Oakland - Friday Nights Conversation Series (with Benjamin Paloff & Scott Esposito, discussing Richard Weiner's "The Game For Real")

Oakland Events

Diesel, A Bookstore in Oakland welcomes Benjamin Paloff and Scott Esposito to the store for our Friday Nights Conversation series on Friday, May 29th, at 7:30pm.

The conversation will also be a celebration . . . of Benjamin Paloff's translation of Richard Weiner's The Game for Real, the first of Weiner’s books ever to be translated into English. Called “The Man of Pain” by the sci-fi author Karel Čapek (who popularized the word robot),  Weiner is one of European literature’s best-kept secrets. Those in on the secret, though, have compared to both Robert Walser and Kafka. One of the first  Eastern European novelists to write about World War I, as well as one of the first-ever readers of Proust, reviewing each of the volumes for the prestigious Czech magazine Lidové noviny, long before they were translated into Czech, Weiner's reputation was established, neglected, and now newly ascendant.

PEN America has called The Game for Real, “the crowning achievement of Richard Weiner’s career and one of the most powerful works of Czech Modernist literature,” and it has lauded Benjamin’s translation as “masterful.”

Join us as Benjamin discusses the task of translation (in general and particular) and as Scott insightfully winds us deeper into Weiner's modernist classic.

Benjamin Paloff grew up in Atlantic City and is a poetry editor at Boston Review. His poems have appeared in The New Republic, A Public Space, The Paris Review, and elsewhere, and he writes frequently for such publications as The Nation and the Times Literary Supplement.  He teaches at the University of Michigan.

In addition to his duties at the Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco, Scott Esposito is the co-author of The End of Oulipo? His writing has appeared recently in Music & Literature, Drunken Boat, and The Point. His criticism appears frequently in the Times Literary Supplement, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post.

Event date: 
Friday, May 29, 2015 - 7:30pm
Event address: 
Diesel, A Bookstore in Oakland
5433 College Avenue
Oakland, CA 94618-1502
The Game for Real By Richard Weiner, Benjamin Paloff (Translator) Cover Image
By Richard Weiner, Benjamin Paloff (Translator)
$14.95
ISBN: 9781931883443
Availability: Not On Our Shelves - Available within 1 to 5 Days
Published: Two Lines Press - May 12th, 2015