Here's the latest in woke outrage, Netherlands edition:
The acclaimed author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld has pulled out of translating Amanda Gorman’s poetry ["The Hill We Climb, read at Joe Biden's inauguration] into Dutch, after their publisher was criticised for picking a writer for the role who was not also Black.
....Journalist and activist Janice Deul led critics with a piece in Volkskrant asking why Meulenhoff had not chosen a translator who was, like Gorman, a “spoken-word artist, young, female and unapologetically Black”.
“An incomprehensible choice, in my view and that of many others who expressed their pain, frustration, anger and disappointment via social media,” wrote Deul. “Isn’t it — to say the least — a missed opportunity to [have hired] Marieke Lucas Rijneveld for this job? They are white, nonbinary, have no experience in this field, but according to Meulenhoff are still the ‘dream translator’?”
But wait:
Meulenhoff said it was Rijneveld’s decision to resign, and that Gorman, who is 22, had selected the 29-year-old herself, as a fellow young writer who had also come to fame early.
Come on, folks. Enough's enough. Are we now to believe that Gorman herself should not be allowed the agency to choose a translator of her choice for her own poetry?
Left-wingnuts, if an eye had blinked wrong at some formative moment these people would be parading around in maga hats.
Jacob Angeli erasure.
Yeah. That’s going too far. But that always happens when there is a mass movement against the status quo. Conservatives did a similar thing when they pushed back from the 1960s and tried to bring back the 1950s. I hope Gorman, who is impressing the heck out of me so far when I see her interviewed, speaks out in defense of her chosen translator. This is like demanding that the translator of Beowulf be dead. (OK, maybe not quite.)
Btw, can someone enlighten me about the Golden Globes controversy? It’s run by the foreign press that covers Hollywood, about 90 people at most. Does the demand for black representation mean that, for instance, Le Monde must send a black French citizen to be its Hollywood scribe, or it should hire a African-American stringer?
No, but the African delegation within the Hollywood Foreign Press Association shouldn't be an 80 year old scribe from the Johannesburg Golf & Racquet Club pining for the halcyon days of P.W.T. Bothadeeznutz.
Hmmm . . . Pia Zadora.
The long of that is to see which studio gets the most noms or Globes, and you'll see which studio gave the nicest dinner or gift basket.
I think the error was in not accentuating the fact the Dutch translation choice was made by the writer herself.
When it looked like a presumably white Dutch publisher or editor had picked a white Dutch writer to translate a celebrated young Black American poet, the optics looked terrible. Had the press release & other announcement made it plain that the American herself made the pick, no problem.
Also, Wokeness Olympics? The Kevin Drum Experience turned into OutkuckTheCoverage so slowly I hardly noticed.
What's next, lambasting MSESPN for not calling for Colin Kaepernick to be defenestrated from the NFL headquarters in Lower Manhattan?
They did? Why? Presumably not everyone involved in printing the poems in the first place were black. This presumes there is already a black person in each place, and that all they can do is black works. That's nuts. A translator is like an editor.
Why on earth should such a thing even be empahsized? For God's sake...
That meeting of the writers cell in "Hail, Caesar!" is pretty funny, but the reality was grim. One ex-member recalled John Howard Lawson's defiance at the HUAC hearing, and compared it to Lawson's meek submission to the reproof of the party leaders at a cell meeting, for deviationism or some other such heresy. Hacks who couldn't even find steady work at Poverty Row were laying down the law to a major talent, and he promised to atone for his sins.*
Likewise here's a sorehead with a modem telling a publishing house to jump, and everyone jumps. For one thing, English is a second language for many Dutch, and it may not need translation. For another Gorman is a practicing Catholic--DoublePlus CrimeThink to someone like Deul and her poetry should be read by nobody.
*When Mike Gold complained similarly about "For Whom The Bell Tolls", Hemingway's response was "Tell Mike Gold to go f-ck himself."
I think you and the publisher are victims of a fallacy you often point out here, Kevin. It's a big country/world with lots and lots of people and SOMEONE will complain about or do any stupid thing. I have no idea who Deul is and this the publisher should have told her to f off. This isn't a case of "we" thinking Gorman shouldn't be able to chose her translator. It's a case of some people somewhere who aren't really important or representative of the supposedly over-woke left being loud and the media paying too much attention to them.
"some people somewhere "
And the publisher.
Why are you casting aspersions on the publisher? The chosen translator wasn't fired, he resigned of his own volition. ("Meulenhoff said it was Rijneveld’s decision to resign"). The publisher apparently had nothing to do with it.
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld--the translator chosen by Gorman--was born a woman but considers themself genderqueer (using they/them as personal pronouns).
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld also won last year's International Booker's Prize, the very first Dutch author to do so. Hence 'the fellow young writer who had come to fame early'.
Also, while Rijneveld is not black, Gorman and her team supported Meulenhoff's choice to select her. On top of that, Meulenhoff would have the translation checked by a panel of 'sensitivity readers'.
And still, it wasn't enough. As a Dutchman--admittedly a white one--I agree that the woke pendulum has swung a bit too far, in this case.
Thanks for sharing more details.
But the publisher isn't the source of the outrage, they simply, and i agree incorrectly, bowed to that outrage. my point here isn't that there are not "overly woke" people doing and saying stupid things, but that the whole media notion that there is some huge problem and "Cancel culture" has run amok, destroying our freedom is wrong.
>>Gorman, who is 22, had selected the 29-year-old herself,<<
I'm sorry, but I hardly think we can expect an artist to understand the social, political, or literary implications of her own work. That's why we need the Twitterati.
This is stupid and irritating and also pretty unimportant. This kind of story always gets outsized attention which is why this kind of thing keeps happening. Friday, grumpy grandpa Bill Maher spent most of his show railing against cancel culture. He even had Megan Kelly on to help him get outraged about a few admittedly stupid but clearly cherry-picked incidents of woke overreach. On Sunday earnest uncle John Oliver talked about the harm caused by police drug raids. Guess which is actually a bigger problem? Guess which gets talked about more?
Also, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Gorman's poetry is not particularly poetic or good.
I'm certainly glad that every episode like this is going to get full press coverage. We sure wouldn't want to use that media space for something unimportant like, say, global warming. Brett Stephens used his invaluable editorial space about the incident at Smith College from 2018.
ONE person complained about the choice of translator, and the translator in question resigned. This is a grand total of two people being silly; scarcely "the wokeness Olympics".
I like how in some posts, Kevin tells us that the experience of a few individuals should be ignored in favor of what the average individual is experiencing. These are usually economic or political posts, like “wages for the average worker are fine.” “the average senior is well off,” and “the average Republican voter doesn’t support overthrowing democracy.”
But then for certain issues like apparently wokeness and cancel culture, Kevin seizes on literally a single person’s opinion about another person’s actions or words, and somehow generalizes that to “all liberals are drifting too far from the center” or “see the left wing is totally out of control.”