Lately I find myself in the frustrating position (not uncommon among booksellers) of being surrounded by far more books than I can read. Not only are there books in the shop, but in my spare moments at work I browse Goodreads, Abebooks and my local library system, and so have a constant stream of books passing through my hands, many of which I can do no more than glance at before returning them or putting them away for later. Into this deluge has flowed this novella by Clarice Lispector, a book which I hear tell was scribbled on scraps of paper at intervals of months or years before coalescing into its current form, and which is - on one level - as evanescent and difficult to grasp as this technique suggests, even while being - on another - as direct as a bullet to the heart at ten paces. Imagine that famous Goya painting with the white shirt and the firing squad, but focus on the victim's face until you're so close the ridges in the paint are as important - as moving - as his expression. Ever read the Borges story 'The Secret Miracle'? When the raindrop which has hit Jaromir Hladik's face just as time stopped starts sliding again, that's maybe something like the little self-conscious 'explosions' with which Lispector riddles her narrative. Structurally, strip Beckett's Malone Dies to the bone - the fictional writer who tells the story as much the protagonist as s/he whose story he tells - and you've got a rough outline of The Hour of the Star. I say rough because either this is a book to read two or three times before knowing anything certain about it or my current white-water reading technique is just not up to the task. Whatever the case, this is a hard book to comprehend, coming as it does so directly from a place beyond comprehension, and I presume Lispector made a habit, like Beckett, of gazing intently on things beyond comprehension. Still, it's not a 'difficult' book - not on the level of language, anyway - and reports of the strangeness of its prose have, to my mind, been exaggerated. To me it reads quite naturally, especially in the new translation, and from what few pages I saw of the old translation I suggest forgetting that relic immediately and getting your hands on this one. It's modern, that's for damn sure - I doubt there is much else out there as sleek and arresting and asymmetrical as this. And it's haunting: Lispector speaks through her (male) narrator who speaks through his character Maccabea. I had just read (on the train to and from work, as perhaps readers of the Brazilian newspaper which published them might have read them) Lispector's Chronicas when I started the novella, and consequently had a vivid, if oblique, impression of her in mind as I read this. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of The Hour of the Star with me as I write, but perhaps these lines from one of her Chronicas ('Creating Brasilia') will help suggest the kind of writer she is or can be:Brasilia is built on the line of the horizon.When I died, I opened my eyes one day and there was Brasilia.The two architects who planned Brasilia were not interested in creating something beautiful. That would be too simple; they created their own terror, and left that terror unexplained.Besides the wind, there is another thing that blows. It can only be recognised in the supernatural rippling of the lake. - Wherever you stand, you have the impression of being on the edge of a dangerous precipice.Its founders tried to ignore the importance of human beings. The dimensions of the city's buildings were calculated for the heavens. It is a shore without any sea.How I should love to set white horses free here in Brasilia. At night, they would become green under the light of the moon - I know what those two men wanted: that slowness and silence which are also my idea of eternity.Fear has always guided me to the things I love; and because I love, I become afraid.What kind of writer is Clarice Lispector? The rarest kind. The fact that her Chronicas ever made it into a newspaper at all - let alone week after week - is, to this Australian, astonishing. That The Hour of the Star is a bestseller and its author a household name in her own country is even moreso. Judging from what little I've read, Lispector's ruthless stripping away of everything but the visionary/intuitive/paradoxical is unmatched by any prose writer except Beckett, and when and if I ever have the time and resources to do so I will approach her ouvre as I once approached his: piece by piece, in a quiet room in the country with her biography close at hand. This is a work so elemental it seems hewn from rock, or washed up on the shore in Brasilia from that non-existent sea. If I don't give it a perfect score it's only because I don't yet know if she speaks directly to my heart. But her example, her aesthetic determination, is unsurpassed.Clarice Lispector: this woman, our contemporary, a Brazilian woman… it is not books that she gives us, but the act of living saved by books, narratives, constructions that make us step back. And then, through her window-writing, we enter into the frightening beauty of learning how to read: and we pass, through the body, to the other side of the I. To love the truth of what is alive,... to love the origin, to be personally interested in the impersonal, in the animal, in the thing.(Helene Cixious)
