Michael ortho fur is a man on a mission in a recent profile of him New Yorker magazine wrote quote he has so far reviewed a staggering three thousand seven hundred and sixty books on that site his goal is to read a book a day but he averages about two hundred and sixty a year of course these numbers are now badly out of date Michaels specialty is fiction in particular world
literature and fiction in translation so we're here today to talk about books and fiction with Michael ortho for hello Michael thank you for coming I tell us thank you for having me let me start first with the question that's a little bit expansive now if we think about fiction for all the wonderful novels we read it actually turns out to be the case the events and those novels didn't
actually happen right even especially vivid works like Lord of the Rings right those are not real events right so if we're reading for some reason to learn things or be moved emotionally why is it that things that didn't happen have so much power for you or other readers relative to things that did happen why is fiction so special well I think being not tied down to the actual events
allowing the imagination to roam really writers are able to do amazing things and I think that's what we get out of it that nonfiction the description of what has actually happened first of all it's also very difficult to capture just precisely what has happened and often fiction allows you to go beyond that to imagine the reasons behind it which you might not be
able to if you were doing just purely following the facts so to speak but say we think of it in marginal terms you know I'm an economist so if I say well reading Hamlet Shakespeare Dostoevsky Jane Austen of course that was essential for one's own education to speak to other people the core I don't know if you'd quite call them ideas but inspirations and those works move people's lives but
at the margin given how much you read and you know I read the fair amount of fiction to how much value is there really for that Marge work of fiction given the regularity of patterns of stories that we see what [Music] is it you get out of the marginal work of fiction well it varies I mean I have to admit the great deal that I read I don't get that much out of and you
really I think one of the reasons I do read as much as I do is because it really takes that whole mass to really find all the different things you're looking for in it but I definitely think it really it expands my horizons in a way that other things can't travel talking to people meeting people reading the newspaper following current events those things obviously also help you
understand the world better but I think fiction adds a totally different dimension to it and truly great fiction really can take you much farther than other things can I think there's a book I read a review of I'm sure you've heard of it maybe read it Marlon James a brief history of seven killings very positive reviews right its 704 pages and they're fairly dense pages
I thought of reading the book and then I sat down and I said to myself with the time it would take me to read this book I could fly to Jamaica and spend in additional three days I've only been to Jamaica once and therefore it didn't make sense for me to read the book now how do you feel about that reasoning well I I'm full of admiration if you think you could capture you
know spending three days in Jamaica would be the equivalent I don't think it's equivalent I think it really is a separate experience I think also many people don't have the possibility of just traveling and reading a book is much simpler the access is always there so you really you can pick whatever strikes your mood which you know if you commit to three days in
Jamaica your second Jamaica for three days and maybe it turns out that isn't really what you wanted but I think the Marlon James Adventure he's way of seeing it one of the things we have to remember when someone writing a book a work of fiction is usually years working better and I think that is reflected in the final product the final product might seem like a compact 700
page book that's already a very long one but there is so much that is being worked through in that and in good fiction great fiction the work itself reflects that so if we take American citizens who are not necessarily the people who read you but at the margin we could give them more nonfiction we could give them more travel we could give them more fiction or we could actually give
them more of some really good TV which of those things are we rooting for them to do more of it the margin ah at the margin I I would think travel I think really the experience of the foreign place would be the most benefit because I think most people really don't get that don't have that opportunity I don't think they need more TV I think TV you've pre well covered in this country
and everyone gets their fill or the the proper or probably more than the proper dose but I think fiction is up there I think fiction is important part of it as well and it's such an easy part to get to as well so I think people should take advantage of that in that sense the the moral cost is relatively low the since you know you can just go to your local
library to the local book store and you have such a wide selection see I'm actually inclined to give them the marginal dose of TV really I think people absorb it and process it better and the fact that they watch a lot of TV means they're good at it so you're very good at reading fiction you absorb and process it very well so TV shows really stick with people if at the margin your
evening people quality TV it might even be my choice over travel a lot of people come away from travel and they don't always enjoy travel they may feel it was good for them they had to make too many decisions and they argue with each other alright I can do it so the general mix like what people do versus what they really enjoy I find interesting now on yours you have
