This wasn’t a comment on Vuong specifically - I suppose translators are especially attuned to sentences like this because we have to parse them in order to render them and the experience of reading them into another language. As a reader, you can skim along a sentence just getting the feels and often that’s enough. A translator wants to understand what every word is doing and what it’s for.
Yeah, I just needed to get Granta into the title because most people know it as the "Granta scandal," and "did the judges of the Commonwealth Prize that Granta published [...]" doesn't fit as easily. But I clarify Granta's actual relationship to the award in the opening paragraph.
I’ll say this for Ocean Vuong, having never read her work: when listing the weird metaphors, I did actually think «hey, thats not so bad!» on the third one. Cormac McCarthy it is not, but I do get the imagery of a tablecloth melting in a nightmare. At least compared to the garbled nonsense surrounding it.
This wasn’t a comment on Vuong specifically - I suppose translators are especially attuned to sentences like this because we have to parse them in order to render them and the experience of reading them into another language. As a reader, you can skim along a sentence just getting the feels and often that’s enough. A translator wants to understand what every word is doing and what it’s for.
i felt like I was watching Jerry Springer for the literary world and thoroughly enjoyed this
It would be my dream to be the Jerry Springer for the literary world
one of us can be the talk show host version of him and the other can be the literary mayor of cincinnati lol
Love this takedown. So coherent….;-)
This reinforces my suspicion that literary magazine editors, who whine about being swamped with stories, are using AI to sort through the slush pile.
Of course, they are quite happy to pocket "submission fees" for all those stories and poems.
Ka-ching!
Pay To Play journals are a fucking joke. May write a piece about just entirely that at some point
“Vibe Shift arrives not as a riot but as a ringtone” made me CRY LAUGH.
They aren't the "Granta judges." They are the Commonwealth Prize judges. Granta has published Commonwealth Prize-winning stories for some time.
Yeah, I just needed to get Granta into the title because most people know it as the "Granta scandal," and "did the judges of the Commonwealth Prize that Granta published [...]" doesn't fit as easily. But I clarify Granta's actual relationship to the award in the opening paragraph.
spectacular cliffhanger
Its so discouraging. Everybodys copying each-others homework and that includes the LLMs themselves!
I put "write me a story about Ocean Vuong’s career being killed by the Vibe Shift and LLMs" into chatgpt and the result is genuinely hilarious.
I’ll say this for Ocean Vuong, having never read her work: when listing the weird metaphors, I did actually think «hey, thats not so bad!» on the third one. Cormac McCarthy it is not, but I do get the imagery of a tablecloth melting in a nightmare. At least compared to the garbled nonsense surrounding it.
Vuong is a dreadful poet; he’s got a completely tin ear for the music in the language. I never understood why he won any prizes.