Oppenheimer's legacy?

In the spring of 1926 Robert Oppenheimer spent ten days on a walking tour of Corsica with John Edsall and Jefferies Wyman.  The trio walked the length of the entire island, from the north to the medieval citadel Bonifacio in the south.  Something happened during those ten days which Oppenheimer never spoke about.  But even though we don't know what happened, he hinted that the events of those days would make a lasting impression on his life.  And, indeed, Oppenheimer's mental outlook appears to have improved remarkably after the Corsica episode.

In Monk's biography of Oppenheimer, he reveals that the young physicist read À la recherche du temps perdu (at least the first volume, Du côté du chez Swann) while on that walking tour.  The idea that reading Swann's Way might have been a cure for Oppenheimer's ailing soul gives me comfort.

As a side note, I'll add that a copy of W.G. Sebald's Campo Santo arrived in my mailbox last week.  The first four essays in the section labeled "Prose" concern Sebald's own walking tour of Corsica.

Afternoon coffee break

We chat about the decline of academia, pressure from the neoliberal management model which metricizes intangibles like the quality of instruction.  Is this book better than that?  This book is just different from that book.  Which academic journal has the highest impact factor? I.F.  If...  Please don't ask me to put three or four stars.

We're almost done when K says he's just read Austerlitz by Sebald.  Excellent, I say.  It took me a while to get used to the sentences, says K.  Don't you think the style is a function of the translator?  I give the translator a lot of credit for the quality of the prose.  I don't know, I say.  Sebald's got a distinctive style.  Anthea Bell did Austerlitz.  Michael Hulse did the other three, I'm pretty sure.  I'll check later.  (Neither of us reach for an iPhone.)

Most of what I read is books in translation.  Some books that I want to read haven't been translated into English yet.  Enrique Vila-Matas' Doctor Pasavento is one that I'm reading now, but reading in French.

Do you read German? asks K.  No, just French, I say.  And English, of course.

I read a lot of translated books too, says K.  I wonder why we default to translated literature.  It's not like there's a shortage of English-language writers.  But who's writing the books like Sebald, Vila-Matas, Aira, Toussaint, Knausgaard in English?  That's not exactly what I mean.  These authors are all different.  What I mean is who are the English language writers that I would enjoy reading as much as these?  Paul Auster?  To a degree, yes.   Invention of Solitude is his best.  Teju Cole.  Ben Lerner.  Any others?