a blog which has two parts one is called literary saloon the others complete review but I think of them as one integrated entity you review books on a very regular basis and most of all you review books which are being translated from other languages into English is that a fair way to put it as foreign fiction ballads yes and what why the appeal of foreign language fiction to
you what what catches you there well in part it also came about the site I started the site in 1999 it's been around a long time and one of the reasons I started it was because I saw how many people were posting book reviews online and suddenly you had the possibility of getting book reviews not just from your local paper or from the national magazines but from anywhere in
the world and one of the things that struck me and this is also partly has to do with the timing in American publishing in an American book reviewing is that there was very little coverage of a specially translated fiction which would be much more popular saying the 1970s and suddenly we had reached a real low point and so I made a conscious effort also to move in that direction
but aside from that I also I find foreign fiction more interesting in a way it's it's not that I find foreign fiction more interesting than American or British fiction but just I think it's better to to read from everywhere from all over the place rather than one specific locale and what's your theory even of America where have we gone wrong so you say correctly there
was more interest in foreign fiction in the 1970s right and we've moved away from that why is that happened what's the institutional failure behind that you could say lack of someone like you may be part of it but you're here now it's still the case a novel comes out in Aric in english and they try to hide the fact that it was translated quite often I'm sure you've seen this or maybe not
seen it well I think I think actually things have improved a lot in the time I've been running the site I think a major reason was that there was a generational shift from the especially the publishing world the publishers would come across from Europe around World War two and who obviously brought a lot of international fiction who were aware of what was being
written elsewhere in the world mainly in Europe unfortunately so relatively localized as well but still and but you also had it with the interest in Japanese fiction for example there was that generation which is also very much due to the sudden interest in Japan from World War two the people who learned Japanese and then began translating the
work and I think there was a generational shift which played itself out most fully in the 1990s but yeah I'm not I'm not sure why exactly it went as far down as it did the wonderful thing is that translation has really been revived in the past couple of years I think there really has been a greater interest in especially with smaller publishers who are really interested
in publishing translation it is a kind of paradox of globalization right so after the 70s in particular immigration to the United States goes up quite rapidly there's a lot more trade especially with Asia many more Americans get passports they travel abroad and yet at the same time we're less interested in some aspects of foreign literature and maybe there's
something more general to this so if you think of America as in some ways an open country actually we're much less willing to watch foreign films that are people from most other countries and then you go to Canada for all of its talk of cultural protectionism they do a small amount of it or Paris arguably they're in many ways more open to foreign cultures than America solo
like what's the general paradoxical lesson about globalization we can pull out of all of this I it might be a cultural thing that America is in many ways always been sort of integrating it is integrated the immigrants that come in and it is valued that they become American that they adopt American values and part of that is being leaving behind to a certain extent
the culture in this great amount of literature of sort of the first second third generation Americans and how or that that lives but it's almost all in English and there's very little of returning to the languages that these immigrants brought with them on the other hand it's fascinating how many foreign authors live especially in university settings in the United States her and
but they live in these sort of isolated pockets they're not part of the broader American literary culture which I find the bizarre paradox and I don't quite understand why that happens but let me tell you an argument about New York City which I occasionally hear and I know it's not true about you but whether you think it's true at all and it gets at these paradoxes of globalization that in some
ways New York City or maybe just Manhattan is fairly provincial because people think and they're led to believe that the whole world comes here in some ways that's true but tourism and migration but you don't actually get the whole world here at all you get a highly processed filtered version of a bit of it from each particular region and then people here in a way become more
inward-looking they don't go as many other places they feel everything's right here they get into their routines and is it possible that parts of Manhattan are evolving into this highly provincial place because of these cultural paradoxes I think so although New York still remains such a dynamic place because you also have great shifts in how what populations come here and
how that affects the city I think and so there is that dynamism the the changing neighborhoods so I still think in that sense it is a very vibrant city and it's fairly unpreventable for a metropolitan city compared to even some European I'm from Austrian Vienna is it's a cosmopolitan city but in the end of the idea is it is yeah yeah my friend Ben Quezon oka he's always
