Quotes by Elliott Colla

Elliott Colla

Academic writing you have to get right. Fiction you have to get plausible. And there’s a world of difference. In a way, if someone says this didn’t feel exactly right, I don’t care. But that is not okay to do in academia – it’s not about feeling. You want to establish a pretty solid case. So did this allow me to express things differently? Absolutely. Another thing I’ve been thinking about as an academic: our writing style is expository, and in fiction, withholding information matters quite a bit. Withholding things in academia – there’s no place for that!

Feelings

Thinking

Writing

Certain readers will read my book not because they are interested in Iraq, but because they read crime fiction. I did want to get beyond just speaking to other Middle East scholars, so I’m happy about that. But this was, nonetheless, a novel I wish I got to read in Arabic and translate.

Book

Crime

Wish

Culture is invited to the table usually only as raw material that needs no analysis.

Culture

Each discipline has the capacity to be interested in politics, and each would ask different questions of what politics is, what constitutes power, how power is maintained, how it circulates, how relationships are formed, how institutions are built, how they fall. Every discipline would answer those questions in different ways.

Different

Discipline

Fall

I think if I’d gone to an MFA program and learned that, it would have been money well spent. But translation has been that for me.

Gone

Program

Thinking

In a couple of Ahdaf Soueif’s novels, she gets at the certain kind of English that’s being spoken by Egyptians. It’s a beautiful, expressive English but it is non-standard, “broken” English that happens to be efficient, eloquent, and communicates perfectly well even if it is breaking rules.

Beautiful

Broken

Couple

In translation you have to get it right, you have to be precise in what you’re doing. You have to attempt what they did in that language – say, in Arabic – and try to accomplish a version of that in English, and you’re constantly serving two masters.

Doing You

Trying

Two

In trying to imagine this world, I kept coming back to Michel Aflaq. He’s a Christian Arab, a Syrian, who ends up finding his home in Iraq and is buried there – I was stunned to see his tomb is right smack down in the Green Zone.

Christian

Home

Iraq

It does not take much to imagine the humanity of people you don’t know.

Doe

Humanity

People

Michel Aflaq – is bad poetry wrapped in the guise of utopian politics, or great poetry wrapped in the guise of horrible politics.

Great Poetry

Horrible

Utopian

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Achievement

Appreciate

Beautiful

Book

Bookstores

Broken

Christian

Complicated

Corruption

Couple

Crime

Culture

Different

Discipline

Doe

Doing You

Fall

Father

Feelings

Firsts

Gauges

Gone

Great Poetry

Grows

Home

Horrible

Horse

Humanity

Ideas

Independence

Intellectual

Interesting

Iraq

Kind

Looks

Moving

People

Police

Program

Reading

Reality

Salary

Song

Stories

Successful

Support

Thinking

Trying

Two

Utopian

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Quotes by Elliott Colla

Elliott Colla

Certain readers will read my book not because they are interested in Iraq, but because they read crime fiction. I did want to get beyond just speaking to other Middle East scholars, so I’m happy about that. But this was, nonetheless, a novel I wish I got to read in Arabic and translate.

Culture is invited to the table usually only as raw material that needs no analysis.

I think if I’d gone to an MFA program and learned that, it would have been money well spent. But translation has been that for me.

In translation you have to get it right, you have to be precise in what you’re doing. You have to attempt what they did in that language – say, in Arabic – and try to accomplish a version of that in English, and you’re constantly serving two masters.

In trying to imagine this world, I kept coming back to Michel Aflaq. He’s a Christian Arab, a Syrian, who ends up finding his home in Iraq and is buried there – I was stunned to see his tomb is right smack down in the Green Zone.

It does not take much to imagine the humanity of people you don’t know.

Michel Aflaq – is bad poetry wrapped in the guise of utopian politics, or great poetry wrapped in the guise of horrible politics.

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