Nigel Spencer: Reviews, prizes, readings, conferences, etc..

Monday, March 21, 2011

Reviews, prizes, readings, conferences, etc..

1999 ACCUTE CONFERENCE PROGRAM JUNE 2-5, Université de Sherbrooke and Bishop's University * Space and Place Colloquia † Celebrating 25 Years of ESC

20:00 ACCUTE/ACTR Joint Session: Translation and Identity / La traduction et l'identité Readings/Translations at Bishop's Marie Claire Blais with Nigel Spencer (translator) David Fennario, David O'Connor.

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THUNDER AND LIGHT (2001)

--Governor General's Literary Award for Translation: 2002--

The Jury said:

Nigel Spencer's translation, like Marie-Claire Blais' novel, gathers in rhythm and intensity

as it draws the reader inexorably into its world. Spencer rises to the many challenges of
Blais' prose with deftness and grace, teaching us to read in a new way.

Nigel Spencer becomes our guide to the labyrinth of Marie-Claire Blais' fictional world. In so doing, the translator displays the same spirit of invention as the author.

AUGUSTINO AND THE CHOIR OF DESTRUCTION (2007)

--Governor General's Literary Award for Translation: 2007--

The jury said:

Nigel Spencer conveys the compelling spirit of Marie-Claire Blais' dizzying prose in this fictional microcosm of our disjointed times. His translation carries the reader along through the claustrophobic whirl and conflicting relations of a phantasmagoric world.

Nigel Spencer has performed a tour de force in Augustino and the Choir of Destruction, his translation of the third volume in Marie-Claire Blais’ quartet. The poignant and intricate stories of the novel’s astonishing constellation of characters are sensitively conveyed through his moving and innovative use of language.
Spencer has risen to the extraordinary challenge of rendering Blais’ uninterrupted stream of hallucinatory prose into an accomplished and lyrical translation.

(Third consecutive Governor General's Literary Award
for the original or translation of the first three novels in this sestet.)

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"The acceleration of our lives...deftly translated by

Nigel Spencer. These people do exist. On the page,

however, they take on surreal dimensions, the
fragments of their lives woven together through
Blais' dark, magical prose."

--Pat Donnelly, The Montreal Gazette: 28/7/2007

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"Blais' writing is...challenging but highly skilled stream of consciousness, the complexity of which only a seasoned writer could pull off..."

"The stream of consciousness travels back and forth among a collection of characters, fictional and historical...it will circle back around to understanding. This repetition strengthens the stories."

--Carla Lucchetta, The Globe and Mail: 28/7/2007
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…Consolation comes and goes without lasting, but beauty lasts, and friendship, and love. Always in Marie-Claire Blais’ work there comes the certainty that we are all connected, capable of everything, the deepest love, the worst crimes, the sublimest creations, great daring and self-sacrifice, simple joy. I know of no other novelist writing today who reflects so succinctly and with such real charity, what it’s like to be human in this perturbed century. Nobody has orchestrated the passions and perplexities, the shared themes of life in quite such a way, one voice giving way to another, and another, the song continually passed on, taken up in another key. The writer herself is never glimpsed, but in her control and finesse she has all the skills of a great conductor. Readers who may be alarmed by being asked to read pages of prose with no pauses and little punctuation might be encouraged by reading it aloud, a process by which both the structure and the intense musicality of the writing may be fully enjoyed. This English translation from the original French, by Nigel Spencer, gracefully tracks the rhythms of Blais’ language, no small feat given the very different structures of French and English and the swell of Blais’ prose that comes and goes like the tides of the ocean itself.

--Rosalind Brackenbury, Solares Hill (Key West, Fla.)
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Fortunately, Blais can pull off this complicated style. A writer with a long history--she published her first novel in 1959 at age 20, and has won three Governor General's Literary Awards for French-language fiction - she has the skill to guide the readers to the book's gently optimistic conclusion with or without the help of conventional punctuation.

The English version of Augustino comes courtesy of Nigel Spencer, who was [the winner of the] Governor General's Award for his translation of the second instalment in this trilogy, Thunder and Light…Spencer's translation is true to the original, with all the characters--all of humanity--as guests at the same party, united by thought, history, and art.

--Anne Chubodiak, Montreal Review of Books.
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REBECCA: BORN IN THE MAELSTROM (2010)

This translation feels right from beginning to end...the rhythm essential in the French is present in the English version as well...

One way to approach the novel is to read it aloud, possibly to your partner at bedtime. Be warned, though. It's not suitable foreplay, as it can be grim, but it sounds fantastic and is loaded with sensual and visceral images.
It is jazz, but not smooth jazz. Sometimes it is bebop, sometimes Latin. There is pleasure in the rhythm and poetry of the language. If you can let go, the sense will come to you.

--Victor Enns: Winnipeg Free Press—Nov. 28, 2009

Books THE WALRUS: SEPT., 09.

How to Read a Masterpiece: Coming to terms with Marie-Claire Blais

by Marianne Ackerman

“Let it wash over you,” the man says. “Like body surfing, let the waves take you. Don’t try to touch bottom, and you won’t hit the rocks.” A burly guy with a voice like timber, Nigel Spencer is sitting at my kitchen table, talking into my tape recorder, addressing my despair. Weeks into this article about one of Canada’s most celebrated writers, a woman whose name is spoken with reverence in literary circles, whose books inspire a steady flow of commentary, and I still can’t get past the first page of her latest novel. Is it possible Marie-Claire Blais could be — as great minds have proclaimed — a genius, and also be unreadable? Or is it me?

. . .

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EVOLUTION: THE VIEW FROM THE COTTAGE. (2010)

CHOICE: July 2011 Vol. 48 No. 11. (The Association of College and Research Libraries)

“[Of the many] that claim to present a coherent view of the natural world...he does it with wit and style. This is a book to savor.”
-- B. E. Fleury, Tulane University