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The Translation of Dr Apelles: A Love Story
by David Treuer
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Synopses & Reviews A daring new novel that "may be David Treuer's best book" ( Charles Baxter). Dr Apelles, Native American translator of Native American texts, lives a diligent existence. He works at a library and, in his free time, works on his translations. Without his realizing it, his world has become small. One day he stumbles across an ancient manuscript only he can translate. What begins as a startling discovery quickly becomes a vital quest—not only to translate the document but to find love. Through the riddle of Dr Apelles's heart, The Translation of Dr Apelles explores the boundaries of human emotion, charts the power of the language to both imprison and liberate, and maps the true dimensions of the Native American experience. As Dr Apelles's quest nears its surprising conclusion, the novel asks the reader to speculate on whose power is greater: The imaginer or the imagined? The lover or the beloved? In this brilliant mystery of letters in the tradition of Calvino, Borges, and Saramago, David Treuer excavates the persistent myths that belittle the contemporary Native American experience and lays bare the terrible power of the imagination. Review: "The intertwining of two love stories results in a strangely compelling take on matters of the heart in Treuer's third novel (after The Hiawatha). Dr. Apelles, a Native American who translates Native American texts, works as a book classifier for RECAP (Research Collections and Preservations), a 'prison for books' located near an unnamed American city. While at the local public library, Dr. Apelles finds a manuscript that he begins translating. The story-within-a-story is of Bimaadiz and Eta, sole surviving infants of separate villages wiped out by a devastating winter. Discovered by different men from the same tribe, the children are adopted by their saviors, reared together as friends and eventually fall in love. Dr. Apelles, while translating the story, realizes his life is unfulfilling, so he begins a love affair with a fellow book classifier, Campaspe, that parallels Bimaadiz's and Eta's. Treuer obscures time and place in both storylines, and though neither the plots nor characters are remarkable, the author's beautiful prose — Flaubert in some places, Chekhov in others — grabs and holds attention so well that even the narrative contrivances and unlikely coincidences don't diminish the pleasurable reading experience. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review: "In the middle of one of the most gripping action sequences in the 'Aeneid,' Virgil deliberately calls attention to the artificiality of the story he is telling. It occurs in Book II, in the account of the sack of Troy. Virgil first says the Trojan horse is made of fir; a hundred lines later, he says it's made of maple; next it turns to oak; and, still later, it's pine. Not only does the horse's protean ... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) essence function as a metaphor for the inherent deceptiveness of Greek gifts, it serves to remind us that we are hearing a tale told to the Carthaginians by one very interested participant — Aeneas — thus alerting us to the presence of more subtle fabrications. Late in David Treuer's deeply crafty, shape-shifting third novel, 'The Translation of Dr Apelles,' he echoes Virgil. Lest the many inconsistencies in his novel be mistaken for authorial sloppiness, he arranges for the climactic scene of one of his two interwoven narratives to occur under a council tree in the middle of an Indian village. That tree is first an oak; eight pages later, it's a beech; two pages after that, it's a basswood. This should give some idea of the sophisticated game Treuer is playing. The hidden theme of his novel is that fiction is all about games, lies and feints, about the heightened pleasure we can derive from a narrative when we recognize that it is artful. Further — and this is what readers allergic to 'postmodern' or 'metafictional' writing fail to see — this literary strategy, in the right hands, can movingly evoke the real world, in which people are able to communicate with each other, or, say, fall in love, only by crafting stories about themselves, by becoming the unreliable narrators of their own lives. Dr Apelles is a 43-year-old Native American librarian and linguist, a bachelor living in an unnamed American city who in his spare time translates Native American texts. His discovery of an ancient manuscript in 'a language no one save him speaks' catalyzes another discovery: He is frozen with loneliness and desperately needs to find someone to love. A possible candidate