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Selected Cronicas

by Clarice Lispector, Giovanni Pontiero (Translator)

4.38 of 5 stars 4.38 · rating details · 79 ratings · 7 reviews

"In 1967, Brazil's leading newspaper asked the avant-garde writer Lispector to write a weekly column on any topic she wished. For almost seven years, Lispector showed Brazilian readers just how vast and passionate her interests were. This beautifully translated collection of selected columns, or crônicas, is just as immediately stimulating today and ably reinforces her rep...more

Paperback, 296 pages

Published November 17th 1996 by New Directions

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Brazilian literature

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Jun 10, 2012 Carol rated it 3 of 5 stars

Written in the arch, prickly style used by many high-minded early- and mid-20th century authors, especially females (see, Rebecca West). This is not a criticism but a description, one said with a sigh, as a woman writing in this tone would get her heart ripped out by online naysayers -- assuming she got interest from a publisher at all, which she wouldn't. Anyway, Cronicas are sketches written for a Brazilian newspaper. They're short little things, much like blog posts. See, not much changes (ex...more

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Mar 18, 2012 Vicky rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: essays, favorites

A delight that Brazil newspapers give novelists and poets a column of their own to write about anything they want, which is exciting for a writer like Clarice Lispector who is very personal, anecdotal, inquisitive. I enjoyed this selection of her cronicas, but I drifted multiple times for pieces like the chicken and egg story, found it "weird" that she would hate turtles so much and predict their extinction in a thousand years or so, and I wish there were more pieces about teenagers in anguish a...more

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Sep 26, 2008 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I can no longer recall where it began but I know I did not start at the beginning. It was, in a manner of speaking, all written simultaneously. Everything was there, or appeared to be there as if within the temporal space of an open piano with its simultaneous keys.

I wrote with the utmost care as the narrative began to take shape inside me, and only after the fifth version had been patiently drafted did I become fully aware of the text. Only then did I begin to understand more clearly what was...more I can no longer recall where it began but I know I did not start at the beginning. It was, in a manner of speaking, all written simultaneously. Everything was there, or appeared to be there as if within the temporal space of an open piano with its simultaneous keys.

I wrote with the utmost care as the narrative began to take shape inside me, and only after the fifth version had been patiently drafted did I become fully aware of the text. Only then did I begin to understand more clearly what was waiting to be expressed.

My great fear was that, out of impatience with my slowness in understanding myself, I might arrive at some meaning with undue haste. I had the impression , or rather felt certain that the more time I gave myself, the more spontaneously would the narrative begin to surface.

Increasingly I find that it is all a matter of patience, of love begetting patience, of patience begetting love.

The book came together simultaneously as it were, emerging more here than there, or suddenly more there than here: I would interrupt a sentence in Chapter Ten, let us say, in order to write Chapter Two, which I would then abandon for months on end while I wrote Chapter Eighteen. I showed endless patience: putting up with the considerable inconvenience of disorder without any reassurance that I would finish the book. But then order, too, can bring a sense of disquiet.

As always, the greatest difficulty is waiting. (I’m feeling rather odd, a woman will tell her doctor. You’re going to have a baby. And here was me thinking I was dying, the woman replies.) My deformed soul growing and swelling, while I remain uncertain whether something is about to come to light.

In addition to this tiresome waiting, it requires infinite patience to reconstitute in gradual stages the initial vision which came in a flash. Recovering that vision is extremely difficult.

And to make matters worse, I am quite hopeless when it comes to editing. I am incapable of narrating an idea, and do not know how to ‘embellish an idea with words’. What I write does not refer to past thought, but to thought in the present: whatever comes to the surface is already expressed in the only possibly words, or simply does not exist.

As I write them down, I am convinced once more that, however paradoxical it may sound, the greatest drawback about writing is that one has to use words. It is a problem. For I should prefer a more direct form of communication, that tacit understanding one often finds between people. If I could write by carving wood or by stroking a child’s head or strolling in the countryside, I would never resort to using words. I would do what so many people do who are not writers, and with the same joy and torment as those who write, and with the same bitter disappointments which are beyond consolation. I would live and no longer use words. And this might be the solution. And as such, be most welcome.

From: The Making of a Novel
(May 2nd 1970
pgs: 139-140)(less)

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Mar 20, 2011 Sarah Lower rated it 5 of 5 stars

My favorite book.
"One day a leaf grazed my eyelashes, and I thought to myself: God is being extremely delicate."

"And when it comes to writing? Here there are great temptations because the dividing line between bad taste and truth is almost imperceptible."

ha! How can you not love this?

Just reread after many years.

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Jan 28, 2008 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction, great-short-story-collections, short-short-fiction, fiction-in-translation

A wonderful introduction to Lispector. It's a collection of short pieces Lispector used to write as a columnist for . They are not at all journalistic however. Instead they are wonderful meditations, philosophical bits, encounters, prose poems. This is the sort of book I like to read when I feel stuck.

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Oct 26, 2007 Pauline rated it 5 of 5 stars

I reread this book a lot. This was the first book I read by her, so maybe that is why it is my favorite. Everytime I pick up this book I remember why I love the way that she writes so much, everything seems very personal to her, yet creative and thought provoking at the same time.

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Jun 17, 2010 Wendy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: latin-america, lit-in-translation, essay

I am awed by her trenchant intelligence, her honesty, her sense of irony. Wow. Wowwowwow.

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May 20, 2013 Ashley marked it as to-read

Shelves: essays

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About Clarice Lispector

Clarice escrevia desde que aprendeu a ler, em Recife, onde passou parte da sua infância. Seu primeiro romance, publicado em 1944, foi chamado Perto do Coração Selvagem. Na época, a literatura brasileira era dominada por romances regionalistas mas Clarice surpreendeu a crítica ao lançar romances existencialistas.
Seu romance mais famoso é A Hora da Estrela, publicado antes de sua morte.
Clarice veio...more Clarice escrevia desde que aprendeu a ler, em Recife, onde passou parte da sua infância. Seu primeiro romance, publicado em 1944, foi chamado Perto do Coração Selvagem. Na época, a literatura brasileira era dominada por romances regionalistas mas Clarice surpreendeu a crítica ao lançar romances existencialistas.
Seu romance mais famoso é A Hora da Estrela, publicado antes de sua morte.
Clarice veio a falecer em 9 de dezembro de 1977, um dia antes de seu aniversário, de câncer.
Chegou a traduzir o livro Entrevista com o Vampiro da americana Anne Rice. Foi considerada o Kafka da literatura latino-americana pelo The New York Times em artigo publicado no dia 11 de março de 2005.

Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist. Born to a Jewish family in Podolia in Western Ukraine, she was brought to Brazil as an infant, amidst the disasters engulfing her native land following the First World War.

She grew up in northeastern Brazil, where her mother died when she was nine. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro when she was in her teens. While in law school in Rio she began publishing her first journalistic work and short stories, catapulting to fame at age 23 with the publication of her first novel, Near to the Wild Heart (Perto do Coração Selvagem), written as an interior monologue in a style and language that was considered revolutionary in Brazil.[citation needed]

She left Brazil in 1944, following her marriage to a Brazilian diplomat, and spent the next decade and a half in Europe and the United States. Upon return to Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she began producing her most famous works, including the stories of Family Ties (Laços de Família) and the great mystic novel The Passion According to G.H. (A Paixão Segundo G.H.). Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her life in frequent pain, steadily writing and publishing novels and stories until her premature death in 1977.

She has been the subject of numerous books, and references to her and her work are common in Brazilian literature and music. Several of her works have been turned into films and she was the subject of a recent biography, Why This World, by Benjamin Moser.(less)

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