Thoughts on Vladimir Sorokin

[Anonymous No.23060187]

His work might get banned in Russia.

[Anonymous No.23060193]

>>23060187
Sorokin is a fuccking hack and Max Lawton is a ugly loser who uses daddy’s money to live like a character in a BEE novel

[Anonymous No.23060201]

>>23060193
How did his dad make his money?

[Anonymous No.23060217]

>>23060187
Isn't this book even more depraved?

[Anοnymous No.23060230]

>book about lonely addict man
>entire chapter dedicated to him literally shitting himself

[Anonymous No.23060243]

>>23060187
the ice novels are the worst I have ever read. just an edgelord that western publishers want to cocksuck

[Anonymous No.23060251]

>>23060201
Him and his brother were raised doing crew and both had crew scholarships, so basically the “sport” for unathletic rich fags. But apparently they had enough capital in high school to start their own nonprofit
> In high school, Lawton and his brother Ben cofounded Technology Through the Ages, a public service organization that helps residents of assisted living communities in Milwaukee stay in better touch with their families using the internet. He has also worked at RaisedBy.Us, a nonprofit organization that enables employees of tech companies to pledge a portion of their paychecks to a charity of their choice

[Anonymous No.23060262]

>>23060201
Here is Max Lawton’s daddy who bankrolled his BEE literary lifestyle

[Anonymous No.23060363]

>>23060251
>>23060262
wew hipstersisters...
Not looking good!

[Anonymous No.23060902]

>>23060262
KWAB

[Anonymous No.23061239]

>>23060193
He broke his scapula

[Anonymous No.23061254]

>>23061239
He also hates pedophiles like Alexander Theroux and thinks /lit/ users who shit on Murakami have terrible taste

[Anonymous No.23061279]

>>23061254
wtf is his beef with Theroux? he fucked his arthoe gf or something?

[Anonymous No.23061313]

>>23060262
Don’t forget mummy is already in the industry

[Anonymous No.23061317]

>>23060187
why are translation consoomers so smug, arrogant and obsessed with signaling how obscure they shit they consoom is

[Anonymous No.23061322]

>>23061279
>gf
He’s married to this trustfund filmmaker

[Anonymous No.23061335]

>>23061322
>set for life since birth
>gets to do whatever he wants
>highly influential in literary circles
>married to an attractive young woman
bros... i wish that was me...

[Anonymous No.23061343]

>>23061317
Hey Faggots,
My name is Max Lawton, and I hate every single one of you. All of you are fat, retarded, no-lifes who spend every second of their day writing about mis-ass authors. You are everything bad in the literary world. Honestly, have any of you ever gotten any pussy? I mean, I guess it's fun making fun of people because of your own insecurities, but you all take to a whole new level. This is even worse than jerking off to entry-level literature like the pedophile Alexander Theroux.
Don't be a stranger. Just hit me with your favorite author. I'm pretty much perfect. I was captain of Columbia’s Crew Team, and translate a super obscure Russian writer for NYRB thanks to my mom’s connections. What books do you read, other than "jack off to Céline and Nabokov"? I also get straight A's, and have a banging hot wife (She just blew me; Shit was SO cash). You are all faggots who should just kill yourselves. Thanks for listening.

[Anonymous No.23061356]

>>23061335
>attractive young woman
post hot photos of her, I've been unable to find any

[Anonymous No.23061371]

>>23061343
Do you use DeepL or Google Translate? Something else? Be honest, Maxy Boy.

[Anonymous No.23061373]

>>23061356
Grim considering her daddy is one of Turkey’s premier plastic surgeons

[Anonymous No.23061381]

>>23061373
She's turkish? lol

[Anonymous No.23061399]

>>23061381
Yeah, why do you think he has the standing to start beef with a translator who has rights to a Turkish novel he wants to translate with Andrei from the Untranslated by saying the translator is dogshit and he will do a better job (pic of him and Andrei with the book they want to translate). Surprised his lawyer daddy didn’t help him sue for rights

[Anonymous No.23061436]

>>23061399
That's not Andrei, that's the other translator kek
Andrei's identity is a mystery. I remember he said he would never reveal his native language because people would then know his nationality. I imagine it's a very specific and minor language

[Anonymous No.23061437]

>>23061399
to be fair it was dogshit and the only reason it was published was because the translator was married or something to the author and got the rights when he died