talking to me about this idea of life hacks like advice where you can live your life or learn things more efficiently and let's say I was approaching foreign language literature in translation as an economist and the following life hack occurred to me I mean lay it out and you tell me why it's wrong there's always more to read always more wonderful things to read in all of the
major languages but if you can read a language fluently usually you'll enjoy the fiction or poetry in that language much more so you're not going to run out of things to read in the languages you can read in so therefore in translated literature you should read like the very most famous works so if you don't read Russian yes Reid Brothers Karamazov and
Warren piece and a few things and then stop and if you read say English Spanish and French then just read in those languages and translated literature at the margin put it aside never look at it again now that's not what you do but what's wrong with that argument well I think you're really missing so much because the problem is finding what's what is a value what is important and I mean
we have these established books like Warren peace or Crime and Punishment but Russian literature goes so so much deeper for example to take just an example of a big language and it also changes with time so rapidly I think that in every 10-year period you could select a new set of a dozen recent relatively recent of the past quarter-century from that culture works
which would be give you a completely different view and yet provide you with a completely different experience and the bigger problem I see of course is that you're missing out on so much literature from elsewhere that there really is in for a lot of cultures and languages there isn't that stand out that you know you know Russia Tolstoy got it but if you want
to read something from the Philippines you're unlikely to be able to find that that one author and there are so many other languages and cultures and there's so much being written now which it really is worthwhile keeping up with but would you agree then that it's a good life hack say for poetry so if I try to read poetry originally written in Russian I don't speak Russian I
understand some of it I know enough to get that I'm not getting it when I read it in English it just doesn't come through or no matter how great the poet and I don't enjoy it that much so in this case I followed the life hack I just don't read poetry in Russian and I feel that sufficient do you agree with that when it comes to poetry but I do read poetry in the languages I read well
yeah poetry is a bit more difficult because first of all this seems a lot more with fewer the less poetry that stands out it's very difficult often to recognize the great poetry of the day in the time being especially with modern poetry I find it very difficult to get a sense of what I really should be focusing on so [Music] I mean I guess it is a useful life at
because really there is only so much we can read and I might very well act similarly with poetry because I don't spend that much time reading poetry but with fiction my guy wouldn't accept it now here's another life hack which I totally reject but it may just be because I'm an addict of sorts but you tell me why for you it's wrong a lot of people say to me well I love fiction but
I'm never going to read new works because I can't tell what's really good I'll just wait 20 years and then look back on what was truly excellent from 20 years ago and read that 20 years later but in the meantime now I'll just read classics or things in other areas which are verified as being truly excellent does that make sense well I worry very much about people who rely on you know
what gets that stamp of approval and just because it's it's been you know has a cover review in the New York Times Book Review does not mean that that book really is you know if we look at it from five or ten years down the road that that book will still be a significant work and I find so much which is highly praised at any one point a long-term
won't be and again however but then we longer wait thirty years well much that we look back on is we've lost in the margins as well because it's really hard to keep track of all the great book and we saw it strand earlier today stoner John Williams this is a book that disappeared from view for a long time it has always recognized sort of I mean people would say this is a great book
but it had really fallen out of you Helen do it's the Last Samurai was just refine distorted and Amazon and excited to get my copy I didn't know about it right and this was sort of ik that legendary text but it had gotten a great deal of potential might first came out and then through odd series of coincidences sort of fell fell from view and there are many many many more books
which are in this you know a grey zone where if you really dig if you really look you could still pluck them out but because there's some there's so much new work being published it's very difficult for it to rise out of that noise say I'm an American but I'm someone who doesn't have as much time to read as you do or I do and I'm only going to take away one book tip from this podcast
video I'm you know you know walk into a Barnes & Noble or go to Amazon and I want to buy a new book and at the margin what's the piece of information I should have that will help me make a better decision other than just saying well go to literary saloon and see what I tell you to do but more generally I forgot my iPad I'm in strand or Barnes and Noble well I think depending
on the bookstore and but it works probably even for for many of the Barnes & Noble one I really think you should have some faith in the staff that they they will be able to invest I do I'm certain it's Tran for example which the booksellers there are book lovers and if you give them a bit of information about what would be suitable for you that they will
