The 40 But 10 Interview Series: Laura Nagle

 

I had decided to retire the literary Would You Rather series, but didn't want to stop interviews on the site all together. Instead, I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!

Today we are joined by Laura Nagle, who is a translator and writer based in Indianapolis. Her translations of prose and poetry from French and Spanish have appeared in journals including AGNI, The Southern Review, ANMLY, and The Los Angeles Review. She received a Travel Fellowship from the American Literary Translators Association in 2020.

 

Why do you translate?

There are plenty of noble reasons to pursue translation, but the answer I keep coming back to is that it’s fun. As a writer, my doubts about whether a plot or character arc is working can become overwhelming, but when I’m translating, all of that is settled before I begin; I couldn’t change it even if I wanted to! That means I get to focus on wordplay and on the aesthetic aspects of language—the parts of the writing process that are my greatest strengths and that I most enjoy.

What made you start translating?

You know that feeling when you’ve read something fabulous and absolutely must get somebody else to read it? Sometimes the book and the reader I think would love it don’t share a language. It was only a matter of time before I realized that was a problem I could fix.

Describe your book in three words.

Lies. Brazen lies.

Summarize your book using only gifs or emojis.

👴🏼🎶🧛‍♂️🧿🗡️🩸👻😱🤷🏻‍♂️🎶👴🏼

You have to choose an animal or cartoon character that best represents you. Which is it and why?

I wouldn’t normally presume to answer questions on Prosper Mérimée’s behalf, but I imagine he would have gotten a kick out of Cookie Monster in character as the host of Monsterpiece Theater. I think there’s a sort of kinship between Alistair Cookie and the narrator of Songs for the Gusle; they project the same fragile, unearned authority, and the tales they tell inevitably descend into the same glorious nonsense.

What’s on your literary bucket list?

I’d like to strike a balance between working with contemporary authors and introducing long-neglected works to a new audience. That latter category includes genre-defying books like Songs for the Gusle, which was first published nearly two hundred years ago but is only now becoming available in English. I’m also seeking publishers for works by the likes of Bolivian feminist poet Adela Zamudio and nineteenth-century French novelist Sophie Gay—women who gained prominence in their own countries but were unfairly neglected by English-language publishers in their lifetimes.

Do you think you’d live long in a zombie apocalypse?

Absolutely not. I’d be out in the first wave. There’s a character in this book who scares himself nearly to death just thinking that he might be in the presence of a vampire, and he’s the one character I find truly relatable.

If you could time travel, would you go back to the past or forward into the future?

Definitely the past, if only to minimize my chances of winding up in a zombie apocalypse. Mérimée’s characters are dangerous enough.

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This is the first complete English-language translation of La Guzla, ou Choix de poésies illyriques recueillies dans la Dalmatie, la Bosnie, la Croatie et l’Herzégowine, which presents a collection of folk literature from the former Illyrian Provinces. Or does it? It contains short pieces drawing from various genres—ersatz scholarly essays, ballad lyrics presented in the form of prose poems, folk tales, a fragment of a stage play—all generously peppered with footnotes explaining the historical and sociological context of these “discoveries.”

First published in 1827, La Guzla purported to be a collection of folktales, ballad lyrics, and travel narratives compiled and translated into French by an anonymous traveler returning from the Balkans. Before long, though, it was revealed that both the stories and their “translator” were the fictional creations of a young civil servant, Prosper Mérimée, who would later become one of the most accomplished French writers of his generation. In these dramatic tales of love, war, and encounters with the supernatural, Mérimée has given us both a treasure trove of “fakelore” and a satirical portrait of a self-appointed expert blissfully unaware of how little he understands the cultures he claims to represent.

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About the Author
Prosper Mérimée (1803–1870), a French writer and translator from Russian, was a major figure in the Romantic movement. He is remembered as a pioneer of the novella, with Carmen (1845) and Colomba (1840) figuring among his best-known works. A noted archaeologist and advocate for historic preservation, Mérimée served for two decades as France’s inspector-general of historic monuments.