Wednesday at Zenda. Foreign Narrative Wednesday. On this Wednesday, The English Understand Wool and Other Tricks (Random House), a novel by Helen DeWitt, author of the groundbreaking The Last Samurai. In this instance, DeWitt, with her unmistakable irony and fierce intelligence, turns the world of culture, often ruthless and unfair, into a territory as comic as it is unpredictable.
In the publisher’s own words: “Raised in Marrakech by a French mother and an English father, Marguerite has learned to avoid the slightest lapse of taste. Do not compel the servants to work during Ramadan, and while they enjoy paid leave, one should stay at Claridge’s and install a piano in the suite. Tweed should come from the Hebrides and the finest linen from Ireland, but the garments must be tailored by London tailors. Those, and many other lessons Marguerite has absorbed from her parents. But at seventeen she discovers she has been the victim of a grand deception and she must navigate by the dictates of good taste to defend herself alone among the sharks of the publishing industry.
This opening novella is followed by a sequence of stories in which writers, artists, musicians, editors, agents, and businessmen masquerading as cultural promoters come and go. Creative genius and the desire to bring it to fruition clash with market demands, precariousness, and the need to make a living”.
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Author: Helen DeWitt. Title: The English Understand Wool and Other Tricks. Translation: Gabriela Ellena Castellotti. Publisher: Random House. Sales: Todostuslibros.