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A Translator's Note by PAUL AUSTER This is one of the saddest stories I know. If not for a minor miracle that occurred twenty years after the fact, I doubt that I would have been able to summon the courage to tell it. It begins in 1972. 1 was living in Paris at the time, and because of my friendship with the poet Jacques Dupin (whose work I had translated), I was a faithful reader of L'Ephemere, a literary magazine financed by the Galerie Maeght. Jacques was a member of the editorial board - along with Yves Bonnefoy, Andre du Bouchet, Michel Leiris, and, until his death in 1970, Paul Celan. The magazine came out four times a year, and with a group like that responsible for its contents , the work published in L'Ephemere was always of the highest quality. The twentieth and final issue appeared in the spring, and among the usual contributions from wellknown poets and writers, there was an essay by an anthropologist named Pierre Clastres, De l 'Un sans le Multiple (Of the One without the Many) . Just seven pages long, it made an immediate and lasting impression on me. Not only was the piece intelligent, provocative, and tightly argued, it was beautifully written . Clastres' prose seemed to combine a poet's temperament with a philosopher 's depth of mind, and I was moved by its directness and humanity, its utter lack of pretension. On the strength of those seven pages, I realized that I had discovered a writer whose work I would be following for a long time to come. When I asked Jacques who this person was, he explained that Clastres had studied with Claude LeviStrauss, was still under forty, and was considered to be the most promising member of the new generation of anthropologists in France. He had done his field work in the jungles of South America, living among the most primitive stone-age tribes in Paraguay and Venezuela, and a book about those experiences was about to be published. When Chronique des Indiens Guayaki appeared a short time later, I went out and bought myself a copy. It is, I believe, nearly impossible not to love this book. The care and patience with which it is written, the incisiveness of its observations, its humour, its intellectual rigour, its compassion - all these qualities reinforce one another to make it an important, memorable work. The Chronicle is not some dry academic st udy of "life among the savages," not some report from an alien world in which the reporter neglects to take his own presence into account. It is the true story of a man's experiences, and it asks nothing but the most essential questions : how is information communicated to an anthropologist, what kinds of transactions take place between one culture and another, under what circumstances might secrets be kept? In delineating this unknown civilization for us, Clastres writes with the cunning of a good novelist. His attention to detail is scrupulous and exacting; his ability to synthesize his thoughts into bold, coherent statements is often breathtaking. He is that rare scholar who does not hesitate to write in the first person, and the result is not just a portrait of the people he is studying, but a portrait of himself. I moved back to New York in the summer of 1974, and for several years after that I tried to earn my living as a translator. It was a difficult struggle, and most of the time I was barely able to keep my head above water. Because I had to take whatever I could get, I often found myself accepting assignments to work on books that had little or no va lu e. I wanted to translate good books, to be involved in projects that felt worthy, that would do more than just put bread on the table. BRICK/ 4
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Chronicle of the Cua\'aki Indians was at the top of my list, and again and again I proposed it to the various American publishers I worked for. After countless rejections, l finally found someone who was interested. I can't remember exactly when this was. Late 1975 or early 1976. I think, but I could be off by half a year or so. In any case, the publishing company was new, just getting off the ground, and all the preliminary indications looked good. Excellent editors, contracts for a number of outstanding books, a willingness to take risks. Not long before that, Clastres and I had begun exchanging letters, and when I wrote to tell him the news, he was just as thri lied as I was. Translating the Chronicle was a thoroughly enjoy­ able experience for me, and after ;ny labours were done, my attachment to the book was just as ardent as ever. I turned in the manuscript to the publisher, the translation was approved, and then, just when everything seemed to have been brought to a successful conclusion, the troubles started. It seems that the publishing company was not a solvent as the world had been led to believe. Even worse, the publisher himself was a good deal less honest in his handling of money than he should have been. I know this for a fact because the money that was supposed to pay for my translation had been covered by a grant to the company by the C.N.R.S. (the French National Scientific Research Centre), but when I asked for my money, the publisher hemmed and hawed and promised that I would have it in due course. The only explanation was that he had already spent the funds on something else. I was desperately poor in those days, and waiting to be paid simply wasn't an option for me. It was the difference between eating and not eating, between paying the rent and not paying the rent. I called the publisher every day for the next several weeks, but he kept putting me off, kept coming up with different excuses. At last, unable to hold out any longer, I went to the office in person and demanded that he pay me on the spot. He started in with another excuse, but this time I held my ground and declared that I wouldn't leave until he had written out a cheque to me for the full amount. I don't think I went so far as to threaten him, but I might have. I was boiling with anger, and I can remember thinking that if all else failed l was prepared to punch him in the face. It never came to that, but what I did do was back him into a corner. and at that moment I could see that he was beginning to grow . cared. He finally understood that I meant busine s. And right then and there, he opened the drawer or his desk, pulled out his chequebook, and gave me my money. In retrospect, I consider this to be one of my lowest moments, a dismal chapter in my career as a human being, and I am not at all rroud of how I acted. But I was broke, and I had done the work, and I deserved to be raid. To prove how hard up I was during those years, I will mention ju t one appalling fact. I never made a copy of the manuscript. I couldn't afford to xcrox the translation. and since I assumed it was in safe hands, the only cory in the world was the original typescript sitting in the publisher's office. This fact, this stupid oversight, this poverty-stricken way of doing business would come back to haunt me. It was entirely my fault, and it turned a small misfortune into a full-blown disa ter. For the time being, however, we seemed to be back on track. Once the unpleasantness about my fee was settled, the publisher behaved as if he had every intention of bringing out the book. The manuscript was sent to a typesetter, I corrected the proofs and returned them to the publisher- again neglecting to make a copy. It hardly seemed important. after all, since production was well underway by now. The book had been announced in the catalogue, and publication was et for the winter of 1977-78. Then, just months before Chronicle of the Cuayaki Indians was supposed to appear, new came that Pierre Clastres had been killed in a car accident. According to the story I was told, he had been driving somewhere in France when he lost control of the wheel and skidded over the edge of a mountain. We had never met. Given that he was only forty-three when he died, I had assumed there would be ample opportunities for that in the future. We had written a number of letters to each other, had become friends through our correspondence, and were looking forward to the time when we would at last be able to sit down together and talk. The strangeness and unpredictability of the world prevented that conversation from taking place. Even now, all these years later, I still feel it as a great loss. BRICK/ 5

