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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Ohh that was too many thoughts for right now
I promise I’m not an anti intellectual (in fact some have accused me of being pretentiously intellectual) I understood the book about as much as I think it can be understood yet I’m still left asking what was the point of any of it? I love abstract philosophical dissections, but this just felt so myopic in its solipsism that it totally lost me. Or maybe I’ve had one too many psychotic episodes fueled by intense depersonalization to think any of the hallucination stuff is novel.
Here, I throw my intellectual and literary reputation at the mercy of The Council of Reader. There are always Naked Emperors among us in fashionable and over-intellectualized literary circles, and Lispector is a Chieftain Queen among them.
I had been looking forward to finding my way into Clarice Lispector’s work for several years and I have never been more disappointed by an author in my life.
Mea Culpa.
I love clarity in all things. I feel that the author’s goal should be to serve the art and the reader. All that is self-serving in literature is anathema to me. And this work is a pinacle of art that is somehow self-congratulatory on the theme of self-obsession to the point of attempting to transcend the self. Confused? You will continue to be on every page.
This reads like the scrawlings of a patient in a mental health ward. Renfield would be proud.
Blending the worst parts of Kafka (whom I really enjoy) and William Blake (whom I detest), Lispector manages to string out an entire novel of stream-of-consciousness psycho-babble that is constantly self-contradictory and poetically meaningless with a simple underlying theme - You as you stand in this moment are the only relevant god in the universe. Reject your humanity and self-identification and need for rationality and embrace the void of transcendant nothingness. There is no god, but you’re a god, but all creatures apart from humans are already gods and humans are not precisely because they search for god.
So what actually happens in this novel? The day after her housemaid moves out, an upper class single woman plans to leisurely clean up the spare bedroom, only to find that the maid has completely sterilized the room where she was staying, apart from some chalk drawings on the wall. This spirals into some sort of horror-inducing epiphany about the void of the universe, which is further exacerbated when she opens the empty wardrobe and comes face to face with a roach, which she then slams the door upon. At last, she must come to terms with the fact that the roach belongs in the real
universe and it is her perception of a different reality that must be overcome. So what must she do? As a parody of Christian communion, she much eat the roach and become adjusted to the morality-less, purposeless, identity-less state of the universe as it really stands.
While I’ve sapped the plot of its poetic force, my paragraph explanation actually gives it at least double the clarity of any part of the novel.
I can hang with stream-of-consciousness writing.
I don’t mind reading authors who I completely disagree with on spiritual or philosophical grounds.
Until my dying breath, I will continue to rail against all literature in which the author bludgeons the reader with incomprehensibility as a tool by which to feel more intellectually superior. I’m completely comfortable agreeing that something poetic is lost in the translation from the Portuguese and that there are endless literary allusions and metaphors which are easy to lose track of, but this entire novel is about a single scene in which a woman who is self-obsessed has a nervous breakdown and eats a roach as communion with the void, admiting at last that the universe is meaningless and we should reject our individual essence in attempt to lose the capacity for rational thought.
Enjoy at your own peril.
I had been looking forward to finding my way into Clarice Lispector’s work for several years and I have never been more disappointed by an author in my life.
Mea Culpa.
I love clarity in all things. I feel that the author’s goal should be to serve the art and the reader. All that is self-serving in literature is anathema to me. And this work is a pinacle of art that is somehow self-congratulatory on the theme of self-obsession to the point of attempting to transcend the self. Confused? You will continue to be on every page.
This reads like the scrawlings of a patient in a mental health ward. Renfield would be proud.
Blending the worst parts of Kafka (whom I really enjoy) and William Blake (whom I detest), Lispector manages to string out an entire novel of stream-of-consciousness psycho-babble that is constantly self-contradictory and poetically meaningless with a simple underlying theme - You as you stand in this moment are the only relevant god in the universe. Reject your humanity and self-identification and need for rationality and embrace the void of transcendant nothingness. There is no god, but you’re a god, but all creatures apart from humans are already gods and humans are not precisely because they search for god.
So what actually happens in this novel? The day after her housemaid moves out, an upper class single woman plans to leisurely clean up the spare bedroom, only to find that the maid has completely sterilized the room where she was staying, apart from some chalk drawings on the wall. This spirals into some sort of horror-inducing epiphany about the void of the universe, which is further exacerbated when she opens the empty wardrobe and comes face to face with a roach, which she then slams the door upon. At last, she must come to terms with the fact that the roach belongs in the real
universe and it is her perception of a different reality that must be overcome. So what must she do? As a parody of Christian communion, she much eat the roach and become adjusted to the morality-less, purposeless, identity-less state of the universe as it really stands.
