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Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector
"That rare person who looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf," Clarice Lispector is one of the most popular but least understood of Latin American writers. Now, after years of research on three continents, drawing on previously unknown manuscripts and dozens of interviews, Benjamin Moser demonstrates how Lispector's art was directly connected ...more
Hardcover, 479 pages
Published
August 4th 2009
by Oxford University Press, USA
(first published January 1st 2009)
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Penelope Fitzgerald wrote to her American editor in 1987: "On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken."
This a remarkable biography. Moser clearly admires Lispector and one learns so much about her life and work from him. His tone, so unlike that of Joan Schenkar (which struck me as rapacious) in The Talented Miss Highsmith , the last biography I read, is even-handed, and...more
This a remarkable biography. Moser clearly admires Lispector and one learns so much about her life and work from him. His tone, so unlike that of Joan Schenkar (which struck me as rapacious) in The Talented Miss Highsmith , the last biography I read, is even-handed, and...more
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A Soul Turned Inside Out: Clarice Lispector, Hélène Cixous, and L’écriture féminine
The first time the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector was interviewed, following her sensational debut in 1944 with the novel Near to the Wild Heart, she was asked why she writes: “I write because I find in it a pleasure that I don’t know how to translate. I’m not pretentious. I write for myself, to hear my soul talking and singing, sometimes crying.” She said she believed all writing, in some sense, ...more
The first time the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector was interviewed, following her sensational debut in 1944 with the novel Near to the Wild Heart, she was asked why she writes: “I write because I find in it a pleasure that I don’t know how to translate. I’m not pretentious. I write for myself, to hear my soul talking and singing, sometimes crying.” She said she believed all writing, in some sense, ...more
In an emphatic and repetitive style, Moser does a good enough job introducing the fascinating worldly mystic Lispector, her works, and her times that I am eager to plunge into her considerable oeuvre. Lispector's life has all the elements of a good story. She was born in the Ukraine to a mother who had contracted syphilis from being raped in a pogrom. Clarice's family managed to emigrate to the far parts of Brazil where her mother survived only a few years and her father struggled to support ...more
Never before have I dove into a university press biography about a writer that barely anyone in the U.S. has ever heard of (including myself). But ever since reading books by Roberto Bolaño, I've been fascinated with obscure, mysterious, hermetic writers. Though the late Clarice Lispector left the realm of obscurity decades ago in her native Brazil, there is still a lot that a remains mysterious about her. In her prime, a fog misconception surrounded her - some said she had to be a man or that s...more
“Last night I had a dream within a dream. I dreamed that I was calmly watching actors on a stage. And through a door that was not locked men came in with machine guns and killed all the actors. I began to cry: I didn’t want them to be dead. So the actors got up off the ground and said: we aren’t dead in real life, just as actors, the massacre was part of the show. Then I dreamed such a good dream: in life we are actors in an absurd play written by an absurd God. We are all participants in this t...more
Catherine Woodman
added it
Marvelous biography, which focuses on Clarice Lispector, but also on the world in which she lived. She emigrated to Brazil in 1920, her mother the victim of the pogrom rapes, and who died soon after their arrival--Jews in the Ukraine were having a bad time of it long before Hitler invaded, and so she and her family were establishhed in brazil by then. The situation in Brazil was no less conducsive to welcoming Jews, but she had opportunities, and went on the be amongst the most well known of B...more
Moser, Benjamin. Clarice, uma biografia. S. Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2009, 648p.
22
"A questão da origem", escreveu um crítico, "é tão obsessiva que em torno dela pode dizer-se que se enreda toda a prosa da autora".
225
"A literatura é a vida, vivendo"
345
carta de Maury Gurgel Valente pedindo perdão à Clarice.
405
Eu antes tinha querido ser os outros para conhecer o que não era eu. Entendi então que eu já tinha sido o...more
22
"A questão da origem", escreveu um crítico, "é tão obsessiva que em torno dela pode dizer-se que se enreda toda a prosa da autora".
