Host Ken Jones talks with Max Nemtsov, a writer, translator, and editor based in Moscow. Max’s translation credits include a long list of great American post-war writers including Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, J.D. Salinger, Ken Kesey, Richard Brautigan, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, and Thomas Pynchon.
Along with his colleague Anastasia Gryzunova, Max translated Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, perhaps the most challenging English-language masterpiece this side of Finnegan’s Wake.
Max’s experience outside of translation includes work in radio, journalism, publishing, and film. He co-wrote the script for the Russian film “Subs” -- based on Jack Kerouac’s novel The Subterraneans – which won the Grand Prize at the Kiev International Film Festival in 1995.
Join us as we talk about Max's work, the art of translation, the place of American literature in Russian culture, and especially, about Pynchon and Gravity’s Rainbow.
Photo of Max Nemtsov courtesy of Anna Sinyatkina
- KBOO