokov’s
own development as a translator,
from his early and ambitious ren-
derings of Pushkin’s short lyrics to
his post-1950s literal cribs, prepared
especially with his students in mind.
Nabokov’s evolving ideas about
the purpose of translation are well
reflected in the collection, begin-
ning with his idea that the pro-
cess should render a self-sufficient,
albeit incredibly faithful, English-
language poem, and progressing to
his eventual idea that crib-like literal
renderings could and should serve
only to access poems from unknown
languages. In this sense, the book
can more accurately be described
as a case study of a great, if con-
troversial, translator rather than a
workshop. The editors’ organization
of the collection by the period of the
The fact that Bayard documents his
borrowing so scrupulously means
comparison of Nabokov’s evolving
translation theory. For the contem-
porary translator, his cribs seem less
valuable for their literary merit than
their earlier counterparts—less gen-
uine, too considered.
The editors of this volume have
produced a companion website con-
taining Nabokov’s annotated and
marked transliterations of his later
Russian translations into the Roman
alphabet, another manifestation of
the idea of translation as access point
rather than self-sufficient poem.
Nabokov’s eventual position was as
polarizing in the 1950s as it is today,
but the quality of his early transla-
tions, his mostly trustworthy taste
regarding the work of the Russian
lyric poets, and his essays about
the process of translation—includ-
ing his poem “Pity the Elderly Gray
Translator”—make this collection
worthwhile.
David Shook
Oxford University
Miscellaneous
Pierre Bayard. Le plagiat par anticipa-
tion. Paris. Minuit. 2009. 154 pages.
\15. isbn 978-2-7073-2066-7
In his latest essay, Pierre Bayard puts
on display the provocative intelli-
gence, wit, and critical resourceful-
ness that characterize his previous
books. Those qualities have won
him a readership decidedly broader
than that of most academics and the-
oreticians of literature, and for that
he should be applauded. He bor-
rows the construct announced in his
title from the Ouvroir de Littérature
Potentielle (or “Oulipo”), a group
of literary experimentalists based in
Paris, founded in 1960 by Raymond
Queneau and François Le Lionnais.
that he cannot be accused of plagia-
rism—but that does not mean that
the Oulipo cannot be accused of
plagiarizing Bayard by anticipation.
If the latter were indeed the case, the
Oulipo would be in distinguished
company, for Bayard contends con-
vincingly in this study that Vol-
taire plagiarized Conan Doyle; that
Maupassant plagiarized Proust; that
Racine plagiarized Victor Hugo; and
that Fra Angelico cadged his “drip-
ping” technique from Jackson Pol-
lock. All of this is enough to make
one’s head spin, as Bayard asks us
to rethink the idea of influence from
top to bottom, arguing that literary
history must be read in both direc-
tions, that is, both retrospectively
and prospectively. The history of
events must be disintricated from lit-
erary history, he suggests; how else
can we explain the fact that certain
authors, from Sophocles to Laurence
Sterne, seem so contemporary to
us, having as it were assimilated
and reconfigured crucial insights in
Freud and Joyce, respectively?
More than any other critic of his
generation, Pierre Bayard delights
in what one might think of as “ear-
nest play.” His approach to litera-
ture is fundamentally ludic in char-
acter, but he plays an extremely
focused, oriented kind of game that
testifies to a deep seriousness of pur-
pose, one whose outcomes deserve
to be considered in high sobriety.
His writing is animated by a most
refreshing (and contagious) faith in
literature and its uses. What he seeks
most of all, I think, is to prompt his
reader to consider literature with a
new eye, to make us read otherwise,
unfettered by the conventions and
constraints that habitually condition
our reading. And if such a read-
ing should occasionally lead us into
July – August 2009 ı 75
 absurdity and aporia, Bayard trusts fact widely read, as Bradford also
r e v i e w

that we are clever enough to find confirms. His lifelong fascination

our way out again—if indeed “out”
is where we wish to be.
Warren Motte
University of Colorado
i n
with books and maps provided ref-
uge in what is now revealed to have
been a near-Dickensian childhood
characterized by “a catalogue of
violence, poverty and likely mari-
tal break-up . . . in a household