[Anonymous No.23061443]

>>23061436
Max and Andrei have confirmed on twatter that they’re translating it together

[Anonymous No.23061451]

>>23061443
Maybe but it's not Andrei in the photo. It's some guy named Ralph Hubbell (translator from Turkisk).
https://twitter.com/maxdaniellawton/status/1690436372505739264/photo/1

[Anonymous No.23061459]

>>23061399
photo is from two years ago, there’s a translation by Ralph Hubbell* coming to NYRB in August (Eng. title is Waiting for the Door)
still, shouldn’t this guy get a lot more experience with Turkish before setting out to translate fiction?
>hey here’s my plethora of formal education in Russian and Russian literature, I can translate Russian
>oh by the way I’m fluent in French too so uh… I can translate that too
>oh hey almost forgot! my wife is Turkish, I’m learning Turkish for her, so let me translate that to pwetty pwease :3
dude I’m learning a niche language right now and finding some very impressive contemporary works in it, does that mean I’m going to go around claiming I can translate them into English? fuck no lmao, I’d get laughed out the door by its community of speakers. at the very least they would expect to see some formal writing in it or on the history of it before I so much as touched its contemporary fiction

*while waiting for captcha i saw this anon post >>23061451, well there ya go

[Anonymous No.23061464]

Is Max Lawton secretly RW/conservative?

[Anonymous No.23061524]

>>23061459
>photo is from two years ago, there’s a translation by Ralph Hubbell* coming to NYRB in August (Eng. title is Waiting for the Door)
Yea, that's a collection of short stories. This other shit that Max, Andrei and all the other hipsters like is a novel that's supposedly the Turkish Ulysses titled Tutunamayanlar

[Anonymous No.23061539]

>>23061524
oh yeah you’re right, same author so must have been why i was confused, eventually found a couple people discussing it in an archived post
is this guy seriously so full of himself he’s trying to translate “the Turkish Ulysses”? what’s next, he moves to Romania, gets the Rosetta Stone, and three months later bullies Sean Cotter out of translating the rest of Orbitor?

[Anonymous No.23061607]

>>23061539
He wants to translate all this
https://twitter.com/maxdaniellawton/status/1634997354104496128/photo/1

[Anonymous No.23061655]

>>23061607
So he knows Russian, French, German, Turkish, Italian, and Spanish? Sure…

[Anonymous No.23061662]

>>23061607
Christ, and it’s almost all Andrei’s posts too
it was funny to see him ranting about the original translator’s “clunky” style, as if prose style in the translation is all that matters, as if you don’t have a million other things to consider that maybe—shocking revelation, I know—Sevin Seydi had an advantage over you in (including being a native speaker and literally married to a good friend of the author’s for a time)
quick Google search led me to Adalet Ağaoğlu, who’s just as significant in Turkish literature and has only one book translated to English. why not he try her? it’s almost as though he has to go above and beyond in proving his ability. like if he set out to climb Everest for the first time and in doing so wanted to be the first person ever to do it stark naked

[Anonymous No.23061744]

>>23061662
All of them are from Andrei's posts or by authors posted by Andrei. Only Dosto and his own shit aren't.

[Anonymous No.23061752]

>>23061744
Oh, and the Littell novel (which is pretty mid btw, no idea why he wants to translate it).

[Anonymous No.23061770]

>>23061752
because he wants to champion a lesser work by a celebrated famous author and pretend it's his actual masterpiece, of course. he'd bring up that one 2666 quote if bolaño wasn't as played out as he is.

[Anonymous No.23061787]

Leave Littell to real translators like Mandell, Max
(shit too late but w/e)

[Anonymous No.23061826]

>>23061770
and that’s why I think he chooses to translate exactly what he translates. he’s too anxious about the scrutiny that comes with looking into completely new territory, so he tries to divert attention to lesser works by authors who have already been translated or simply sets out to translate works others have evaluated. either way, he’s casting other people’s spotlights on himself

[Anonymous No.23061850]

>>23061787
Didn't Sorokin's translator die and that's why Max got the job? I'm talking about Jamey Gambrell (died in 2020 and magically all of Max's translators appeared after that)

[Anonymous No.23061861]

>>23061787
Didn't Sorokin's translator die and that's why Max got the job? I'm talking about Jamey Gambrell (died in 2020 and magically all of Max's translations appeared after that)

[Anonymous No.23062542]

>>23061607
KEK you won’t finish that by the time you die let alone 40 lil bro

[Anonymous No.23062554]

>>23062542
he's pretty fast to be honest. probably because he doesn't have to have another job or teach somewhere or something like most other translators.

