The French publisher Minuit just put out Jean Echenoz’s latest book, Bristol, and I wrote this in a comment on another platform:
Echenoz isn’t very well known in anglophonia, which is a pity because — from what I know of his work at least — it’s great. From my days in publishing I have the uncorrected proofs of an English translation of his novel Lac, which I don’t think was ever published, not sure why.
…followed by…
Ohhhh, I see…it took 20 years and a name change: Lac was translated as Chopin’s Move (Dalkey Archive, 2004). Or something like that, a bit hard to tell. No surprise that Dalkey would do it: they’re the inheritor of New Directions and Barney Rosset’s Grove Press in their best days, the two publishers that pretty much defined what Americans think modern literature is (or at least thought what it is 🫤). Dalkey got Echenoz’s book from the publisher Matthew Godine, who issued the uncorrected proofs that I have. I know I got them from the New Press in its early days, because we published several of Echenoz’s novels. (NP was founded by André Schiffrin after Random House fired him from Pantheon, the imprint his father founded. André’s father Jacques had founded Pléiade in Paris.) I’d guess that Juan Garcia de Oteyza acquired Lac/Chopin for Godine when he worked with them on his Eridanos imprint1 (largely funded by Bompiani), which issued dazzlingly beautiful editions of lesser-known Latin American writers — flawless, every one of them, in their curation, translation, design, and production. I worked with Juan at the US office of the Italian publisher Marsilio, which was run by Umberto Eco’s son, so there was an endless parade of literati coming through its doors. Juan went on to become Mexico’s cultural attaché to the US and to head up the Aperture Foundation, before dying way too young. He was — truly — one of the greatest people I’ve ever know, incredibly cultured and salt-of-the-earth in equal measure. It’s said that a person’s memory dies the last time someone mentions them, so I will never miss a chance to remember Juan in public. 🙏🏼
I’m conjuring up all these details not to drop names but to leave breadcrumb trails for anyone interested in these entangled literary histories — especially Juan’s Eridanos imprint.
Notes
Footnotes
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A quick search doesn’t turn up any tribute or informational pages about Eridanos on the net — not even on Godine’s site — which is really a pity. I’ll have to fix that. ↩