Alfred Mac Adam

Will the real author please stand up?

By Elika Khosravani

Illustration by Em Bennett

This May, as Broadway’s trees bloom green, Professor Alfred Mac Adam will address his students one last time. Among the many courses he’s taught, none is more well known than Mad Love, which explores irrational love across the Western canon. After 42 years at Barnard, he is ready to reflect on his departure. 

Mac Adam, a professor of Spanish and comparative literature, likens his career to an absurd yet fitting dilemma: “If you love something, it’s like having a bathtub full of your favorite ice cream. You have to eat everything in the bathtub. But, you know, there is never enough time.” A prolific translator, he has spent decades devouring literature, but the hunger never fades. That same devotion flows from every crevice of his office, where books teeter in precarious stacks and small trinkets line the walls. 

I’m immediately drawn to an unusual guardian of the space; a plaster bust of Dante Alighieri stares back at me. Mac Adam swiped it from Princeton during his time there—out of pity, he claims. Students had turned Dante’s jaw into an ashtray, stubbing out their cigarettes on him. Now, in Mac Adam’s office, the Italian writer’s solemn gaze watches over a far kinder guest: his scarves. Mac Adam calls it theft; I think he rescued Dante from a lifetime of cigarette burns.

We sat in his office, discussing Latin American literature, the dying publishing industry, and the myth of bilingualism.

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

. . .

The Blue and White: How are you finding Barnard upon your final semester teaching here?

Alfred Mac Adam: I’m having a good time. In the last couple of years, I’ve had excellent students and good responses. I expect that the stuff I teach no longer has a great deal of interest for students.

B&W: What you teach is very valuable, though. Many of the classes I’ve taken throughout my life only focus on the European canon of literature, whereas you touch upon South American literature that people don't even look at.

AMA: Well, the problem there is that if you notice the offerings in both Barnard’s Spanish department and Columbia’s Spanish department, there’s not a great deal of interest in literature. And my whole background, as you know, is literature. So I’m the odd man out.

B&W: You describe “mad love” as a kind of affliction, complete with physical and physiological symptoms that consume and ultimately destroy the individual. I was interested in how you came to create the definition of mad love, and by extension also the course itself. You’ve been teaching it for a long time now.

AMA: It was the result of reading books where I found that I kept running into this issue. It was all about mad love. I thought to myself, maybe there’s a course here, and sure enough, there was. 

B&W: If I am not mistaken, in the course Mad Love, you only teach Western books. Did you not find there to be space for Latin American literature in that course?

AMA: No, you’re quite right. I could have included Latin American books, but I somehow thought that I should try to get out of my department, a little bit and out of my specialty, so that I didn't fall back on clichéd material that I’ve taught so many times.

B&W: It’s undisputed that South America has produced some of the greatest literary voices of the 20th century. What sets it apart from the European canon?

AMA: Just take one phenomenon, which would be the Spanish American novel of the 1960s. Take Gabriel García Márquez or Carlos Fuentes. They made an impact when brought into translation. I remember an American author—whose name has gone out of my mind, of course—at a symposium saying that he felt like a father reading the newspaper in his living room with a child in front of him. But the child turned out to be Spanish American literature. Suddenly, the child throws a toy that goes right through the newspaper and hits you in the face, because everything that is coming out is shocking and innovative. Of course, that was the hallmark of the literature of that period. It turned a tradition received by Europe and North America upside down and made fun of it. That’s how it created its own space. It changed the way literature would be received by the reader.

B&W: Is that what drew you to translating Latin American literature?

AMA:  I was already working on the authors, and I knew their work. I even met a few of the authors. When they were shopping around for translators, they knew me, and that was an important thing. It snowballed from there. But with Carlos Fuentes, for example, it was almost a disaster because I was editing a magazine for the Americas Society. We were doing a new issue, and I asked Fuentes if he would give us a piece of a work in progress. He gave it to us in Spanish. I translated it, and he hated it.

B&W: How come?

AMA: I don’t know. He just didn't like it. And I said, well, that's the end of that. Then, about two weeks later, the phone rang, and it was Carlos saying: “Alfred, I've been thinking about you.” Which was a scary thing for him to say. He decided that the translation wasn't bad after all, but he just hadn't seen it that way because I was putting it in American idioms. And that began a 20-year relationship.

B&W: You’ve translated many of his books over the years. Has your approach to his work evolved?

AMA: Well, Fuentes was a man who started early and peaked early. I’m sorry to say this. His books always sold reasonably well: They were great as ideas, and not as great as execution. I think I’m being fair when I say that, but you know, he was a friend. So, I was almost happy the day I got the letter saying from Farrar—well, how did they put it? “We’re going in a different direction.” And I said, oh, meaning away from me. 

B&W: Well, you had a long run with him, so it’s fine.

AMA: I was fired. He was shocked himself, because they hadn't consulted him.

B&W: He didn't get to choose to fire you?

AMA: No. His agency did it. Publishers are the people with the money. They make all kinds of decisions for you.

B&W: As an established translator, do you feel like you have more freedom in choosing the work you get to translate, or do they just assign it to you?

AMA: It’s happened where I suggest something to somebody, and it works out. But that can't happen as much anymore because publishing is a dying industry.

B&W: Really?

