Robert Majzels

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Robert Majzels (born May 12, 1950 in Montréal ) is a Canadian writer , translator , editor and university professor . His experimental and intertextual novels explore the "forms and ethical foundations of writing".

Life and work

Majzels' parents, the teacher Paulette Kaufmann and the tailor Simon Majzels, were Holocaust survivors who emigrated to Canada . In his youth he was involved in political organizations and theater groups. He worked as a lathe operator , taxi driver, nurse and insurance agent before graduating from Concordia University with a Masters in English Literature in 1986 . He then taught creative writing at Concordia for 13 years . In 1988 he edited The Guerrilla is like a poet , an anthology of Filipino poetry.

His play This Night the Kapo won the Dorothy Silver Playwright's Award in 1991 and first prize in the Canadian Jewish Playwriting Competition in 1994. In 1992 his first novel Hellman's Scrapbook was published . With a collage of diary entries, letters, newspaper articles and book excerpts, it depicts the life, family and psychiatric treatment of the eponymous David Hellman.

His second novel City of Forgetting (1998) has been repeatedly compared to Ulysses because he “› does ‹in many ways to Montreal what James Joyce › does ‹ to Dublin ”. In Majzels' novel, historical and fictional characters roam impoverished and homeless through contemporary Montreal, among them: Maisonneuve , Rudolph Valentino , Che Guevara , Klytaimnestra , Lady Macbeth and Suzy Creamcheese . The ironic handling of the utopias and major projects of the 20th century is already indicated in the title: Montréal, the largest metropolis in the Canadian province with the motto “Je me souviens” (French: I remember ), is a city of oblivion .

For the translation of France Daigles Romans Pas Pire into English ( Just fine , 1999) Majzels received the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation in 2000 .

From 2000 to 2002 he wrote his third novel in Beijing and began learning Chinese . After returning to Canada, Majzels became an Associate Professor at the University of Calgary .

In his novel Apikoros Sleuth (2004), which works with the dialectical style and textual design of the Talmud , he used Chinese logograms in addition to Latin and Hebrew characters . The book won the Canadian Alcuin Award in 2006 and the UK Wood Pencil Award for Best Book Design in 2007 ; In 2008 it reached the final round of the Most Beautiful Books from Around the World competition organized by the Book Art Foundation at the Leipzig Book Fair .

The Humbugs Diet was published in 2007 . The detective novel set in a nursing home throws "an innovative and bitterly funny look at aging and death".

Works

novel
drama
translation
  • France Daigle, Pas Pire (1998) as: Just fine . Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1999 ISBN 0-88784-639-4 .
  • Nicole Brossard , Installations (1989) as: Installations . Winnipeg: The Muses' Company, 2000 ISBN 1-896239-65-X (translated by Erin Mouré ).
  • France Daigle, Un fin passage (2001) as: A Fine Passage . Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2002 ISBN 978-0-88784-681-6 .
  • Nicole Brossard, Cahier de roses & de civilization (2003) as: Notebook of Roses and Civilization . Toronto: Coach House Books, 2003 (translated with Erin Mouré) ISBN 978-1-55245-181-6 .
  • France Daigle, Petites difficultés d'existence (2002) as: Life's Little Difficulties Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2004 ISBN 978-0-88784-700-4 .
  • Nicole Brossard, Musée de l'os et de l'eau (1999) as: Museum of Bone and Water Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2005 ISBN 0-88784-686-6 (translated with Erin Mouré).
  • Nicole Brossard, Piano blanc (2011) as: The White Piano . Toronto: Coach House Books, 2013 ISBN 978-1-55245-273-8 (translated with Erin Mouré).
  • France Daigle, Pour sûr (2011) as: For Sure . Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2013 ISBN 978-1-77089-204-0 .
Editing
  • Robert Majzels, The Guerrilla is like a poet: An anthology of Filipino poetry . Toronto: Cormorant Books, 1988 ISBN 978-0-920953-32-7 .
  • Claire Huot and Robert Majzels (Eds.), 85 . Los Angeles: Les Figues / Toronto: Moveable Inc., 2013 ISBN 978-0-9684908-5-3 .

Awards (selection)

  • 1991 Dorothy Silver Playwright's Award
  • 1994 1st prize at the Canadian Jewish Playwriting Competition
  • 2000 Governor General's Literary Award for Translation

literature

  • Dorothea Löbbermann, "Plans of cities, plans of texts: The cartographic imagination of Karen Tei Yamashita and Robert Majzels" in: Achim Hölte et al. (Ed.), Metropolises on a scale: the city map as a matrix of storytelling in literature, film and art . Bielefeld: transcript, 2009 ISBN 978-3-89942-905-3 pp. 265-287.
  • Lianne Moyes, "Homelessness, Cosmopolitanism and Citizenship: Robert Majzels' City of Forgetting ", in: Études Canadiennes / Canadian Studies 64 (2008), pp. 123-138.
  • Domenic Beneventi, "Lost in the City: The Montreal Novels of Régine Robin and Robert Majzels", in: Justin D. Edwards and Douglas Ivison, Downtown Canada: Writing Canadian Cities . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005 ISBN 978-0-8020-8668-6 pp. 104-121.
  • Lianne Moyes, "Unexpected Adjacencies: Robert Majzels' City of Forgetting ", in: Domenic Beneventi et al. (Ed.) Adjacencies: Minority Writing in Canada . Montreal: Guernica, 2004 ISBN 978-1-55071-167-7 pp. 168-189.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Alexander Hart, "MAJZELS, Robert" in: William H. New (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8020-0761-9 , p. 750.
  2. ↑ a b 12 or 20 questions: with Robert Majzels at: albertawriting.blogspot.ca, accessed on September 10, 2015 (English).
  3. ↑ Robert Majzels and Erin Moure at: robertmajzels.com, accessed on September 10, 2015 (English).
  4. ↑ a b Robert Majzels and Erin Moure at: griffinpoetryprize.co, accessed on September 10, 2015 (English).
  5. ↑ Dorothea Löbbermann, plans of cities, plans of texts: The cartographic imagination of Karen Tei Yamashita and Robert Majzels in: Achim Hölte et al. (Ed.), Metropolises on a scale: the city map as a matrix of storytelling in literature, film and art . Bielefeld: transcript, 2009 ISBN 978-3-89942-905-3 p. 267.
  6. ^ Sherry Simon, Translating Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City . Montréal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2006 ISBN 978-0-7735-3108-6 pp. 195-201.
  7. ↑ Robert Majzels on: playwrightscanada.com, accessed on September 10, 2015 (English).
  8. ↑ Barbara Black, Robert Majzels finds focus in Beijing at: ctr.concordia.ca, accessed on September 10, 2015 (English).
  9. ↑ Apikoros Sleuth Award: Wood Pencil / Typography / Book Design / 2007 at: dandad.org, accessed on September 10, 2015 (English).
  10. ↑ Marlene Chan, The Alcuin Society 2007 Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada (PDF file) at: alcuinsociety.com, accessed on September 10, 2015 (English).
  11. ^ The Calgary Herald, What's new in crime. The Humbugs Diet - by Robert Majzels  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from: canada.com, accessed September 10, 2015.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.canada.com  
personal data
SURNAME Majzels, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian writer, translator, editor and university lecturer
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Montréal