be able to guide you I mean I like to think that the complete review is meant to guide course to their books right and I so I think on the more localized level in the bookstore you you hopefully get that as well I think I've bought more than a hundred books because of years so I thank you for that let's say now I'm someone who more or less reads for a living maybe I write books or on a book
reviewer or I'm a certain kind of journalist or I work in publishing and you can give me advice at the margin how to make a better book choice something to buy and read for that kind of person it's harder to give address right but what would your advice be ah I don't I don't know that I would I'm I I don't really have a system for picking books myself I'm very much that
can't be true you may not have articulated your sister yes but I saw you in the Strand you have rules and principles you turn the corner at a certain time you know what sections to go to a right and it's but yeah it's a very personal selection process I think and I mean it's I I think it's whatever information works for you a one source of information for example is is seeing
what imprint has published a certain publisher so that if New Directions or New York Review review books brought out a volume you know possibly in what kind of book this might be and so that that helps now write down and in a books or with book use book so you have to be familiar with the older imprints for example which just takes a lot of practice I guess but
that for example is one of the sources and information it's very difficult I think to narrow it down I think that's one of the wonderful things of going in a books are and of being willing to take a chance and pick up something that hasn't been shoved down your throat hasn't been recommended in 15 different publications because the offerings out there are so rich that you
can really find main things just at the extremes I once did an experiment I went into a bookstore and I said I'm just gonna pick out the book whose cover I like the best and put aside whatever other impressions I might have of that book and really see this through just to see how good of a predictor that would be and I ended up liking the cover of a Kate Christianson novel and I then liked
the novel and I've liked some of her subsequent writing so when it comes to covers covers are there in a way to trick us but there's also a kind of matching going on it signals maybe how intellectual the book is or what kind of person should buy or read that book so you see a cover how do you decipher or decode the information there if you like the cover does it sway you
it can sway me but it rarely does I'm not a big cover person I'm really a text person not an image person and so I try to see beyond the cover but it does the the aesthetics obviously do play somewhat of a role but it's very yeah I think a cover can attract my attention but won't be decisive I don't think I anything about a cover could convince me that
this is a book I must have I think I will leave beyond that but it can get me to pick up the book say a parent comes to you the parent says I have a 12 year old smart child show some interest in now wanting to read what advice do you give that parent for hooking the child on reading since you yourself your whole life you've had this extreme intense love of reading maybe
you were born with it but how do people get hooked on reading what do you tell that parent I I think you want to let them loose in a book environment so in the library in the bookstore and you want to give them the freedom to explore for themselves to make it because I think reading is very much a personal thing especially in childhood and especially where parents are often
tempted to well is this a book that's good for the kid and I think you want to avoid that because the child has a completely different perspective and really has to want to read the book and I think by letting them make their own choices their own selections finding their own way and not really pressuring them I don't think you want to say you know reading is good for
you you you have to read whatever this but just making it make it easy for them to read whatever they want to read you know what I did a few times with Jana I put a book on the table I point at it I'd say you're not ready for this yet and then I just walk about usually doing that was fairly effective I can imagine are there books which are better translated into languages other than the languages they
were written in novels III think there are I think probably many which are let's say be novels so pulp novels for example can often be especially stylistically improved and translation and you often have so-called literary authors translating crime authors or beuliss crime authors and they do a wonderful job of it there are also cases where I don't I don't
think it's better but some of the most interesting the translations that appeal most to me are those of experimental works which basically are not you can't translate them literally yes so the word for word you don't cackle so the translator basically becomes a recreator of the text and then takes a new approach and some of those are wonderful as well what's the best book that you
never finished and I never finished but I don't know because I really I finish almost almost everything it takes a lot for me to give up on a book and see I fit I don't finish most of my books maybe I finished 10% I'm not sure but beer minority why finish books that are not as good as the next book you could be reading in respected value terms right right yeah but I can't
think of any I don't think I've there the price and long books which I haven't made my way entirely through but or which I returned like let's say Richardson's Clarissa mm-hmm which is a huge book and which I've never sat down to read from beginning to end so perhaps something like that but nothing really strikes me is because a good book I want to finish that book I
