ROLT

Today was the latest ROLT event.  The topic was foreign writing translated into English, and I titled the event "In other words..." Eight people said they were coming, but only one guy besides myself showed up!  And it wasn't like one of those cold January evenings.  On top of that, we never got a waiter to take our orders. (Victory Cafe was swamped with customers that afternoon.)

I read a passage from Orhan Pamhuk's Istanbul, translated by the great Maureen Freely, reprinted in the Cities issue of Lapham's Quarterly. (Most of it was a single sentence punctuated with semicolons!) Since the King James Bible is one of history's great translation achievements, I also read the whimsical Book of Jonah.  The other guy read a section from The Five Mysteries of Life, which may well be fascinating reading but doesn't really lend itself to being listened to.

Since the group was small, I skipped a couple of other passages I had planned.  I was going to read a passage from Gunter Grass' The Tin Drum describing Oskar encountering and winning over a gang of JDs. (I'd hoped to read from Ralph Mannheim's great translation, but could only find a later translation by Breon Mitchell.) And I'd planned to read a passage from The King of the Mountains describing how Hadji Stavros ended up a bandit king.

Speaking of The King of the Mountains, I just finished it.  Since the next Lapham's Quarterly still hasn't arrived, I suppose I'll read The Conscript next.

Yesterday there was only a small group at acting class.  In the evening I went to Karaoke Meetup at Kramer's.  Jonah wasn't feeling well, so at the last minute I agreed to be substitute organizer.

Our bread machine is shot. (The revolving thing that stirs the dough came off.) I won't have time to look for a new machine until Tuesday, so the next loaf will be maybe three weeks later than the last one.