The Bridge: A Conversation on Patrick Modiano with Mark Polizzotti and Sam Sacks

The Bridge and the PEN Translation Committee present “On Patrick Modiano: Mark Polizzotti and Sam Sacks,” a discussion on translating the recent Nobel laureate’s work, independent publishing, and how to review translations.



Mark Polizzotti is the author of eight books, including the collaborative novel S. (1991), Lautréamont Nomad (1994), Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995; revised ed., 2009), Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados (British Film Institute, 2006), and Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (Bloomsbury, 2006). His essays and reviews have appeared in ARTnews, Bookforum, The Nation, The New Republic, Parnassus, Partisan Review, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. The translator of over forty books from the French, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Patrick Modiano, Marguerite Duras, André Breton, Raymond Roussel, and Jean Echenoz, he directs the publications program at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His translation of three novellas by Modiano was published under the title Suspended Sentences by the Margellos World Republic of Letters series, Yale University Press, in November 2014.



Sam Sacks writes the Wall Street Journal’s weekly Fiction Chronicle. He is also a founding editor of the online arts and literature journal Open Letters Monthly. His criticism has appeared in the London Review of Books, Commentary, Prospect, the New Yorker’s book blog Page-Turner, the Barnes & Noble Review, and elsewhere. He lives in New York City.



This is a co-presentation by the Bridge and the PEN Translation Committee, PEN American Center.