really so it would have been a not very memorable originated case of the so-called great books what's the one that disappointed you most of the so-called great ones I don't well it's difficult knowing what that Canon is like Harold blooms list in the back of his book we know III something like that idea little I have difficulty with some of the especially the vers epics
I've done so I've never finished the Aeneid for example or something like that and I've difficulty getting into some of those I think of the great authors the ones I the one I'm most difficulty with this bright Dostoevsky so I've read most of those and I think the prince is probably my favorite or the idiot is sometimes translated but I'm not a big [Music]
fan of Dostoevsky so tomji wrote this question into me on marginal revolution quote which are the first three books that come to mind and answer to the question what books made him feel really good after finishing them quickest answer desired again this is the kind of question I've great difficulty with because I don't know what made me feel happiest right I don't know that the the immediate
satisfaction I couldn't even think of one off the top of my head now my theory of you as a reviewer and reader is that you love highly complex books that are long and very puzzling to work out well I mean you enjoy those very much yes so I mean it's bring up two or three of those and you can tell us what's in them for you or why we prepare okay so here's volume 1 of a
Chinese book used to be known as dream of the red chamber now it's more often called story of the stone penguin translation you're an advocate of this book very long this is only one volume of five yes what's in here it's it's basically it's a family saga but and basically a love story of the main character and the two women girls when it starts out way it starts out with a
seeing a young boy and it's basically a novel which has everything it's it's sort of a comprehensive it's such a sweeping book such a it's really one that you can get lost in over a long period of time it's a book that is very easy to return to because there's so much in it even though on the Wikipedia page forty main characters are listed right plus minor characters so
that's going to be tough going right even with a good translation not well it depends well yeah I think it conveniently it probably has a list of characters biggie yes and even with the cheat sheet forties alright this but they're the main characters and again it's as a book to return there really are the Sentra characters and the more incidental characters and the story
focuses on groups of characters at a time it doesn't they're not 40 people on stage all the time so that that makes it somewhat simpler it is initially perhaps if you haven't read much Chinese fiction the Chinese names alone can be confusing but I don't I don't think that's that's the least of the hurdles to the book I think but it's also very accessible it's just
the compelling story it really describes these characters and their feelings very well and a wonderful picture also of the China of the times which is a totally different world yeah an author you're a big advocate of our know Schmidt right yes you've written a book on him it's the book here his masterwork is coming out in English actually translated for the
first time this September is that correct yes yes and the German title is settles town what's the English title who's bottoms dream bottom stream and most people have never heard of our notion it inaudible you know but we have a chance now to read his masterwork some of his others are in English already tell us why we should care well the bottoms dream I don't know if how many
people will actually read that that is a very complicated piece of work honest myth is a fashion you love it right in a book country I do and get it but again it's on Schmidt as a whole and Schmidt has written in several different categories so he's also written short novels and stories which are much more accessible but you giggled when you read bottom stream all
right yes you giggled a lot that's well this is it's the English edition I think is just under 1,500 pages it's going to be a bit compared to dream of the red chamber it's going to be about this big and it's written in three columns per page so is the main story and then you have the commentary and not quite the footnotes but Sir the elaborations on the sides not talked us into the work
now well it's a it's a work it covers a seven day span and basically it's a story of translation it's basically some translators come to an expert on PO and ask his advice about translating PO as the title bottoms Reem also suggests is a Shakespearean aspect to it as well and I don't even know if it's Schmidt's greatest work it's in in some ways because it is such a you know beyond
anything almost anyone else has ever tried to write it is an immense accomplishment it's right it's not the first Schmidt work you want and what's the first Network you want to read well if you eventually want to read bottoms dream then the school for atheists is the one term that's in English now that's that's being English now interestingly the person who translated
all these books is Johnny woods who's famous for his translations of Thomas Mann he did the definitive magic mountain in Boonton Vaux and but he's always been translating a low Schmidt for decades now I'm Vonnie lighting the translations ah yes and Schmidt again is one of these writers who you really it's difficult to translate him just literally in the case of bottoms dream
and the school for atheist which are these he called them is Type O script books because they were written on larger than normal pieces of paper and allowed not just writing line by line as we're used to but the plane with the text and so for example one of his favorite things to do was with words where you can change the meaning the beginning of the word so you have both