AMA: You have to remember the cost of doing a translation. You have to pay a translator, right? And somebody's gotta look over that translation other than the translator. The investment is quite considerable. Publishing houses just can't afford that anymore. So, the books gather dust. Sure, there are lots of translators. No question about it. But the number of people who can earn a living from translation… You either have to be an academic or sell life insurance. I'm not joking: All the writing industries are disappearing. I'm shocked to see that The New Yorker costs about $10 a copy now. When I was a kid, it was 25 cents. I don't care about inflation, but that’s a big difference.

B&W: No one’s buying print anymore.

AMA: That is the case. It’s harder for publishers to take a risk on something. 

B&W: I mean, I was going to ask if you had any advice for anyone who wanted to be a literary translator, but—

AMA: Go into law would be my best advice. Translation is almost a thankless task. If the book is good, then you’'ll find reviews talking about the book, but they’ll never mention the translation. If the book isn't liked, who do you think gets the blame?

B&W: The translator? 

AMA: The whipping boy. 

B&W: I recently read “The Translator’s Task” by Walter Benjamin, where he questions whether translations are primarily for readers who simply do not understand the original text. In your experience, do you think translation results in greater loss or greater gain?

AMA: That’s an impossible question to answer because the nuances of a writer's style are going to get lost. Humor is going to get lost. The rhythm of the original language is inevitably going to get lost. English is very monosyllabic. But at the same time, it's necessary.

B&W: Personal bias can also seep into a translation. How do you avoid butchering an original work with your own biases?

AMA: By trying to stick as close as possible to the original. I’ve seen crazy translators, and I do mean people who should be in straitjackets. They do things to books, and you say, well, what was going through their minds when they did this? They may have perfectly plausible reasons in their heads. It was Gregory Rabassa who put his finger on the problem, which was that translations shouldn't sound like translations. A translation should sound like a regular book, where you're unaware it’s a translation. Did Gregory Rabassa make mistakes? Yeah, sure. But if you could create a visiting card for translators, it would have the translator's name and underneath it would say, “I make mistakes.” They're inevitable. Everybody makes mistakes. But Rabassa’s translations were always readable. That was the key thing. All of us who followed took off from his model. 

B&W: There is this expectation of invisibility in translation. A good translation should be invisible to the reader, almost seamless.

AMA: Well, that's one of the theories of translation: that it should be clear to a reader that it is a translation. And the other, and I admit the more commercial version, is that the reader should be thinking that this reads like a normal English book.

B&W: But if you make something read like an English book, aren’t you sacrificing the nuance, the style, the rhythm of the original language?

AMA: Not necessarily. This is where the work comes in. In the old days, it would be read by an editor, who plays the role of the idiot. If the editor sees something that doesn't make sense, they flag it. Right? But, there would also be a second reader: a copy editor. The copy editor would make sure that the timelines were correct. Authors make mistakes too, right? And that was a great system. But it doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't exist anymore because publishers don't have the money; they don't have the resources.

B&W: So, translation is inherently collaborative.

AMA: It has to be. For it to be successful, I say it should be. It absolutely should be because you need another set of eyes. 

B&W: Given that translation requires the deconstruction and reconstruction of a text, do you also consider yourself to be a writer?

AMA: No, no. I am the builder. In other words, the architect draws up the plans: That's the author. My job is to make sure that the foundation is solid, that the bricks are holding together, and that the walls won’t fall. It’s a secondary role. And you can't get carried away. Will the real author please stand up?

B&W: Do you think and write like the authors you translate while you're shaping their voice in English? Is that something you take into consideration?

AMA: I don't know. I don't know that I can get outside myself that easily. I think you have to do it on your terms. 

B&W: How do you navigate keeping your terms while maintaining the structural integrity of the original text? Do you have a method?

AMA: I hate to say it, but I don't. Some people say that you have to read the whole book before you translate it: not me! I just sit down and get going. That's all. That's it. Just go. 

B&W: Which book or author has been your favorite to translate?

AMA: I don't think I have a favorite author. I mean, I never got to do as much Borges as I would've wanted to do. That was all kind of usurped years ago.

B&W: What do you think about authors who translate their own work?

AMA: Let me tell you, one of the worst decisions people make is to translate themselves. It’s astounding. I've seen good books ruined because the author's English just wasn't up to their Spanish.

B&W: As someone who can read both English and Spanish fluently, do you notice when one translation is stronger than the other?

AMA: Your point is well taken. Sometimes, bilingual editions are just opportunities for people who know both languages to say, “It doesn’'t say that over here!” The myth of bilingualism is a true myth. Somewhere down in the core of your brain is the language you spoke first. 

B&W: So you don’'t enjoy this, this act of self-translation. Have you met a lot of authors who translate themselves?

AMA: A few. It is not a common phenomenon. A lot of ‘em are cheap skates too. 

B&W: You've been at Barnard since 1983. Forty-two graduating classes. After you retire, will you continue translating?

AMA: If the opportunities come up? Sure. Do you know a salsa singer named Rubén Blades?

B&W: I’m not familiar.

AMA: Well, he’s passé, but he’s a singer and an actor. He was in politics, and he wrote a memoir [which Mac Adam translated]. 

B&W: Maybe you’re the Rubén Blades of translation.

AMA: Well, we’ll have to see how that works out!