Bill Porter, Red Pine

 Bill Porter is the most interesting independent scholar working today whose father was a bank robber.

Porter’s father, originally from Arkansas, was the only member of his gang to survive a shootout in Michigan. He spent time in prison, became a wealthy businessman and was an influence in the Democratic Party in California. Bill Porter was raised in affluence. Famous people called the house. And then the family lost its wealth.

It’s an interesting story, but Porter’s work as a translator is more interesting.

Years ago, I began reading Chinese poems translated by Red Pine. That’s Porter’s “art name,” used when he’s working as a translator.

An art name is not exactly a pen name. Porter says that in ancient Chinese culture, when a person found a calling, often in middle age, that new aspect of identity was acknowledged by taking on an art name.

I know two wonderful Chinese by their art names: Cold Mountain and Stone House. I have to look it up to tell you that scholars teach them as Hanshan (said to have lived in the 9^th century) and Shiwu (1272-1352).

At one point in Porter’s complicated biography, he was working at a radio station in Hong Kong to support his family and his habit of reading poetry. He would travel to places in China and describe them. He collected about a thousand short stories about places. He called them “fluff” pieces, but he also said they shaped his craft as a translator.

 

Everything I’ve learned about writing I learned from doing radio. The hook. You’ve got to grab people’s attention right away, and you have to keep it. You can’t digress. You learn naturally to be terse and succinct, and focus on things that people can grasp right away. Not the arcana. What I write, it’s for the readers, not myself.

You don’t want people to hear the words. You want them to hear the story. Like translation.

 

• Sources: Robin Dudley, “’Red Pine’ talks translation, fluff and writing”; The (Port Townsend, Wash.) Leader, Oct. 18, 2016. The quotation is from this article.

“The Chinese Hermit Tradition: An Interview with Red Pine”; Tricycle, Winter, 2000. The interviewer was Andy Ferguson.