school bus and school child and so at school and as one we're in the bus and child on top of each other so you could have both meanings of the word and but he would take this to the nth degree and so a bottoms dream and also the school for it is allow for incredible literary play and Schmidt is also I mean I read a fair amount I've read probably more than
most people honorably I'm Anna Schmidt is an order to above me as a reader really that is he wrote a lot but basically he's one of the great readers of all times and one of the reasons I also appreciate him so much is because he's directed me to so much more reading and they're a couple of all he's like you proud of your life right well on some level yes yes here's your book out not
too long ago the complete review guide to contemporary world fiction another author you promote in this book and elsewhere Louis quite a solo one went got the solo Louise is the brother a brother but better than they like right well unfortunately Lewis nothing of his has been translated yet although his major work the title of which escapes me Antonia and taken he is
coming out from dholki archive as well so I didn't say no bushes who were publishing bottoms dreams okay it strikes me as a book you would love it does it does and but unfortunately I have not read that yet but brother Juan why is he special because he also his he writes in so many different registers he's not satisfied with simple even when he's successful with one way of
storytelling he tries out different things new things he tells stories in new ways and also he's been a wonderful chronicler of Spain and especially the Spanish conflict with the Islamic world which goes back to when part of Spain was exotic and so that's been a tension that has been in the culture for well over a thousand years and he got his writing in he's written several
works which I find really superior and he's one of those authors where you won't get the same book you've got last time you'll get something completely different when you pick up the next one and he's one of those authors who also manages to do he's not going to fail at these attempts they are going to be if they are failures they're interesting failures and so that that appeals to me
greatly so he's one of those authors where if something new of his is coming out I'm going to make a beeline for it now there's a segment of these chats you may have heard of it it's called overrated or underrated so I'm going to call out your names books whatever you're free to decline if you don't want to offend anyone or other reasons but that will
try just a few and you tell us overrated or underrated JK Rowling I I is it as a writer I feel perhaps overrated but as a cultural phenomenon I think perfectly fine I mean it's hard to say underrated because she is sort of the Maples ultra of children's writing so Goethe overrated or underrated especially in English absolutely underrated good is far more significant author than anybody
here seems to realize and the tls just has review of a new Princeton anthology of the essential great a thousand pages and you know that's that's you can't you can't stuff him into a thousand pages because there is so much there and so much variety to which is also one of the astonishing thing is you know the greatest poet of the times the greatest
dramatist of his times and it was a astounding novelist as well a scientist a good side yes yes and the conversations with a common and son you know you have all these different things which are just just superior literary so in English is vastly under it in Germany I think they get it they have a payment uncle a miracle underrated or overrated I actually have not ever read it but I
can America not as a writer as a political leader again it probably depends where I admire her I think among the political leaders currently operating in Europe and especially since we're speaking shortly after the whole brexit vote and the turnover that happened anything from there I I think she's probably underrated Herman Melville probably also underrated I we're
agreeing on albey so far if you curious all right yeah I think people don't also range far enough with Melville I always always when the argument of the Great American Novel comes up I always make a plug for the confidence man which i think is sort of representative it says so much about America but I think that that would be my choice for the Great American Novel and especially from Belleville but
yeah I I think he's also under a Thomas baron heart um well he's very fashionable uh but also I don't think he can be underrated I'm also complete completely behind him I think he was a remarkable author I've always enjoyed even though there's a droning similarity to much of his bitter ranting it completely wins me over and I I don't think I've been disappointed by any any
Bernhardt Wittgenstein's nephews my favorite and then the loser they don't go gay yeah but all of them I think are fantastic yeah first for me very underrated another Austrian Friedrich a Hayek the economist um again you're free to pass yeah I well he's he's I I perhaps don't like what he his arguments are always employed for I mean currently he's obviously very popular economist to rely on and
[Music] I think it gets dangerous with you know the interpretation of the philosophies so I'm a bit more leery of too much enthusiasm for him but again obviously such a significant figure that's very difficult to underwrite anything so for fiction what would be the country or region now what's the country what's the region is even up for grabs but that is
really underappreciated relative to what it has done so if you say all classic Russian fiction even if people haven't read it when people know there's a lot there right probably wouldn't pick that so what's the counterintuitive pick for a most underrated region or country for a wonderful fiction under way I would absolutely think the regional language literature of India I think surprisingly
