The Uncanny Reader (72 page)

Authors: Marjorie Sandor

BOOK: The Uncanny Reader

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J. T. (JOHN THOMAS) BEALBY (1858â1944) (ERNST THEODOR AMADEUS HOFFMANN'S “THE SAND-MAN”)
Born in England and educated at Cambridge, J. T. Bealby translated an 1885 volume of Hoffmann's stories,
Weird Tales.
A prolific writer and editor, Bealby edited the collected Dryburgh edition of
The Waverley Novels
of Sir Walter Scott, contributed to several editions of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
(collaborating on some items with noted anarchist Peter Kropotkin), edited
The Scottish Geographical Magazine
, and translated other works on a variety of subjects, including books about travel and explorations. He moved to British Columbia in 1907 and two years later published the classic
Fruit Ranching in British Columbia
, part memoir and part manual for prospective immigrants.

*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *

JOHN CURRAN DAVIS (BRUNO SCHULZ'S “THE BIRDS”)
was born in North East England and went at an early age to London to seek his fortune. He found instead an array of unconnected occupations from building work to political campaigning. In the wake of the Fall of Communism, John went to Poland, first as a mature student and later as a teacher of English, and there became fascinated by Polish language and literature.

*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *

WIAM EL-TAMAMI (MANSOURA EZ ELDIN'S “GOTHIC NIGHT”)
grew up in a yellow place where nothing grows and has been traveling since. She has lived in Kuwait, England, and Vietnam and is currently based in Egypt, where she writes, translates short stories and poetry, edits novels, cooks, explores, revolts, and tries to rest her itchy feet. Her work has been featured in
Granta, Banipal, Jadaliyya, Alif,
and several anthologies. In 2011 she was awarded the Harvill Secker Young Translators' Prize for her translation of “Gothic Night.”

*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *

CONSTANCE GARNETT (1861â1946) (CHEKHOV'S “OYSTERS”)
was one of the first English translators of nineteenth-century Russian literature. At the age of eighteen she won a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge, and in 1883 she moved to London, where she began to work in publishing. Her career as a translator began when she was introduced to the Russian exile Felix Volkhovsky, with whom she studied Russian. The first to translate Chekhov and Dostoyevsky into English, Garnett also translated the complete works of Turgenev and Gogol and the major works of Tolstoy. Altogether she produced over seventy English-language volumes of Russian literary works.

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EDWARD GAUVIN (DUCHON-DORIS' “THE PUPPETS” AND MAUPASSANT'S “ON THE WATER”)
is the winner of the John Dryden Translation prize. A Clarion alum, he has received fellowships and residencies from the NEA, the Fulbright Program, PEN England, PEN America, the Centre National du Livre, and the Lannan Foundation. His volume of Georges-Olivier ChÃ¢teaureynaud's selected stories,
A Life on Paper
(Small Beer, 2010), won the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award and was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award. Other publications have appeared in
The New York Times, Tin House, Conjunctions,
and
The Southern Review
and elsewhere. The contributing editor for Francophone comics at
Words Without Borders,
he writes a bimonthly column on the Francophone fantastic at
Weird Fiction Review
.

*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *

LUIS HARSS (FELISBERTO HERNÃNDEZ'S “THE USHER”)
is a bilingual writer who has translated works by Julio CortÃ¡zar, JosÃ© MarÃa Arguedas, and other Spanish American novelists and Sor Juana InÃ©s de la Cruz's
Dream
.

*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *

MICHAEL HOFMANN (FRANZ KAFKA'S “THE STOKER”)
is the author of six books of poetry and dozens of translations from the German, including works by Hans Fallada, Ernst JÃ¼nger, Franz Kafka, Wolfgang Koeppen, Joseph Roth, and Wim Wenders. Recent publications include a book of essays,
Where Have You Been?
and an edition of Gottfried Benn,
Impromptus: Selected Poems and Some Prose
(both from Farrar, Straus and Giroux). He teaches at the University of Florida.

