Gatekeepers: The Emergence of World Literature and the 1960s

Abstract

WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 101 Jonas Zdanys Red Stones Illus. Steven Schroeder Lamar University Press Red Stones’s collaborative effort sees Jonas Zdanys’s precision of language in these twelve-line lyric poems contrasting with the textural abstractions of Steven Schroeder’s paintings. Zdanys, a celebrated bilingual poet who writes in as well as translates from the Lithuanian, navigates from the physical to the philosophical in these short poems that leave the reader always hungry for the next one to begin. Nota Bene STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION 1. Publication Title: World Literature Today 2. Publication Number: 060-680 3. Filing Date: September 1, 2016 4. Issue Frequency: Bimonthly 5. Number of Issues Published Annually: Five 6. Annual Subscription Price: $30 Individual, $135 Institution 7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication: World Literature Today / University of Oklahoma / 630 Parrington Oval, Suite 110 / Norman, OK 73019-4033 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters of General Business Office of Publisher: Same as above. 9. Full Names and Complete Mailing Addresses of: Publisher: Robert Con Davis-Undiano. Assistant Director & Editor in Chief: Daniel Simon / World Literature Today / University of Oklahoma / 630 Parrington Oval, Suite 110 / Norman, OK 73019-4033 10. Owner: University of Oklahoma Board of Regents / 119 Evans Hall / Norman, OK 73019-3074 11. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Security Holders: None 12. The purpose, function, and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal income-tax purposes have not changed during the preceding twelve months. 13. Publication Title: World Literature Today 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: May 2016 15. Extent and Nature of Circulation: 2390 1100 740 1840 100 50 150 1990 400 2390 92.4% 749 2589 2739 94.5% Actual no. copies of single issue published nearest to filing date Average no. copies of each issue during preceding 12 months I certify that all information furnished above is true and complete. Daniel Simon, Assistant Director Total no. of copies Paid and/or requested circulation 1. Paid subscriptions 2. Counter sales Total paid and/or requested circulation Free distribution by mail Free distribution outside the mail Total free distribution Total distribution Copies not distributed Total Percent circulation Paid electronic copies Total paid print+electronic copies Total print distribution+paid electronic copies Percent paid (print+electronic copies) 2390 1100 740 1840 100 50 150 1990 400 2390 92.4% 749 2589 2739 94.5% William Marling. Gatekeepers: The Emergence of World Literature and the 1960s. New York. Oxford University Press. 2016. 215 pages. This excellent study of the catalysts for four writers—Gabriel García Márquez, Charles Bukowski, Paul Auster, and Haruki Murakami—is fascinating to read. It analyzes the means by which these authors came to prominence and focuses on first readers, editors, translators, and publishers . Borrowing a bit too formulaically from the theories of James English, Pierre Bourdieu , and Randall Collins, Marling offers an engaging account of how four authors arrived on the international literary scene. Of note is Marling’s format of appending a contradistinctive example, a coda, for each successful author: in the case of García Márquez, Rigoberta Menchú Tum; in the case of Charles Bukowski, Diana di Prima; in the case of Paul Auster, his first collaborator (and first wife), Lydia Davis; and in the case of Haruki Murakami, the pop novelist Banana Yoshimoto. This is the book that Marling wrote: it is not the book promised by its title and subtitle, Gatekeepers: The Emergence of World Literature and the 1960s. Marling claims he is studying world authors: a claim justified in the case of García Márquez and Murakami, both of whom are translated into the world’s major languages (forty-plus languages). The claim can be maintained with less certainty with Bukowski and Auster, who are generally known only in Europe. There is a disjunction between the text and the title: Gatekeepers is both generic and general. The Emergence of World Literature and the 1960s is cleverly trendy, but no more significant than the fact that many of today’s prominent authors grew up in the 1960s. A book on world literature should at least mention the gatekeepers of world authors: Lin Shu, who...

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