"What Do Toilet Paper and Air Travel Have in Common?"
"No, We Will Not Pardon Your French."
"Sex, American Style," or "How to Confound the Scrooges Who Cut Off Funds for Your Cherished Project and Astound the Public into Buying Your Book at the Same Time."
Are these joke setups? Punch lines? Well, yes and no: they're titles of essays from a humorous, meandering collection titled What's in a Name? And Other Pieces of My Mind.
Whose mind, you ask? Oh, what a beautiful mind it is: that of Stephen Pearl-an erudite Brit who served in the Royal Air Force, attended Oxford, worked as a UN interpreter in New York, developed an innovative method for training simultaneous interpreters, and translated several Russian classics (whew!).
Pearl puts his considerable brainpower to good use in dozens of essays touching on everything from global warming to Monday Night Football. Though Pearl clearly has addressed a wide range of topics, he manages to organize them into four categories: "What's in a Name?" "Americana," "The Sexes," and "Other Pieces."
Whether you're looking for an entertaining diversion or a paradigm shift, you'll find it within these pages.
About the Author: Stephen Pearl was born, raised, and educated in the United Kingdom. He learned Russian during his service in the Royal Air Force and graduated from St John's College, Oxford, with an MA in Classics. He moved to New York in order to work as a French, Russian, and Spanish interpreter at the United Nations, eventually becoming Chief of the English interpretation section. After retiring, he developed a new method of teaching simultaneous interpretation that he has presented at institutions around the world.
Stephen spends his days translating classic Russian literature-most notably the works of Ivan Goncharov. His translation of Oblomov earned him the 2008 ASTEEL Translation Prize, and his translation of The Same Old Story was short-listed for the 2016 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Pearl's translation of Tchaikovsky's letters is set to be published by Yale University Press in 2017.
