December 11, 2023

December Newsletter

Hi,

Greetings from snowy Beijing! There are a couple of new posts on the blog this month:

• "The Inescapable Philtrum" follows up on some of the ideas I suggested in my entropy theory of translation, zooming in on one particular criticism that Tim Parks leveled at Deborah Smith's translation of The Vegetarian by Han Kang: the presence of the word "philtrum"
• "Kill Him in the Shell" considers some of the parallels between the plot of Julius Caesar and the recent (temporary) deposing of Sam Altman from OpenAI

This last month I’ve been reading:

• Domestic Violence by Eavan Boland
• At Freddie's by Penelope Fitzgerald
• Björk's Homogenic by Emily Mackay

Thanks for subscribing,

Dave Haysom
spittingdog.net