Translating New Journalism:
Capturing the Essence of the American Nineteen-Sixties
Lennart Roest 3248569
July 2015
Master Thesis
Translation Studies
Utrecht University
Supervisor: Onno Kosters
Second Reader: Ton Naaijkens
Table of Contents
Abstract
3
Introduction
4
1 New Journalism
6
1.1 Origin and Development
6
1.2 Characteristics
7
1.3 Notable New Journalists
10
2 Translating New Journalism
13
2.1 General Strategies
13
2.1.1 Target Text Purpose
13
2.1.2 Historisation and Foreignisation
15
2.1.3 The Translator’s Visibility
17
2.1.4 Resistancy
20
2.2 Status-Life Symbols
24
2.2.1 Theories
27
2.2.2 Strategies
29
2.3 Dialogue
33
2.3.1 Theories
36
2.3.2 Strategies
39
2.4 Parallel Texts
43
2.4.1 New Journalism in the Netherlands
43
2.4.2 The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test vs. De Trip
45
2.4.3 In Cold Blood vs. In Koelen Bloede
50
1
Conclusion
56
3 Translations
58
4 Source passages
75
Bibliography
89
2
Abstract
Translation problems caused by cultural discrepancies are not uncommon in the field of
translation studies. However, in translating New Journalism, a style of news writing
developed in the nineteen-sixties in America, these problems seem unusually difficult. New
Journalists sought to portray a cultural reality by immersing their audience through the use
of literary devices, and preserving this effect in a translation is often challenging. This thesis
aims to explore possible translation strategies dealing with the cultural differences between
American culture in the nineteen-sixties and contemporary Dutch culture. Translationrelevant aspects of New Journalism are examined, as well as two existing Dutch translations
of New Journalism works. Lawrence Venuti’s notion of “resistancy” is also mentioned, which
states that the intended effect of the original text can be preserved through a strong
foreignisation tactic. This is an idea that is also applicable to the translation of New
Journalism, as the highlighting of foreign elements can serve to immerse the target
audience into a different cultural reality by creating an effect of estrangement.
3
Introduction
Every act of translating is in its core an intercultural one. A text is always written against the
background of the culture in which it is conceived, and translating a text requires it to be
transposed in such a way that it can function in the target culture. This is, of course, a widely
known concept in the field of translation studies and naturally, the greater the cultural
differences between the source and target cultures, the more problems the translator is
bound to encounter. However, in some cases problems are caused by additional factors
other than cultural distance.
In the nineteen-sixties, the tremendous social and cultural changes that took place in
America called into life a form of journalism called New Journalism. Reporting on people
and events that were culturally relevant at the time, New Journalists made use of realistic
literary devices to create immersive and compelling stories in which they portrayed a
specific cultural reality. Even though the cultural differences between America and the
Netherlands do not seem very great, New Journalism’s focus on accurately depicting reality
increases the difficulties a translator of New Journalism faces in terms of transposing
cultural elements, particularly in the areas of equivalence, readability and acceptability by
the target audience.
This thesis aims to analyse the problems that arise in the process of translating the
genre of New Journalism into Dutch. Possible strategies that can be used to tackle the
problems arising in such texts will be discussed, the effects of which will be illustrated in
translations of excerpts taken from the genre. The first section will contain a brief overview
of the genre of New Journalism; its history, characteristics, and most prominent advocates
will be discussed. This will also include a brief introduction to the texts chosen to be
translated as well as their authors. The second section will consist of an outline of the
4
specific translation problems encountered during the translation process and a discussion of
their possible solutions. In the third and final section, the annotated translations will be
presented.
When it comes to the subject of New Journalism, the immense differences between
American culture and Dutch culture present something that might be called a culture
chasm, one that a translator inevitably has to deal with. In the following, my aim is to
provide clarity on the subject and provide solutions and tools with which this cultural divide
may be bridged.
5
1 New Journalism
1.1 Origin and Development
The exact origins of the New Journalism seem unclear, as there has been much debate
about the idea that it was actually new when it made its way into the mainstream in the
1960s. For example, Harold Hayes, editor of men’s magazine Esquire, has said that the New
Journalism is actually “literary journalism” or “stylized non-fiction writing,” which according
to him dates as least as far back as Mark Twain (qtd in Buettler, 1984). Furthermore, in 1975
Marshall Fishwick already called New Journalism “old hat,” and wrote that adding the
adjective “new” does not change the noun’s past connections (1975, 2). However, despite
these differing opinions on the validity of its name, it is clear that this style of reporting
thrived in America during the nineteen-sixties.
In his book Fact and Fiction: New Journalism and the Non-Fiction Novel, John
Hollowell begins his description of the American 1960s by stating the following:
The dominant mood of America in the 1960s was apocalyptic. Perpetual crisis
seemed in many ways the rule. Throughout the decade the events reported daily by
newspapers and magazines documented the sweeping changes in every sector of
our national life and often strained our imaginations to the point of disbelief.
Increasingly, everyday “reality” became more fantastic than the fictional visions of
even our best novelists.
(3)
The American nineteen-sixties can thus be characterized as a time of great cultural and
social turbulence, mainly caused by the counterculture and its members who rebelled
against mainstream America and introduced new norms and values.
This so-called counterculture brought about developments in American popular
culture that called for “moral attitudes and understanding” and caused journalism to adapt
in order to “be relevant and to participate communicatively in those changes” (Johnson qtd
6
in Kallan 1975, 9). He further states that New Journalism represents “the writer’s attempt to
be personalistic, involved, and creative in relation to the events he reports and comments
upon” (ibid, 10). Moreover, the turmoil of 1960s America caused novelists to view American
life as “an affront to the fictional imagination, confounding rather than compelling” (Weber
1975, 44). Journalist-turned-novelist Tom Wolfe argues that serious novelists did not want
to be remembered as “the secretary of American society” and that by the 1960s, novelists
had “abandoned the richest terrain of the novel: namely, society, the social tableau,
manners and morals”, which allowed journalists to step in and claim this terrain for their
own (1973, 43-44). According to Wolfe, many journalists at the time aspired to be novelists,
and the need for a more creative approach to journalism provided them with the perfect
opportunity to combine or even invent different styles of writing.
New Journalism’s correlation with the counterculture of the 1960s is something most
scholars seem to agree on. The cultural developments of the 1960s were so significant that
they eventually led to journalists stepping beyond the boundaries of traditional journalism
in an effort to resist its constraints, and approaching their profession in a more creative
manner. This more creative manner would come to include a wide variety of forms and
techniques.
1.2 Characteristics
Just as the origins of New Journalism have always been surrounded by much confusion and
debate, the characteristics of the genre are equally vague. In New Journalism, the use of
literary techniques varied greatly from author to author. However, Tom Wolfe, who is
generally considered one of the founders of the genre, identified four techniques that stem
directly from fiction writing which he deemed central to New Journalism. These techniques,
7
all of which will be described in greater detail below, are scene-by-scene construction,
shifting points of view, extensive dialogue and the recording of status-life symbols (Wolfe
1973, 46-47). Indeed, these devices which, according to Wolfe, stem from realism1, appear
in the works of most New Journalists. Furthermore, they add to what can be said to be one
of the most important aspects of New Journalism, which is its visual style of writing. Richard
Kallan, for example, compares Tom Wolfe’s style of writing to television reporting, saying
that Wolfe’s fast-paced and non-linear prose “coalesce[s] to create an oral, ‘televisionic’
journalism” (1979, 54). David Culbert also compares New Journalism to television, saying
that it is “primarily an attempt to apply the techniques of a visual medium to the printed
page” (1975, 70). The four characteristics mentioned above support these views, as New
Journalists seem to adopt Henry James’s motto of “show don’t tell,” showing the audience
their subject matter by describing scenes as they unfold, often viewing them from a point of
view that belongs to either a character or to the journalist himself. A major point of New
Journalism is “immersion”: New Journalists generally aim to immerse their audience into the
reported reality by immersing themselves into their subject matter and reporting directly
from the scene. Dialogues and spoken language are portrayed realistically, that is to say, in
such a way that the reader can almost hear them as if he himself were present. Finally, the
recording of status-life symbols, such as people’s clothing or even their hairstyles, gave the
audience a visual taste of what life in 1960s America was like. New Journalists valued telling
the truth, and used these devices to create for their readers an experience of the truth as if
it were witnessed first-hand.
1
Wolfe was inspired by realist authors such as Balzac, Dickens and Gogol, and in the preface to his 1973
anthology The New Journalism, he often relates the four main devices of the New Journalism to the techniques
used by these writers.
8
Another major characteristic of New Journalism is the fact that it is more subjective
than traditional journalism. This ties in with the visual aspect of the genre, as New
Journalists portray reality both objectively through detailed descriptions of scenes but also
subjectively, as scenes are portrayed from a certain point of view. Michael Johnson
describes how this subjectivity is what gives the New Journalism its appeal. Using Tom
Wolfe’s “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby”, an essay about a hot-rod car
show in California, as an example, he writes that by being subjective, Tom Wolfe and New
Journalists in general are able to
… eliminate that tone of grey condescension with which more conventional
journalism would treat such a subject; and he has become involved in the whole
scene - its details, the small touches, the signatures of the whole custom-car mind
set, the style of the environment - to an extent that allows him to perceive and write
about it in an extraordinary way. (1975, 38)
Their involvement in their subject matter allows New Journalists to write about reality as
they see it, entertaining the audience through stylistic devices as well as uncovering aspects
of reality that would not be covered by conventional journalism. Johnson continues by
saying the following:
By 1965 [Wolfe] and his fellow New Journalists were well on their way toward
elaborating a whole new inventory of stylistic resources not only for creating
“entertainment” of a special kind but also for the communication of the only true
information there is: that which derives from a new and profounder sense of the
human universe when it is rhetorically recast to reveal its conventionally invisible
aspects and dimensions. (1975, 38)
As Johnson indicates here, the New Journalists’ subjectivity allows them to provide the
reader with information that is more profound than could be the case with traditional
journalism, simply because they often describe scenes through the eyes of a person that is
involved in it. Again, the audience is able to ‘see’ the situation as if they were present on the
scene themselves.
9
In short, New Journalists aim to use the four devices listed above in order to write
stories that are as informative as possible. By immersing their audience into their subject
matter they provide information that might be subjective, but that nevertheless stays true
to the facts of everyday American life. Of these four devices, the implementation of statuslife symbols and the use of dialogues prove to be most problematic for a translator of New
Journalism, as these contribute most to the effect of immersion that is such a prominent
feature of the genre. A target reader is likely to have a different image of the (in many cases
culturally bound) symbols described in the text, and the realistic representation of dialogue,
that often involves the phonetic depiction of speech, cannot always be relayed accurately to
a target audience.
1.3 Notable New Journalists
Truman Capote (1924-1984)
Truman Capote is one of the better known pioneers of New Journalism, even though he
sought to differentiate himself from other journalists. In an interview with George Plimpton,
he stated that journalists like Tom Wolfe and others had “nothing to do with creative
journalism - in the sense that [he] used the term,” because their talent was mainly
journalistic and therefore lacked the “proper fictional technical equipment” in order to write
creatively (Plimpton 1966). Nevertheless, his influence on the genre of New Journalism was
significant, and his ground-breaking non-fiction novel In Cold Blood (1966) is generally seen
as the epitome of the genre and also formed the peak of Capote’s career. For these reasons,
a passage from this work has been selected to be translated for this thesis.
10
Tom Wolfe (Born 1931)
Tom Wolfe is widely regarded to be the most influential New Journalist, mainly for his role
in popularising the genre. He started out working for the New York Herald Tribune in 1962
as a feature writer, and wrote articles for Esquire and New York Magazine, among others.
He was one of the first journalists to explore the implications of writing journalistic articles
using elements of realist fiction, and his career as a New Journalist started when he wrote a
story for Esquire on a custom car show in California. Instead of writing an article that
conformed to the conventions of journalism, Wolfe wrote a letter containing his notes to
the editor of Esquire, who simply removed the salutation ‘Dear Byron’ from the top and ran
the letter as an article using the title “There goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored
Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.” The article now simply bears the title “The KandyKolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,” and was also part of Wolfe’s first book bearing
the same name. Because it can be considered Wolfe’s first New Journalism article and no
Dutch translations seem to exist to date, this thesis will present a translation of an excerpt
from the article. Later in his career, Wolfe wrote several other non-fiction books including
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) and The Right Stuff (1979). Following his New
Journalism work, Wolfe continued to write fiction novels in which his background in New
Journalism is clearly visible. Some of these works are The Bonfire of the Vanities, a story that
centres around race and social class in New York, and I Am Charlotte Simmons, which
concerns sexual and status relationships at a fictional university. Wolfe is still active today
and published his latest novel, Back to Blood, in 2012.
11
Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)
Even though Hunter Thompson is generally considered to be a representative of New
Journalism, he himself called his work ‘Gonzo Journalism,’ which can be seen as a subgenre
of New Journalism. It is characterised by a first-person style in which the journalist himself
becomes the protagonist of the story. Thompson most often writes in first person, and uses
his own experiences to colour the stories he writes, at times incorporating humorous and
bizarre elements into his texts. He is best known for his novel Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas, but it was his article “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” in 1970 in
which he first established himself as a Gonzo Journalist. This makes the latter a relevant text
to examine and translate, which is why the third excerpt chosen to be translated for this
thesis is taken from this article.
12
2 Translating New Journalism
2.1 General Strategies
Before delving into specific translation problems that arise in translating New Journalism
and examining possible strategies and solutions, it may be useful to outline several general
strategies that can form the basis of any further translation decisions. In translation, shifting
a text from one cultural context to another entails shifts on many different levels, which is
why formulating encompassing strategies will be a great help to the translation process.
2.1.1 Target text purpose
The first aspect that should be considered with regards to translating New Journalism is the
purpose the target text will serve in the target culture. Hans Vermeer uses the word Skopos
to describe the aim and purpose of a translation, and in the framework of his Skopostheorie,
one of the most important factors determining the purpose of a translation is the
addressee, the intended audience of the target text with their culture-specific worldknowledge, their expectations and their communicative needs (qtd in Nord 1997, 12).
According to Vermeer, to translate means “to produce a text in a target setting for a target
purpose and target addressees in target circumstances” (ibid.). Much of the focus is
therefore on the target audience, which is of course an important factor, but an
examination of the source text (or texts, in this case) is equally important. As the name
implies, New Journalism is all about informing the reader about cultural events and society
in the American nineteen-sixties. It is the New Journalists who provide this information to
their readers, who are a part of the cultural situation they report on. In addition, this
information is given through the use of literary devices that serve to engross the reader and
13
immerse him into gripping stories based on the readers’ own cultural context. When looking
at the target audience, the main difference is of course that target readers do not have the
same knowledge of the source culture as source readers do, as they are situated in a
different cultural context. If the same informative function is to be maintained in a target
text, the question is therefore what the target audience knows of the source culture and
language. The greater the target audience’s knowledge of American culture, the easier it will
be to convey the ideas and concepts represented in the source text. Basing translation
decisions on assumptions made about the knowledge the target audience has of the source
text can greatly aid the translation process. To this regard, it can be assumed that a Dutch
target reader of New Journalism is interested in reading about American culture and is
therefore sufficiently familiar with the source language and culture to understand most
descriptions and references contained in the source text(s). In Norman Mailer’s “The Armies
of the Night,” an essay about the anti-war demonstration at the Pentagon in 1967 in which
Mailer himself participated, words such as “Pentagon” and “BBC” would be familiar enough
to be understood by a Dutch target audience in a translation. In the same essay, however,
terms such as “US Marshal” or “MP” are generally not as well known and therefore may
need to be made explicit in order to convey the same denotative meaning to the target
reader. It will then be up to the translator to decide which strategies are best suited for
which situations, but these will be discussed in greater detail at a later stage.
When it comes to the literary aspect of New Journalism, there does not seem to be a
clear problem, since in this case, literary devices used in the source culture usually also
appear in the target culture. However, Christiane Nord indicates that “[a]s a rule, literary
codes include not only stylistic features such as rhythm, prosody, syntax, macrostructure,
metaphors and symbols but also characters, ideas, expressiveness and atmosphere,” (1997,
14
88) adding that readers are more easily able to identify with fictional characters and
situations when they recognise a familiar text world (ibid.). Due to New Journalism’s
dependence on elements like characters and atmosphere to create an immersive effect, the
cultural gap between the American source culture and the Dutch target culture may cause
this effect to be lost to a certain degree. Here again, the translator may have to rely on what
Nord calls “additional information or adaptations introduced by the translator” in order to
bridge the “cultural gap between the amount of information presupposed with respect to
source-text receivers and the actual cultural and world knowledge of the target-text
addressees” (86).
