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robin d. gill an ecoradical, editing, translating, writing and, since october 31, 2003, publishing in two languages.
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Life History: Twenty years in Miami, twenty years in Japan and a dozen here and there. Main Work: Having neither the money to hire a typist nor the ability to type myself, I wrote my first seven books completely by hand in a language that welcomed real manuscript, Japanese, rather than in my native tongue, English. These books – meant to help Japanese break free of an over-simplistic worldview, where all culture tended to be cast in Western vs. Japanese/Eastern terms, and adopt a more positive ecological attitude – were published by top publishing houses (below) and well received (reviews, on right) and reprinted. While writing, I worked as an acquisitions editor and translation checker for Kousakusha and Papyrus, small editorial publishers in Tokyo. The list of authors/books/translators I served shows my interest in intelligent but not overly academic nonfiction combining literary and scientific sensibilities (books served). After 20 years in Japan working for peanuts (fact, not complaint: my employers could not help it, for they were always in tight circumstances), I am back in the USA and typing up a storm in English on an underpowered laptop. My books-to-be mostly fall into five categories: 1) Anthologizing, translating and explaining haiku about selected themes to create a 20-volume almanac of 200 themes and dozens of spin-off books, ranging from the abstract (summer heat) to the concrete (a sea cucumber); 2) Cannibalizing my own work published in Japan to create books on culture for an English-reading audience; 3) Long-term book projects on favorite subjects not directly Japan-related (on a hyper-conscious cat, on the beauty of softness, on Thoreau's journal); 4) Books which paraverse.org guests will be invited to co-create (perhaps from 2005); 5) Translations of old books I want to translate.
See the Paraverse Press book lines for more details on scores of books.
Other Work: I also had shows of my etchings and sculpture in the USA, Japan and Korea, and experimented with free-tension string-instrument-making (one string ), inventing new methods of making music by feel that I hope to share with the world some day. New Work: Creating and running The Paraverse. [It is not an easy birth. Frontpage is supposed to be WYSIWYG, but in many respects you do not get what you see (the font size plays damnable games on the htm page that do not show when created in FP) and lacking any way to regulate the space between lines, I am prevented from lining up things properly between columns. Margins are worse and the settings do not work. Worse of all, FP insists that a line must be opened between paragraphs and that makes it impossible to print haiku properly because every break is a paragraph. [redo line breaks with Shift+Enter teaches a friend]. "Find and Replace" gives me no help for the ugly mix of commas.)] Philosophy: Stay still, waste not (except for words, as they cost little energy) and be completely open about everything. Whatever money I/paraverse makes will be posted on this site. Name: My Japanese books, most of which are now out of print, may be found (in a few fine libraries) on First Search's Worldcat ("au: robin gill" lang. "in japanese"). Note that no middle initial is used. Unfortunately, my work and that of an English theologian and prolific writer named Robin Gill became hopelessly jumbled together – my Japanese readership sometimes buys them by mistake (I was even asked to sign one at a book fair) – so, I will use the name "robin d. gill," with my middle initial, preferably written in small letters, when writing in my native tongue to avoid further confusion. My haiku name is keigu [respectfool(ishness)]. ______________________________________________________ published books
in english Rise, Ye Sea Slugs! 1000 holothurian haiku in the Japanese original and in multiple translation: Paraverse Press. October 2003. See new books. Better yet, see the fine reviews for this book by William J. Higginson (Modern Haiku), Thomas H. Rohlich (Metamorphoses), Jane Reichhold (LYNX), and others. Fly-ku! See the equally fine reviews by Robert Wilson (Simply Haiku), a famous bonzo journalist (R.A.L.P.H.) and others. Orientalism and Occidentalism: Is Mistranslating Culture Inevitable? Paraverse Press. November 2003. See new books. Topsy-turvy 1585: 611 ways the Europeans and Japanese were Contrary according to a Tract by Luis Frois, S.J. translated and explicated . . . : Paraverse Press. July 2004. This 740 pg. monster has not attracted reviewers. A short version: 2005. in japanese 1) 0moshiro Hikaku Bunka‑ko (entertaining thought on comparative culture), Kirihara‑shoten: 1984. The book challenges the antithetical stereotypes of English and Japanese, and argues that languages are more similar in terms of overall psychological gestalt than their different parts suggest. Republished (with a more appropiate name chosen by the author and lengthened by a tenth) as Eigo‑wa Konna‑ni Nippongo (English is that Japanese), Chikuma‑bunko (pocket-book): 1989. [Kirihara-shoten is a well-known education publisher and Chikuma is one of Japan’s largest and highly regarded literary presses] 2) Nihonjinron Tanken (exploration of stereotypes of national character), TBS Britannica: 1984. An attempt to diagnose and treat Japan's "uniqueness syndrome." [TBS Britannica was a wealthy publisher at the time but killed this book by insisting onb a boring title]. 