Two Voices Salon: Will Vanderhyden and Chilean Author Carlos Labbé
Center for the Art of Translation | 582 Market Street, Suite 700 | San Francisco, CA
We welcomed translator Will Vanderhyden (in person) and author Carlos Labbé (via Skype) into the Two Lines Press offices to discuss Carlos’s novels Loquela and Navidad & Matanza, which Will has translated for Open Letter Books. They were interviewed by Two Lines Press’s Scott Esposito.
In addition, Will and Carlos discussed how Will first discovered Carlos’s works, the importance of the political in his novels, the influence of Bolaño and Cortázar on Carlos and his generation of Latin American writers, how his books may mimic serialist music, and many other things.
AUDIO TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Introductions
1:50 How Navidad & Matanza and Loquela function as books and the interactions of the various “levels of reality”
7:35 The thickness of the voices in Labbé’s work and the feeling of enclosure and labyrinth created by these voices
13:00 The convergences and overlappings of the voices in Loquela, and why the book is made this way
16:04 The meaning of the word “loquela” and how (and why) Carlos chose to use it as a name for the book
22:45 How Vanderhyden first discovered Labbé’s books and why he wanted to translate him, and his early relationship with Labbé
25:50 Labbé’s feelings on seeing the English translation of Navidad & Matanza, and the importance of understanding Chilean politics to the translation of that book
29:07 Labbé’s feelings on the relationship of his work to Bolaño’s writing, and Bolaño’s influence/importance for the next generation of writers
35:00 The concept of “Neutria” from Loquela and how it relates to the ideological angles in Labbé’s work
39:53 Labbé’s books as “the story of their rules”
41:43 Labbé’s most recent book, Piezas secretas contra el mundo, which uses elements from the Choose Your Own Adventure books
47:25 Labbé’s relationship with Cortázar’s books and influence
53:50 Schizophrenia and Labbé’s work
57:20 Blanchot’s idea of loneliness, contradicted in Loquela
1:00:05 Which book of Labbé’s would Vanderhyden most like to translate next?
1:04:00 Creating a book along the lines of serialist music
Will Vanderhyden is a translator of Spanish and Latin American fiction. He graduated from the MALTS (Masters of Arts in Literary Translation) Program at the University of Rochester. His translations of Carlos Labbé’s Loquela and Navidad y Matanza were published by Open Letter Books.
Carlos Labbé is a Chilean author of three novels—Libro de Plumas (2004), Navidad y Matanza (2007), and Locuela (2009)—as well as a collection of short stories, Caracteres Blancos (2010). He has cowritten two screenplays, published a hypertext novel, Pentagonal: incluidos tú y yo (2001), and recorded several albums of pop music. In 2010 he was included in Granta magazine’s Best Young Spanish Language Novelists. The English translation of his second novel, Navidad y Matanza, was published by Open Letter Books in the spring of 2014.