2.1.2 Historisation and Foreignisation
Another question that arises in the early stages of the translation process is whether the
translation is to be source-oriented or target-oriented. That is, does the translation remain
faithful to the source material or does it cater more to the target audience by transposing
elements in such a way that they are more easily recognizable? As early as the nineteenth
century, philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher wrote on the different methods of translating
and mentioned two ways in which a translator can operate in this regard: leaving the writer
in peace as much as possible by moving the reader towards him (remaining faithful to the
source material), or leaving the reader in peace as much as possible and moving the writer
towards him (catering to the target audience) (2012: 49). In his discussion of translating
poetry, James S. Holmes described similar strategies, terming them as “foreignisation” and
“domestication” respectively (2010: 185), where “foreignisation” denotes the preservation
of foreign source text elements in the target text and “domestication” refers to the
opposite, i.e., transposing foreign elements to suit the target cultural environment. He also
15
mentioned three different levels on which these strategies can be applied, namely that of
the linguistic context (elements such as syntax), literary intertext (literary devices such as
verse form) and sociocultural situation (images and symbols) (ibid.). Of these three levels,
the lattermost is most appropriate when dealing with New Journalism, since problems
having to do with word order and syntax seem trivial in this case, and, as mentioned before,
literary devices used in the source culture also appear in the target culture. When it comes
to literary devices, however, there are differences to be seen in terms of expressiveness
(bearing in mind Nord’s words quoted earlier) between languages. This might play a role in
dialogues, in the way characters in the source text express themselves; or in the way a
writer describes a certain scene. In these cases, an additional problem arises that is tied to
the translator’s visibility, but this will be discussed later. In any case, emphasis seems to lie
on the sociocultural level, where problems arise when translating status-life symbols for
example. Symbols may be different between cultures, and may also appeal to the
aforementioned knowledge of the reader. It is here, then, that the most relevant translation
problems present themselves to the translator.
The informative nature of New Journalism combined with the genre’s roots in
American culture would indicate that the foreignisation strategy is the most appropriate in
creating a translation. New Journalism informs the audience on American culture, which
makes it important to preserve every foreign aspect of the source text in a target text. Joe
Eszterhas’ story “Charlie Simpson’s Apocalypse,” on a shooting rampage committed by 25year old Charlie “Ootney” Simpson in the city of Harrisonville, Missouri in 1972, is a good
example of a text that seems to demand a foreignising approach, containing elaborate
descriptions of small-town scenes and a narrator that employs informal language:
16
They call this lush area Twister Alley. Of all the woebegone acreage in
America, Harrisonville and the fast-blink single-gas-station towns clustered about it Peculiar, Lone Jack, Gunn City - attract more funnel clouds and 90 mph whirlwinds
each hardluck year than anyplace else. The whirlwinds sweep down across
greenbacked rows of wheat and corn, tottering over power lines and flame onto
dried haystacks - raising hell two or three times a season with the insurance rates
and the little money a farming man has left after Uncle Sam takes his share.
(The New Jouralism, 148)
It is clear that a domesticating strategy, for example by transposing the setting of this text to
a target culture setting, would be nearly impossible to achieve due to the density of sourceculture elements, in addition to the fact that the event described of course did not take
place in the target culture setting. Even though this is an example taken from one New
Journalism text, it does illustrate the overall tone of the genre, that of reporting through
vivid descriptions and sometimes subjective comments, making the use of a foreignising
strategy all the more fitting.
In addition to the strategies of foreignisation and domestication, Holmes mentions
two other strategies that are also considered opposing extremes: the strategies of
historisation and modernisation (185). Since most New Journalism articles were written
during the nineteen-sixties, and therefore report and inform on this period, it would make
sense to utilise the historisation strategy for the same reason as using the foreignisation
strategy. Therefore, in summary, a retentive strategy based on a combination of
foreignisation and historisation seems in order when translating New Journalism.
2.1.3 The Translator’s Visibility
Another point that is worthy of discussion and that corresponds to the notions of
foreignisation and domestication is the visibility of the translator. According to Lawrence
Venuti, the translator of a text is invisible when a text reads fluently, creating the illusion
17
that the translated text is not a translation but the original (1995, 1). He goes on to describe
a fluent translation as one written in language that is current and in which foreign words are
avoided, one that is immediately recognizable and intelligible, and domesticated as opposed
to (disconcertingly) foreign2 (5). This notion conflicts with the earlier discussed
foreignisation and historisation strategies, as the translator is more likely to become visible
if foreign elements are retained in a text. It therefore seems impossible that a translator of
New Journalism is able to remain invisible and render a text that is fluent according to
Venuti’s criteria. Efforts can be made to create a translation that is as fluent as possible, but
it is likely, lest the target text become disconcertingly domestic, that in a translation of a
New Journalism text the translator will be visible at least to some degree.
The reason that the translator’s visibility is a relevant factor to consider especially
when translating New Journalism, is that it represents a potential problem regarding one of
the more important elements of New Journalism, which is immersion. A translation in which
the translator is too visible may make the audience too aware of the fact that they are
reading a translation instead of an original text, effectively destroying the immersive effect
that New Journalist writers sought to create. Due to the use of the foreignisation and
historisation strategies, the target audience may already be aware that they are reading a
foreign text, but a translator who is too visible may only prove to be a source of distraction,
pulling the reader out of the textual world and breaking the reader’s sense of immersion.
The translator therefore seems to be confronted with a situation where a balance needs to
be struck between his own (in)visibility and the immersive quality of a text, all the while
maintaining the foreign nature of the source material.
2
Venuti names several other factors here, and in fact his description of what he calls a “fluent” translation is
quite detailed. I merely chose to include those elements that are relevant for this discussion.
18
Regarding the “foreign-ness” of a New Journalism translation, it may be appropriate
to consider the ways in which foreign elements are introduced to a target audience. Writing
on foreign elements in translations, Philippe Noble discusses the problems that arose in
translating Cees Nooteboom’s novel Allerzielen, in which the contrast between two cultures
plays a central role. He describes how a translator of such a work is confronted with the task
of translating these foreign elements and eventually has to conclude that the intention to
recreate certain effects from the source text can often lead to creating a text that is
different from the original text in many ways (2003, 35). For example, he discusses how
Nooteboom uses German dialogue in a Dutch text in order to set the scene and create an
effect of estrangement:
“Hallo! Hallo! Kann mir jemand helfen? Hilfe bitte! Hilfe!” (p. 27)
“Können Sie ihn bitte halten, während ich anrufe?” (p. 28)
“O Gott,” zei de vrouw, en het klonk alsof ze bad, “ich bin gleich zurück.” (p. 28)
(qtd in Noble 2003, 27)
It should be noted that these instances of German only occur at the beginning of a dialogue,
after which the rest of the dialogue unfolds in Dutch. Since the relationship between Dutch
and German is different from that between German and French, German dialogue is
perceived as much more foreign by a French target audience. Noble, however, did not want
to relinquish the effect of the German dialogue, and was therefore forced to provide in-text
translations:
“Hallo! Hallo! Kann mir jemand helfen? Hilfe bitte! Hilfe! Ohé! Ohé! Quelqu’un peut
m’aider? Aidez-moi! Au secours!” (p. 29)
“Können Sie ihn bitte halten, während ich anrufe? Vous pouvez le tenir, s’il vous
plaît, pendant que je vais téléphoner?” (p. 30)
“Oh mon Dieu, fit la femme, et on aurait dit qu’elle priait, je reviens tout de suite.”
(p. 31)
(ibid.)
19
By utilising this strategy, Noble manages to retain much of the original effect, even though
target culture conventions call for significant changes to be made.
Also discussing the representation of the foreign in translations, Karel Giltay and
Hanneke van der Heijden speculate on the possibility of the translated text as a whole acting
as the foreign agent introduced to the target reader, rather than a clash between two
cultures as described within a single text (2004, 19). Of these two notions, the latter in
particular could be a suitable approach to translating New Journalism as well. The target
audience is faced with a foreign text that is introduced to them by the translator who,
despite being somewhat visible, acts as a kind of mediator or messenger between the
source and target cultures. The translator could become a kind of reporter himself, where
the target text is seen as a report on the source text and his visibility is used to subtly
underline this role. For instance, he could highlight or emphasise certain foreign elements in
the source text in a way that is recognisable to the target audience (mimetic speech in
translated dialogues for example). This is mere speculation, however, and exactly how this
might be brought into effect will be discussed in a later section, but it does appear that the
inevitable visibility of the translator does not need to have a negative impact on the
translation.
2.1.4 Resistancy
In line with the idea described above, it may also be relevant to acknowledge an additional
strategy that Lawrence Venuti refers to as “resistancy” (1995, 24). Venuti, opting for the
strategy of foreignisation as a reaction to the Anglo-American tradition of domestication,
proposes the use of a translation style that goes against fluency and that creates an effect of
estrangement by “challeng[ing] the target-language culture even as it enacts its own
20
ethnocentric violence on the foreign text” (ibid.). He illustrates the effects of this strategy by
translating Milo de Angelis’ poem “Il Corridoio Del Treno” (“The Train Corridor”) in a way
that preserves its formal discontinuity, while a domesticating strategy could easily resolve
any syntactical anomalies and produce a text that is fluent according to target culture
standards (299):
“Again this plagiary
of resemblance—do you want this?” in the cold train
that crosses the rice fields and separates everything
“you want this—you think this
is love?” It is dark now
and the deserted corridor lengthens
while the elbows, leaning on the compartment window
“you’re still there,
but it’s time to change expectations” and a station
passes, in the fog, its opaque houses.
“But what plagiary? If I believe
in something, then it will be true for you too,
truer than your world, I confute it always”
a trembling
beneath the overcoat, the body follows a force
that conquers, leans the word against itself
“something, listen,
something can begin.”
(The Translator’s Invisibility, 297)
Venuti argues that, in the original poem, De Angelis intentionally constructs broken
sentences to create a feeling of “fragmented subjectivity” (297); it becomes difficult for the
reader to interpret the different voices that are present in the text, or to decide whether
there are, indeed, more than one (ibid.). Venuti explains that in his translation, he could
have easily made the syntax more fluent by for example using the word “lean” instead of
“leaning” in line 7 or inserting the phrase “go by” after “opaque houses” in line 10 (299).
Instead, in his translation he aims to reproduce the original author’s intention of “throwing
the reading process off-balance, aggravating the already difficult problem posed by the
shifting positions of intelligibility, the dislocation of voice” (299). His resistant strategy can
21
also be seen in the use of more archaic language in the target text; by using “plagiary”
rather than “plagiarism” and “confute” rather than “refute,” he creates an effect of
estrangement, and once again goes against the “canon of transparency” (ibid.). By choosing
to highlight or enhance foreign features and not conforming to the target culture tradition
of domestication, Venuti therefore manages to maintain the effect of the source text. This
notion of resistancy seems particularly appropriate for the translation of New Journalism, as
Venuti argues that this strategy offers the target audience a certain view of a foreign
culture:
Translation is a process that involves looking for similarities between languages and
cultures—particularly similar messages and formal techniques—but it does this only
because it is constantly confronting dissimilarities. It can never and should never aim
to remove these dissimilarities entirely. A translated text should be the site where a
different culture emerges, where a reader gets a glimpse of a cultural other, and
resistancy, a translation strategy based on an aesthetic of discontinuity, can best
preserve that difference, that otherness, by reminding the reader of the gains and
losses in the translation process and the unbridgeable gaps between cultures.
(The Translator’s Invisibility, 306)
Due to New Journalism’s reportorial nature and the idea that a translator of New Journalism
could become a kind of reporter himself, foreign features of the source text could be
highlighted or emphasised, creating a sense of estrangement. Whereas the source audience
is confronted with its own culture, the target audience of a New Journalism translation is
presented with a foreign one, with the translator acting as a mediator or communicator. The
visibility of the translator therefore need not be an issue, but rather a means of conveying a
cultural reality to a target audience, as the translator makes his own presence visible by
highlighting the foreign nature of the source text.
In short, it appears that a strategy of resistancy seems most viable for the translation
of New Journalism. Just as the genre of New Journalism itself resisted conventional
journalism, the notion of resistancy can be seen as an effort to go against the tradition of
22
domestication. Furthermore, by emphasising foreign elements in a New Journalism text, a
translation can be created that, in line with the idea put forward by Giltay and Van Der
Heijden, acts as the foreign agent introduced to the target reader. Essentially, the target
reader is then transported to and immersed into a foreign (in this case, American) culture,
which allows for the informative function of New Journalism to be preserved. The problem
of immersion remains, considering the fact that the translator’s visibility might increase, but
this problem can also be dealt with, as shall be discussed further in the following sections.
23
2.2 Status-life Symbols
As mentioned earlier, the inclusion of status-life symbols allowed new journalists to depict
people’s lifestyles, from the clothing they wore to the way they behaved, informing the
audience of what life was like during the 1960s. Wolfe’s definition of status-life is “the entire
pattern of behaviour and possessions through which people express their position in the
world or what they think it is or what they hope it to be” (1973, 47). These symbols, which
could range from a person’s hairstyle or the car they drove to the university they attended,
were essentially used not only to inform the reader but also to immerse them into the
textual world. The readers, being familiar with these status-life symbols and understanding
their denotations and connotations, would then be able to construct an image in their
minds that immediately told them all they needed to know about a specific character or
situation or even the textual world in general. The somewhat obvious problem that these
status-life symbols cause when attempting to translate them is that they seem specifically
aimed at the source audience, and that any target audience will have difficulties
understanding their denotations and connotations. As a result, chances are that much of the
imagery, meanings and underlying references contained in a New Journalism text will be lost
in translation. Since Tom Wolfe in particular makes avid use of these status-life symbols,
(most of) the examples below are taken from his work. In addition, in the excerpts
contained in the following section, all status-life symbols have been marked in bold for
clarity.
A simple example of a translation problem tied to the denotative meaning of statuslife symbols can be found in Tom Wolfe’s “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline
Baby,” where the words “custom” or “customized” create an issue, especially since the word
occurs so frequently in the source text. As this article was written about a custom car show,
24
the words “custom cars” or “customized cars” are frequently encountered. In English, these
words have a distinct denotation, namely that of a car that has been modified to either
improve its performance or alter its aesthetics. Because in his article Wolfe calls these cars
“art objects,” (75) it is clear that, in this case, the latter interpretation is appropriate.
However, in Dutch, there is no clear equivalent of the word “custom” in relation to cars.
Translations that may come to mind are “aangepaste auto” or “opgevoerde auto,” but
neither of these carry the same denotation as the original words. The first denotes a car that
has been tailored to the needs of a driver with a certain handicap, while the latter simply
refers to a car that has an improved performance. Another translation might be “gepimpte
auto” (a “pimped” car), but this is closer to slang and is therefore less appropriate for this
context. In addition, this word would come across as too modern for the Dutch target
audience, going against the principle of historisation. None of these translations have the
same denotation as the original term, and therefore create an image in the reader’s mind
that is different from the one intended in the original. Viable translations of the word
“custom” and other examples mentioned below will be discussed in section 2.2.3.
Another example of this problem can be found in Tom Wolfe’s story “Girl of the
Year,” which starts as follows:
Bangs manes bouffants beehives beatle caps butter faces brush-on lashes decal
eyes puffy sweaters French thrust bras flailing leather blue jeans stretch pants
stretch jeans honeydew bottoms eclair shanks elf boots ballerinas Knight slippers,
hundreds of them [...]
(The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby, 199)
This passage contains a barrage of status-life symbols, which causes a number of difficulties.
The terms refer to hairstyles and items of clothing worn at a Rolling Stones concert, and as is
the case with the word “custom,” many of these terms do not have a Dutch equivalent.
Because the American 1960s gave birth to a wide variety of different styles of hair and
25
clothing, terms were invented to describe these styles. Terms that a language like Dutch in
many cases simply does not have. For example, words such as “honeydew bottoms” and “elf
boots” create a puzzle for the translator, because they are extremely foreign to Dutch
culture. Translating these terms in such a way that the original image is conveyed, may
therefore prove to be difficult.
As is the case with the denotative meanings of these status-life symbols, their
connotations are important to the reader’s understanding of the text as well. In Wolfe’s
story “The Voices of Village Square,” the reader is introduced to a character named Harry,
who is then mocked by the narrator:
Oh, dear, sweet Harry, with your French gangster-movie bangs, your Ski Shop
turtleneck sweater and your Army-Navy Store blue denim shirt over it, with your
Bloomsbury corduroy pants you saw in the Manchester Guardian airmail edition
and sent away for and your sly intellectual pigeon-toed libido roaming in Greenwich
Village - is that siren call really for you?
(The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, 313)
This example shows a device that Wolfe himself aptly calls the “hectoring narrator” (1973,
30) and here, Wolfe makes use of various names of brands and clothing stores in order to
describe the type of clothing Harry is wearing, simultaneously mocking him for his fashion
sense. If an audience is to understand this, they will need to understand the connotations of
these status-life symbols. In this case, Wolfe makes references to various high-quality and
specialized clothing stores to paint a picture of the type of person that Harry is (according to
Wolfe). Further in the story, Wolfe continues to describe Harry as an inexperienced type
that has idealistic expectations of life in New York City:
Half of them, like Harry, look like the sort of kids who graduated in 1961 from
Haverford, Hamilton or some other college of the genre known as Threadneedle Ivy
and went to live in New York City. Here they participate in discussions
our IBM civilization, the existing narcotics laws, tailfins and suburban housing
developments, and announce to girls that they are Searching. Frankly, they are all
26
lonesome and hung up on the subject of girls in New York. They all have a vision of
how one day they are going to walk into some place, usually a second-hand
bookstore on Bleecker Street west of Sixth Avenue, and there is going to be a girl in
there with pre-Raphaelite hair, black leotards and a lambskin coat. Their eyes will
meet, their minds will meet - you know, Searching, IBM civilization and all that, and
then - [...]
(The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, 314)
From this description, it becomes clear that Wolfe has a very specific idea of the type of
person he wants to portray here, and the connotations connected to the status-life symbols
in this passage and the previous one play a great role in establishing this character in the
text. Since most of these status-life symbols are bound to the source culture, bringing them
to a target culture may cause the target audience to have a different understanding of the
character and of Wolfe’s intentions as a “hectoring narrator.”
