Pratiques Scandaleuses

The Série Noire was born out of literary scandals (Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Kathleen Winsor's Forever Amber) and traded on them. Marcel Duhamel's mission statement of 1948 promised readers violence and depravity. Its early focus on translations of so-called American thrillers also led to scandalous cases of French authors masquerading as Americans (Boris Vian's role in the Vernon Sullivan affair shocked Paris in 1946 and shone light on the practices of Duhamel's team). In time it also became famous for its colorful treatment of the original texts that it translated for its French readers. In this article we reassess to what extent the criticisms of Série Noire translation infidelities are warranted. Certainly, there has always been a degree of mythmaking at work in assessments of Duhamel's practices, but, more than that, discussion of publishing scandals often overlooks details that spoil a good story. Discussion of the trajectory in French translation of Jim Thompson's Pop. 1280 is an interesting case in point. The story of the original text's transformation under Duhamel's pen is surprising, but arguably the failure to tell the whole story is itself equally scandalous

Art · Art history · Literature · Miller · Publishing · Historical and Literary Analyses · History · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Narrative Theory and Analysis

• The Spectralities Reader

  Kirsten Møllegaard•Folklore•2014

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