Babel, or The Necessity of Violence

I want to come back to this after some time has passed but initially my thoughts are conflicted. The novel is such a feat. I cannot imagine the research and self awareness necessary to write this. For a book whose core is the impossibility and violence of translation (both of words and experiences), it has deftly attempted to translate the experiences of these children of colonized nations being transformed and radicalized by the multifaceted violence of their daily lives and their growing awareness of the world and their place in it. You can feel the way the book simultaneously talks to readers who share in the marginalized experience of oppressed and foreign people while also talking to its privileged readers. It's a stunning work in its ambition and its audacity to communicate what the book itself argues cannot be translated.

Where my reservations lie is in the length and pacing of this novel. It may be because I was reading on a deadline, but I found myself struggling with an impatience with the text. A part of me argues with myself that the length of the novel is a necessary tool to enable “translation”. When a word is missing in a language, you turn to longer idioms/metaphors for translation. The idea that the main characters translation was strongest when they could dream in both languages... may argue you need to sit with the characters long enough that you begin to try to think like them, and to dream like them, in order to understand them. If the novel were condensed, maybe this process of absorption/immersion would be lessened, and the inevitability of Robin's journey not earned.