For your reading bafflement: “Shaggå of the Painfully Infinite Sky” by Antoine Volodine, up at The Baffler

 

My translation of Antoine Volodine’s Shaggå of the painfully infinite sky is available to read at The Baffler as of today. I’m so excited to share this piece with everybody—originally I translated it for Palais, the magazine of the Palais de Tokyo, but that was only in print and you’d have to be pretty motivated to get a copy of it here in the United States. So when the kind people at The Baffler asked if I had any Volodine translations to share with them, of course I said heck yeah and sent this one over.

The Shaggå of the painfully infinite sky comes with its own introductory remarks, although if you’re not familiar with Volodine’s work or the larger body of work called post-exoticism, that explanation—which is part of the fiction—might also need some explanation. Lionel Ruffel’s foreword to Solo Viola may be helpful here. He cites a talk that Volodine gave at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France:

One must see and understand Antoine Volodine as a collective signature that undertakes the writings, voices, and poems of several other authors. […] One must allow my presence here as a spokesman. A spokesman for post-exoticism, an imaginary literature, coming from elsewhere and going elsewhere, a literature that proudly proclaims its status as foreign and strange, that proudly claims its singularity, and that refuses any attribution to a specific and clearly identifiable national literature.

Lionel Ruffel then goes on to explain that:

Post-exoticism […] forms that frame narrative. Sometimes it is explicitly mentioned in the texts, but more often it is left implicit, giving these works a supplement of meaning that carries us elsewhere […] In this frame narrative, political activists, militants of radical egalitarianism, are imprisoned, nearly or already dead, and are trying to communicate amongst themselves, as if with their last breath—trying to give new form to the beauties and disasters of an already ended world.

So it helps to understand (or even, maybe, to not understand) that the Shaggå of the painfully infinite sky is a story within a story within a story. I’ve always felt proud of this piece, and the author was generous enough to share his time and help me with it, and kind enough to praise the result. I hope you enjoy it.

In other news:

Kree by Manuela Draeger is coming out in October, but it’s available for pre-order now!

On a nice drizzly day in late June, I once again jogged from Two Harbors to Duluth in the annual Grandma’s Marathon. Now looking forward to running the Twin Cities Marathon in early October.

More news soon, I hope.

Updates on Kree, by Manuela Draeger

Just a quick post to show off this very stylish cover that the University of Minnesota Press has chosen for Kree by Manuela Draeger, translated by yours truly. This is Draeger’s most recent contribution to the post-exotic oeuvre, which is being produced by a person who also goes by the names Antoine Volodine (author of Solo Viola), Lutz Bassmann, Elli Kronauer, and a few others. I have had so much obsessive fun with translating Kree, and I’m really looking forward to sharing it with the world.

We’ll all have to wait until it’s officially published in October, however—so if you need something to scratch your post-exotic itch in the meantime, check out the recent Black Village, by Lutz Bassmann (translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman), or you can look for Mevlido’s Dreams by Antoine Volodine (translated by Gina Stamm), coming out in June 2024.

I have Opinions about Apple Fritters

Okay, friends. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list. I’m not an expert, I’m not a professional baker, and I’m not, like, the crazy apple fritter lady. I don’t have any objective scientific standards by which to assess Applus fritterus and I’m not traveling the world in search of the One Superior Fritter. I just like them. Sometimes when I’m at the grocery store and I’m hungry, I get one as a treat. Over time, I have developed some opinions, and I have decided to share them. So here we are.

Some Apple Fritters of the Twin Cities

Lunds & Byerlys:

Lunds used to carry a modestly sized apple fritter, but they started making the larger Mighty Apple Fritter at some point, and I guess it sold well, because now all their apple fritters are Mighty. Sized to share, let’s say. The icing makes a nice sugar crust, rather than a sticky exterior. The dough is fluffy and light—though a bit cakey—with generous lashings of cinnamon, and pleasant little apple bits throughout. Forgive me for being obvious, but: L&B sells a mighty fine apple fritter.

La Boulangerie Marguerite: 

From a boulangerie—fancy! I have not visited this Saint Paul bakery, but I get their apple fritters at Longfellow Market. Texturally, these are fabulous, with a lovely crisp-fried crust under a crunchy sugar glaze and a melty-soft interior, including some nice apple bits. Flavor-wise they’re a bit one-note, and that note is just straight up sugar bomb. I’d prefer a stronger apple flavor, or maybe a little tartness or baking spice to add some nuance. But this was a really nice fritter nonetheless.

NB: While today’s specimen was excellent, at least once before I’ve found this fritter a bit mushy and dry, with an unpleasant hint of corn syrup. My guess is that freshness may make a difference. Maybe today (a Monday) was delivery day and I got lucky. 

Maple Donuts:

On a recent trip to Longfellow Market, I glanced at the pastry table and saw something new! Maple Donuts, what’s that? I thought, and into the cart they went. But alas, when I got home and examined the package more carefully, I discovered that Maple Donuts are made in York, Pennsylvania. Now, Pennsylvania is a fine place and I’m sure they have lovely pastries. But if these apple fritters were ever lovely, the long voyage from York certainly killed their last dreams of freshness. By the time they got to me, they were dense, bready and mushy and tasted mostly like corn syrup. The interior was tinted yellow with turmeric. Weird. The exterior was sticky, as if dehydrated from sweating. A few detectable apple bits struggled to shine through the yellowed paste. Somewhere a scraggly apple tree weeps for its lost children.

Now, you might think this means I hated Maple Donut apple fritters, or even that they were bad apple fritters. And they weren’t the best. But, Reader, I ate them. Between Jeff and I, we ate all of them. 

Cub Foods (on Minnehaha Avenue):

Food snobs like myself might be surprised to hear that Cub Foods sells an excellent apple fritter, but guess what—it’s good and by the way, it’s also big. Without making any of L&B’s claims to Mightyness, it is nonetheless the biggest (and also the cheapest) of the bunch. Here’s one with my hand for comparison. So share it with someone you like.

And yes, it is good! Nice soft texture, squishy but not mushy, lots of cinnamon. The glaze is a bit stickier than I like, and the apple bits are almost indetectably small. Like if I get up close and squint, I see them, but I wish there were more. Regardless: a good apple fritter, and a nice treat if you happen to be at Cub.

NB: I’ve heard that not all Cub stores have the same owners or the same baked goods, so I can only vouch for the Minnehaha Avenue location, and a reliable source has told me that 60th & Nicollet is good, too.

My very non-expert conclusion:

Apple fritters are good. Even when they’re not very good. If you’ve tried one that I haven’t, feel free to let me know, and maybe I’ll check it out.