even though India's perhaps the main literary English is the main literary language of India and a great deal is locally translated even there much of the vernacular literature still isn't available in English and what one can see of it and also in part here about it we're missing an awful lot I mean there there really there is a literary culture there especially for
example in Bengali but we've had that since Tagore and one of the remarkable things is even you know Tagore won his Nobel Prize over 100 years ago there's still novels by him which haven't been translated into English yeah and he sees he's really a very good novelist and it's yes truly worthwhile and this goes from many regions of the southern region of Kerala
where they write in Malayalam numbly Malayalam it's a this remarkable literary production there and we just see so little of it and so and is also what is available because a fair amount is it tends to be underappreciated especially in American the United Kingdom so it hasn't really reached these shores and would you pick any part of the world as overrated for
literature in a way I know you think it's all underrated but in relative terms um I I think the American dominance is still too overbearing worldwide so we agree on this too I'm happy to hear you say that but go on yeah no I think it's just it's it's American literature is too often given a free pass especially abroad because you know we're so used to it being so dominant and so I really
think if any is overrated it is American fiction most of it bores me and like one of my pieces of advice for people going to a book store I would just say don't buy an American novel all other things equal no because they're fairly likely to do so now they're more likely to have heard of it without any kind of bias necessarily operating just refuse to buy American novels for a year I think it's
good peaceful is probably yes I probably oh you know if you think of all of your beliefs about literature books fiction or you can go more broadly if you'd like but what's the belief you hold that other smart people you respect would find the most absurd so if someone said oh I think Robert Heinlein is the greatest author ever to have walked on earth that would be
considered absurd not my belief probably not yours but what's your like craziest view relative to the other people you think are smart and respect in a literary sense or you can go broader if you want God I start with literary Anna I don't know I don't think see I'm so my opinions are so firmly held I believe they'll get to be so obvious and though you may still think
you're right right I don't Betsy I know people don't agree yeah yeah but well I don't get those disagreement they don't dare disagree to my face apparently I really don't know nothing comes obviously to mind and more generally also not I mean just more general I guess the the standout beliefs is I I don't see myself having the concern for mortality which most other
people seem to have that seems to be a very popular thing in reading as well that is this this obsession with mortality which I find a bit bit odd so you think we fear death too much yes I think it's it's and many people seem to really you know obsessive about it or in a certain sense and so that that's something I mean I don't think necessary my opinion strange it's just it's something so
foreign to me and the other thing is also I have great difficulty with religion the the Gansett god concept is just I can't I really don't know what to to how to regard that it is one I can't fit into my world view when any of my actions and so even though I read a great deal which also again is based on the course at that part of it always remains foreign to me
but when it comes to death would you say death is underrated or life is overrated ah well you can't overrate life so it's all we got again because I don't believe in the religion aspect of it too I don't believe in the afterlife so [Music] I definitely think you know life is underrated but death is you know it's it's an inevitability so you take it as it comes
because there's no other way to take it so now let me tell you about one of the things I find most charming about your site and your reviews there's this unusual mix between extreme passion for the subject and curiosity and drive to get the books and track what's coming out and reading them and then a lot about how other people are reviewing the books so one reads your sight that don't
just get you you get a whole broad panoply of others use that's one of the most valuable things but then in the other hand you're very hard to impress as a reader so just to you give these short capsules of your reviews here are three of your more recent ones so today and I quote passable ultralight fare here's another one typical Carlotto tale of
Justice in a flawed world so there's something reductionist or here's one you were very enthusiastic quote nicely done now I know those are shorter capsules for broad or more detailed reviews yes but this mix between like the the blase and the enthusiasm and how willing you are to just retreat into like and then that's what I find so intriguing about literary saloon is there anything
you would say to that uh yeah well I I hope people use the site in that way at it in a way my reviews presuppose familiarity with the site I assume the people you know they look up a couple of reviews and they get an idea of what this person is doing and the capsule reviews I think are a sort of counterbalance also to the longer reviews in which often I will be more
enthusiastic or I mean this is ultra light novel I gave it a B because it's competent it's perfectly competently done but it's just a vacuous problematic you know this is so little to it but it's still it's it's perfectly readable and I hope I explained that fully in the review it's yeah you did but one of the things which I also I mean the original idea behind the site was to be able to