As stated earlier, status-life symbols serve to simultaneously immerse and inform the
reader by establishing an absorbing image of the textual world. However, the greater the
spatial and temporal differences between the source and target cultures, the more difficult
it becomes for the target culture to understand the denotations and connotations of certain
terms.
2.2.1 Theories
The issue of translating cultural terms and their denotations and connotations is of course
not an uncommon one in the field of translation studies. In an article on translating cultural
terms, Diederik Grit addresses this problem by stating that members of one culture often
have no mental image of the denotations of terms from another culture, let alone their
connotations, and that when trying to bridge a cultural gap, a translator needs to convey a
cultural reality that is different from that of the target audience (2010, 190). This is precisely
the case when translating New Journalism, as the conveyance of a cultural reality lies at the
27
heart of any New Journalism article. Grit discusses what he calls Culture-Specific Elements or
C-SE’s, which manifest themselves either as concepts that are specific to a certain country or
cultural area and that have no or merely a partial equivalent in another culture, or as the
terms used for these concepts (189). The latter manifestation in particular seems useful
here, since even though the target audience might be familiar with the concepts presented
in New Journalism, it is the terms and their translations that may cause problems in creating
an image of these concepts in a target text.
Grit argues that the selection of appropriate strategies when dealing with C-SEs
depends on several factors such as text type, text purpose and target audience (190). These
factors are important to consider, though in the case of New Journalism, this already causes
several dilemmas. For example, Grit makes a distinction between literary and journalistic
texts (ibid.), but in the combination of journalistic reporting and literary techniques in New
Journalism articles these text types are combined. Similarly, Grit asks the question whether
the main purpose of a text is to inform the audience or rather to convey a certain
atmosphere (ibid.), but the informative aspect of New Journalism relies greatly on the way
scenes are constructed and atmospheres are created, further complicating the selection of
viable strategies. In the latter case, however, it can be argued that the atmospheric value of
a New Journalism text is slightly more important, because New Journalists, as mentioned
earlier, aim to inform their audience by immersing them through their scenes and
storytelling. Deciding on a target audience does not seem to cause any clear dilemmas in
this case, though it is one of the more important factors to consider. In a previous section, I
have already expounded on the implications of foreignisation and domestication according
to Holmes’ system, reaching the conclusion that a retentive (i.e. a combination of
historisation and foreignisation) seems most appropriate for translating New Journalism
28
articles, assuming that the target audience has at least some knowledge of American
culture.
In light of all this, it is clear that a translator of New Journalism faces the problem of
recreating the same atmosphere and immersive effect that was present in the source text,
all the while ensuring that the target audience is not left in the dark as to the meanings of
these status-life symbols.
2.2.2 Strategies
Of all the strategies that Grit proposes, three seem particularly fitting to deal with status-life
symbols. One is to maintain the original term, using quotation marks or italics to indicate
that it is in fact a foreign term (192). Grit notes that this is usually only done if the target
audience has sufficient background knowledge of the source culture and language and adds
that in literary texts, this strategy serves to create a “couleur locale” (ibid.). Given the fact
that a retentive translation strategy seems appropriate for New Journalism, this option is
quite viable. For instance, because the target audience of a New Journalism translation can
be assumed to at least be familiar with the English language, the word “custom” could be
maintained in the target text, simply italicizing it to emphasise its foreign nature and add to
the target reader’s experience of reading a foreign text. This would also correspond with
Venuti’s idea of resistancy, by accentuating the foreign quality of the text.
Another strategy is to provide an in-text description or explanation of source terms,
thereby establishing their denotative meaning or their connotations (Grit, 192). This
strategy is useful for situations where the denotative meanings of terms might not
immediately be clear, despite the terms’ presence in the target culture. The words
“bouffant” or “beehive” in the passage from “Girl of the Year” for example do occur in the
29
Dutch language to a certain degree, although their presence in the target text can lead to
confusion among some target readers as it may not immediately be clear that these terms
refer to hairstyles. Instead, an explanation could be given to indicate their denotation, using
a word like “opsteekkapsels” to replace the original term. Grit, however, does mention a
downside to this strategy, namely the possibility of a translation becoming too wordy (192).
Especially in the passage from “Girl of the Year” this could become problematic due to the
rapid and rhythmic succession of status-life symbols there, but in those cases other
solutions might be available, such as the substitution of both “bouffants” and “beehives”
with the single word “opsteekkapsels.”
In addition to listing different translation strategies, Grit has observed that the
combination of different strategies is a common practice, since none of the strategies he
discusses are without problems (193). In translating New Journalism, a combination of
strategies is sometimes necessary in order to create a text that reads fluently and is, bearing
in mind Venuti’s notions on the translator’s invisibility, transparent. Looking back at the
words “custom” and “customized,” the strategy of maintaining these words in a target text
seemed most fitting, but due to their many repetitions in Wolfe’s “The Kandy-Kolored
Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby,” maintaining every instance of these words may be a
problem. If they are consistently maintained, the target audience is continually confronted
with these italicised foreign words, reminding them that they are reading a translation and
therefore breaking the immersive effect of the text as a whole. Therefore, instead of
applying the same strategy to every instance, a translator may choose to maintain only the
first instances of these words and find alternatives for any subsequent iterations. One could
for example use the words “gestileerde auto’s” (“stylized cars”) or even omit the original
word in the translation entirely. The reason for the latter option would be that once the
30
original denotation of a word is made clear, the audience will likely remember it the next
time the reference is encountered. As a result, it becomes less necessary to keep reusing the
same terms in the target text, leaving the translator free to create variations wherever they
seem fitting.
Finally, it may be worth noting that the connotations of status-life symbols can also
become clear from the context in which they occur. In the passage from “The Voices of
Village Square,” a translator seems to have little choice but to maintain the terms
mentioned there, since they denote brand names and clothing stores that, due to the aim at
a foreignising strategy in a translation, cannot be adapted to the target culture. The direct
connotations of these terms might therefore be lost on a target audience, but the tone in
which Wolfe mocks and writes about Harry also hints at the type of character he is trying to
portray. In other words, Wolfe’s tone and attitude towards the character of Harry is giving
the audience information on the connotative meaning of the status-life symbols used in the
passage, and therefore on the character itself. A translator might make use of this by
emphasising certain elements of the source passage in a translation, for example in the
description of Harry’s appearance:
O, beste, lieve Harry, met je Franse gangsterfilm-pony, je dure coltrui van de Ski
Shop en je blauwe spijkershirt van de Army Navy Store eroverheen, met je
ribfluwelen Bloomsbury-broek die je in de luchtposteditie van de Manchester
Guardian hebt gezien en je speciaal hebt laten invliegen, en je sluwe intellectuele xbenige libido dat in Greenwich Village rondwaart – is die sireneroep echt voor jou
bedoeld?
Here, the words marked in bold are possible additions that a translator could use in order to
make explicit the connotations associated with these status-life symbols, making it easier for
the target audience to understand the connotations and the character.
31
Deciding whether the denotation or connotation(s) of a certain status-life symbol is
more important is often not as clear-cut as it seems. Denotative meanings will inform the
reader about a certain setting or atmosphere, while connotations do the same for any
characters that may appear in a story. Often, leaving status-life symbols untranslated is
appropriate due to the lack of a target-language equivalent and also because it creates an
effect of estrangement (compare Venuti’s “resistancy”), but in these cases, a translation can
benefit greatly from subtle additions by the translator in the context to explain certain
terms. Using variations of translations of certain items (as in the case of the word “custom”)
can also be useful in making a text more acceptable to read for the target audience. A
combination of strategies therefore seems in order when a translator has to deal with
status-life symbols on a larger scale, bearing in mind readability and the audience’s
knowledge of the source culture.
32
2.3 Dialogue
In New Journalism, dialogues form an important part of the realistic and immersive effect
that is inherent to the genre. As is the case with status-life symbols, they are often used to
provide information on the types of people that are present at a scene and that are
encountered by the journalist himself or a character of the story. This is usually done by
representing their speech in a way that is indicative of their social background, by making
use of elements such as dialects or phonetic speech representations. According to Wolfe,
realistic dialogue involves the reader more completely and also establishes and defines
character more quickly than any other single device (1973, 46). This is exactly how dialogues
in New Journalism are used, enabling the source audience to immediately recognise and
relate to the dialects and sociolects that are represented in the speech of the characters. For
a target audience, on the other hand, it will be more difficult to relate to dialogues in New
Journalism due to the inevitable linguistic and cultural shift that takes place when these
dialogues are translated. The intended effect of establishing character and involving the
reader will therefore be affected, as the target audience will have a more difficult time
relating to the translated dialogues.
An example of the use of dialogue as a means to establish characters can be found in
the book Dispatches by Michael Herr. In this book, Herr describes his experiences as a war
correspondent in Vietnam, including his interactions with soldiers on the scene. The
following exchange takes place when Herr, who acts as the first-person narrator, is startled
by artillery fire on the front line, and two marines called Mayhew and Day Tripper (for his
fear of the night) start bickering:
“Them’re outgoing,” he said.
33
Day Tripper heard the deep sliding whistle of the other shells first. “That ain’t
no outgoin’,” he said, and we ran for a short trench a few yards away.
“That ain’t outgoing,” Mayhew said.
“Now what I jus’ say?” Day Tripper yelled, and we reached the trench as a
shell landed somewhere between the 37th A.R.V.N. Rangers’ compound and the
ammo dump. A lot of them were coming in, some mortars too, but we didn’t count
them.
“Sure was some nice mornin’,” Day Tripper said. “Oh man, why they can’ jus’
leave us alone one time?”
“Cause they ain’t gettin’ paid to leave us alone,” Mayhew said, laughing.
“Sides, they do it cause they know how it fucks you all up,”
“Tell me you ain’t scared shit!”
“You’ll never see me scared, motherfucker.”
“Oh no. Three nights ago you was callin’ out for your momma while them
fuckers was hittin’ our wire.”
“Boo-sheeit! I ain’t never gettin’ hit in Vietnam.”
“Oh no? Okay, mothafucker, why not?”
“Cause,” Mayhew said, “it don’t exist.” It was an old joke, but this time he
wasn’t laughing.
(Dispatches, 67-68)
The use of sociolects in this passage adds personality to the characters of Mayhew and Day
Tripper, and makes it so that they are recognisable to the reader as belonging to a lower
social class. Herr even manages to record subtle differences between their individual speech
patterns, as the speech of the African-American Day Tripper differs slightly from that of
Mayhew, who is white. For example, Day Tripper’s speech contains more frequent
omissions of final consonant clusters (in “can’ jus’” and “outgoin’”), as well as the
generalisation of past tense with second person subjects in “you was callin’ out.” These are
features associated with African-American Vernacular English (Rickford 1999, 4-7), and
therefore serve to further distinguish these characters by representing their speech in
different ways.
Another example of dialogue used to establish a character can be seen in Hunter
Thompson’s essay “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved,” where Thompson,
34
shortly after arriving at Louisville airport, encounters a man named Jimbo in the airport
lounge:
I ordered a Margarita with ice, but he wouldn’t hear of it: “Naw, naw… what the hell
kind of drink is that for Kentucky Derby time? What’s wrong with you, boy?” He
grinned and winked at the bartender. “Goddam, we gotta educate this boy. Get him
some good whiskey….”
[...]
I thanked him and fitted a Marlboro into my cigarette holder. “Say,” he said,
“you look like you might be in the horse business … am I right?”
“No,” I said. “I’m a photographer.”
“Oh yeah?” He eyed my ragged leather bag with new interest. “Is that what
you got there - cameras? Who you work for?”
“Playboy,” I said.
He laughed. “Well goddam! What are you gonna take pictures of - nekkid
horses? Haw! I guess you’ll be working pretty hard when they run the Kentucky
Oaks. That’s a race just for fillies.” He was laughing wildly. “Hell yes! And they’ll all be
nekkid too!”
(The New Journalism, 195-196)
Jimbo is portrayed here as being a somewhat obnoxious character, which is emphasised by
the way he expresses himself. In addition, phonetic words such as “naw” and “nekkid” as
well as expressions such as “goddam” underline his Texan origin, a fact that was mentioned
earlier in the text. For a source-audience reader these features are recognisable, enabling
them to relate to the character and the author interacting with him.
In New Journalism, dialogues are also used to add to the atmosphere of a particular
scene. In Tom Wolfe’s “The Voices of Village Square,” an essay written about the Women’s
House of Detention in New York City’s Greenwich Village, Wolfe records an interaction
between one of the women held in the House of Detention and a man named Willie who
had just walked out of the building:
“You mean it!” she yells from somewhere up there. “You gonna sell the
pants!”
“I told yuh!” Willie yells, right over the garbage trucks, the Vespas, the
Volkswagens, the people, over the whole lumbering, flatulent mess.
“And then you coming back!”
“All right!”
35
“When!”
“Soon’s I sell‘em!”
“They in the closet, Willie!”
(Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, 318)
This conversation takes place between characters that do not interact with the
author, but are simply part of the scene as Wolfe describes it. Once again, the depiction of
lower-class speech patterns (for example, omitting the copula “are” in “you gonna sell the
pants”) and phonetic representations such as “yuh” are recognisable to the source
audience, which enhances the immersive effect the dialogue is intended to have.
The examples above illustrate that dialogues in New Journalism can be used in
different ways, but as stated before, their main purpose is to involve and immerse the
reader. Establishing characters by the way they speak and express themselves makes them
recognisable and allows the reader to relate to them and the various scenes in which they
appear.
2.3.1 Theories
As is evident from the examples above, the problem of translating dialogues in New
Journalism frequently entails dealing with the representation of dialects and sociolects. In
translation, these elements are cause for significant problems for several reasons. Hatim
and Mason mainly emphasise the ideological and political issues that come into play, saying
that when dealing with dialects and sociolects, translators should be aware of their
ideological and political implications (1990, 40). They illustrate this by giving an example of
how in a translation of a Russian play, a Scottish accent was used to depict the speech of
Russian peasants, inadvertently associating a Scottish accent with a low status (ibid.).
Indeed, in written media, the author often chooses to include anomalous speech with a
predetermined goal in mind, for example by making a statement on social status by having a
36
character’s personality traits and behaviourisms associated with their social or geographical
background. In New Journalism, however, this generally does not seem to be the case.
Rather than the author using dialectal or sociolectal variation in dialogues to make a
statement, it is simply a result of the recording of real-life speech uttered by actual people
in order to provide information on their background, contextualising the narrative
geographically and socially. For example, it was not Michael Herr’s choice to have Mayhew
represent a certain social class by depicting his speech using a social dialect, but the way
Mayhew expresses himself as well as Herr’s faithful recording of it automatically leads to the
inference (by the audience) of a certain social background. Nevertheless, a translator of
New Journalism is still faced with the problem of how to render these dialogues in a target
text which, due to their mimetic function is mainly an issue of translating phonetic (“yuh,”
“jus’”), morphological (“ain’t”), syntactic (omission of copulas) and lexical (“fuckers,”
“goddam”) speech features. New Journalists seemed to have a tendency to render dialogues
in such a way that the audience could almost hear the characters speak, which makes it
important that translated dialogue comes across to the target audience as a natural
representation of spontaneous speech.
In terms of geographical dialect, options seem scarce for the translator of New
Journalism, for obvious reasons. Hatim and Mason argue that translating a dialect through
the use of an equivalent dialect from the target culture would run the risk of creating
unintentional effects (1990: 41), and for this reason, New Journalism’s distinctly American
cultural context seems to prohibit the use of target culture dialects in a translation, which
would create the effect of transposing the setting of the source text to a target culture
setting. This would go directly against the foreignisation strategy, as well as Venuti’s notion
of resistancy. The fact that Jimbo from Thompson’s “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and
37
Depraved” has Texan origins therefore seems impossible to relay in a target text through
the use of a target language (in this case, Dutch) dialect, making it very likely that the
intended effect of his speech is lost on the target audience. However, there may be ways for
a translator to work around this, which will be discussed below in the section on usable
strategies.
On translating social language variations, Hatim and Mason argue that “[p]rincipals
of equivalence demand that we attempt to relay the full impact of social dialect, including
whatever discoursal force it may carry” (1990, 42). As in the case of translating geographical
dialects, the translator once again has the option of translating social dialects by using a
target text equivalent, but in doing so, social stratification can be an issue. Trudgill points
out that class systems are different between cultures, and the fact that the class system of
the English speaking world is much more fluid than India’s caste system, makes the linguistic
situation much more complex in the former (1983, 36-37). In this particular case, even
though the American and Dutch cultures can be seen as relatively classless, they are still
home to many different language communities, which can make equivalence difficult to
achieve. Furthermore, using an existing TL equivalent once again runs the risk of sounding
too familiar to the target audience, causing cultural and geographical displacement of the
target text. Another option for translating social variation is to approximate the variety used
in the source text by using speech features that mimic spoken language in the target text. In
Dutch, these may include contractions like “assik” rather than “als ik” (“when I”) or
omissions in spelling such as “ochend” instead of “ochtend” (“morning”). This may be a
suitable option given the fact that these features are more common and therefore more
recognisable to the audience, maintaining the effect of immersion (i.e. the idea that the
reader can almost hear the characters speak) that dialogues in New Journalism are intended
38
to have. However, this calls forth an issue of acceptability. Määtä argues that “language
communities have different levels of tolerance towards written dialect” (2004, 321), and so
the phonetic representation of speech may be difficult for a Dutch target reader to accept. It
could have a negative effect on readability if it appears too frequently or too exaggerated,
and once again it could also result in a cultural displacement of the target text if it becomes
too recognisable to the reader. However, this does seem like the most viable option,
considering the difficulties of finding a social equivalent in the target language and the fact
that omission of the sociolect (which would be a third option), negates the intended effect
of the original text.