*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *

STEPHEN SNYDER (YOKO OGAWA'S “OLD MRS. J”)
teaches Japanese literature at Middlebury College. In addition to translating the work of Yoko Ogawa, he has also translated works by Kenzabur
Å
Å
e, Ry
Å«
Murakami, Natsuo Kirino, and Miri Yu.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Anthologies don't arrive like Venusâlet alone oystersâon the half shell, and this one is indebted to a long line of storytellers, teachers, scholars, students, family, and friends. My first thanks go to the late Francisca Rodriguez of Alhambra, California, who closed the curtains of our suburban home in the early sixties and told me ghost stories of the San Gabriel Valley, forever changing my picture of that suburban landscape and all places to follow. I am grateful to my amazing mother, Jeanne Sandor, who made readers of us all, and to my three older brothers, Jon, Richard, and David, who let me stay up late in the 1960s to watch
The Innocents, The Haunting,
and
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Thanks, guys.

It was Rory Watson, poet and professor emeritus of University of Stirling in Scotland, who introduced me to the tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann and who answered my letter-out-of-the-blue all these years later, to talk about the Scottish uncanny. John McNamara of the University of Houston helped me track down the origins of the word itself. Steven Millhauser gave this project a much-appreciated boost of encouragement early on and continued to lend his support throughout, and Joyce Carol Oates offered support, wisdom, and practical guidance at several key junctures along the way. Several literary compadres pointed the way to uncanny authors new to me, helped me through rough passages, offered valuable second opinions, and helped write the author bios of the dead. I give heartfelt thanks to them all: Jane Sandor, Deborah Eisenberg, Kelly Link, Michael Hofmann, Edward Gauvin, Patrick J. Clarke, Suzanne Berne, Susan Jackson Rodgers, Murray Weiss, and Matthew Burriesci.

I am indebted to Christopher Golden, Kate Bernheimer, Ellen Datlow, Gavin Grant, Jeff VanderMeer, Ray Russell, and S. T. Joshi for answering my questions so generously, and equally indebted to a small host of angels in the World of Permissions, for kindness to a greenhorn.

Thanks to the Oregon State University College of Liberal Arts and the School of Writing, Literature, and Film for a research grant and time to develop this project and to my comrades in the Schoolâand particularly in the MFA Programâfor being the best friends and colleagues a person can rightly hope for. Nor would this anthology exist if it weren't for the adventurous spirit of the MFA and MA students at Oregon State University, who have been going down the rabbit hole of the uncanny with me over the last several years. Two of that tribe deserve a special shout-out for their generous reading assistance: Patrick J. Clarke, composer, and Jon Ross, writer. To yet another OSU MFA alum, Adam Michaud, I owe thanks for the Herculean effort of transcribing squirrelly uncanny reprints.

Colleen Mohyde of The Doe Coover Agency helped me shape this idea into a viable proposal and has been a wonderful supporter for many years. Michael Homler at St. Martin's Press took a chance on this project, then emanated great calm, patience, and fortitude in the aftermath. Thank you both.

My beloved daughter, Hannah, has my eternal admiration for the way she put up with terrifying stories and equally terrifying midges on bleak, beautiful Rannoch Moor in the Scottish Highlands and has grown up to be such an intrepid reader and person of the world. And finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my husband, Tracy Daugherty, who has been living with the
Unheimliche
in the house ever since we met and who has always been there to help incubate a dream.

The editor with friends

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Marjorie Sandor
is the author of four books, most recently
The Late Interiors: A Life Under Construction
(Skyhorse/Arcade, 2011). Her story collection
Portrait of My Mother, Who Posed Nude in Wartime
(Sarabande Books), won the 2004 National Jewish Book Award in Fiction, and an essay collection,
The Night Gardener: A Search for Home
(The Lyons Press), won the 2000 Oregon Book Award for literary nonfiction. Her work has appeared in such journals as
The Georgia Review, AGNI, The Hopkins Review,
and the
Harvard Review
and has been anthologized in
Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize, Twenty Under Thirty,
and elsewhere. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon, and is on the faculty of the Oregon State University MFA Program in Creative Writing, and Pacific Lutheran University's low-residency MFA Program. She has been teaching courses on the uncanny in literature for the past decade. Sign up for email updates
here
.