By the Book: Sibelan Forrester
Sibelan Forrester is the Susan W. Lippincott Professor Modern and Classical Languages and Russian. She teaches Russian language and literature, science fiction, folklore, and translation theory and practice. Besides scholarly articles and books, she has published translations of fiction, poetry, and scholarly prose from Croatian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian.
What are you reading these days? I'm reading a bunch of folktales from the non-Russian peoples of the Russian Federation, in translation.
Is there a book you've read multiple times? Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. (And of course, all the books I'm lucky enough to get to teach.)
Is there a book you pretend to have read? No - though I sometimes pretend to have heard of someone when their name comes up in conversation.
Who is your favorite author? Hmmm... Maria Stepanova? Marina Tsvetaeva? Marija Knežević? Osip Mandelstam? It's hard to say.
What's the latest book you could not finish even though you thought you should? Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - but I'll get back to it when the semester ends.
What literary character would you most like to be friends with? Perhaps the Good Soldier Švejk.
Do you have a literary nemesis? No, though there are writers I will ALWAYS pass over in favor of others.
What is your favorite reading genre? Poetry! Though fiction is great too, and a good scholarly study is a pleasure to read.
What book do you recommend most often? I don't think there's just one. I am full of recommendations. :-)
What's the best movie adaptation of a book you've read? Cold Comfort Farm!
What author would you like to meet and what would you ask them? Vladimir Propp - everyone who knows him says he was very sweet. I'd ask him how he managed when he was in prison.
What book made an early impact on you and why? The Last Unicorn: its combination of humor and poetry.
What is one lesson you learned from a book that you think everyone should know? We hate it when virtue is not rewarded.