225
"A literatura é a vida, vivendo"
345
carta de Maury Gurgel Valente pedindo perdão à Clarice.
405
Eu antes tinha querido ser os outros para conhecer o que não era eu. Entendi então que eu já tinha sido o...more
It's unusual for me to read a biography before I've read/watched much of the person I'm reading it about. However, I've only read one book of Lispector's, a lend from Marie, and it was amazing; I wrote pages of quotes from it. When I catalogued this book it intrigued me, and now that I've read it I'm more intrigued than ever. Lispector was an interesting woman: a genius, with unique ideas on spirituality and life. After surviving a rough childhood, Lispector forever searches to redeem herself fo...more
A Dutch newspaper featured an article on this book yesterday, on this remarkable sounding woman I've never heard of but felt drawn to instantaneously.
I am still debating whether to read her writing first, or her biography first.
I am still debating whether to read her writing first, or her biography first.
too dense with superfluous detail for someone wanting an introduction to the author. Goes to great lengths to tell and not show me that Clarice Lispector was "mysterious." Boring. Boring. Boring. Boring.
Can't help feeling from interviews with the author that this was more of a vanity project.
Clarice Lispector is good but not amazing. Let's not get carried away here.
Clarice Lispector is good but not amazing. Let's not get carried away here.
Another National Book Critics Circle finalist in biography, about the mysterious author likened to Kafka. Enthralling story, beautifully told.
Michael
added it
Very complete and detailed biography of an excellent writer from Brazil. I read this book some time ago, but forgot to add it until now.
An extraordinary biography that goes beyond the trivia of personal episodes. Excellent!
Very well-written bio of a fascinating woman, an icon in Brazilian literature.
TLS 19 February 2010
Delicioso mix de crítica literária e biografia, que despertou uma irresistível vontade de revisitar toda a obra da autora. Clarice soa humana, demasiadamente humana, passível de todo o perdão e compreensão que há no mundo.
This is a tough read. The NYT book review made it sound fascinating but it's a slog. So much of it is how her writing was or wasn't like her real life. If you've not read what she's written--and I've read nothing-- a lot is hard to follow and, frankly, dull. Too much critique of her writing and not enough detail about her life. Will push thru though at a snails pace. Hate to drop a book mid-read. Sigh....
Finally decided to give up. This is unreadable.
Finally decided to give up. This is unreadable.
Critical biographies are, I think, often more about the biographer and his/her perspectives. The first third of this one had me believing it would be different. It's not. But, in spite of the critical slant seeking to "prove" Lispector's role as a "Jewish writer," and in spite of a real wont of editing that might have resulted in fewer repetitions, Lispector's life seems to shine through the verbiage. And it was an extraordinary writing life.
Interesting and long biography of a fascinating woman who was and still is a famous Brazilian author who I had never heard of before. The biography took forever to get through though but -I think I would like to read some of her fiction. Here's a good recap about her on Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Lis...
Bartira Nunes
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Essa biografia da Clarice me agradou imensamente.Achei muito interessante o misto de história de vida e crítica literária que o autor faz,pois além de dar detalhes da vida da autora que me eram até então completamente desconhecidos,comenta,de forma bastante elucidativa,as principais obras dela.
Boa mistura de biografia e crítica literária. Clarice e sua obra são materiais fantásticos.
Um excelente documento sobre essa Esfinge da literatura brasileira.
benjamin me fez ficar obcecada novamente por clarice. doeu.
jennifer
is currently reading it
so far, so amazing.
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marked it as to-read
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“Clarice scrawled, 'A question from when I was a little girl that I can answer only now: are rocks made, or are they born? Answer: rocks are.”
—
2 people liked it
“A little girl's fantasies are one thing, and literature is another; just as numbers require rules to give them human meaning, words, too, demand a form to turn them into literature.”
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2 people liked it
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