link to other reviews and also the I have the review quotes from the major review publications where there are review codes available which I actually did sort of as a countermeasure to because I was so irritated by the blurbs you find on the back of like the paperback edition which are not at all representative of the reviews of the book so I wanted to give an honest I
wanted to give the honest blurbs of the reviews but it's always been important to me that you know my opinion is my opinion and you really should seek out as many as different ones as possible and to be able to give access to all these different reviews to point readers to because readers some readers rely on a certain reviewer and so if I can give them the link to that for this book so
that they will get an opinion which perhaps is more informative to to them than mine can be because they don't see eye to eye with me I think that's a very important thing and having as many different opinions as possible to me that always seems beneficial I I realize now we you know we have this issue of whether the wisdom of crowds really is wisdom and
it doesn't just over complicate matters as well but it's it's always been important to me that you know I have very strongly held opinions but you know please also consider the other opinions because other reviews and here I mean media not say bloggers but how corrupt are they corrupt in what sense that there's some something in the process which involves favoritism and maybe
there's an incentive for excess enthusiasm because if your book review section reviews thirteen books and says they're all mediocre well people won't buy the books but more importantly they'll stop buying your book review section right yes so do you think there's for instance an incentive to be too positive or some other skew uh I think I don't know that is blatant as
that I I definitely think it is editors certainly prefer positive reviews and there are some newspapers which basically won't print negative reviews I think that's always an issue and I mean they can say that well we you know we pre select so that's our the way we do it but that's I mean one of the things I love about how I'm able to review books is that I just you
know I'll review almost anything and I will actually review it even if I do not enjoy the book even if I've immense problems with the book because I think that's just don't put them down like I do it take New York Times or Amazon I know there's both but if you had to choose which do you trust more uh I I don't know if I can I like Amazon because I can get a lot of
information about out of Amazon they're really that the way the information is presented and in part with the reviews depending on how widely it's being reviewed part of the problem with the New York Times of course is that they can only review so few books and so you have really so little information or information about so few titles whereas Amazon at least some information about
practically everything in that sense Goodreads is perhaps the you know even more useful because especially with the foreign language books they'll usually at least be people who have already reviewed the foreign language edition and that's helpful one of the things I find remarkable about my site is I try to link to big media reviews and an extraordinary number of the books which
I cover basically go unreviewed in the major media often even in Publishers Weekly and which I find kind of shocking because I mean I do review obscure books but it's not that obscure I'm fascinated the literary hub is a very good website now which collects a lot of literary information and they've also now have started a review aggregating part of the site called
bookmarks and basically what they do is when they find reviews in three of the publication's they monitor which are basically all American major publications and a few internet sites if they have three reviews per book then they'll put that on bookmarks with the summaries and links to the reviews so sort of what I do and I find maybe one out of ten of the books I
cover who qualify for that and I find that shocking that sense so we know you can read in a lot of different languages and we know you read a lot of books out it close what are three other things about yourself you might want to tell us not to do with both I don't know that anyone would find anything interesting about me I don't I don't know what what culture perhaps will the ISO mention it you can't
mention fan of doing I sculpture I I am I find the so basically when there's a lot of snow out I won't just build a snowman but I will try to sculpt as much as I can out of the snow and I enjoy doing that because the snow is always different the conditions are always different what you can make out of it is different and it's also completely transitory it's gone
usually in a short time sometimes a few weeks or month and it sort of the Andy goal where these sculptures in nature taken to the more extreme because the snow is obviously really very short lasting and it also shape shifts as it collapses as it falls apart and you were born in Graz Austria right I was you have a background in law that cur I do I'm degree in law I'm a New York state
lawyer and you were put off by the academic nature of formal literary study because it involved so little reading of books and too much Theory ah very much so yes I was disappointed that at university basically you could study literature without without reading basically without reading fiction especially and more importantly without really engaging in fiction I think that literature
can lend itself to theory you can build theory around it but I don't find that a useful way of dealing with literature thank you very much Michael again this is Michael's book Columbia University Press the complete review guide to contemporary world fiction Michael ortho fir in my opinion still vastly underrated thank you so much here to have you thank you so much