While I’ve sapped the plot of its poetic force, my paragraph explanation actually gives it at least double the clarity of any part of the novel.
I can hang with stream-of-consciousness writing.
I don’t mind reading authors who I completely disagree with on spiritual or philosophical grounds.
Until my dying breath, I will continue to rail against all literature in which the author bludgeons the reader with incomprehensibility as a tool by which to feel more intellectually superior. I’m completely comfortable agreeing that something poetic is lost in the translation from the Portuguese and that there are endless literary allusions and metaphors which are easy to lose track of, but this entire novel is about a single scene in which a woman who is self-obsessed has a nervous breakdown and eats a roach as communion with the void, admiting at last that the universe is meaningless and we should reject our individual essence in attempt to lose the capacity for rational thought.
Enjoy at your own peril.
Such an odd book. Lots of religious imagery and discussion here, making it my least favorite by her thus far. Don't come here looking for plot or even for clarity, this just sets a mood for a woman analyzing her existence. I feel like even at 189 pages this was too long ...
Much better than Agua Viva. Agua Viva if it were still comprehensively about something, even if that something is difficult to grasp
challenging
I am abandoning this book (for now?) after 60 pages because I am not in the mood for an existential meditation. Lispector's writing reminds me of that of Virginia Woolf because I have to be in a certain frame of mind in order to read it. Woolf's writing, however, is more fluid, and Lispector's writing sometimes contradicts itself - especially in the first chapter.
Dates: 29 Dec 14 - 3 Jan 15
Dates: 29 Dec 14 - 3 Jan 15
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
After Água Viva and handwriting every favourite quote from it, I felt like I had an overdose of Lispector. I couldn't get into this one as quickly as I did with the previous book, because I was still reeling from it. And much like her other books, I never really looked up the synopsis so I didn't know what The Passion was about.
This novel started out like the narrator's soliloquy. It was slow and at times, felt like it wasn't going anywhere. But I stayed on and hoped for the best. At first I wasn't quite sold on it and thought maybe I should hit pause but it was constantly calling me so eventually I picked it up again.
Then the novel really started. You get to know the characters. G.H., her life, her penthouse, her maid. And the picture gets clearer as the story goes on. I actually think this book was like a retelling of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka but from a different point of view; of Gregor's sister or one of his parents. It was quickly piquing my interest.
Once again Lispector had a unique way of writing. With every last line of a chapter, said line will be repeated into the next chapter to start over. It was almost like crocheting. Making another chain stitch to repeat a double crochet, yarn over, front loop.. She was literally stitching together a story and I don't think I've ever encountered that while reading. So fascinating.
It was a lot to take in. It was a sea of thoughts. It was philosophical. It was theological. It was a horror story. It was mind and gut churning. It was very Lispectorian.
I was not prepared at all for the final reveal. I had theories but also knew deep down that it wouldn't go that way. No, it went completely the other way. I didn't expect it at all. I exclaimed loudly, which surprised my sister who was next to me. I couldn't wrap my head around it. Like I get it, but I also didn't. I need to sit with it for now.
This novel started out like the narrator's soliloquy. It was slow and at times, felt like it wasn't going anywhere. But I stayed on and hoped for the best. At first I wasn't quite sold on it and thought maybe I should hit pause but it was constantly calling me so eventually I picked it up again.
Then the novel really started. You get to know the characters. G.H., her life, her penthouse, her maid. And the picture gets clearer as the story goes on. I actually think this book was like a retelling of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka but from a different point of view; of Gregor's sister or one of his parents. It was quickly piquing my interest.
Once again Lispector had a unique way of writing. With every last line of a chapter, said line will be repeated into the next chapter to start over. It was almost like crocheting. Making another chain stitch to repeat a double crochet, yarn over, front loop.. She was literally stitching together a story and I don't think I've ever encountered that while reading. So fascinating.
It was a lot to take in. It was a sea of thoughts. It was philosophical. It was theological. It was a horror story. It was mind and gut churning. It was very Lispectorian.
I was not prepared at all for the final reveal. I had theories but also knew deep down that it wouldn't go that way. No, it went completely the other way. I didn't expect it at all. I exclaimed loudly, which surprised my sister who was next to me. I couldn't wrap my head around it. Like I get it, but I also didn't. I need to sit with it for now.