Richard Bradford. The Life of a Long-

Distance Writer: The Biography of [of] resigned acceptance of humili-
Alan Sillitoe. London. Peter Owen ation, despair, lassitude and pain.”
l i t e r a t u r e

(Dufour, distr.). 2008. 390 pages + 16 Military service in Malaysia showed

plates. $51.95. isbn 978-0-7206-1317-9
Like virtually all of the novelists
of the so-called “Angry Young
Men” generation, Alan Sillitoe
remains best known for his first
book, Saturday Night and Sunday
Morning (1957). Nevertheless, now
in his sixth decade as a professional
writer, he has been among the most
w o r l d
him the wider world; debilitating
illness there gave him opportunities
to develop further the autodidact’s
love of literature that had actually
begun far earlier than had been dis-
closed heretofore. Once recovered,
he became determined to write with
utter fidelity about the life of his
native working-class Nottingham, quixotic, magnetic, and unimprov-
long invisible in conventional lit- able” and “that Sillitoe can lay

prolific of his generation, with a
creative output that is remarkably
diverse (novels, short stories, plays,
poems, travel writing, essays, and
children’s literature) and singular
not only in its uncompromising por-
trayal of English working-class life
but in its psychological acumen and,
often, its comic artistry. Richard
Bradford’s authorized biography,
The Life of a Long-Distance Writer,
draws extensively on Sillitoe’s volu-
minous private papers as well as
extensive interviews to present a
remarkable narrative of Sillitoe’s life
and to assert a compelling argument
for his central importance in English
literature of the last fifty years.
Because he left school at the
age of fourteen to work in a fac-
tory before joining the military,
Sillitoe has long been regarded
as supposedly a purely proletar-
ian writer oblivious to the literary
canon. Yet as Sillitoe’s own nonfic-
tion—including his “commonplace
book,” Raw Material; his autobiogra-
phy, Life without Armour; and vari-
ous essays—has made clear, he is in
erature. Unlike the working-class
protagonists of his contemporaries
John Wain, John Braine, David Sto-
rey, and others, Sillitoe’s characters
have no desire to “ascend” into the
middle class by marriage or other
means; they disdain and exuberant-
ly subvert arbitrary bourgeois pro-
prieties, conventions, and decorum,
embracing the raucousness, rowdi-
ness, and pragmatic ethos of work-
ing-class life and culture. Sillitoe’s
many novels and stories do for Not-
tingham’s working class what Bal-
zac did for nineteenth-century Paris.
His achievement remains underap-
preciated and underassessed, even
today.
In contrast to Roger Lewis’s
splenetic, vituperative biogra-
phy of Anthony Burgess (2004),
which cataloged its subject’s flaws
while ignoring the most “writerly”
aspects of Burgess’s phenomenally
prolific life, Bradford’s biography
deftly makes Sillitoe’s daily writing
routine central, even in his intro-
duction. His claim that Sillitoe’s
“fiction . . . is extraordinarily good:
claim to being the most accom-
plished practitioner of [the] genre
of the last fifty years” may quite
intentionally provoke much-needed
debate about, and reappraisal of,
Sillitoe’s literary standing. Bradford
will get no dissent about that from
me, and this thoughtful, eminently
readable biography makes his case
formidably.
William Hutchings
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Tracy Daugherty. Hiding Man: A Biog-
raphy of Donald Barthelme. New
York. St. Martin’s. 2009. 581 pages +
16 plates. $35. isbn 978-0-312-37868-4
Tracy Daugherty comes to his sub-
ject as a former student of Donald
Barthelme’s and fellow practitioner
of fiction, but he has also done a
good deal of research, using various
archives, interviews, and study of
the materials—artistic, philosophi-
cal, literary, historical, architectur-
al—that influenced Barthelme and
are, as Daugherty shows, visible in
his work. The strictly biographical

76 ı World Literature Today