Essentially, translating New Journalism dialogues entails striking a balance between
maintaining the illusion of spontaneous speech that contributes to the dialogues’ immersive
effect and avoiding the translated dialogues becoming too familiar or recognisable to the
target reader, thus adhering to the strategy of foreignisation and preventing cultural and
geographical displacement.
2.3.2 Strategies
As mentioned above, since the predetermined foreignisation strategy rules out the use of a
target language dialect, whether it be geographical or social, the strategy of using phonetic
speech features to mimic spoken language in the target text seems most viable for the
translation of dialogues in New Journalism. Examples of how this strategy may be used
follow below, but first it should be pointed out that in this case, the translator can employ
an additional tactic in order to add to or even enhance this strategy.
In a previous section, attention was paid to Philippe Noble´s discussion of the
representation of foreign elements in translated texts, and the way in which Dutch author
39
Cees Nooteboom incorporates foreign languages like German into dialogues to illustrate a
character’s confrontation with a foreign culture. According to Noble, these fragments of
foreign speech have an alienating effect on the reader, but are also a source of recognition
because they characterise cultures that are relatively familiar to a Dutch reader (2003, 27).
He calls these fragments “linguistic collages” that serve to underline the foreign nature of
these sequences (ibid.). In a similar fashion and with the same purpose in mind, a Dutch
translator of New Journalism dialogues could include English words and phrases into the
text in order to preserve the immersive quality of the original. Much like a reader of
Noteboom’s work, a Dutch reader of a translated New Journalism dialogue would then be
confronted with language that emphasises the foreign nature of the text, while still being
familiar and therefore recognisable to the target reader. This also seems to go hand in hand
with Venuti’s notion of resistancy, that revolves around the highlighting of foreign elements
in a translation. This idea, combined with the inclusion of phonetic speech features in the
target text, therefore seems to be the most viable option for translating New Journalism
dialogues, as demonstrated in the examples below.
Even though it has been mentioned that the Texan nature of Jimbo’s speech in “The
Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” appears difficult to relay in a translation, some
elements such as phonetic utterances (“Haw!”) may be preserved using the strategy
described above. When combined with the aforementioned use of phonetic features, his
speech might be translated as follows:
Hij moest lachen. “Well goddam! Waar ga je dan foto’s van neme - blote
paarde? Haw! Je zal ‘t met de Kentucky Oaks vast nog druk krijge dan. Da’s een race
alleen voor merrieveulentjes.” Hij lachte wild. “Hell yes! En die zijn dan allemaal ook
in hun nakie!”
40
Maintaining Jimbo’s characteristic utterances such as “well goddam” and “hell yes” help
preserve the characterisation of his character, simultaneously giving the target reader an
idea of what he sounded like in real life, which is the entire goal of New Journalism
dialogues. Worthy of note here is that the English words are in italics so as to set them apart
from the rest of the text, and that this technique seems to work best for single words or
short expressions that would otherwise be highly problematic to translate accurately.
Applying this strategy to longer phrases or even sentences could influence the readability of
the target text and is therefore inadvisable. The omissions in spelling in for example the
words “neme” and “krijge” indicate a lower register, and even though these features do not
accurately represent a Texan dialect, their function is mimetic and therefore give the illusion
of spontaneous speech. It is then up to the target audience to decide what Jimbo’s speech
sounds like in their mind, based on this representation.
The speech of Mayhew and Day Tripper could be translated in a similar fashion:
“‘Twas nog wel zo’n mooie ochend,” zei Day Tripper. “Oh man, waarom
kunnen ze ons nie ‘s met rust laten?”
“Omdat ze nie betaald worden om ons met rust te laten,” zei Mayhew
lachend. “En trouwes, ze doen ‘t omdat ze weten hoe opgefokt jij d’rvan raakt.”
“Je gaat me nie vertellen dat jij nie bang bent!”
“Mij zal je nooit bang zien, motherfucker.”
“Oh nee. Drie nachte geleden lag je nog om je mamma te roepen terwijl die
fuckers ons beschoten.”
“Boo-sheeit! In Vietnam ga ik dus echt nooit geraakt worden.”
“Oh nee? Okee, mothafucker, waarom dan niet?”
“Omdat,” zei Mayhew, “dat land niet bestaat.” Het was een oud grapje, maar
deze keer lachte hij niet.
This example is slightly more complicated. The heavily marked speech of these two
characters makes it more difficult to reflect the phonetics of their social dialect in a target
text without readability becoming a problem. Displaying their speech too phonetically may
have the effect of aggravating the audience by presenting them with text that is not
41
commonly encountered, while at the other hand, the effect of characterisation will suffer
tremendously if their language is too close to TL standard. In addition, the subtle differences
between both of these characters’ speech pattern would be completely negated if their
dialect is left (mostly) untranslated.
In conclusion, Venuti’s notion of resistancy seems quite useful in translating
dialogues, since the highlighting of certain words can create an effect of estrangement,
while simultaneously recreating the illusion of spoken language and maintaining the effect
of immersion. However, the use of this strategy seems to have distinct limitations based on
the source language competence of the target audience. A translator needs to decide which
words or phrases are familiar enough for the target audience to understand, taking care not
to create a text that is too foreign. Therefore, bearing in mind readability, this technique can
only be used sparingly, and while sociolects can be approximated through the phonetic
representation of speech, it seems inevitable that the effect of establishing characters in
dialogues is greatly diminished.
42
2.4 Parallel Texts
Alongside the analysis of translation problems and their possible solutions, an examination
of parallel texts in the target culture can be of great help during the translation process, as
parallel texts can serve as a source of information and even as textual models (Nord 1997,
53). Considering the fact that this thesis is concerned with the intercultural issues of
translating New Journalism into Dutch, it may be beneficial to look at the status of New
Journalism in the Netherlands and the way in which it is translated and received in a Dutch
cultural environment. To this end, the following section contains an outline of the presence
of New Journalism in the Netherlands as well as analyses of two Dutch translations of New
Journalism works: the 1992 translation of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,
translated as De Trip by Bert Koning, and the 2005 translation of Truman Capote’s earlier
mentioned novel In Cold Blood, translated as In Koelen Bloede by Thérèse Cornips.
2.4.1 New Journalism in the Netherlands
Whereas the New Journalism in America had gained immense popularity during the
ninteen-sixties and nineteen-seventies, it has never managed to become as popular in the
Netherlands. Jerry Goossens writes that New Journalism in the Netherlands died off early
(without specifying exactly when), and that Dutch journalists rarely ever attempt writing it
anymore, despite the fact that the genre is regularly discussed in the teaching of journalism
(2002, 7). Nevertheless, the genre did manifest itself almost exclusively in Dutch magazine
Haagse Post in the nineteen-seventies and eighties, through experimental collaborations
with literary writers (Van den Broek 2003, 115). However, these manifestations were
considered to be of little societal relevance, since they took the form of what Van den Broek
calls “literature in magazine form” (ibid., my translation), focusing mainly on style and
43
atmosphere rather than conveying a clear message. The Haagse Post carefully followed New
Journalism in America, as editor Daan Dijksman interviewed Tom Wolfe in 1976 and some
journalists even reported on events unfolding in American culture, such as the Watergateaffair (116). Despite this, however, New Journalism was never able to catch on in the
Netherlands as it did in America and in the nineteen-nineties the genre was slowly pushed
out of mainstream newspaper journalism, since the Dutch standard at the time called for
short and impersonal articles (Blanken 2012).
Even though the New Journalism never had the same form, impact or relevance in
the Netherlands as it did in America, it can be said to have had some influence on the rise in
popularity of literary non-fiction. Non-fiction novels are still quite popular in the
Netherlands, with Geert Mak being one of the most successful and influential authors. Mak
himself was in turn greatly influenced by American New Journalist James Agee, and in
particular by Agee’s novel Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, saying that it is the most inspiring
book he has ever read (qtd in Meijer, 2002). He underlines the visual and televisional aspect
of New Journalism by admiringly comparing Agee’s style to that of a documentary, calling
him a “cameraman in words” (my translation, LR) who incorporates extremely detailed
observations into his writing (ibid.). New Journalism, therefore, did influence literary nonfiction in the Netherlands to some extent, even though its presence eventually faded and
the genre lost its relevance.
Overall, it can be concluded that New Journalism has had some influence especially
during the nineteen-seventies and eighties, but that the genre itself was never widely
practiced in the Netherlands. The non-fiction novel, however, has gained in popularity and is
still very much part of the Dutch literary world. In terms of genre conventions, this reduces
44
difficulties when translating New Journalism into Dutch, as the target culture in this case is
at least familiar with New Journalism as both a way of writing and a cultural phenomenon.
2.4.2 The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test vs. De Trip
Tom Wolfe´s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test tells the story of Ken Kesey, the author best
known for writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and who travelled across the United
States from California to New York together with his followers, the Merry Pranksters, in a
colourfully painted school bus. During their travels, they encounter several prominent
counterculture figures such as the Hell’s Angels, the rock band the Grateful Dead and the
poet Allen Ginsberg. They also frequently engage in drug use, smoking marihuana in their
bus and attending parties that featured Kool-Aid spiked with LSD. The book had a
tremendous influence on American culture in the nineteen-sixties, as it was widely
considered to be the first book written on the hippie movement and seen as the starting
point of the psychedelic nineteen-sixties (The Guardian, 2014). In the book, Wolfe employs
an idiosyncratic style featuring elements such as repetitions, fragmented sentences and
onomatopoeias. He also uses many slang words, most of which are tied to drugs (“acid,”
“dope”), and even experiments with point of view and stream of consciousness. The book is
a shining example of the use of New Journalism techniques, since Wolfe’s style is mainly
descriptive, not only reporting on how events unfolded but also offering the reader a view
of what goes on inside the mind of a person influenced by LSD. The first Dutch translation of
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was done by Bert Koning and published in 1971, but in the
following discussion, Wolfe’s original text will be compared with the 1992 version.
45
When looking at Koning’s translation, the first thing that once notices is his
predominantly foreignising strategy. As indicated above, slang words play a large role in
Wolfe’s novel, as seen in the following excerpts from the original text from 1968:
What was it that had brought a man so high of promise to so low a state in so short a
time? Well, the answer can be found in just one short word, my friends, in just one
all-well-used syllable: Dope! (5)
Sometimes he would go to work high on acid. (27)
[...] let us now be popping more speed and acid and smoking grass as if it were all
just coming out of Cosmo the Prankster god's own local-option gumball machines—
(57)
It was freaking incredible. (94)
It's like every head, freak, boho, and weirdo in the West has assembled in one spot,
the first freakout, with a couple of hundred teeny freaks thrown in for good
measure. (112)
—Show biz—yesssss—and nooooo—Clair was soaring on LSD, wondering what
was happening to herself and whether she was going mad [...] (149)
Koning maintains many of the slang words contained in Wolfe’s text, as seen in the
following examples from Koning’s translation:
Wat deed een zo veelbelovend man zo diep vallen in zo’n korte tijd? Nu, het
antwoord is maar één kort woordje, vrienden, maar één overal veelgebezigde
lettergreep: Dope! (8)
Soms was hij high op acid als hij naar zijn werk ging. (47)
[…] laten we dan nu maar uit de band springen met meer speed en acid en grass
alsof dat de rechtstreekse producten waren van Cosmo, het Prankstergods eigen
monopolie van bubblegumautomaten. (97)
Het was gewoon te freaking absurd. (163)
46
Het lijkt wel of alle heads, hippies, freaks en mafkikkers van het hele Westen op een
plaats samengestroomd zijn, de eerste freakout, plus nog een paar honderd
tienerfreaks om het geheel compleet te maken. (193)
- Show bizz - yesssss, - and nooooo - Clair was soaring op LSD, zich afvragend wat er
met haar gebeurde en of ze gek aan het worden was [...] (255)
In these examples, words such as “dope”, “acid” and “freaking” are preserved, for which
there are several reasons. One is that Wolfe identifies with Kesey by using his slang,
assimilating it into his writing style as if he were Kesey himself. This allows the reader to
have a seemingly first-hand experience of the events that Wolfe reports on and get an
inside view of Kesey’s world. In other words, the reader is immersed into the story through
the use of slang. A second reason for maintaining slang words is that they are important to
the overall atmosphere of the novel and the theme of drugs. Words such as “speed” and
“acid” are used in Dutch and therefore remain untranslated, but Koning also chooses not to
translate the less commonly known word “grass” as well as words such as “freaking” and
“soaring.” These are words that are not only part of Kesey’s vocabulary but also preserve
the distinctly American atmosphere that permeates the book.
In addition to these slang words, there are examples of words and phrases that
Koning decided not to translate, while a translation would have been without problems.
These are words such as “thing,” “weird,” and even phrases such as “oh yeah”:
Ja, maar, Paul, die things die ze doen, de terreinopzichters zijn er gewoon door
geschokt. (175; italics in original)
Tiny en Buzzard hadden een thing van op elkaar afkomen als er niet-Angels in de
buurt waren [...] (163)
Vanuit de lift stapte je regelrecht het bezoekkamertje binnen. Het was weird. (10)
En, oh yeah, ze heeft een langlopige Colt .45 revolver in haar hand [...] (p. 5-6)
47
Even though there seems to be no need to retain these words because the words “weird”
and “oh yeah” could easily be translated as “vreemd” and “o ja” respectively, Koning’s
choice of doing so can once again be explained by Tom Wolfe’s intention of using Kesey’s
words in order to let him speak through the narrative. It is, however, clear that Koning
deliberately chose to leave these words untranslated, since their translation wouldn’t have
generated any clear problems.
In terms of dialogue, the book contains several instances where characters under the
influence of drugs deliver rambling monologues, as seen in the following example taken
from a chapter of the book where Kesey’s bus is stopped by a highway patrolman and the
driver, Cassady, tries to talk to the officer:
Cassady, the driver, is already into a long monologue for the guy, only he is
throwing in all kinds of sirs: "Well, yes sir, this is a Hammond bi-valve serrated brake,
you understand, sir, had it put on in a truck ro-de-o in Springfield, Oregon, had to
back through a slalom course of baby's bottles and yellow nappies, in the existential
culmination of Oregon, lots of outhouse freaks up there, you understand, sir, a
punctual sort of a state, sir, yes sir, holds to 28,000 pounds, 28,000 pounds, you just
look right here, sir, tested by a pureblooded Shell Station attendant in Springfield,
Oregon, winter of '62, his gumball boots never froze, you understand, sir, 28,000
pounds hold, right here—"
In Koning’s translation, Cassady’s monologue is depicted as follows:
Cassady, de chauffeur, is tegen de kerel al een lange monoloog aan het afsteken,
voor deze gelegenheid doorspekt met allerlei ge-meneer: ‘Uh, ja meneer, dit is een
dubbelgekoppelde Hammond-schijfrem, begrijpt-u wel, meneer, heb ‘m es uitgetest
in een truck-ro-de-o in Springfield, Oregon, moest daar achteruit door een slalom
van babyzuigflessies en gele slabbetjes door het existentieculminatiepunt van
Oregon, hopen te gekke freaks, daaro, begrijpt-u wel, meneer, dit is een stipte staat,
meneer, jazeker meneer, zo’n 12 000 kilo kan-ie hebben, 12 000 kilo, kijk hier maar
es, meneer, getest door een volbloedige Shell-Pomper in Springfield, Oregon, de
winter van ‘62, zijn rubberen remschoenen zijn nooit bevroren, begrijpt-u wel
meneer, 12 000 kilo kan dat ding hier houden.’ (67)
The rambling nature of Cassady’s monologue has mostly been preserved through the use of
contractions (“kan-ie”) and features words such as “daaro” and “flessies” in order to mark
48
his speech as informal. These features make Cassady’s speech relatable for the target
audience and create the illusion of spontaneous speech, preserving the immersive effect
intended in the original. Also preserving the original’s immersive effect is Koning’s decision
not to translate phonetic representations of speech:
[...] en dat brengt Sandy tot razernij en hij schreeuwt Fuck you! en maakt het daarbij
behorende gebaar tegen Kesey. (107)
Het is gezeik natuurlijk - en Buzzard lacht - Haw! Haw! Haw! - ‘t is niet echt, maar het
is… echt, echte buizerd, je kunt het hele geval interpreteren vanuit twee instellingen
- Kaw Kaw Kaaawwwww - en Buzzard springt omhoog en wiekt met zijn armen [...]
(165)
Here, Koning decided to maintain mimetic speech representations in order to maintain the
atmosphere of the original text. Depicting these utterances in their original form firmly roots
the text in an American cultural setting, reminding the target audience of the culture that
the characters they are reading about belong to. It is, much like the previously mentioned
instances of foreignisation, a means of recreating the effect of immersion intended by
Wolfe.
In short, Koning’s translation of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test displays a strongly
foreignising strategy, and as a result contains many English words and phrases woven into
the Dutch narrative. Koning draws upon the target audience’s knowledge of the source
language by not only leaving elements such as slang untranslated, but also not translating
other less important words seemingly at random. It therefore seems that Koning
deliberately used a strategy similar to Venuti’s idea of resistancy, emphasising the foreign
nature of the text and creating an effect of estrangement, all the while keeping to the
immersive quality of the original novel. This indicates that a strategy based on resistancy can
certainly be viable for translating New Journalism texts.
