There is an excellent summary of this week’s reading over on Ijustreadaboutthat:
There were seven killings in August 1995—one of whom was killed by her stepfather. The rest were unsolved.
Epifanio returns briefly to bemoan that judiciales never find a case. And he reveals that he swiped an address book that no one even bothered to ask about or to use for evidence. Of course, he didn’t do anything with it either.
And next Sergio Gonzalez returns briefly. I loved the joke that arts reports were considered faggots “(assthetes, they called them)” (464) and I wonder if that was original in the Spanish or of that is just an awesome translation.
[Our library has a copy of 2666 in Spanish, so I’m delighted to have been able to look up this word. The page numbering is different (of course) and I’m delighted that even with my minimal Spanish, I was able to track down this section with relative ease. I would never bother working on any other translation in the book, but this word really stood out. And so, in the original, we get “(periodistas <<pulturales>>, los llamaban)” (581). Using Google translate I’m getting the “pul” part to mean neatness/fastdiousness and the “ultrales” means culture. It’s a funny joke in Spanish but I love that Natasha Wimmer came up with “assthetes.” What a great translation.]
Excellent! Go read it!
Awesome recap!!! Thanks!!
I fear that what humor there is to be found is increasingly lost on me.
I’m reading the Spanish version, and often wonder how a play on words winds up being translated as I’m to lazy and cheap to find and pay for an English copy.
Any way the gist I got was that “pult-” was close enough to “put-” which is the beginning of the word “puto” which means male whore. So an obliquely homosexual tinge to this nick name blending “puto” and “cultural”.
BTW, how did they deal with Lalo Cura? This is a play on words since rearranging them you get “La locura” which means “insanity”. I was thinking they might come up with something like Lew Nassy or something like that. I’ve noticed they stuck with Lalo Cura. Right off the bat Epifanio laughs about the obvious connection La Locura, how is it dealt with in English