Someone is walking on my grave. Lispector is MJ Nicholl’s doppelganger. I’m sure he hasn’t heard of her, which makes the similarities of exactness between aPostmodern Belch and The Hour eerie. Not only do we have the narrator fooling around with three characters (Macabea, Gloria and Olympico) who are clearly facets of herself, but on page 57 we even have ‘quiddidity’ apropos Macabaea: need I say more?Its no secret Macabea is a ‘loser’, an anti-heroine, an anonymous nonentity, wretched, ugly, sick and unfortunate. It says so on the back cover. Even her name alludes it: in Spanish it mean ‘whipped’ or ‘henpecked’. Obviously Lispector, being Brazilian, writes in Portuguese, but I’d still go with that interpretation rather than the accepted dogma that she was referring to ‘Macabees’, an Aramaic/Jewish male name, in a nod to her own Jewish/Ukrainian heritage. Frankly, the woman seems to have made her religious choice and its pretty obvious she’s gone down the well trodden Catholic path: not atypical for Latin America, where, if this is even possible, there is an even bigger, wider bibel belt than in the US. Macabea is clearly a projection of Lispector’ own unwanted qualities, alongside Gloria and Olympico. This three faceted representation fascinates: first, the names; Gloria and Olympico, as the names signify, are representative of the societal view of success; they are shallow, dull, supercilious and spiritually bereft, albeit it physically fit specimens. Ergo the homecoming queen and king are arrived. Macabea, who is meant to be the downtrodden one, seems to be possessed of more dignity, inquisitiveness and desire to ‘be’ than the other two put together. Why this troika though? Why does Lispector (and MJ!) feel this need to extrapolate in threes? Three of course is a mystical number: perhaps one of the most important numbers in the western hemisphere: in as much as the holy trinity is the manifestation of the essence of God, so perhaps we seek, on the basis of such cultural hegemony, to find our own meaning through trebling: remember, ‘things happen in threes’! the three muses, the three witches in Mcbeth, the three little pigs, three wishes, ........fill your own blank.Macabea isn’t just a repository for unwanted qualities, though: besides being a sin eater she’s also a redeemer as well. Everything Lispector wants to be, but can’t be is dichotomously coupled with everything she is which she doesn’t want to be. Because Macabea is wretched, but she also has the ability to be happy, to find grace in her misfortune, and if no one notices her, its because she’s ‘supersonic’ rather than invisible (p62).Of course as Lispector interfaces with Macabea via a males narrator in a sort of Second Life endeavour, her exotic Frankensteinian creation assumes its own independence, and emphatically keeps getting away from its narrator. What this means is that Lispector is getting further and further away from being able to reconcile the dual antithesis of her nature: its clear the only solution is going to be to terminate the experiment, and subsume Macabea within her in order to be ‘whole’ again.And so: what a termination scene Lispector delivers. As Macabea lays dying, the title of the novel yields its secret: the star here refers not to a celestial but rather a Hollywoodian being. Macabea’s moment of death, surrounded by gawking spectators as she lies bloodied on a street corner, is her first and last time in the limelight: the girl everyone has ignored during her whole life has this one shot at leaving a footprint: her moment, or her hour has come. And frankly, thats not the only thing thats come. Because I think Macabea comes as well, for the first and of course last time: her entire death sequence is one protracted sensual segue, a lusty embrace of life and orgasmic joy. Its poignant really that she passes on in the throes of an orgasm.Lispector moans a little afterwards: ‘Macabea’s murdered me’, she laments. I think not. Macabea saves her. Spiritually, mentally, even sexually. For goodness sake, what does Listepector do in closing: light a cigarette! And go home, cause its strawberry season. What do I do? Think about my favourite cigarette joke: you know: the chicken and the egg are lying in bed. The chicken is smoking a cigarette with a satisfied smile on its face and the egg is frowning and looking a bit pissed off. The egg mutters, to no-one in particular, "Well, I guess we answered THAT question!"
Do You like book The Hour Of The Star (1992)?
