Joshua Barnes reviews Nicholas Dames’ history of literary segmentation, a study that slices through and pauses over what chapters have always told us about the times we live in.
I often return to an essay by Lydia Davis about an unusual experiment in translation. Better known for her work on French writers like Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust, and Maurice Blanchot, Davis had in this case tried to translate a literary text, not from French but rather from English into English. The text in question was Laurence Sterne’s unfinished 1768 novel, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick. Even a glance at its first page suggests why the book might require translation. Here is how it begins: