Geoffrey Brock

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Comments on Pinocchio

“[Collodi’s] achievement here was to tap into the zany spirit of Tuscan humor to deliver a Pinocchio who swings alarmingly between lies and candor, generous sentiment and cruel mockery, good intentions and zero staying power. Geoffrey Brock’s accomplishment in his excellent new translation is to get that spirit across in English.” —Tim Parks, The New York Review of Books

“The new translation by Geoffrey Brock is wonderfully faithful to Collodi’s speed and vigour. Until now, the best-known modern translation has been Ann Lawson Lucas’s... Brock’s version is more natural and engaging, with a better feeling for how to turn colloquial 19th-century Tuscan into colloquial modern English (or rather colloquial American, which is effectively the same thing). Brock is better at the humour, and unlike Lucas doesn’t use quaint idioms (‘Poodle’ and ‘Tuna’ rather than ‘Poodle-Dog’ and ‘Tunny-Fish’) or over-translate (Lucas turns ‘tortellini’ into ‘steak and kidney pudding’, apparently unaware that today most English-speaking children are far more familiar with different pasta shapes than with stodgy meat puddings). Sentence by sentence, Brock’s Pinocchio has better rhythms. In Chapter 18, Pinocchio passes through a town of idiotic animals all of whom have allowed themselves to be duped in some way—butterflies who have sold their wings, ‘tailless peacocks’. Lucas calls this town Sillybillytrap, but Brock makes it ‘Chumptrap’, a more plausible coinage. In Chapter 2, we learn that Geppetto is teased by the local children, who give him the nickname ‘Polendina’, from ‘polenta’, on account of his yellow wig. Lucas renders this nickname as ‘Semolina’, even though her end-notes concede that semolina is similar to polenta only in texture, not in colour. Brock translates it as ‘Corn Head’, a more effective insult which also retains the idea of yellowness.” —Bee Wilson, The London Review of Books

“Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, first published serially in Italy from 1881 to 1883, is short on Disneyesque sentimentality (there is a talking cricket, but Pinocchio squashes him), long on satire and farce. Geoffrey Brock’s superbly crafted translation and Umberto Eco’s introduction bring to life this tale of gumption and greed.” —Cathleen Medwick, O Magazine.

“Near the end of E.L. Doctorow’s novel The Book of Daniel, its alienated young hero goes to Disneyland. Walking through the park, he points out that much of Disney’s work is derived from dark, subversive writers like Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain and the Brothers Grimm—but that his movies and rides erase all the darkness and subversion; Disney turns their stories into sentimental lies. I thought about this when I picked up Geoffrey Brock’s brisk new translation of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio... The rudiments of Collodi’s tale are similar to what most of us remember from the movie... Yet Collodi’s book is, from the beginning, a very different—and much wilder—experience… A similar anarchic spirit infuses Pinocchio himself, who's not the cute, anodyne figure we remember from the movie. He’s a selfish, unruly, sometimes cruel puppet—the very soul of childhood.” —John Powers, NPR Book Notes, on Fresh Air

“Brock’s new English translation of the subversive parable revives Carlo Collodi's sardonic wit and pitch-black humor, while bringing to life the poverty, moral vacuity, and uncensored violence of late-19th-century Europe... [He] strips away the sentimental veneer to reveal the original haunting fairy tale... Pinocchio may have cast off his own strings, but Brock beautifully restores the historical knot.” —Boldtype

“A new translation of Collodi’s original text, re-packaged for adults, reveals a Pinocchio so very bad he smashes the moralizing cricket with a hammer in the first few pages. Delightfully wicked and slap-stick funny, the real Pinocchio is a marvelous discovery for any reader young or old, whether you read it for pure fun or to plumb its depths. After all, as Italo Calvino declared, any reading list ‘must begin with Pinocchio.’” —Lucia Silva, Best Books of 2008, on NPR.org

“The 1940 Disney version rightfully stands as the definitive American Pinocchio, but a new translation of the original 19th-century book has depths that no movie can express... Geoffrey Brock’s new Pinocchio is startling for the book’s differences with the more famous cartoon version, but it’s also a needed reminder of how artfully the early Disney movies repurposed their source material into new forms. For better or worse..., we have Walt Disney partly to thank for the continued interest in Collodi’s playful, forward-thinking novel. Brock’s translation is the perfect occasion to discover the original Pinocchio, and to marvel at the universality of its morality and invention.” —SpliceToday

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