3) Han‑Nihonjinron ‑ a touch of nature (preface by E.O. Reischauer, former ambassador to Japan), Kousakusha: 1984. In its fifth printing. This large and heavily illustrated book against national character stereotyping concentrates on the relationship of culture and the natural world (called fudo-ron in Japanese), and our perception of this relationship. [The publisher I worked for and, I believe, one of the best small presses in the world]. 4) Goyaku Tengoku ‑ wordplay and misplay, Hakusuisha: 1987. Went fourth printings. Using the butchered translation of Peter Farb's Word Play as the warp, this boldly woven criticism‑by‑example of Japan's "Mistranslation Paradise" shows how cultural preconceptions are responsible for patterns of mistranslation. [Hakusuisha is a highly respected publisher of translated fiction, dramatic and educational work] 5) Kora!mu, Hakusuisha: 1989. A collection of the author's essays published in various media from 1983‑1988, loosely centered around Occidentalism, stereotypes about the West. 6) Chugoku‑no Maza Gusu, Kitazawa Shoten: 1991. Essays accompanied by selections from I.T. Headland's Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes (1900) and a long afterword, mostly on the nature of end‑rhyme, something that does not exist in Japanese. [Kitazawa is my favorite bookstore.] 7) Eigo‑wa Konna‑ni Nippongo (English is that Japanese), Chikuma‑bunko (pocket-book): 1989. It is hard to say if a book (see 1, above) with 10% added and a new name should be counted as another book or not. [See 1, above]
Chapters from my books work are included in several anthologies, discussions in magazines and a major encyclopedia. I wrote the Afterword for the translation of Loren Eiseley’s Night Country, and had columns, features and other article, interviews and debates published in scores of magazines from the prestigious Chuokoron and Kagaku Asahi (Asahi's science magazine) to the classy weekly Aera, the huge pop-culture magazine Brutus, the more specialist Sinica and even short-lived music magazines, and major newspapers such as Asahi (bunka= culture page) and Mainichi (full-page interview). I have not kept a list, for I do not seek tenure. |
Excerpts from Reviews
of books by "Robin Gill"
*
published
in Japan *
I did not use my middle initial for my
books in Japanese, so “I bow my head to the author’s linguistic prowess [re.book 1].” – Inoue Hisashi (reader’s card) – a top Japanese novelist and playwright. "What felt good about reading it [re: book 3] was that the book doesn't get bogged down in Japan, but develops into a theory of culture [bunkaron] ... it is remarkable for not being prejudiced either for or against the past." – ITASAKA Gen (review in magazine "Honyaku‑no Sekai"), a Japanese literature scholar who formerly taught at Harvard and later became the president of Tenri University. “The author’s Thoreauvian naturalism is splendid . . . and the book [book 3] leaves you feeling better than reading ten of those popular Japan-as-Number-One type books.” – Matsuoka Seigow (review in an NTT book) – one of Japan’s top editors and well-known avant-garde thinker. "A splendid deconstruction of longstanding stereotypes of Japanese national/cultural character (nihonjinron) that, wearing the academic guise of cultural anthropology and topographic/climatic reductionism, (fudoron), have titillated our pride." – Kyodo News Service (review carried nationally). "Whether due to the flexibility and uniqueness of the perspective or the continual dissimulation of the author's Japanese writing, this book [book 2] is simply thrilling. Introducing example after example of things from other cultures that have been held to be unique to Japan, the author's point is that we must not allow our obsession with "Japaneseness" to stop us from facing up to the human agenda in this Age where we are capable of spoiling the earth." – TSUMURA Takashi (also Kyodo), a well‑known practitioner and advocate of Eastern medicine and meditation "This book [1] possesses dynamite power to destroy common stereotypes about the nature of Japanese and Western culture, which it actually demonstrates by linguistic comparison." – "Tokushima Shinbun" (reviewer for a local newspaper) "I look forward to seeing how the big‑shot scholars are going to respond to this [1]." – NADA Inada, a famous psychologist, author and personality. "This is not a book [4] that is merely 'interesting'... it is a book of anger and shame, that gives a mighty Konishiki [when the sumo wrestler was in good form!] – like shove against the ozeki‑mutual‑aid association [Ozeki is sumo’s second highest rank: there was official resistance to Konishiki's rapid advance up the ranks of sumo] of Japanese academism." – SATO Yoshiaki, writer and translator of several books by Gregory and Catherine Bateson.
