Essays
Translating Philosophy: The Case of Wittgenstein
On translating Jon Fosse (Atlantic: 2023) (in Norwegian: 2023) (Paris Review: 2015)
Introduction to Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet (2020)
Vitality Enough: on translating Anniversaries (2019)
Three more (I - II - III) on Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries (2018)
Column for Paris Review Daily (2014-15):
translating wine names, pennies, St. Jerome, Thomas Wyatt, the Erie Canal,
Elizabethan December, Dante’s birthday …
On Isaac Bashevis Singer (2012)
On Brecht and Margin Call (2012)
On Eric Rohmer (2010)

The Perceptual Science of “The Dress” (2015)

Carving the Whale
Excerpt from the Believer magazine cover story
(a Globe and Mail best read of the week - “funny and fascinating”)

15,000 Pages in Three Minutes (2009)
A very fast speed-read through literary history

Translations
Karl Ove Knausgaard, Fate
Louis Aragon, Damien — not to be confused with Demian
Robert Walser, From Fritz Kocher’s Essays
Robert Walser, The Great Talent

Robert Walser, Circle Dance
Suddenly, before all the others even know it, someone has been made big and important.

Robert Walser, Three Stories in Vice
How is it possible that education and knowledge could make us miserable and destroy our happiness?

Robert Walser, The New Novel
A novel as beautiful as it is exciting and long-winded in the offing and presumably available in bookstores rather soon!

Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Interiors” in The Inner Sky
The souls of these girls are gondolas of gold, laden with impatience...

Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Notes on the Melody of Things” in The Inner Sky
Whether the singing of a lamp or the voice of a storm, whether the breath of an evening or the groan of the ocean...

Raoul Hausmann, Kurt Schwitters and I Write an Opera at the Movies
Ticket bought for Schwitt, in we went, down we sat

Thomas Bernhard, Claus Peymann Buys Himself a Pair of Pants and Joins Me for Lunch (excerpt)

The Philosophy of Translation
Hour-long video: Reading Like a Translator: A Philosophical Approach
Converging Dialogues podcast on the philosophy of translation (2023)
Arkansas International interview (2022)
LA Review of Books interview (2021)
Slate’s Working podcast on translation as creative (2021)
Vitality Enough: on translating Anniversaries (2019)
Are there untranslatable words? (2012; PDF here)
Joshua Sperling essay on Searls’s philosophy

Interviews
In The Week (India) on translating Fosse (2024)
Long interview on Harshaneeyam podcast (Apple here) (2023)
With Asymptote’s Georgina Fooks on A Shining (2023)
Profile in The Harvard Gazette (2023)
With The Mookse and the Gripes on Fosse, mostly A Shining (2023)
Booker Prize: Some of My Favorite Books (2022)
With Open Source’s Chris Lydon on Thoreau’s Journal (2010, 48 min.)
With Open Source’s Chris Lydon on Rilke (2010)
A Conversation on editing Thoreau at NYRB’s blog (2009)
The Last Book I Loved: Singer’s Collected Stories (2009)


Videos
With Victoria Kielland and Merve Emre on My Men (2023)
Short reading with Fosse from A New Name, National Book Award (2022)
With Fatima Naqvi and Paul Reitter on Bambi (2022)
One minute on Fosse’s A New Name for International Booker Prize (2022)
With Saša Stanišić and Jennifer Croft on Where You Come From (2021)
With Jon Fosse and Dustin Illingworth on The Other Name (2020)
TED-Ed animated video on the Rorschach Test (2019)
On Alfred Döblin’s Bright Magic: Stories (2016)
On Proust and Ruskin (2011, three videos)

Early Stories
Repulsive Concrete: Last section of my first book
What I Saw and Heard in Belgium: A writer’s residence in wintry Flanders
Mashup: Waldageddon!