49
2.4.3 In Cold Blood vs. In Koelen Bloede
Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is a true account of the 1959 murder of the Clutter Family in
Holcomb, Kansas. It simultaneously follows the lives of Herbert Clutter and his family and
their killers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, describing the events leading up to the murder.
This use of parallel narratives is what characterises the book, as is Capote’s use of point of
view, which he uses to transport the viewer inside the mind of the murderers, as well as
explore the motives behind the crime. Capote wrote the novel based on his research on the
case, effectively basing his story entirely on facts while he himself does not intrude
anywhere in the story. The book is generally considered to be the first non-fiction novel and
as has been mentioned in an earlier section of this thesis, it is also seen as the epitome of
the genre of New Journalism and the peak of Capote’s career. The book was first translated
into Dutch by Thérèse Cornips in 1966, but the following discussion will contain excerpts
from Cornips’s 2005 translation.
Unlike Koning’s translation of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Cornips’s translation of
In Cold Blood displays a much lesser degree of foreignisation. Capote’s style seems
significantly more timid than Wolfe’s, not including elements such as slang words in order to
establish a certain point of view or onomatopoeias to represent sounds. As is common in
New Journalism works however, Capote does make “quite effective use” (Wolfe 1973, 135)
of status-life symbols. Dialogues in Capote’s novel are somewhat short and scarce, which is
likely due to the fact that they needed to be reconstructed from information gathered
through interviews rather than based on first-hand experiences. This toned-down style has
resulted in Cornips’s translation being equally toned-down in terms of foreignisation, as will
be shown in the following examples.
50
Capote’s use of status-life symbols ranges from describing settings and atmospheres
to establishing characters, and is often quite detailed:
Like Mr. Clutter, the young man breakfasting in a cafe called the Little Jewel never
drank coffee. He preferred root beer. Three aspirin, cold root beer, and a chain of
Pall Mall cigarettes - that was his notion of a proper "chow-down."
(12)
Miles away, shrouded in a summery veil of heat-haze and sea-sparkle, [Dick] could
see the towers of the pale, expensive hotels - the Fontainebleau, the Eden Roc, the
Roney Plaza. On their second day in Miami he had suggested to Perry that they
invade these pleasure-domes. “Maybe pick up a coupla rich women,” he had said.
Perry had been most reluctant; he felt people would stare at them because of their
khaki trousers and T-shirts. Actually their tour of the Fontainebleau’s gaudy
premises went unnoticed, amid the men striding about in Bermuda shorts of candystriped raw silk, and the women wearing bathing suits and mink stoles
simultaneously.
(194)
In Cornips´s translation, these passages are rendered as follows:
Evenals Mr. Clutter dronk de jongeman die in een café genaamd Little Jewel zijn
ontbijt zat te nuttigen nooit koffie. Hij prefereerde limonade. Drie aspirientjes, koud
root beer, en een reeks Pall-Mall sigaretten - dat was zijn idee van een behoorlijke
hap. (24; italics in original)
Mijlen verder, gehuld in een zomers waas van hittedamp en zee-geglinster, kon
[Dick] de torens zien van de matkleurige, dure hotels - het Fontainebleau, het Eden
Roe, het Roney Plaza. Op hun tweede dag in Miami had hij Perry voorgesteld die
lustpaleizen binnen te dringen. “Misschien een stelletje rijke wijven oppikken,” had
hij gezegd. Perry was zeer schoorvoetend meegegaan; hij had het gevoel dat de
mensen hen zouden aanstaren om hun kaki broeken en polohemden. In
werkelijkheid ging hun ronde door de protserige localiteiten van het Fontainebleau
onopgemerkt voorbij, te midden van de in Bermuda-shorts van zuurstok-gestreepte
natuurzij langs stappende mannen, en de gelijktijdig in badpakken en nertsstola’s
geklede vrouwen. (213)
In general, the translation of these status-life symbols does not seem to include any
remarkable changes or translation decisions. Instead, most status-life symbols have been
translated, with only a few terms being maintained. In the first passage, of the two instances
of the word “root beer,” the second was maintained, italicising it to indicate its foreign
nature. In the second passage, Cornips decides to leave the word “Bermuda shorts”
51
untranslated, adding only a hyphen between the words as is required for compound words
in Dutch. The word “shorts” is also commonly used in Dutch with regards to clothing, which
allowed for this word to be retained. One more observation that is worthy of note is that
Cornips at times seems to translate status-life symbols in a way that alters the image they
conjure. An example of this is the word “t-shirts,” that Cornips translated as “polohemden.”
The word “polohemden” conjures up a different image than the word “t-shirts,” also
changing the term’s connotations. In this passage, Perry hesitates to follow Dick to the
“pleasure domes” because he feels that they are underdressed, only wearing t-shirts. The
Dutch word “polohemden,” however, refers to a type of shirt that is decidedly more fancy
than a simple t-shirt, and Cornips’s translation therefore not only creates a different image,
but also seems to make Perry’s fear unwarranted. This decision by Cornips, therefore, goes
against the author’s intention of using status-life symbols as a means to convey a character’s
thoughts and feelings, by altering the connotations that accompany the original term.
In Cold Blood contains some instances of dialogue, and here again, Cornips’s
translation decisions do not seem very radical in terms of foreignisation. In fact, whereas
Koning maintained some of the speech representations contained in The Electric Kool-Aid
Acid Test, Cornips seems to have translated all of the spoken dialogue in her translation of In
Cold Blood. Cornips has made some effort to reflect features of informal or sociolectal
speech in her translation, although these seem minimal. This can be seen, for example, in
Floyd Wells’s, a former cellmate of Dick Hickock’s, speech:
“He was the first fellow I celled with. We celled together I guess a month. June and
part of July. He was just finishing a three-to-five - due for parole in August. He talked
a lot about what he planned to do when he got out. Said he thought he might go to
Nevada, one of them missile-base towns, buy hisself a uniform, and pass hisself off
as a Air Force officer.” (153-154)
52
“Het was de eerste jongen met wie ik samen een cel had. Dat duurde denk ik een
maand. Juni en het begin van juli. Hij was zowat aan het eind van zijn drie tot vijf - in
augustus kon hij eruit, voorwaardelijk. Hij praatte een hoop over wat hij allemaal
ging doen als hij vrijkwam. Hij zei dat hij misschien wel naar Nevada ging, naar zo’n
raketbasis, en dat hij dan voor z’n eigen een uniform kocht en z’n eigen dan zou
uitgeven voor officier bij de luchtmacht.” (172)
Aside from the words “zowat” and “z’n eigen” in Cornips’s translation, there seems to be
very little to reflect Floyd’s lower register. Here again, the more timid style of Capote
warrants an equally timid approach, one that in this case does not prompt the use of clear
idiolectal features in the target text.
There are also instances where Cornips has decided to translate elements that, for
the sake of the effect of immersion, could have been maintained. For example, the novel
contains a scene where Perry listens to Christmas carols while lying on the beach in Miami:
Christmas carols were in the air; they issued from the radio of the four women and
mixed strangely with Miami's sunshine and the cries of the querulous, never
thoroughly silent seagulls. "Oh, come let us adore Him, Oh, come let us adore Him"...
(195)
De lucht was vol kerstliederen; ze werden voorgebracht door de transistor van de
vier vrouwen en vormden een vreemde mengeling met Miami’s zonneschijn en het
gekrijs van de klaagzieke, nooit helemaal zwijgende zeemeeuwen. “Kom, laten wij
aanbidden, kom, laten wij aanbidden”...
(214)
The depiction of lyrics in music contributes to the atmospheric value of the scene,
immersing the reader into the scene, but translating this element breaks this effect of
immersion by altering the image of the text world. In the same vein, translating displayed
text (for instance, text on signs) has a similar effect:
An old Ford. Looked like it was made before he was born. He gave it a paint job.
Painted the top part black and the rest silver. Then he wrote 'For Sale' on the
windshield. One day I heard a sucker stop and offer him forty bucks - that’s forty
more than it was worth. (170)
Een ouwe Ford. Zag eruit alsof hij gemaakt was voordat hij geboren werd. Hij
schilderde ‘m op. Van boven zwart en de rest zilver. Toen schreef hij TE KOOP op de
53
voorruit. Een keer zag ik er een sufferd bijstaan die hem veertig ballen bood - veertig
meer dan het ding waard was. (188)
Similar to translating lyrics in music, translating displayed text can have an influence on the
immersive effect of the text, as it can be considered part of the imagery of a scene.
Cornips’s decision to translate “for sale” as “te koop,” while seeming reasonable, ultimately
affects the image that the text intends to relay by displaying text that does not fit the text’s
linguistic setting, slightly breaking the effect of immersion. In cases like this, however, it
should be noted that the context in which displayed text occurs is important to take into
account. If it were unclear from the context that the car was meant to be sold, translating
“for sale” as “te koop” would be a justified choice, since the target audience would
otherwise be slightly caught off guard by the sudden occurrence of foreign words. In this
case, however, the last sentence of the passage makes it clear that the car is indeed meant
to be sold, which would make retaining the words “for sale” a viable option.
In all, it can be seen that Cornips does not foreignise quite as strongly as Koning,
which results in a translation that at times relinquishes some of the immersive effect of the
original text. As stated earlier, this difference in translation styles can at least partially be
explained by the radically different writing styles of the authors themselves, as Wolfe’s style
seems significantly more flamboyant than that of Capote, who seems to employ a more
serious tone. The subject matter of each text is also a factor, since The Electric Kool-Aid Acid
Test, in which the theme of drugs plays a major role, calls for a specific kind of jargon that
simply will not be found in a novel about a murder case. Overall, it can be concluded that a
strong foreignisation strategy can preserve the immersive quality of a New Journalism text,
ensuring that the target text fulfills more or less the same function in the target culture. By
54
highlighting foreign aspects of the original, the target audience is transported to, and
informed about, a different cultural reality.
55
Conclusion
Bridging the gap between cultures is what lies at the heart of the act of translating.
Naturally, the greater the differences between cultures, the greater the difficulties that
come with bringing them together, yet even cultures that do not seem to be exceptionally
far apart can be problematic to reconcile. As has been illustrated in this thesis, the genre of
New Journalism creates problems in that it reports on American life in the nineteen-sixties
and accomplishes this by immersing the source culture audience through the use of literary
techniques. Informing through immersion is the main point of the New Journalism, which
becomes all the more difficult when the same effect is to be preserved in a translation. The
American sixties and seventies were a time of social and cultural upheaval; a time of
protests, drugs, hippies and rebellion, and conveying the essence of this time period to any
who were not a part of it remains a seemingly insurmountable task.
In order to solve this problem when translating New Journalism texts into Dutch, a
translation can benefit greatly from a strategy based on a high degree of foreignisation due
to the target audience’s relative familiarity with American culture. Venuti’s notion of
resistancy, which entails the deliberate highlighting of foreign elements to preserve the
original effect of the text, can therefore serve a purpose here. By creating an effect of
estrangement, the target reader gets, in Venuti’s words, “a glimpse of a cultural other”
(1995, 306), which allows for the informative function of New Journalism texts to be
preserved by reproducing the intended effect of immersion. The Dutch target audience is
confronted with a true-to life representation of a foreign culture, just as the source
audience of the New Journalism was confronted with its own.
Venuti’s idea of resistancy does, however, have its limitations. The target audience’s
knowledge of the source language needs to be taken into account when deciding to what
56
degree or in which situations the original text is to be maintained. This plays a role especially
in dialogues, where the translator can make specific choices on the matter, whereas
elements such as status-life symbols rely heavily on their denotative and connotative
meanings, which limits their translation options. Bearing in mind readability, the translator
should take care not to exaggerate his foreignising endeavours, lest he alienate the target
audience.
Often when dealing with cultural discrepancies in translating, efforts are made to
adapt the source text to the target culture. With regards to the case of New Journalism,
however, bridging the cultural divide means bringing the target audience to the source
culture. The only way to convey the reality of the “groovy” sixties accurately seems to be to
let the target audience take part in it, with the translator acting as their guide.
57
3 Translations
Tom Wolfe
Uit “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby”
De eerste keer dat ik een goede blik kon werpen op customized cars3 was tijdens een ‘Teen
Fair’ die in Burbank plaatsvond, een buitenwijk van Los Angeles voorbij Hollywood. Dat was
nogal een levendige plek om naar kunstobjecten te kijken – ik moet zeggen dat je
uiteindelijk toch wel tot de conclusie moet komen dat deze custom auto’s kunstvoorwerpen
zijn, tenminste als je de standaarden hanteert die in een beschaafde maatschappij gebruikt
worden. Maar daar kom ik straks nog op. Anyway, rond twaalf uur ’s middags kom je dus
aanrijden op een plek die iets weg heeft van een pretpark en waar er drie serieus kijkende
tieners4, een beetje als de kantinecommissie van de middelbare school, kaartjes staan aan
te nemen, maar het tafereel voorbij de ingang5 is vrij gek. Binnen vallen er twee dingen op.
Het eerste is een enorm platform zo’n twee meter van de grond met een hully-gully band –
alles is elektrisch, de basgitaar, de gitaren, de saxofoons – en dan staan er achter de band,
op het platform, ongeveer tweehonderd jongeren uitzinnige dansjes te doen genaamd de
hully-gully, de bird en de shampoo. Zoals ik al zei is het rond het middaguur. De dansjes die
3
Due to the lack of a clear equivalent of the term “customized cars” in Dutch, it seems fitting to maintain and
italicise the first instance of the word, highlighting it as a foreign term. Subsequent iterations of the same word
may be translated differently, as an explanation of the original word or simply for the sake of variation.
4
Wolfe’s frequent use of the word ‘kids’ proves to be somewhat of an issue; the word ‘kinderen’, which is a
translation option, creates an image of young children in Dutch eyes, while the kids described in this text are
teenagers. Because of this, the use of the word “tieners” in the translation seems more appropriate, as well as
variations such as “jongeren” or “jongelui.” Maintaining the word “kids” is also an option, bearing in mind the
concept of resistancy, but in this case, the word “kids” might still bear the connotation of little children in the
eyes of the target audience. This could be resolved by using demonstrative pronouns such as “deze” or “die” in
some cases, to clarify that the word refers to the youngsters at the Teen Fair.
5
Here phrasing was somewhat of an issue, because the word ‘binnen’ seemed to create an awkwardly
structured sentence wherever it was placed. It also creates a repetition of the word ‘binnen’ because it occurs
again in the next sentence. This is why in the end, I have chosen for a different wording.
58
deze kids doen zijn nogal spastisch. De jongens en meisjes raken elkaar niet, zelfs niet met
hun handen. Ze kaatsen gewoon wat in het rond. Dan zie je plotseling dat alle meisjes
precies hetzelfde gekleed zijn. Ze hebben opgestoken kapsels – allemaal – en broeken die,
nouja, ‘nauwsluitend’ geeft niet echt het idee weer; dat zegt meer over de vorm dan over
hoe strak de broeken zijn. Het is net alsof een of andere wellustige kleermaker met een
obsessie voor de glutaeus-maximus ze groefje voor groefje heeft ontworpen. Tegen de tijd
dat je erin geslaagd bent je hierop te concentreren, merk je op dat er in het midden van het
park een enorm, volmaakt rond zwembad is; echt behoorlijk gigantisch. En in het water
stuift er een cabin cruiser van Chris-Craft in het rond die grote golven maakt, met nog meer
van die meiden met opgestoken kapsels op een kluitje achterin. In het water liggen
teenagers met duikuitrusting te drijven als plankton; anderen zwemmen wat rond, ademend
door een snorkel. En overal staan kraampjes, opgezet door schoen- en gitaarfabrikanten en
God mag weten wie nog meer, en in elk kraampje staan er tieners te dansen – ze dansen de
bird, de hully-gully en de shampoo – op de muziek van de hully-gully band die via
luidsprekers over het hele terrein verspreid wordt.
Terwijl dit allemaal gaande is probeert Tex Smith van Hot Rod Magazine, die me hier
mee naartoe genomen heeft, me te leiden naar de tentoonstelling van customized cars –
“Tom, ik wil je een auto laten zien die Bill Cushenberry gebouwd heeft, de Silhouette” – dat
wil zeggen, er kaatsen hier midden op de dag tweehonderd tieners over een platform, een
snel klein bootje stuift rond en rond en rond in een rond zwembad, en ik lijk de enige te zijn
die is afgeleid. De tentoonstelling van deze gestileerde auto’s blijkt de Ford Custom Car
Caravan te zijn, die Ford het hele land door stuurt. In het begin, met al het geluid en alle
beweging om je heen en de opkomende geilheid die je ervaart, wat wil je met al die jonge
vampjes die alle kanten op schieten, lijken deze custom auto’s nu niet echt iets bijzonders.
59
Ze zijn natuurlijk wel erg bijzonder, maar het eerste waar je aan denkt is het gewoonlijke –
je weet wel, dat de tieners die deze auto’s in hun bezit hebben waarschijnlijk schriele kleine
boefjes zijn die T-shirts dragen en hun sigaretten bij zich houden door ze in hun T shirt bij de
schouder te stoppen.
