Back to business

I hate Mondays – they are an unwelcome necessity – and Monday the 5th of January is a day that should be scrapped altogether from all calendars. Significantly, our Italian and Spanish friends (and probably the rest of civilized Europe) go back to work only on Wednesday 7th.

But I'll have to admit it wasn't a bad day at all: it was actually quite well organized and somehow even relaxing. We sent two books to the printers and prepared two more to go tomorrow. Apart from an excessive consumption of caffeine (or rather teine) and a translator's rant against some other publishing company I will not name – described as a "bunch of clowns" – there's very little to report on this page.

I am getting on with The Catcher in the Rye, and I am finding it very well written and tremendously funny. I'll ask Einaudi if they'll let me translate it for them at the next printing. The trouble is that in standard Italian there's no equivalent to the kind of jargon used by young Holden. I suppose colloquial here wouldn't do: ideally it would have to be translated in one of the national dialects – but nobody would publish it then. I can see why Motti's translation didn't work.


AG