"Tudo no mundo começou com um sim."Esta obra, antes de mais, não é para quem vive de máscaras. Certamente que todos usamos uma ou outra em momentos pontuais (viver em sociedade não dá azo a que as pessoas possam ser 100% genuínas), mas esta Hora da Estrela relembra-nos de quem somos por detrás de tudo isso.Para mim, esta obra retrata uma espécie de 'Inception' no que toca ao processo de criação literária. O narrador é um autor que precisa desesperadamente de colocar uma personagem em papel, a nordestina Macabéa. Este tece constantemente (e a entrecortar a narrativa) reflexões sobre a posição e o papel do escritor na sociedade e, principalmente, sobre o processo de escrita da sua obra. É notável a maneira como Lispector coloca a consciência do escritor: um marginalizado. É aqui que o narrador se funde com a (sua) personagem: ambos são marginalizados ao viverem num espaço que não os aceita. Essa fusão dá-se em todos os níveis e não apenas no desejo de simplicidade da linguagem despojada. Ao serem os dois rejeitados (cada um à sua maneira) pelo mundo que os rodeia, o narrador passa a apoiar-se na sua própria personagem que, de tão 'inocente' e cheia de vida que é, parece ter a força de vontade de viver que ele já perdeu.No entanto, como o narrador afirma logo no início da história, "enquanto eu tiver perguntas e não houver resposta continuarei a escrever", e essas perguntas todas têm a ver com Macabéa (e, intrinsecamente, com o próprio narrador). Sendo que a vida dela é tão desinteressante, certamente que chegaria a altura em que finalmente uma 'explosão' ocorreria - não daquelas que explode e a fumaça passa logo depois, não: daquelas definitivas e imutáveis. A explosão que o próprio narrador precisava - afinal, ele vivia através de Macabéa... até ganhar um fio de coragem e largar um pouco o cordão umbilical da personagem que se obrigara a nascer para um mundo "todo contra ela".Esta obra é a grandeza de cada um.É o explodir.É o dizer "sim".
—Alina
Clarice Lispector's name has been on my radar for awhile. I heard she was beloved by Borges, Cortazar and Bolano. I also heard she was insanely influential among the Latin American writers who were part of the "cool-set." So I finally decided to pick up one of her books - a small one, which happily is supposed to be one of her best.The book is written in a clean, sparse, and beautiful style, but the story is anything but simple. The narrative flip flops from the author's ruminations on writing, character creation, and how the character and situations seem to write themselves, and then, suddenly, we're following the very depressing story of the character the author is writing about. The character is named Macabea and the author constantly reminds us that she is from the northeast of Brazil, which is a desperately and depressingly poor area. Macabea's story is a steady state of suck, and the author sometimes jumps in and tells us that he isn't fully in control over what is happening. (The fictional author of The Hour of the Star is a man.) Macabea's story is the story of the unlucky, the dispossessed, the abject, but despite that it is a story about faith in life despite having a life filled with nothing but bad luck.The book is beautiful. Might even be a five star book. Lispector's writing style is somewhere between Robbe-Grillet and Djuna Barnes, but it very much her own (it also reads a little bit like Benji's section from The Sound and the Fury). There is a despairing beauty in the story, and throughout a quiet anger at the unfairness of life, but tempered by an awe at the tenacity of life to keep going even when death seems to an outside observer like a better option. Here, read her opening and see what you think:Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes.One last thing: she uses a cool technique to show the writer coming up with a "whammy" for the character (bang!) which works beautifully for both the poor woman whose life is nothing but dull, and as a way to show a bit of sudden inspiration on the part of the writer.
—Troy
"Everything begins with a yes" opens this unique take on an otherwise already written concept - that is, a novel about a writer writing observing another character. Honestly, up until the last several pages, this piece is extremely captivating, especially in terms of the varying perspectives and what ideas stand behind them. I think there is something to be said about writers who write about writing. The stream of conciousness prose really works, keeps the reader interested, despite the almost unmoving so-called narrative. Really, what I liked most about this piece is that it is inspirational. The final few words will not disappoint.
—Jonathan Dickstein
