Clarice Lispector

Massive 600+ page short story collection coming out later this year. Apparently it assembles 9 seperate collections.

xyzzzz__, Lispector's cronicas are also worth reading if you're interested in other texts by her that stand outside novelistic structures, although she never goes as far into abstraction there as she does in The Passion According to GH or the parts I've read of Agua Viva: the meditative passages jostle up against stray memories and details of everyday life (including the quirks of her maids, iirc).

James, I'm really excited to hear about the new collection--although a few of her books of stories have been translated (my favorite might be Family Ties), it sounds like there should be a lot of untranslated work in the Complete Stories.

I should say that the one extant filmed interview with Lispector (from 1977, near the end of her life) is undramatic but kind of mesmerizing. I love the prolonged silence after she claims that the role of the Brazilian writer should be to speak as little as possible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1zwGLBpULs

(Its Monsieur Teste btw..)

Cronicas does sound amazing ows. I'll def try and get this! Similarly I am excited to get hold of her short stories sometime.

I'll look at that youtube later.

James, I'm really excited to hear about the new collection--although a few of her books of stories have been translated (my favorite might be Family Ties), it sounds like there should be a lot of untranslated work in the Complete Stories.

The only shorts of hers I've read are a couple translated by Elizabeth Bishop, but I really liked them. I've found the link to the book: http://ndbooks.com/book/the-complete-stories - it has _86_ stories! Not out until August, though.

Published on my bday! :-)

The Cronicas are getting published soon!!

As much as I admire Clarice Lispector’s fiction, the non-fiction crônicas are my favourite part of her writing. Great to see this massive edition on the way from Penguin. Last year, I wrote about Lispector and Brazil in crônica form for @GrantaMag https://t.co/9AgMqpLFtZ pic.twitter.com/I3MExzP8qk

— Sinéad Gleeson (offline) (@sineadgleeson) July 14, 2022

I heard a few of her short stories ("Remnants of Carnival," "The Obedient Ones" and "Happy Birthday") read on Selected Shorts, and I thought they were brilliant. On the strength of those works and Tommy Orange's citing her as an influence, I picked Near to the Wild Heart for book club a while back. Turnout for discussion was notably light. It is a challenging work, one that is made maybe a little more accessible if you familiarize yourself, at least on a superficial level, with Spinoza before you dive into it. A prodigiously gifted writer; I wish I read Portuguese well enough to read her in the original.

The cronicas have already been published by carcanet, I’ve got it (700 odd pages, I’ve only dipped into them). Penguin translation may be better but I can sort you xyz!

Thanks wins, but it's ok - happy to hang on till September (Had no idea there was a whole translation of it, only knew of a selected Cronicas)