For clarification: The title is not a statement of megalomania, but the reference to the film Being John Malkovich. You will remember the plot: Craig, an unemployed puppeteer accidentally discovers a small hidden door behind a filing cabinet, that leads directly into the head of Malkovich. Through a tunnel he gets sucked into the actor’s head.

Something like that happened to me when I began to translate Elfriede Jelinek, albeit not directly, but gradually. Very gradually. My small hidden door was not a filing cabinet but the announcement of her receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004. It’s a long story, which I will briefly summarize as it connects to my relationship with PAJ that dates back to 1980, with the first publication in English of my translation of Thomas Bernhard’s early play The Hunting Party, and later The German Lunch Table, in the journal, followed...

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