Gatekeepers

the long version

The emergence of 'world literature' in the 1960s owes to a set of gatekeepers - agents, partners, friends, coteries, translators, patrons, small presses, and reviewers - who cooperated and collaborated in the fashion typical of historic 'bohemias'. Self-marginalized and frugal, they also self-published and created new venues. They seized on new printing technologies, on changes in copyright law, and a counter-cultural social climate. The authors treated here - Gabriel García Marquez, Charles Bukowski, Paul Auster, and Haruki Murakami - not only became well known in such circumstances but were also translated and exported. This was doubly difficult because it involved parallel receiving markets, for which they required particularly astute foreign gatekeepers.