A Translator's Note by PAUL AUSTER

This is one of the saddest stories I know. If not for a minor miracle that occurred twenty years after the fact, I doubt that I would have been able to summon the courage to tell it.

It begins in 1972. 1 was living in Paris at the time, and because of my friendship with the poet Jacques Dupin (whose work I had translated), I was a faithful reader of L'Ephemere, a literary magazine financed by the Galerie Maeght. Jacques was a member of the editorial board - along with Yves Bonnefoy, Andre du Bouchet, Michel Leiris, and, until his death in 1970, Paul Celan. The magazine came out four times a year, and with a group like that responsible for its contents , the work published in L'Ephemere was always of the highest quality.

The twentieth and final issue appeared in the spring, and among the usual contributions from wellknown poets and writers, there was an essay by an anthropologist named Pierre Clastres, De l 'Un sans le Multiple (Of the One without the Many) . Just seven pages long, it made an immediate and lasting impression on me. Not only was the piece intelligent, provocative, and tightly argued, it was beautifully written . Clastres' prose seemed to combine a poet's temperament with a philosopher 's depth of mind, and I was moved by its directness and humanity, its utter lack of pretension. On the strength of those seven pages, I realized that I had discovered a writer whose work I would be following for a long time to come.

When I asked Jacques who this person was, he explained that Clastres had studied with Claude LeviStrauss, was still under forty, and was considered to be the most promising member of the new generation of anthropologists in France. He had done his field work in the jungles of South America, living among the most primitive stone-age tribes in Paraguay and Venezuela,

and a book about those experiences was about to be published. When Chronique des Indiens Guayaki appeared a short time later, I went out and bought myself a copy.

It is, I believe, nearly impossible not to love this book. The care and patience with which it is written, the incisiveness of its observations, its humour, its intellectual rigour, its compassion - all these qualities reinforce one another to make it an important, memorable work. The Chronicle is not some dry academic st udy of "life among the savages," not some report from an alien world in which the reporter neglects to take his own presence into account. It is the true story of a man's experiences, and it asks nothing but the most essential questions : how is information communicated to an anthropologist, what kinds of transactions take place between one culture and another, under what circumstances might secrets be kept? In delineating this unknown civilization for us, Clastres writes with the cunning of a good novelist. His attention to detail is scrupulous and exacting; his ability to synthesize his thoughts into bold, coherent statements is often breathtaking. He is that rare scholar who does not hesitate to write in the first person, and the result is not just a portrait of the people he is studying, but a portrait of himself.

I moved back to New York in the summer of 1974, and for several years after that I tried to earn my living as a translator. It was a difficult struggle, and most of the time I was barely able to keep my head above water. Because I had to take whatever I could get, I often found myself accepting assignments to work on books that had little or no va lu e. I wanted to translate good books, to be involved in projects that felt worthy, that would do more than just put bread on the table.

BRICK/ 4

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