Contributions by George Henson
George Henson George Henson has published translations in a variety of venues, including The Kenyon Review Online, Words Without Borders, and World Literature Today. Among other writers, George has translated Elena Poniatowska, Alberto Chimal, Leonardo Padura, and Andrés Neumann. His published books include Poniatowska’s The Heart of the Artichoke (Alligator Press 2012) and Luis Jorge Boone’s The Cannibal Night (Alligator Press 2013). For the last two years, George has been in a quasi-monogamous relationship with Mexican writer Sergio Pitol, translating his memoirs The Art of Flight and The Journey, both forthcoming with Deep Vellum Publishing. He’s hoping the affair will continue until all of Pitol is translated. Like Pitol’s Marquise, he is never content to stay at home, so he goes out at five o’clock every morning to teach Spanish. At night, when not translating, he works on his dissertation on Sergio Pitol.
The Marquise was Never Content to Stay at Home
Sergio Pitol
translated by George Henson
For Margo Glantz
A feeling of disaster is haunting the world. The novel records it and, in doing so, is resplendent. The more rotten it smells in Denmark—and today Denmark seems to be a large part of the universe—the more indispensable the novel becomes. Ultima Thule: a reflection of an indomitable impulse to survive, of the preservation of form over chaos, sacrifice over apathy, spirit over unformed matter—the novel is that and more. Fueled by extreme tensions, witness to violent upheavals, nourished at times by caviar and quail and other times by carrion, it reappears on the international stage today with enviable health. It blooms with a fullness that roses would envy. Behold it: protean, generous, bold, ubiquitous, skeptical, cheeky, and unmanageable. Each crisis of society causes it to regenerate. When necessary, it sheds its … Read More »
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