Editing Le Ton beau de Marot (section)

==Reception==
Reviewing the book for ''[[The Washington Post]]'', [[Michael Dirda]] praised it as "dazzlingly smart, useful, impassioned and extremely enjoyable" and "an exhilarating blend of autobiography, analysis, wordplay, and elegy". Dirda observed that Hofstadter used a narrative voice that is "chatty, energetic and slangy", with "even the most abstruse matters (being) plain and jargon-free," but also faulted the book for its "blithe self-centeredness".<ref name=Dirda>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1997/06/29/at-play-in-a-field-of-words/9551324f-1c4e-49c7-ba27-3b961f077546/ At Play in a Field of Words], by [[Michael Dirda]]; in ''[[The Washington Post]]''; published June 28, 1997; retrieved April 19, 2025</ref>

Writing in ''[[The New York Times]]'', [[Robert Alter]] found it to be "quirky, personal, amusing, sometimes touching and often exasperating", with an "eccentric structure [that] allows [Hofstadter] to talk about pretty much whatever he wants to, some of it only loosely associated with translation." Alter felt that many of Hofstadter's insights about translation "involve a good deal of [[reinventing the wheel|reinvention of the wheel]]", and that the book's "ultimate weakness" is that ''Ma Mignonne'' is "no more than a charming trifle, with the charm clearly inseparable from its elegant form", concluding that although "Hofstadter has  valid things to say about one-half the task of literary translation—the juggling of verbal combinations and permutations", he does not address "the fundamental fact that literature is not merely an articulation of patterns but a deep imagining of the world through words."<ref name=NYT>{{cite web|last1=Alter |first1=Robert |title=My Little Chickadee:Douglas Hofstadter takes a 16th-century French poem addressed to a young girl and translates it every which way |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/07/20/reviews/970720.20altert.html|work=[[The New York Times]] |date=July 20, 1997 |accessdate=7 August 2014|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130616192456/http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/07/20/reviews/970720.20altert.html|archivedate=2013-06-16}}</ref>

''[[Kirkus Reviews]]'' described it as "friendly, sometimes brilliant, but generally pedantic", and noted that "despite Hofstadter's multifarious ingenuity, his central insights—e.g., the sublime complexity of language—seem banal", positing that they will be "familiar, not just to philosophers of language and literary critics, but to thoughtful lay readers."<ref name=Kirkus>[https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/douglas-r-hofstadter/le-ton-beau-de-marot/LE TON BEAU DE MAROT], reviewed in ''[[Kirkus Reviews]]''; published February 15, 1997; archived online,  May 19, 2010</ref>

''[[Publishers Weekly]]'' stated that the book's "moments of wit, intelligence and uncommon curiosity" are countered by its "diffuse structure and inflated—and sometimes hokey—prose" and its "cheery gee-whizzery [that] often rings false", comparing it negatively to Hofstadter's earlier works.<ref name=PW>[https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780465086436 Le Ton beau de Marot], reviewed in ''[[Publishers Weekly]]''; published 04/28/1997</ref>

[[David Langford]], while conceding that the book "isn't [[science fiction]]", emphasized that it is "full of SF examples, SF ideas, and that special tingly flavour of intelligent SF."<ref name=Langford>"Take Me To Your Picard", by [[David Langford]]; published in ''[[SFX (magazine)|SFX]]'' #33 (Christmas 1997); collected in ''The SEX Column and other misprints''; published 2005 by [[Cosmos Books]]; p. 65</ref>