[Anonymous No.23062679]

Did Lawton kill your families or something? Who gives a fuck what his background is. At least he's ambitious and bringing good untranslated fiction into English for people who can't read it. Go translate the fucking books yourselves if you think you can do a better job.

[Anonymous No.23062798]

>>23062679
>good untranslated fiction
>good
Retard

[Anonymous No.23062827]

>>23062798
It's good until Max translates it.

[Anonymous No.23062842]

>>23061343

[Anonymous No.23063161]

>>23061399
cute gay couple

[Anonymous No.23063420]

>>23061313
>>23060262
wew I never had a chance

[Anonymous No.23064259]

>>23062827
Kek

[Anonymous No.23064267]

>>23061254
>using such terms

how do these people not get a urge to delete themselves out of existence out of sheer profound, existential embarassment?

[Anonymous No.23064744]

>>23061254
this max fella sounds annoying to be around

[Anonymous No.23065385]

>>23061343
Actually, Sorokin indeed might be "super obscure", but only when we are talking about a western reader. He's one of the Great 3 of russian postmodernist contemporary classics. Others being Pelevin and Mamleev.

[Anonymous No.23065406]

>>23065385
Obscure has lost all meaning. NYRB has paid to promote that retarded hack so much throughout the States and western world. NYRB has genuine normie-tier readership. He’s not obscure.

[Anonymous No.23065411]

>>23065406
Obscure is relative.

[Anonymous No.23066262]

>>23062679
sup max, your wife’s dad offer you a “deviated septum surgery” yet?

[Anonymous No.23067341]

>>23065411
My genuine thought is that it's just fruitless to translate Sorokin to english, since many, if not most of his books only "click" and fall into place when you have experience living in Russia or post-soviet countries in general. His books wouldn't add much to a western readers mind, so it just feels like trite prose.

[Anonymous No.23067348]

>>23067341
what books of his can only click with Russians?

[Anonymous No.23067608]

>>23067348
For example, "Day of the Oprichnik", his most known work, is a hyperbolic grotesque novel about the paramount state of corruption and hypocrisy in russian ruling class. This state was present from the beginning, is present, and, most likely, will be present in the future of our country. And when reading his descriptions of the world, you just instantly relate to it, see parallels with the situations you were in, or could be in, see the generalized prototypes behind the characters. Obviously, as a western reader, you would understand the words and sentences, and most of the themes, but you wouldnt get the feeling that the events of the book are basically your reality, albeit pushed to the absurd extremes. So the understanding of the book when read with the appropriate knowledge of context is just that much deeper. But it is still a good standalone postmodernist book regardless.

[Anonymous No.23067619]

>>23067608
>This state was present from the beginning, is present, and, most likely, will be present in the future of our country
Whiny liberal bullshit based on stereotypes, ignorance, and russocentrism.

[Anonymous No.23067714]

>>23067608
The same thing could be said of Proust’s recherche: it makes no sense to read it since we were not around to see the fall of the aristocracy as he lived it.
Not really a valid argument. The better argument is that sorokin just fucking sucks and the west is only shilling him because he is edgy in a tryhard way and anti-“putler”

[Anonymous No.23067957]

>>23067714
there isn't a single civilized person in the world who doesn't find what you're doing in ukraine to be absolutely repulsive and indefensible vadim. you're truly a nasty subhuman monstrosity.

[Anonymous No.23067970]

>>23067957
>there isn't a single civilized person in the world who doesn't find what you're doing in ukraine
Well duh, that's why we invaded

[Anonymous No.23068012]

>>23067957
I am not even Russian nor does my post even imply that you obese, dyel Amerilard (if not a golemerican, I suspect an ugly finn).

[Anonymous No.23068543]

>>23067619
I thought that on /lit at least, people would know the definiton of the word "liberalism". Apparently I was wrong.

[Anonymous No.23068571]

>>23067957
Ukraine is gay. Russia is in the right from what I've read.