is Campaspe, a co-worker at his library. The story of Apelles' pursuit of Campaspe alternates with another story, set in the upper Midwest in what appears to be the 19th century. Two infant foundlings, Bimaadiz and Eta, rescued by a nearby tribe in separate incidents from Indian camps annihilated by a harsh winter, are raised in the same village and gradually fall in love. Their Edenically innocent passion — their names subtly invoke Adam and Eve — must resist the deceptions and temptations of a whole series of snakes. There's the false friend who secretly lusts after Eta, a floating brothel that kidnaps her, a white government official who desires Bimaadiz and plots to adopt him. These episodes and others serve as the serial ordeals that all questers after true grails must endure. One naturally wonders: Is the story of Bimaadiz and Eta the 'ancient manuscript' that Apelles is translating? If you're the kind of reader who would be bothered by an answer such as 'yes and no,' or even 'that's not the right question,' this novel probably isn't for you. Treuer's double narrative works like a pond in which two stones have been dropped; the two circles of expanding ripples meet, overlap and flow on. Calvino comes to mind. A good alternate title for this novel would be 'If on a Winter's Night a Translator.' Virgil, Calvino and Genesis are not the only substrata Treuer wants us to sense beneath the undulations of his American terrain. The vast library warehouse in which Apelles works recalls Borges, too. Apelles' name is not noticeably Native American (a trait he shares with his Ojibwe author); it's the name of a Greek painter of the 4th century B.C., whose model for his most famous work was a woman by the name of Campaspe (a hint about creator and created that should not be ignored). The spirit of V.S. Naipaul inhabits the empty, ordered apartment of this Indian exile. By subtitling his novel 'a love story' instead of 'a romance,' Treuer avoids making his nod to A.S. Byatt's 'Possession' too obvious. And the story of Bimaadiz and Eta is patterned after a Greek pastoral romance of the 3rd century A.D. that I'll leave it to the novel, late in the game, to name. Yes, a game. And (for this reader) an enjoyable and exhilarating one. But Treuer's intent is serious. He seems to want to do for Native American culture and literature what James Joyce did for the Irish: haul it into the mainstream of Western culture through sheer nerve and verve. Certainly it's nervy of him to begin Apelles' story in a linguistic style that mimics his protagonist's paralysis. The sentences, in a literary equivalent of claymation, labor mightily to get Apelles out of his chair, across a room, down a flight of steps. As Apelles' emotional life takes wing, the language lightens with him until they both soar and ultimately (when, like Elijah, Apelles is 'translated') ascend into the empyrean — in this case via an elevator — and evaporate. The effect is tender and lovely. As for verve, the tale of Eta and Bimaadiz brims with it. To serve his purpose, Treuer needed to take an ancient and highly artificial form and invest it with such conviction and energy that comic or skeptical responses would simply fall away, leaving delight — or perhaps a better word is love — in the truth-making magic of storytelling. Reader, he did it. Brian Hall's most recent book is 'I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company: A Novel of Lewis and Clark.'" Reviewed by Brian Hall, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Review: "A novel that is so intellectually rigorous and emotionally stirring, we've already told everyone who will listen to read it." Time Out Chicago Review:
"The satisfied sigh you utter when you read the last sentence is neither silly nor a delusion of sentiment." Minneapolis Star Tribune Review: "By novel's end, readers will understand that they have been engaged by some audacious literary legerdemain. In this story about how hearts are inscribed with love (and love lost), Treuer has messed with your mind." Seattle Times About the Author David Treuer is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He is the award-winning author of two previous novels, Little and The Hiawatha. He teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Minnesota.
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9781555974510
- Subtitle:
- A Love Story
- Author:
- Treuer, David
- Publisher:
- Graywolf Press
- Subject:
- General
- Subject:
- Indians of north america
- Subject:
- Translators
- Subject:
- General Fiction
- Subject:
- Literary
- Publication Date:
- August 2006
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 315
- Dimensions:
- 9.22x6.62x1.19 in. 1.44 lbs.
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