For reviews of my recent books in English, (RISE, YE SEA SLUGS! and ORIENTALISM & OCCIDENTALISM) please see New books! ____________________________________________________ Books Served by robin d. gill A score of a hundred or so books I found for my employing publishers. I checked the Japanese of many from cover-to-cover and most, in part. This is from memory, so it may be imperfect.
Allen, Mea: Darwin’s Flowers. A good study of Darwin’s botanical interests and contributions starting with the best condensation of the Beagle trip I have read. (The translator did not make me work hard for this book found in a used-book-store.) Beer, Gillian: Darwin’s Plots. I am not a big fan of literary criticism, but Beer has a foot on the ground (science) and writes beautiful convoluted sentences I like but which are hell for translators. (I helped some with the translation, but not as much as I would have liked to). Cole Robert: The Spiritual Life of Children, The Moral Life of Children. These books full of taped quotes of children’s voices are far better than Cole’s other work I have read. (I found and helped with both books, published respectively by my two employing publishers, but more so with the second, for its translator is a friend.) Cronin, Helen: The Ant and the Peacock. The subjects of sexual selection and group-fitness are brilliantly summarized. (Checked the entire translation) Desmond & Moore: Darwin. This is the biography, very thorough and very long. (An excellent translator, but he still found work for me.) Dillard, Annie: Writing Life (Checked the entire translation. the author was kind enough to let us switch chapter 1 and 2 for Japanese want something concrete first.) Another publisher already had her best book, Tinker Creek (which I recommend to all who want to see a modern nature essay at its best) Eiseley, Loren: Darwin and Mr. X, Night Country (for which I wrote an afterword for the Japanese edition), The Star Thrower (Donne-loving Eiseley can be ambiguous for a translator, so I really had to work on rewriting as well as checking his books!) Fontenelle: Entretiens sur la Pluralite des Mondes (Plurality of Worlds). A French Classic (I confess I discovered it from English and my role was only that of convincing the publisher to do the first Japanese translation). Steven J. Gould: Ontogeny and Phylogeny (No easy task checking this huge book!), Time’s Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle. (I also helped one of his translators working for another publisher. If only he had not up and died on me, I’ll bet RISE, YE SEA SLUGS! would have tickled his fancy and made his column! Yes, I confess that one reason I mourn his passing is selfish.) Gonzales-Crussi: The Five Senses. Like Primo Levi, a cultured essayist with a scientific background. He deserves to be much better known (The translator did not leave me much to do). Grinspoon & Bakalar: Psychodelics Reconsidered. If a Nobel prize were given for non-fiction, the advancement of scientific thinking and sanity found in books like this and Marijuana Reconsidered (a book I could not convince my publisher to do) would deserve a nomination. (The book had bad luck with translators and I put in hundreds of hours checking . . . I hope it is out by now!) Hansen, Chadwick: Witchcraft at Salem. It turns out that Cotton Mathers is a hero who deserves our admiration for what he did to prevent the witch trials from being worse and the author, likewise, for the rehabilitation of a good soul. (I had fun correcting the translation, especially the man with the hole in his yard . . .) For the rest of the sampling of books I served please go to the books served link.
Call this a "thought experience" or a fantasy. Here, the author imagines what it might be like making kimchi with the cabbage still growing. I am inserting garlic and hot red pepper between the leaves. This type of large oblong cabbages grow in the winter so I am wearing ear-muffs. As the cabbage was not in my garden, I was not able to try the experiment. The (c), like many things, does not work in Frontpage. |
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