Back in 2011, the British novelist Adam Thirlwell began conceiving an issue of McSweeney’s that can perhaps most easily be summed up as a game of broken telephone. A text would be translated by one novelist-turned-translator, then that text would be translated by a second person, then the resulting text would be translated by a third. Ultimately, twelve separate texts were translated—each five or six times—for a total of sixty unique translations, all of which appear in the issue. The translators include Jonathan Lethem, Laurent Binet, Sarah Manguso, Javier Marias, and Lydia Davis. I emailed with Thirlwell about this fascinating project, which is now out as McSweeney’s #42.

– Sheila Heti

THE BELIEVER: Let’s start off with you explaining this issue and its constraints.

ADAM THIRLWELL: The experiment was an experiment in multiplying translation. The precise set-up we ended up with was to have 11 or 12 stories that were each translated by their own series of translators – where each translator, with just a couple of exceptions, was deliberately a novelist, rather than a trained linguistic professional. And each novelist-translator could only refer back to the previous version in the series – and not, therefore, the original. Apart from that, there were basically no rules.

Some novelists replied that they would only do it if they could do it as literally, as faithfully as possible. And some said they could only do it if they could essentially write a new story. As for me, I made no judgments. And so the idea behind this experiment was to test how far not just the basic plot-elements of a story might survive this kind of pressure cooker, but also how far its style would survive too, so I suppose the real experiment was with style. I think I was hoping to discover that, contrary to what most people might assume, the style of each story would somehow survive this ordeal. And I think in the end I was pleased that the results were way more sprawling than I’d anticipated.

BLVR: You began the issue with a translation of Kierkegaard. Can you say why you decided to start off with him? Why is he particularly timely or modern or interesting?

AT: Before we go anywhere with this I need to make a belated opening statement about this whole project – which is that randomness was very much this experiment’s theme. Very little of this experiment was controlled by its apparent editor. I would like to make that very clear as a kind of background to everything that follows…

And so although I’m happy that the project begins with SK, and would have loved...