Collage 416

Yesterday my wife and I arrived at Lola and Mark's place "out west" for a short visit that coincides with Lola's birthday tomorrow. It's the first time we've seen each other in nine years. We had been thinking about driving in to Boston to visit the Team Tolstoy studios today, but the weather is too perfect to spend 5-plus hours battling holiday-weekend traffic in a car. So we will stay in the hills, but I do regret not getting the chance to see the studio and an idea of what it might be like to work more directly with Lola and the other members of Team Tolstoy.
A few moments ago, I described to Lola how I usually go about creating a collage. The first step is to reread the chapter that includes the page I will use for the collage. Then I locate the exact section that the Russian corresponds to so that I know (roughly) what the words mean or at least identify names and pieces of dialogue. This process provides the seed for an idea that leads to the collage.
Unfortunately, this process doesn't always work as quickly as I would like. That is when I am most acutely aware of what I am missing by working "alone" - physically removed from the rest of Team Tolstoy. -- Otto

Otto Mayr
from page 87-88, Volume 2 of original text
collage
made 5/3/11
Pevear/Volokhonsky translation page 668-670