Proust in the Age of Retranslation

How should translators — or any writers, for that matter — respond to their critics? The usual advice is quiet dignity: for certain distances to be kept so that a sense, however slight, of superiority might be implied. Some even urge writers not to bother reading their critics at all, which is the literary equivalent of the sort of self-care that encourages melancholiacs not to watch the news, or check their bank accounts, or listen to sad songs. I, for one, prefer belligerence. Not just the clever letter to the editor or its modern incarnation, the complaint on social media, but the well-executed campaign of revenge. Lydia Davis’s example, in that regard, is inspirational. When André Aciman wrote a negative review of her translation of the first volume of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, faulting her for not capturing the rhythm of Proust’s French as well as her predecessors did, her response included: a snarky letter, which sparked a bitter exchange in The New York Review of Books; “The Walk,” a short story about a translator and a critic; and an essay, “Changing My Mind,” published twelve years later, explaining exactly what that short story was about.