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Clarice Lispector (1920–1977), the greatest Brazilian writer of the twentieth century, has been called “astounding” (Rachel Kushner), “a penetrating genius” (Donna Seaman, Booklist), and “a truly remarkable writer” (Jonathan Franzen). “Her images dazzle even when her meaning is most obscure,” noted the Times Literary Supplement, “and when she is writing of what she despises, she is lucidity itself.”
Benjamin Moser is the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award, and is also the editor of the New Directions Lispector program. A former books columnist at Harper's Magazine, Moser is now a columnist at The New York Times Book Review, and is currently at work on the authorized biography of Susan Sontag. He lives in the Netherlands.
The Hour of the Star (Second Edition)
by Clarice Lispector, Benjamin Moser (Translator), Colm Tóibín (Introduction)
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(Second Edition)
$11.49
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ISBN-13:
9780811219600
- Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
- Publication date: 10/24/2011
- Sold by: Barnes & Noble
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 128
- Sales rank: 282,997
- File size: 1 MB
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A new edition of Clarice Lispector’s final masterpiece, now with a vivid introduction by Colm Tóibín.
Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Colas, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, and yet he cannot avoid the realization that for all her outward misery, Macabéa is inwardly free/She doesn't seem to know how unhappy she should be. Lispector employs her pathetic heroine against her urbane, empty narrator—edge of despair to edge of despair—and, working them like a pair of scissors, she cuts away the reader's preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love and the art of fiction. In her last book she takes readers close to the true mystery of life and leave us deep in Lispector territory indeed.Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
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Vogue
Macabea is one of the great antiheroines of modern fiction...the literary discovery of the decade.The New York Times
Lispector is the premier Latin American woman prose writer of this century.Saturday Review
An artist of vivid imagination. If her work is thoughtful and poetic, distinguished by touching insight and human sympathy, it is also full of irony and wild humor.Vanity Fair
If she does — dare I say it? — touch you, she touches you like nothing else you’ve ever read.”— Benjamin MosherJonathan Franzen
A truly remarkable writer.Barnes and Noble Review
This is without a doubt one of the most audacious and affecting works of fiction I've ever read.The Brooklyn Rail
The reader finds herself in the throes of a master, rendered speechless with awe and terror.Vogue.com
A new translation of Clarice Lispector’s searing last novel, The Hour of the Star by Lispector biographer Benjamin Moser—with an introduction by Colm Tóibín—reveals the mesmerizing force of the revitalized modernist’s Rio-set tale of a young naïf, who, along with the piquantly intrusive narrator,challenges the reader’s notions of identity, storytelling, and love.
Jesse Larsen - 500 Great Books by Women
In less than one hundred pages, Clarice Lispector tells a brilliantly multi-faceted and searing story.Benjamin Mosher - Vanity Fair
If she does — dare I say it? — touch you, she touches you like nothing else you’ve ever read.The Faster Times
This text investigates the knowledge of not knowing and the rich poverty of the inner void with stratagems of obfuscation, leaps of language, and suspensions of syntax and form that are perhaps best received by the gut.Critical Mob
In this slim novella, Lispector uses an intricate narrative structure in order to represent a peculiar state of mind. Rodrigo, a well-off and cultured man, struggles to tell the story of the sad life of Macabéa, an unhygienic, sickly, unlovable, and an altogether "un-ideal" typist living in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Although Rodrigo claims he's the only person who could love Macabéa—if only because she's the subject of his narrative—he really tells her story as a way to thwart his own isolation. Lispector employs odd sentence fragments and erratic grammatical choices to highlight the importance of imagination as a means for her characters to liberate themselves from their banal existences. Through Rodrigo's narrative, Lispector artfully ponders the fate of her characters, and their fears and desires, in a harsh and unforgiving cityscape. Startlingly original and profoundly sad, The Hour of the Star is a provocative work by a highly influential author who should be more widely read.”— Jeff BrewerThe New Inquiry
The only antidote to stupidity is an agitated intelligence constantly prowling for blank spots in one’s outward seeming. The Hour of the Star is a romance, then, between stupidity and its neurotic observer, a restless stretching away from form, tradition, and the stupefying rules they impose on writing.Jeff Brewer - Critical Mob
In this slim novella, Lispector uses an intricate narrative structure in order to represent a peculiar state of mind. Rodrigo, a well-off and cultured man, struggles to tell the story of the sad life of Macabéa, an unhygienic, sickly, unlovable, and an altogether "un-ideal" typist living in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Although Rodrigo claims he's the only person who could love Macabéa—if only because she's the subject of his narrative—he really tells her story as a way to thwart his own isolation. Lispector employs odd sentence fragments and erratic grammatical choices to highlight the importance of imagination as a means for her characters to liberate themselves from their banal existences. Through Rodrigo's narrative, Lispector artfully ponders the fate of her characters, and their fears and desires, in a harsh and unforgiving cityscape. Startlingly original and profoundly sad, The Hour of the Star is a provocative work by a highly influential author who should be more widely read.Charles Larson - Counter Punch
The Hour of the Star trips up our concept of the novel. What a story is expected to do. How characters act. Why writers write. Why readers read. It’s an experience you won’t forget.500 Great Books by Women
In less than one hundred pages, Clarice Lispector tells a brilliantly multi-faceted and searing story.”— Jesse LarsenCounter Punch
The Hour of the Star trips up our concept of the novel. What a story is expected to do. How characters act. Why writers write. Why readers read. It’s an experience you won’t forget.”— Charles LarsonLibrary Journal
As Lispector was dying in 1977, she and her secretary constructed this novel from notes, which partially explains its fragmentary nature. The detached male narrator, Rodrigo S.M., tells the story of Macabéa, a rickety, Coca-Cola-drinking virgin from the poor region of Alagoas, who moves to Rio's urban jungle. She lands a job as a typist and becomes enamored of the self-seeking Olímpico. After he dumps her for the worldlier Glória, Macabéa requests the advice of a fortune teller. No sooner is she buoyed by the seer's optimistic predictions than she is run over by a car. The joy of this novel is that we experience both Rodrigo's indulgent introspection as well as Macabéa's woeful life. This new translation begs comparison with Giovanni Pontiero's 1986 version; many phrases are identical, but some wording is slightly different or has been contemporized. The translator, author of the Lispector biography Why This World, understands the nuances of Lispector's often-hermetic style. VERDICT For readers who passed it up the first time, now would be the chance to become acquainted with the last and perhaps finest work of one of the foremost authors of 20th-century Brazilian literature.—Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., Dublin, OH