Maar na een tijdje was ik blij dat ik de auto’s in deze natuurlijke setting gezien had,
die tenslotte een soort Plato’s Republiek voor tieners was. Want als je maar lang genoeg
ergens naar bleef kijken op deze fair, bleef je steeds weer hetzelfde opmerken. Deze
jongelui zijn helemaal geobsedeerd door vorm. Het is praktisch een religie voor ze. De
dansers bijvoorbeeld: niemand van hen lachte ooit. Ze staarden in opperste concentratie
naar elkaars benen en voeten. De dansen zelf kenden totaal geen elegantie, het was meer
een soort volksdans, maar iedereen concentreerde zich om ervoor te zorgen dat ze het
precies goed deden. En de kids hadden allemaal vorm, een wilde vorm, maar vorm waar
blijkbaar strenge eisen aan gesteld werden. Zelfs de jongens. Hun kleding was prozaïsch –
Levi’s, Slim Jims, sportshirts, T-shirts, poloshirts – maar de vorm was consistent: een
kachelpijpsilhouet. En ze hadden allemaal dezelfde haarstijl: sommigen hadden lang haar,
anderen kort, maar niemand had een scheiding; al dat haar was strak vanaf de haarlijn naar
achteren gekamd. Ik liep langs één van de gitaarstands, en er zat daar een klein jochie, van
ongeveer dertien, een elektrische gitaar helemaal kapot te spelen. Het jochie heette
Cranston nog wat. Hij zag eruit alsof hij Kermet of Herschel zou moeten heten; al zijn genen
waren vreselijk Oklahoma-achtig. Cranston speelde erop los en er stond een grote menigte
te kijken. Maar Cranston zat met zijn rug zo krom als een banaan onderuitgezakt tegen een
tafel en zag er spectaculair verveeld uit. Op dertienjarige leeftijd was dit jochie fanatiek als
het ging om cool zijn. Dat waren ze allemaal. Ze waren allemaal schitterende slaven van
vorm. Ze hebben hun eigen levensstijl gecreëerd, en ze zijn veel autoritairder in het
60
uitoefenen ervan dan volwassenen. Niet alleen dat, maar vandaag de dag hebben deze
jongeren – vooral in Californië – geld, wat natuurlijk de reden is waarom al deze
schoenenverkopers en gitaarhandelaren en de Ford Motor Company überhaupt op een
Teen Fair aanwezig waren. Ik vind het niet erg om te observeren dat deze zelfde combinatie
– geld plus een slaafse overgave aan vorm – verantwoordelijk is voor Versailles of St. Mark’s
Square. Natuurlijk zijn de meeste voorwerpen die door de geld-plus-vorm formule6 van deze
tieners geproduceerd worden van een vrij afgrijselijke aard. Maar dat gold ook voor de
meeste parafernalia die zich in Engeland tijdens het regentschap ontwikkelden. Ik bedoel,
het meeste daarvan was van het niveau van door stijfsel gehaalde halsdoeken. Iemand7 kon
om elf uur ’s ochtends het huis van Beau Brommel binnengaan, waarna de butler kwam
aanlopen met een dienblad vol verfomfaaid linnengoed. “Deze zijn mislukt,” deelt hij mede.
Maar dan komt Brummel beneden met een perfect gestijfd halsdoek om. Als een perfecte
iris, de bloem van de Mayfair-beschaving. Maar de periode van het regentschap heeft wel
wat fantastische formele architectuur gekend. En de formele maatschappij van de jongeren
heeft ook tenminste íets substantieels toegevoegd aan een formele ontwikkeling van een
hoog niveau – de customized cars. Ik hoef niet stil te staan bij het feit dat auto’s meer
betekenen voor deze jongelui dan architectuur in Europa in pakweg 1750 tot 18508. Ze zijn
vrijheid, stijl, seks, macht, beweging, kleur – alles staat recht voor je neus9.
Er zijn sinds 1945 ontwikkelingen geweest in de formele houding van jongeren ten
opzichte van auto’s, erg verfijnde ontwikkelingen waar volwassenen zich in de verste verte
6
Here I added the word ‘formule’ because this seemed to fit more naturally in Dutch.
The original tekst reads ‘A man’, but in Dutch it is not very common to say ‘een man’. Instead, the word
‘iemand’ is more appropriate.
8
I have omitted the words ‘formal century’ here, because the Dutch do not commonly refer to this period of
time with a term like ‘formele eeuw’, which would be the word-for-word translation. Furthermore, leaving out
this part of the sentence does not impair the reader’s ability to understand it.
9
Wolfe is referring to what one experiences when looking at these custom cars, which is why I chose to use
the word ‘staat’ in this sentence. A Dutch person would describe such a vehicle as ‘standing’ in front of him.
7
61
niet bewust van zijn geweest, voornamelijk omdat die kids zich er niet over uitlaten, vooral
de meest geobsedeerde niet. Zij komen niet bepaald10 uit lagen van de maatschappij
waarvan de kinderen al op hun zeventiende gevoelige analytische poëzie schrijven, en als ze
dat wel doen vallen ze snel in de handen van leraren Engels die hen Hemingway of een hele
hoop goddamn-and-angry-breast schrijvers laat lezen. Als ze ooit nog over een snelweg
schrijven is het een door de regen glanzende snelweg en maken de auto’s die eroverheen
razen het geluid van scheurende zijde, niet dat ook maar één op de tienduizend
huishoudens sinds 1945 het geluid van scheurende zijde heeft gehoord.
Anyway, we zijn terug op de Teen Fair en ik praat met Tex Smith en Don Beebe, een
gezette jonge vent met een wit sportshirt en een Cubaanse zonnebril. Terwijl ze me
vertellen over de Ford Custom Car Caravan, kan ik inzien dat Ford deze teenage-lifestyle en
het potentieel ervan is gaan begrijpen. Ford lijkt het als volgt te zien: Duizenden van die kids
krijgen auto’s in hun bezit, waarna ze die óf opvoeren, óf qua uiterlijke vormgeving wat
aanpassen, meestal een beetje van beide. Voordat ze trouwen geven ze al hun geld hieraan
uit. Als Ford ze nu aan de Fords kan krijgen, kopen de jongelui straks nieuwe Fords nadat ze
getrouwd zijn. Zelfs jongeren die zelf niet voltijds autofanaat zijn zullen zich laten
beïnvloeden door welke auto het meest “boss”11 gevonden wordt. Ze gebruiken dat woord
vaak, “boss.” Aanvankelijk werd Ford als de “hot car” gezien door de kids, maar toen, van
1955 tot 1962, werd Chevrolet de favoriet. Ze hadden grote motoren en waren makkelijk op
te voeren, de vormgeving was simpel en de kids konden ze makkelijk aanpassen. In 1959, en
des te meer in 1960, werd Plymouth ook een “hot car.” In 1961 en 1962 draaide alles om
Chevrolet en Plymouth. Nu is Ford in opmars. Veel van de hot-rod en custom car10
I added the word “bepaald” here to emphasise Wolfe’s condescending attitude towards the verbal
competence of these teenagers.
11
Maintaining the word “boss” here seems more appropriate than translating it to “baas,” since the latter has
become a popular slang word in Dutch and would therefore come across as too modern for this context.
62
professionals, volwassenen, zullen je vertellen dat Ford nu de “hot car” is, maar dat moet je
met een korreltje zout nemen, omdat Ford links en rechts in welke vorm dan ook geld in het
rond strooit. In de Custom Car Caravan zijn alle auto’s vervaardigd uit carrosserieën van
Ford, behalve auto’s die compleet met de hand gemaakt zijn, zoals de hiervoor genoemde
Silhouette.
63
Truman Capote
Uit In Koelen Bloede
In Miami Beach is Ocean Drive nummer 335 het adres van het Somerset Hotel, een klein
vierkant gebouw min of meer wit geschilderd met veel toefjes lavendel, waaronder een
lavendel bordje met de woorden: ‘Vacancy - Lowest Rates - Beach Facilities - Always a
Seabreeze.’12 Het maakt deel uit van een rij kleine hotels van stucwerk en cement die zich
langs een witte sombere straat opstellen. In december van 1959 bestonden de ‘beach
facilities’ van Somerset uit twee strandparasols die achter het hotel in een strook zand
gestoken waren. Op één van deze parasols, een roze, stond geschreven ‘We Serve Valentine
Ice-Cream.’ Om twaalf uur ‘s middags op Eerste Kerstdag lag er een kwartet vrouwen onder
en omheen, toegezongen door een transistorradio. Onder de andere parasol, die blauw was
en waar het bevel ‘Tan with Coppertone’ op stond lagen Dick en Perry, die al vijf dagen in
het hotel woonden, in een tweepersoons kamer die ze voor achttien dollar per week
huurden.
Perry zei, “Je hebt me nooit een vrolijk kerstfeest gewenst.”
“Vrolijk kerstfeest, schat. En een gelukkig nieuwjaar.”
Dick droeg een zwembroek, maar Perry weigerde, net als in Acapulco, zijn gewonde
benen te ontbloten - hij was bang dat het aanzicht misschien andere strandgangers zou
‘shockeren’ - en was daarom volledig gekleed, zelfs met sokken en schoenen. Toch was hij
relatief tevreden, en toen Dick opstond en oefeningen begon te doen - handstand, om
indruk te maken op de vrouwen onder de roze parasol - hield hij zichzelf bezig met de Miami
Herald. Al snel kwam hij een artikel tegen dat zijn aandacht volledig opslokte. Het ging over
12
The reason for maintaining these words is due to their visual nature; text displayed on signs contributes to
the imagery of the text world and can therefore be preserved, in keeping with the novel’s American setting.
64
moord, het afslachten van een familie uit Florida, ene Mr. en Mrs. Clifford Walker, hun
vierjarige zoontje en hun tweejarige dochtertje. Alle slachtoffers, geboeid noch gekneveld,
waren met een .22 kaliber-wapen door het hoofd geschoten. De misdaad, waarbij geen
aanwijzingen te vinden waren en die op het eerste gezicht , had zaterdagavond negentien
december plaatsgevonden in het huis van de Walkers, een veeranch in de buurt van
Tallahassee.
Perry onderbrak de acrobatiek van Dick om het artikel hardop voor te lezen en zei,
‘Waar waren we afgelopen zaterdagavond?’
‘Tallahassee?’
‘Ik vraag het aan jou.’
Dick concentreerde zich. Op donderdagavond waren ze, om beurten achter het
stuur, Kansas uit en door Missouri heen naar Arkansas gereden en vervolgens over de
Ozarks ‘omhoog’ naar Louisiana, waar ze door een doorgebrande dynamo op vrijdagochtend
vroeg tot stilstand werden gebracht. (Een tweedehands vervanger, gekocht in Shreveport,
kostte tweeëntwintig vijftig.) Die nacht sliepen ze in de auto geparkeerd langs de weg
ergens bij de grens tussen Alabama en Florida. Tijdens de reis de volgende dag, die een
ongehaaste onderneming was, hadden ze diverse toeristische uitstapjes gemaakt bezoekjes aan een alligatorboerderij en een ratelslangranch; een tochtje op een boot met
een glazen bodem over een zilverig helder moerasmeer; een late, lange en prijzige lunch van
gegrilde kreeft in een wegrestaurant. Kostelijke dag! Maar beiden waren ze uitgeput toen ze
aankwamen in Tallahassee, en ze besloten daar dus te overnachten. ‘Ja, Tallahassee,’ zei
Dick.
65
‘Onvoorstelbaar!’ Perry wierp nog een blik op het artikel. ‘Weet je wat me niet zou
verbazen? Als dit niet door een krankzinnige gedaan was. Eén of andere gek die las wat er in
Kansas gebeurd is.’
Dick, die niet wilde dat Perry weer ‘aan de gang ging over dat onderwerp,’ haalde
zijn schouders op en grijnsde en sjokte richting de branding, waar hij een tijdje over het
natte zand banjerde en hier en daar bukte om een zeeschelp op te rapen. Als klein jongetje
was hij zo jaloers geweest op de zoon van een buurman die na een vakantie naar de
zuidkust van het land teruggekomen was met een doos vol schelpen - hij had hem zo gehaat
- dat hij de schelpen gestolen had en ze één voor één met een hamer had vermorzeld. Hij
was constant vervuld van nijd; de Vijand was iedereen die iemand was die hij had willen zijn
of die iets had wat hij wilde hebben.
De man die hij bij het zwembad van het Fontainebleau had gezien, bijvoorbeeld.
Mijlen13 ver weg, gehuld in een zomerse sluier van hittewaas en zeeschitters, kon hij de
torens van de bleke, dure hotels zien - het Fontainebleau, het Eden Roc, het Roney Plaza.
Tijdens hun tweede dag in Miami had hij aan Perry voorgesteld om deze genotsoorden
binnen te vallen. ‘Misschien een paar rijke vrouwen oppikken,’ had hij gezegd. Perry was
zeer terughoudend geweest; hij was bang dat mensen naar ze zouden staren vanwege hun
khaki broeken en t-shirts. Tijdens hun tocht over het protserige terrein van het
Fontainebleau werden ze echter niet opgemerkt tussen de mannen die rondmarcheerden in
rood-wit gestreepte bermuda’s van ruwe zijde en de vrouwen die tegelijkertijd badkleding
en stola’s van nertsbont droegen. De indringers hadden in de lobby rondgehangen, door de
tuin geslenterd, bij het zwembad geluierd. Daar had Dick de man gezien, die zijn leeftijd was
- achtentwintig, dertig. Hij had een ‘gokker of advocaat of misschien een gangster uit
13
In keeping with the American context of the original, I have decided to maintain “miles” in this case, rather
than translating it to kilometres.
66
Chicago’ geweest kunnen zijn. Wat hij ook was, hij zag eruit alsof hij de glorie van geld en
macht kende. Een blondine die op Marilyn Monroe leek masseerde hem met
zonnebrandcrème en zijn luie, ringen dragende hand reikte naar een bekerglas met jus
d’orange met ijs. Dat alles behoorde hem, Dick, toe, maar het zou nooit van hem zijn.
Waarom zou die klootzak alles moeten hebben, terwijl hij zelf niets had? Waarom zou die
‘big-shot bastard’14 al het geluk moeten hebben? Met een mes in zijn hand had hij, Dick,
macht. Big-shot bastards zoals hij moesten maar oppassen want anders zou hij ze misschien
‘openmaken en een beetje van dat geluk op de vloer laten lekken.’ Maar Dicks dag was
verpest. De mooie blonde die de zonnebrandcrème inwreef had hem verpest. Hij had tegen
Perry gezegd, ‘Laten we hier in godsnaam wegwezen.’
Nu was er een meisje van een jaar of twaalf figuren in het zand aan het tekenen; met
een stuk drijfhout maakte ze grote grove gezichten in het zand. Dick, die deed alsof hij haar
kunsten bewonderde, bood haar de schelpen aan die hij had verzameld. ‘Kun je ogen mee
maken,’ zei hij. Het kind nam de gift aan, waarop Dick glimlachte en haar een knipoog gaf.
Het speet hem dat hij zich tot haar aangetrokken voelde, want zijn seksuele interesse in
vrouwelijke kinderen was een zwakte waarvoor hij zich ‘oprecht schaamde’ - een geheim
dat hij aan niemand bekend had en waarvan hij hoopte dat niemand het zou vermoeden (al
was hij zich ervan bewust dat Perry er reden toe had), omdat andere mensen het misschien
niet ‘normaal’ zouden vinden. Dat was wel degelijk iets waarvan hij zeker wist dat hij het
was - een ‘normaal mens.’ Pubermeisjes verleiden, zoals hij ‘acht of negen’ keer in de
afgelopen paar jaar gedaan had, bewees niet het tegendeel, want als het puntje bij het
paaltje kwam, hadden de meeste echte mannen dezelfde verlangens als hij. Hij pakte de
14
Leaving the words “big-shot bastard” untranslated not only comports with the linguistic setting of the novel,
but it is also a representation of Dick’s personal vocabulary, giving the reader a more accurate view of what
goes on inside his mind.
67
hand van het kind en zei, ‘Jij bent m’n kleine meid. Mijn lieve schat.’ Maar ze stribbelde
tegen. Haar hand, door hem vastgehouden, spartelde als een vis aan een haak, en hij
herkende de geschokte blik in haar ogen van vroegere voorvallen in zijn carrière. Hij liet los,
lachte lichtjes, en zei, ‘Gewoon een spelletje. Hou je niet van spelletjes?’
Perry, die nog onder de blauwe parasol lag, had de situatie gadegeslagen en had
Dicks bedoelingen meteen door, en verachtte hem erom; hij had ‘geen respect voor mensen
die zich seksueel niet in de hand hebben,’ vooral als het gebrek aan beheersing te maken
had met wat hij ‘perversheid’ noemde - ‘kinderen lastigvallen,’ ‘homogedrag,’ verkrachting.
En hij dacht dat hij zijn zienswijze duidelijk had gemaakt aan Dick; waren ze kort geleden
nota bene niet bijna met elkaar op de vuist gegaan toen hij Dick ervan belette een klein
meisje te verkrachten? Hij zag het echter niet zitten om een dergelijke krachtmeting te
herhalen. Hij was opgelucht toen hij het kind bij Dick vandaan zag lopen.
