AMERICANS CAN ONLY ACCEPT foreign literature once they have washed it with superlatives. Nothing less than a disinfectant exaltation—“masterpiece!” “genius!”—will do if the book is to be read. If you believe critics like me, every translated novel deserves a place among the greats or represents some feat of archival-editorial-financial gumption. To read—and announce oneself as having read—literature in translation is to be tasteful and intelligent, a latter-day cosmopolitan in an age of blighted provincialism. I want to avoid this proclivity because the novel I’m reviewing, Herscht 07769 by Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, translated by Ottilie Mulzet and published last fall by New Directions, does not have much to offer, and because there exists a tendency, even a movement, within the anemic critical sphere into which such works are breathlessly incorporated that runs counter to a critical ethos of careful evaluation and contextualization.
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