Clarice Lispector Archive
The Uneasiness of Lispector and Klassen Children’s Stories
What makes Clarice Lispector and Jon Klassen so appealing as storybook writers is that both of them make attempts at creating a world in which children aren’t shielded from complex situations.
An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures and the Limits of Intimacy
Clarice Lispector soothes and excites the reader through variation, inversion, and extension, writing in a manner that is both erotic and illuminating, and difficult to translate.
Language and the Experience of Desire
A few summers ago, I found myself tongue-tied on a first date. When I’m in London, flirting tastes like the first day of Spring: it imbues the air with possibility, and teases out a linguistic recklessness in me. In Dutch, I seemed to inhabit a less sensuous version of
Finding Shape in an Indifferent Universe
While some critics dismiss fractals as faddish or overly applied, they do offer a compelling vision of a natural world governed by order, pattern, and predictable expansion. And envisioning the world as an organized and predictable place feels mighty tempting.
Step Inside My Skin and Dance Around in It: On Literary Translation
For days, while I revised my translation, I looked for the right words to tell the protagonist’s mother that he’s terminally ill. Even though the protagonist’s life is nothing like my own, I couldn’t help but climb inside his skin and walk around in it.
Beyond the Olympics: Reading Brazil
Beyond the leading sporting events and the idyllic beaches (and the political crisis), there is a Brazil of varied landscapes and experiences. These days I find myself returning over and over again to books that show another side of Brazil, books that are capable of challenging stereotypes.
Door Wide Open: On the Process of Working with Authors
As a reader, is there anything better than finding a book that resonates with you so intensely that you feel that you know the author, share a mind (or a heart) with them, that their words were written for you? As a translator, I can think of something even
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Fatherhood” by David Rutschman
How many words does it take to encapsulate a feeling? An experience? A story we looked at two weeks ago, “Love” by Clarice Lispector, spends just under 3,500 words exploring its title, where Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom takes well over 500 pages plumbing its own. While “Fatherhood” by David Rutschman
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Love” by Clarice Lispector
There have been many craft essays written over the last few decades arguing the merits of the classic Joyce-ian epiphany. In “Love,” (The Offing), Clarice Lispector (translated by Katrina Dodson) explores the nature of epiphanies, and perhaps more importantly, what we do with them once they happen. We meet