Kerstliedjes hingen in de lucht; ze werden geproduceerd door de radio van de vier
vrouwen en vormden een vreemde mengeling met Miami’s zonneschijn en de jammerende,
nooit helemaal zwijgende meeuwen. ‘Oh, come let us adore Him, Oh, come let us adore
Him’15: een kathedraalkoor, verheven muziek die Perry tot tranen roerde - tranen die
weigerden te stoppen, zelfs nadat de muziek ophield. En zoals niet ongewoon was wanneer
hij op deze manier geraakt werd, stond hij stil bij een mogelijkheid waar hij een
‘overweldigende fascinatie’ voor had: zelfmoord. Als kind had hij vaak aan zelfmoord
gedacht, maar dat waren sentimentele mijmeringen geweest die voortkwamen uit de wens
om zijn vader en moeder en andere vijanden te straffen. Vanaf het moment dat hij een
jongeman was, was het idee van het beëindigen van zijn leven echter steeds realistischer
geworden. Dat, had hij onthouden, was Jimmy’s ‘oplossing’ geweest, en ook die van Fern.
15
Similar to text displayed on signs, song lyrics contribute to the atmosphere of the text, which is why
preserving them seems appropriate.
68
En de laatste tijd was het niet alleen een alternatief gaan lijken, maar juist de specifieke
dood die hem te wachten stond.
In ieder geval kon hij niet inzien dat hij ‘veel had om voor te leven.’ Warme eilanden
en begraven goud, diep in vuurblauwe zeeën duiken naar gezonken schatten - zulke dromen
waren verdwenen. Hetzelfde gold voor ‘Perry O’Parsons,’ de naam bedacht voor de
zangsensatie op het podium en het witte doek die hij ooit half serieus gehoopt had te
worden. Perry O’Parsons was gestorven zonder ooit geleefd te hebben. Wat was er nu om
naar uit te kijken? Hij en Dick waren bezig met een ‘race zonder finishlijn’ - dat was hoe hij
het zag. En nu, na amper een week in Miami, moest de lange tocht weer hervat worden.
Dick, die ooit een dag voor vijfenzestig cent per uur bij het ABC auto-onderhoudsbedrijf
gewerkt had, had hem verteld, ‘Miami is nog erger dan Mexico. Vijfenzestig cent! Dank je
vriendelijk. Ik ben blank.’ Dus gingen ze morgen, met slechts zevenentwintig dollar,
overgebleven van het geld dat ze in Kansas City hadden verdiend, weer op weg naar het
westen, naar Texas, naar Nevada - ‘op de bonnefooi.’
Dick, die de branding in was gewaad, keerde terug. Hij liet zich, nat en afgepeigerd,
op zijn buik in het kleverige zand vallen.
‘Hoe was het water?’
‘Heerlijk.’
69
Hunter S. Thompson
Uit “De Kentucky Derby is Decadent en Verloederd”
Welkom in Derbytown
Ik stapte rond middernacht uit het vliegtuig en niemand sprak een woord toen ik over de
donkere landingsbaan naar de terminal liep. De lucht was dik en heet, alsof ik een stoombad
in liep. Binnen waren mensen die elkaar omhelsden en de handen schudden… brede
glimlachen en hier en daar een vreugdevolle uitroep: “Godsamme! Ouwe rukker! Goed je te
zien, jongen! Verdomd goed… en dat meen ik!”
In de ge-airconditionde lounge ontmoette ik een man uit Houston die zei dat hij zus
of zo heette - “but just call me Jimbo”16 - en hij was razend enthousiast. “Ik ben overal klaar
voor, by God! Echt overal. Zo, wat drink je?” Ik bestelde een margarita met ijs, maar daar
kwam niks van in: “Naw, naw... da’s toch geen drankje voor tijdens de Kentucky Derby? Wat
isser17 mis met jou, jochie?” Hij grijnsde en knipoogde naar de barman. “Goddam18, we
moeten deze jongen wat bijbrengen. Geef hem ‘es een goeie whiskey…”
Ik haalde mijn schouders op. “Okay19, een dubbele Old Fitz on ice.” Jimbo knikte
goedkeurend.
16
Maintaining this entire phrase helps establish Jimbo as a character. The English phrase “but just call me...” is
generally well-known among Dutch people familiar with the English language, and therefore helps build the
image of an English speaking character.
17
The use of assimilation, such as merging the words “is” and “er,” as well as the omission of the final “n” in
words such as “vertellen,” “geven,” and “beroven” later in the text, marks Jimbo’s speech as a sociolect,
further establishing his character. This is also relevant regarding Thompson’s comments on the character later
in the text, where he describes Jimbo as a “geek” making a “nineteenth-century ass of himself” (The New
Journalism, 198).
18
For the same reasons as maintaining the phrase “but just call me Jimbo,” preserving certain words in Jimbo’s
dialogue and that of other characters gives the dialogue a realistic quality, depicting speech as it was uttered in
real life. This effectively retains the immersive effect of the original dialogue.
19
In keeping with the atmosphere and setting of the text, the American spelling of the word “Okay” seems
more natural in this context than the Dutch alternative “Okee.”
70
“Kijk.” Hij tikte me op de arm om er zeker van te zijn dat ik luisterde. “Ik ken deze
Derby-lui, ik kom hier elk jaar, en laat me je één ding vertelle dat ik geleerd heb - dit is niet
de juiste plek om mensen de indruk te wekke dat je één of andere faggot bent. In elk geval
niet in het openbaar. Shit, ze zullen je binnen no-time berove, je een klap op je kop geve en
elke cent die je hebt afpakke.”
Ik bedankte hem en stopte een Marlboro in mijn sigarettenhouder. “Zeg,” zei hij, “jij
ziet eruit alsof je in de paardenbusiness zit… heb ik gelijk?”
“Nee,” zei ik. “Ik ben fotograaf.”
“Oh yeah20?” Hij bekeek mijn versleten leren tas met hernieuwde interesse. “Is dat
wat je daar hebt - camera’s? Voor wie werk je dan?”
“Playboy,” zei ik.
Hij moest lachen. “Well goddam! Waar ga je dan foto’s van neme? Blote paarde?
Haw! Je zal het met de Kentucky Oaks vast nog druk krijge dan. Da’s een race alleen voor
merrieveulentjes.” Hij lachte wild. “Hell yes! En die zijn dan ook allemaal in hun nakie!”
Ik schudde mijn hoofd en zei niets; ik staarde hem alleen even aan, waarbij ik
grimmig probeerde te kijken. “Er komen moeilijkheden,” zei ik. “Ik heb de opdracht om
foto’s te nemen van de rellen.”
“Welke rellen?”
Ik aarzelde, en roerde het ijs door mijn drankje. “Bij de baan. Op Derby Day. De Black
Panthers.” Ik staarde hem weer aan. “Lees je de kranten niet?”
De grijns op zijn gezicht was vergaan. “Waar heb je het in godsnaam over?”
“Nou ja... misschien moet ik het je ook niet vertellen…” Ik haalde mijn schouders op.
“Maar hell, iedereen lijkt het al te weten. De politie en de National Guard bereiden zich al
20
Similar to the foreignising strategy used by De Koning in his translation of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, the
preservation of words such as “oh yeah” helps maintain the atmosphere and setting of the original text.
71
zes weken lang voor. Ze hebben twintigduizend man troepen klaarstaan bij Fort Knox. Ze
hebben ons geadviseerd - alle leden van de pers en fotografen - om helmen en kogelvrije
vesten te dragen. Er werd gezegd dat we een schietpartij konden verwachten…”
“Nee!” schreeuwde hij; zijn handen vlogen omhoog en bleven even tussen ons in
hangen, alsof hij de woorden die hij hoorde probeerde tegen te houden. Toen mepte hij
met zijn vuist op de bar. “Those sons of bitches! God allemachtig! De Kentucky Derby!” Hij
bleef met zijn hoofd schudden. “Nee! Jesus! Dat is bijna te erg om te geloven!” Nu leek hij
op zijn barkruk ineen te zakken, en toen hij weer opkeek waren zijn ogen troebel.
“Waarom? Waarom hier? Hebben ze dan nergens respect voor?”
Ik haalde weer mijn schouders op. “Het zijn niet alleen de Panthers. De FBI zegt dat
busladingen gekke blanken van heinde en verre komen - om zich in de menigte te mengen
en allemaal tegelijk aan te vallen, vanuit iedere richting. Ze zullen zich kleden net als de rest.
Je weet wel, jassen en stropdassen enzo. Maar als het gezeik21 begint… nou ja, daar is de
politie zo bezorgd om.”
Hij zat een tijdje gekwetst en verward voor zich uit te staren, niet bepaald in staat
om dit verschrikkelijke nieuws te verwerken. Toen schreeuwde hij uit: “O… Jesus! Wat is er
in godsnaam toch aan de hand in dit land? Waar ben je nog veilig?”
“Niet hier,” zei ik, en pakte mijn tas op. “Bedankt voor het drankje, en veel succes.”
Hij greep mijn arm en stond erop dat ik er nog een nam, maar ik zei dat ik verwacht
werd bij de Press Club en ging er gehaast vandoor om me voor te bereiden op het
afschuwelijke spektakel. Bij de vliegveldkiosk kocht ik een exemplaar van de Courier-Journal
en scande de koppen op de voorpagina: “Nixon stuurt soldaten naar Cambodja, aanval op
communisten” … “B-52 bommenwerpers doen inval, soldaten trekken 20 mijl op” … “4.000
21
The Dutch word “gezeik” seemed appropriate here, since it has become somewhat of a popular
colloquialism.
72
man Amerikaanse troepen ingezet bij Yale, spanning Panther-protest neemt toe.” Onderaan
de pagina stond een foto van Diane Crump, die spoedig de eerste vrouwelijke jockey zou zijn
die aan de Kentucky Derby deelnam. De fotograaf had een foto genomen terwijl ze “bij de
stallen stopte om haar paard, Fathom, te aaien.” De rest van de krant was bezaaid met
walgelijk oorlogsnieuws en verhalen over “opstandigheid onder studenten.” Er werd niets
vermeld over opkomende moeilijkheden bij een universiteit in Ohio met de naam Kent
State.
Ik ging naar de balie van Hertz om mijn auto op te halen, maar de pafferige, hippe
jongeman die de leiding had zei dat ze er geen meer hadden. “Je kunt ze nergens meer
huren,” verzekerde hij me. “We waren zes weken voor de Derby al helemaal volgeboekt.” Ik
legde uit dat mijn agent een witte Chrysler geregeld had voor die middag, maar hij schudde
zijn hoofd. “Misschien komt er nog een annulering. Waar verblijft u?”
Ik haalde mijn schouders op. “Waar verblijven de lui uit Texas? Ik wil bij mijn eigen
mensen zijn.”
Hij zuchtte. “Vriend, je hebt een probleem. Deze stad zit stampvol. Dat is altijd zo
tijdens de Derby.”
Ik leunde naar hem toe, en zei half-fluisterend: “Luister, ik werk voor de Playboy.
Wat zou je zeggen van een baantje?”
Hij deinsde snel terug. “Wat? Kom op, zeg. Wat voor baantje?”
“Laat maar,” zei ik. “Je hebt het zojuist verpest.” Ik zwaaide mijn tas van de toonbank
en ging op zoek naar een taxi. De tas is een waardevol attribuut in dit soort werk; er zitten
allerlei bagagelabels op - SF, LA, NY, Lima, Rome, Bangkok, dat werk - en het meest
prominente is een heel officieel, geplastificeerd label waarop staat “Photog. Playboy Mag.”
Ik had hem gekocht van een pooier in Vail, Colorado, en hij had me verteld hoe je hem
73
moest gebruiken. “Laat nooit het woord ‘Playboy’ vallen voordat je zeker weet dat ze dit
ding gezien hebben,” had hij gezegd. “Wanneer je merkt dat ze het zien, is dat het moment
om toe te slaan. Ze zullen er iedere keer weer in trappen. Ik zeg het je, dit ding is magic.
Pure magic.”
Nou ja… misschien wel. Ik had hem gebruikt op die arme sul in de bar, en nu ik in een
Yellow Cab-taxi22 richting de stad brom, voel ik me een beetje schuldig dat ik middels dat
kwaadaardige fantasietje met het hoofd van die arme stakker heb zitten sollen. Maar wat
zou het? Iedereen die door de wereld zwerft en zegt, “Hell yeah, ik kom uit Texas,” verdient
alles wat hem overkomt. En hij was hier tenslotte ook gekomen om zich op primitieve wijze
voor schut te zetten temidden van een afgematte, atavistische freakout waar hij geen goed
gemotiveerde reden voor had afgezien van dat het een nogal verkoopbare “traditie” was.
Eerder in ons gesprek had Jimbo me verteld dat hij sinds 1954 geen Derby meer gemist had.
“Het vrouwtje wil nie meer mee,” had hij gezegd. “Zij staat ‘t tandenknarsend toe en laat me
voor deze gelegenheid helemaal los. En assik ‘los’ zeg, bedoel ik ook echt los! Ik loop met
briefjes van tien te strooien assof het niks kost! Paarden, whiskey, vrouwe… shit, er zijn
vrouwe in deze stad die alles doen voor geld!”
Waarom niet? Geld is belangrijk om te hebben in deze moeilijke tijden. Zelfs
president Nixon verlangt ernaar. Slechts een paar dagen voordat de Derby begon zei hij nog,
“Als ik geld had, zou ik het investeren in de aandelenmarkt.” En ondertussen vervolgt de
markt zijn grimmige neerwaartse spiraal.
22
“Yellow Cab” is the name of a well-known taxi company in the United States.
74
4 Source Passages
Tom Wolfe
From “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby”
The first good look I had at customized cars was at an event called a “Teen Fair,” held in
Burbank, a suburb of Los Angeles beyond Hollywood. This was a wild place to be looking at
art objects – eventually, I should say, you have to reach the conclusion that these
customized cars are art objects, at least if you use the standards applied in a civilized
society. But I will get to that in a moment. Anyway, about noon you drive up to a place that
looks like an outdoor amusement park, and there are three serious-looking kids, like the
cafeteria committee in high school, taking tickets, but the scene inside is quite mad. Inside,
two things hit you. The first is a huge platform a good seven feet off the ground with a hullygully band – everything is electrified, the bass, the guitars, the saxophones – and then
behind the band, on the platform, about two hundred kids are doing frantic dances called
the hully-gully, the bird and the shampoo. As I said, it’s noontime. The dances the kids are
doing are very jerky. The boys and girls don’t touch, not even with their hands. They just
ricochet around. Then you notice that all the girls are dressed exactly alike. They have
bouffant hairdos – all of them – and slacks that are, well, skin-tight does not get the idea
across; it’s more the conformation than how tight the slacks are. It’s as if some lecherous
old tailor with a gluteus-maximus fixation designed them, striation by striation. About the
time you’ve managed to focus on this, you notice that in the middle of the park is a huge,
perfectly round swimming pool; really rather enormous. And there is a Chris-Craft cabin
cruiser in the pool, going around and around, sending up big waves, with more of these
bouffant babies bunched in the back of it. In the water, suspended like plankton, are kids in
75
scuba-diving outfits; others are tooling around underwater, breathing through a snorkel.
And all over the place are booths, put up by shoe companies and guitar companies and God
knows who else, and there are kids dancing in all of them – dancing the bird, the hully-gully
and the shampoo – with the music of the hully-gully band piped all over the park through
loudspeakers.
All this time, Tex Smith, from Hot Rod Magazine, who brought me over to the place,
is trying to lead me to the customized-car exhibit – “Tom, I want you to see this car that Bill
Cushenberry built, The Silhouette” – which is to say, here are two hundred kids ricocheting
over a platform at high noon, and a speedy little boat barrelling around and around and
around in a round swimming pool, and I seem to be the only person who is distracted. The
customized-car exhibit turns out to be the Ford Custom Car Caravan, which Ford is sending
all over the country. At first, with the noise and peripheral motion and the inchoate leching
you are liable to be doing, what with bouffant nymphets rocketing all over the place, these
customized cars do not strike you as anything very special. Obviously they are very special,
but the first thing you think of is the usual – you know, that the kids who own these cars are
probably skinny little hoods who wear T shirts and carry their cigarette packs by winding
them around in the T shirt up near the shoulder.
But after a while, I was glad I had seen the cars in this natural setting, which was,
after all, a kind of Plato’s Republic for teenagers. Because if you watched anything at this fair
very long, you kept noticing the same thing. These kids are absolutely maniacal about form.
They are practically religious about it. For example, the dancers: none of them ever smiled.
They stared at each other’s legs and feet, concentrating. The dances had no grace about
them at all, they were more in the nature of a hoedown, but everybody was concentrating
to do them exactly right. And the bouffant kids all had form, wild form, but form with rigid
76
standards, one gathers. Even the boys. Their dress was prosaic – Levi’s, Slim Jims, sport
shirts, T shirts, polo shirts – but the form was consistent: a stove-pipe silhouette. And they
all had the same hairstyle: some wore it long, some short, but none of them had a part; all
that hair was brushed back straight from the hairline. I went by one of the guitar booths,
and there was a little kid in there, about thirteen, playing the hell out of an electric guitar.
The kid was named Cranston something or other. He looked like he ought to be named
Kermet or Herschel; all his genes were kind of horribly Okie. Cranston was playing away and
a big crowd was watching. But Cranston was slouched back with his spine bent like a sapling
up against a table, looking gloriously bored. At thirteen, this kid was being fanatically cool.
They all were. They were all wonderful slaves to form. They have created their own style of
life, and they are much more authoritarian about enforcing it than are adults. Not only that,
but today these kids – especially in California – have money, which, needless to say, is why
all these shoe merchants and guitar sellers and the Ford Motor Company were at a Teen
Fair in the first place. I don’t mind observing that it is this same combination – money plus
slavish devotion to form – that accounts for Versailles or St. Mark’s Square. Naturally, most
of the artifacts that these kids’ money-plus-form produce, are of a pretty ghastly order. But
so was most of the paraphernalia that developed in England during the Regency. I mean,
most of it was on the order of starched cravats. A man could walk into Beau Brummel’s
house at 11 A.M., and here would come the butler with a tray of wilted linen. “These were
some of our failures,” he confides. But then Brummel comes downstairs wearing one
perfect starched cravat like one perfect iris, the flower of Mayfair civilization. But the
Regency period did see some tremendous formal architecture. And the kids’ formal society
has also brought at least one substantial thing to a formal development of a high order – the
customized cars. I don’t have to dwell on the point that cars mean more to these kids than
77
architecture did in Europe’s great formal century, say, 1750 to 1850. They are freedom,
style, sex, power, motion, color – everything is right there.
Things have been going on in the development of the kids’ formal attitude toward
cars since 1945, things of great sophistication that adults have not been even remotely
aware of, mainly because the kids are so inarticulate about it, especially the ones most
hipped on the subject. They are not from the levels of society that produce children who
write sensitive analytical prose at age seventeen, or if they do, they soon fall into the hands
of English instructors who put them onto Hemingway or a lot of goddamn-and-hungrybreast writers. If they ever write about a highway again, it’s a rain-slicked highway and the
sound of the automobiles passing over it is like the sound of tearing silk, not that one
household in ten thousand has heard the sound of tearing silk since 1945.
Anyway, we are back at the Teen Fair and I am talking to Tex Smith and to Don
Beebe, a portly young guy with a white sport shirt and Cuban sunglasses. As they tell me
about the Ford Custom Car Caravan, I can see that Ford has begun to comprehend this teenage style of life and its potential. The way Ford appears to figure it is this: Thousands of kids
are getting hold of cars and either hopping them up for speed or customizing them to some
extent, usually a little of both. Before they get married they pour all their money into this. If
Ford can get them hooked on Fords now, after the kids are married they’ll buy new Fords.
Even the kids who aren’t full-time car nuts themselves will be influenced by which car is
considered “boss.” They use that word a lot, “boss.” The kids used to consider Ford the hot
car, but then, from 1955 to 1962, Chevrolet became the favorite. They had big engines and
were easy to hop up, the styling was simple, and the kids could customize them easily. In
1959, and more so in 1960, Plymouth became a hot car, too. In 1961 and 1962, it was all
Chevrolet and Plymouth. Now Ford is making a big push. A lot of the professional hot-rod
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and custom-car people, adults, will tell you that now Ford is the hot car, but you have to
discount some of it, because Ford is laying money on everybody right and left, in one form
or another. In the Custom Car Caravan, all the cars have been fashioned out of Ford bodies
except the ones that are completely handmade, like the aforementioned Silhouette.
79
Truman Capote
From In Cold Blood
In Miami Beach, 335 Ocean Drive is the address of the Somerset Hotel, a small, square
building painted more or less white, with many lavender touches, among them a lavender
sign that reads, ‘Vacancy - Lowest Rates - Beach Facilities - Always a Seabreeze.’ It is one of a
row of little stucco-and-cement hostels lining a white, melancholy street. In December,
1959, the Somerset’s ‘beach facilities’ consisted of two beach umbrellas stuck in a strip of
sand at the rear of the hotel. One umbrella, pink, had written upon it, ‘We Serve Valentine’s
Ice-Cream.’ At noon on Christmas Day, a quartet of women lay under and around it, a
transistor radio serenading them. The second umbrella, blue and bearing the command ‘Tan
with Coppertone,’ sheltered Dick and Perry, who for five days had been living at the
Somerset, in a double room renting for eighteen dollars weekly.
Perry said, ‘You never wished me a Merry Christmas.’
‘Merry Christmas honey. And a Happy New Year.’
Dick wore bathing trunks, but Perry, as in Acapulco, refused to expose his injured
legs - he feared the sight might ‘offend’ other beach goers - and therefore sat fully clothed,
wearing even socks and shoes. Still, he was comparatively content, and when Dick stood up
and started performing exercises - headstands, meant to impress the ladies beneath the
pink umbrella - he occupied himself with the Miami Herald. Presently he came across an
inner-page story that won his entire attention. It concerned murder, the slaying of a Florida
family, a Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Walker, their four-year-old son, and their two-year-old
daughter. Each of the victims, though not bound or gagged, had been shot through the head
80
with a .22 weapon. The crime, clueless and apparently motiveless, had taken place Saturday
night, December 19, at the Walker home, on a cattle-raising ranch not far from Tallahassee.
Perry interrupted Dick’s athletics to read the story aloud, and said, ‘Where were we
last Saturday night?’
‘Tallahassee?’
‘I’m asking you.’
Dick concentrated. On Thursday night, taking turns at the wheel, they had driven out
of Kansas and through Missouri into Arkansas and over the Ozarks, ‘up’ Louisiana, where a
burned-out generator stopped them early Friday morning. (A second-hand replacement,
bought in Shreveport, cost twenty-two fifty.) That night they’d slept parked by the side of
the road somewhere near the Alabama-Florida border. The next day’s journey, an unhurried
affair, had included several touristic diversions - visits to an alligator farm and a rattlesnake
ranch, a ride in a glass-bottomed boat over a silvery-clear swamp lake, a late and long and
costly broiled-lobster lunch at a roadside seafood restaurant. Delightful day! But both were
exhausted when they arrived at Tallahassee, and decided to spend the night there. ‘Yes,
Tallahassee,’ Dick said.
‘Amazing!’ Perry glanced through the article again. ‘Know what I wouldn’t be
surprised? If this wasn’t done by a lunatic. Some nut that read about what happened out in
Kansas.’
Dick, because he didn’t care to hear Perry ‘get going on that subject,’ shrugged and
grinned and trotted down to the ocean’s edge, where he ambled awhile over the surfdrenched sand, here and there stooping to collect a seashell. As a boy he’d so envied the
son of a neighbor who had gone to the Gulf Coast on holiday and returned with a box full of
shells - so hated him - that he’d stolen the shells and one by one crushed them with a
81
hammer. Envy was constantly with him; the Enemy was anyone who was someone he
wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.
For instance, the man he had seen by the pool at the Fontainebleau. Miles away,
shrouded in a summery veil of heat-haze and sea-sparkle, he could see the towers of the
pale, expensive hotels - the Fontainebleau, the Eden Roc, the Roney Plaza. On their second
day in Miami he had suggested to Perry that they invade these pleasure-domes. ‘Maybe pick
up a coupla rich women,’ he had said. Perry had been most reluctant; he felt people would
stare at them because of their khaki trousers and T-shirts. Actually their tour of the
Fontainebleau’s gaudy premises went unnoticed, amid the men striding about in Bermuda
shorts of candy-striped raw silk, and the women wearing bathing suits and mink stoles
simultaneously. The trespassers had loitered in the lobby, strolled in the garden, lounged by
the swimming pool. It was there that Dick saw the man, who was his own age - twenty-eight
or thirty. He could have been a ‘gambler or lawyer or maybe a gangster from Chicago.’
Whatever he was, he looked as though he knew the glories of money and power. A blonde
who resembled Marilyn Monroe was kneading him with suntan oil, and his lazy, beringed
hand reached for a tumbler of iced orange juice. All that belonged to him, Dick, but he
would never have it. Why should that sonofabitch have everything, while he had nothing?
Why should that ‘big-shot bastard’ have all the luck? With a knife in his hand, he, Dick, had
power. Big-shot bastards like that had better be careful or he might ‘open them up and let a
little of their luck spill on the floor.’ But Dick’s day was ruined. The beautiful blonde rubbing
on the suntan oil had ruined it. He’d said to Perry, ‘Let’s pull the hell out of here.’
Now a young girl, probably twelve, was drawing figures in the sand, carving out big,
crude faces with a piece of driftwood. Dick, pretending to admire her art, offered the shells
he had gathered. ‘They make good eyes,’ he said. The child accepted the gift, whereupon
82
Dick smiled and winked at her. He was sorry he felt as he did about her, for his sexual
interest in female children was a failing of which he was ‘sincerely ashamed’ - a secret he’d
not confessed to anyone and hoped no one suspected (though he was aware that Perry had
reason to), because other people might not think it ‘normal.’ That, to be sure, was
something he was certain he was - a ‘normal.’ Seducing pubescent girls, as he had done
‘eight or nine’ times in the last several years, did not disprove it, for if the truth were known,
most real men had the same desires he had. He took the child’s hand and said, ‘You’re my
baby girl. My little sweetheart.’ But she objected. Her hand, held by his, twitched like a fish
on a hook, and he recognized the astounded expression in her eyes from earlier incidents in
his career. He let go, laughed lightly, and said, ‘Just a game. Don’t you like games?’
Perry, still reclining under the blue umbrella, had observed the scene and realized
Dick´s purpose at once, and despised him for it; he had ‘no respect for people who can’t
control themselves sexually,’ especially when the lack of control involved what he called
‘pervertiness’ - ‘bothering kids,’ ‘queer stuff,’ rape. And he thought he had made his views
obvious to Dick; indeed, hadn’t they almost had a fist fight when quite recently he had
prevented Dick from raping a terrified young girl? However, he wouldn’t care to repeat that
particular test of strength. He was relieved when he saw the child walk away from Dick.
Christmas carols were in the air; they issued from the radio of the four women and
mixed strangely with Miami’s sunshine and the querulous, never thoroughly silent seagulls.
‘Oh, come let us adore Him, Oh, come let us adore Him’: a cathedral choir, an exalted music
that moved Perry to tears - which refused to stop, even after the music did. And as was not
uncommon when he was thus afflicted, he dwelt upon a possibility that had for him
‘tremendous fascination’: suicide. As a child he had often thought of killing himself, but
those were sentimental reveries born of a wish to punish his father and mother and other
83
enemies. From young manhood onward, however, the prospect of ending his life had more
and more lost its fantastic quality. That, he must remember, was Jimmy’s ‘solution,’ and
Fern’s, too. And lately it had come to seem not just an alternative but the specific death
awaiting him.
Anyway, he couldn’t see that he had ‘a lot to live for.’ Hot islands and buried gold,
diving deep in fire-blue seas toward sunken treasure - such dreams were gone. Gone, too,
was ‘Perry O’Parsons,’ the name invented for the singing sensation of stage and screen that
he’d half-seriously hoped one day to be. Perry O’Parsons had died without having ever lived.
What was there to look forward to? He and Dick were ‘running a race without a finish line’ that was how it struck him. And now, after not quite a week in Miami, the long ride was to
resume. Dick, who had worked one day at the ABC auto-service company for sixty-five cents
an hour, had told him, ‘Miami’s worse than Mexico. Sixty-five cents! Not me. I’m white.’ So
tomorrow, with only twenty-seven dollars left of the money raised in Kansas City, they were
heading west again, to Texas, to Nevada - ‘nowhere definite.’
Dick, who had waded into the surf, returned. He fell, wet and breathless, face down
on the sticky sand.
‘How was the water?’
‘Wonderful.’
84
Hunter S. Thompson
From “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved”
Welcome to Derbytown
I got off the plane around midnight and no one spoke as I crossed the dark runway to the
terminal. The air was thick and hot, like wandering into a steam bath. Inside, people hugged
each other and shook hands…big grins and a whoop here and there: “By God! You old
bastard! Good to see you, boy! Damn good…and I mean it!”
In the air-conditioned lounge I met a man from Houston who said his name was
something or other–”but just call me Jimbo”–and he was here to get it on. “I’m ready for
anything, by God! Anything at all. Yeah, what are you drinkin?” I ordered a Margarita with
ice, but he wouldn’t hear of it: “Naw, naw…what the hell kind of drink is that for Kentucky
Derby time? What’s wrong with you, boy?” He grinned and winked at the bartender.
“Goddam, we gotta educate this boy. Get him some good whiskey…”
I shrugged. “Okay, a double Old Fitz on ice.” Jimbo nodded his approval.
“Look.” He tapped me on the arm to make sure I was listening. “I know this Derby
crowd, I come here every year, and let me tell you one thing I’ve learned–this is no town to
be giving people the impression you’re some kind of faggot. Not in public, anyway. Shit,
they’ll roll you in a minute, knock you in the head and take every goddam cent you have.”
I thanked him and fitted a Marlboro into my cigarette holder. “Say,” he said, “you
look like you might be in the horse business…am I right?”
“No,” I said. “I’m a photographer.”
“Oh yeah?” He eyed my ragged leather bag with new interest. “Is that what you got
there– cameras? Who you work for?”
85
“Playboy,” I said.
He laughed. “Well, goddam! What are you gonna take pictures of – nekkid horses?
Haw! I guess you’ll be workin’ pretty hard when they run the Kentucky Oaks. That’s a race
just for fillies.” He was laughing wildly. “Hell yes! And they’ll all be nekkid too!”
I shook my head and said nothing; just stared at him for a moment, trying to look
grim. “There’s going to be trouble,” I said. “My assignment is to take pictures of the riot.”
“What riot?”
I hesitated, twirling the ice in my drink. “At the track. On Derby Day. The Black
Panthers.” I stared at him again. “Don’t you read the newspapers?”
The grin on his face had collapsed. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
“Well…maybe I shouldn’t be telling you…” I shrugged. “But hell, everybody else
seems to know. The cops and the National Guard have been getting ready for six weeks.
They have 20,000 troops on alert at Fort Knox. They’ve warned us–all the press and
photographers–to wear helmets and special vests like flak jackets. We were told to expect
shooting…”
“No!” he shouted; his hands flew up and hovered momentarily between us, as if to
ward off the words he was hearing. Then he whacked his fist on the bar. “Those sons of
bitches! God Almighty! The Kentucky Derby!” He kept shaking his head. “No! Jesus! That’s
almost too bad to believe!” Now he seemed to be sagging on the stool, and when he looked
up his eyes were misty. “Why? Why here? Don’t they respect anything?“
I shrugged again. “It’s not just the Panthers. The FBI says busloads of white crazies
are coming in from all over the country–to mix with the crowd and attack all at once, from
every direction. They’ll be dressed like everybody else. You know–coats and ties and all that.
But when the trouble starts…well, that’s why the cops are so worried.”
86
He sat for a moment, looking hurt and confused and not quite able to digest all this
terrible news. Then he cried out: “Oh…Jesus! What in the name of God is happening in this
country? Where can you get away from it?”
“Not here,” I said, picking up my bag. “Thanks for the drink…and good luck.”
He grabbed my arm, urging me to have another, but I said I was overdue at the Press
Club and hustled off to get my act together for the awful spectacle. At the airport newsstand
I picked up a Courier-Journal and scanned the front page headlines: “Nixon Sends GI’s into
Cambodia to Hit Reds”… “B-52’s Raid, then 20,000 GI’s Advance 20 Miles”…”4,000 U.S.
Troops Deployed Near Yale as Tension Grows Over Panther Protest.” At the bottom of the
page was a photo of Diane Crump, soon to become the first woman jockey ever to ride in
the Kentucky Derby. The photographer had snapped her “stopping in the barn area to
fondle her mount, Fathom.” The rest of the paper was spotted with ugly war news and
stories of “student unrest.” There was no mention of any trouble brewing at university in
Ohio called Kent State.
I went to the Hertz desk to pick up my car, but the moon-faced young swinger in
charge said they didn’t have any. “You can’t rent one anywhere,” he assured me. “Our
Derby reservations have been booked for six weeks.” I explained that my agent had
confirmed a white Chrysler convertible for me that very afternoon but he shook his head.
“Maybe we’ll have a cancellation. Where are you staying?”
I shrugged. “Where’s the Texas crowd staying? I want to be with my people.”
He sighed. “My friend, you’re in trouble. This town is flat full. Always is, for the
Derby.”
I leaned closer to him, half-whispering: “Look, I’m from Playboy. How would you like
a job?”
87
He backed off quickly. “What? Come on, now. What kind of a job?”
“Never mind,” I said. “You just blew it.” I swept my bag off the counter and went to
find a cab. The bag is a valuable prop in this kind of work; mine has a lot of baggage tags on
it–SF, LA, NY, Lima, Rome, Bangkok, that sort of thing–and the most prominent tag of all is a
very official, plastic-coated thing that says “Photog. Playboy Mag.” I bought it from a pimp in
Vail, Colorado, and he told me how to use it. “Never mention Playboy until you’re sure
they’ve seen this thing first,” he said. “Then, when you see them notice it, that’s the time to
strike. They’ll go belly up ever time. This thing is magic, I tell you. Pure magic.”
Well… maybe so. I’d used it on the poor geek in the bar, and now humming along in
a Yellow Cab toward town, I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger’s brains with
that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, “Hell
yes, I’m from Texas,” deserves whatever happens to him. And he had, after all, come here
once again to make a nineteenth-century ass of himself in the midst of some jaded, atavistic
freakout with nothing to recommend it except a very saleable “tradition.” Early in our chat,
Jimbo had told me that he hadn’t missed a Derby since 1954. “The little lady won’t come
anymore,” he said. “She grits her teeth and turns me loose for this one. And when I say
‘loose’ I do mean loose! I toss ten-dollar bills around like they were goin’ out of style!
Horses, whiskey, women…shit, there’s women in this town that’ll do anything for money.”
Why not? Money is a good thing to have in these twisted times. Even Richard Nixon
is hungry for it. Only a few days before the Derby he said, “If I had any money I’d invest it in
the stock market.” And the market, meanwhile, continued its grim slide.
88
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