Buddy Read - The complete stories: Clarice Lispector

Settings and markon (Ardene) are doing a year-long read of The complete storiesby Clarice Lispector (translated by Katrina Dodson.) Please join us!


By Bisilliat, Maureen - This file was derived from: Clarice Lispector por Maureen Bisilliat em agosto de 1969. Acervo IMS.jpg:, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93548614

Clarice Lispector was born Chaya Pinkhasovna Lispector in December 1920 in a shetl in the country we know know as Ukraine. She was the youngest of three daughters. Her family emmigrated first to Romania & then to Brazil, arriving early in 1922.

Lispector trained in law school, worked as a journalist, and became a naturalized citizen in 1943. She also published her first novel in 1943, and married lawyer & diplomat Maury Gurgel Valente this year, following him to various posts, bore 2 children and continued to write & publish. She left Valente with her children in 1959, returning to Brazil where she lived until her death in 1977.

Katrina Dodson won the PEN 2016 translation prize for the collection of stories we're readiing.

Our plan is to read one story/week, which means we won't finish this book in 2021, but that's fine with us. You're welcome to join in as you like.

I can't easily find publication history for the first section of stories, First stories; most likely they were published individually in various publications.

They include

• The triumph (published May 1940 per this New Yorker article)


• Obsession


• The fever dream


• Jimmy and I


• Interrupted story


• The escape


• Excerpts


• Letters to Hermengardo


• Gertrudes asks for advice


• Another couple of drunks

Fantastic!!! :D

I'm planning on reading along with you on this too. I read one of her novels a few years ago, The Hour of the Star. I have the book on audible as well as a hard copy so will probably listen as first preference and see how that goes.

>3 avatiakh: Great! Glad to have you join us Kerry!

I read the introduction and the first story, "The triumph," published in 1940, when Lispector was 19. This was a quick & easy read, and I applauded the protagonist's discovery that she was strong enough to survive without her live-in boyfriend.

Agreed. Their relationships seems quite dysfunctional.

I couldn't listen to the introduction - found the way it was describing Lispector off-putting.

Edit: I listened to that story a while back, but it was the only one I'd listened to as part of this collection. Held off when I saw a group read was starting.

I have her complete stories on Kindle. This group should prove incentive to start reading.

>7 gsm235: Nice!

Next story is one of the longer ones. Noting that the first day of the year was Friday, so I should have it listened to by the 15th.

I listened to the introduction and first story last week. The introduction was fairly informative though didn't mention the countries she lived in with her diplomat husband.
The first story was delightful.

I thought the first story was fine - pretty good actually for a 19 year old. I’m not sure I have a whole lot to say about it, other than I always find it amusing when writers write about not being able to write. Of course it was the man not writing in the story.

Decided to read it in ebook format, was running out of time.

Another story about leaving. Feel like there's a lot here - seems extremely open to various interpretations that use the characters as symbols for something else.

I found this one irritating to read, and frustrating to reflect on. Maybe my reading was too literal, but it seemed to me that the seeds of her discontent were already present, and Daniel was just the catyalyst? person she focused on?

And her conclusion, always alone, seems to me to be part of the human condition, hopefully balanced out by connections to others, which she didn't have/rejected.

Oh shoot.... early in the game to forget about this. Off to read the story now.

Huh, that was interesting.

Possibly getting the same sort of confused disorientation trying to reflect on it you got with the last one.

The fever dream (O delirio)

Oh, I like this one! I so identify with that space between waking & sleeping, or while sick with a fever, when everything is clear as day, and then disappears when you wake up, or get well. But sometimes, if you're careful, a glimpse remains . . .

I'm also thinking of climate change and Jemesin's broken earth. And creativity and that it must be expressed or die.

What's this revenge?

Oh no I forgot about this again D:

It's the 7th week of the year... so should be through Excerpt?

Well, I'm behind too. I'm just trying to read the next one and record impressions at this point.

"Jimmy and I" (eu e Jimmy) and "Interrupted story" (História interrompida) are stories about the narrator's relationships with young loves.

The moods and questions asked by each story are different. "Jimmy and I" is comic, and the narrator learns about the fickleness of love and the double standard for men and women with little cost to herself. "Interrupted story" has a more serious tone, but the narrator is still a carefree and impulsive girl, one whose vision of her relationship is shattered towards the end of the story.

I've finished listening to the First Stories and also three from Family Ties. Most stories I've listened to a few times and am enjoying them. 'A Chicken' is fun and an unexpected topic compared to the other ones.
The Fever Dream:
Jimmy & I:
Interrupted Story:
The Escape:
Excerpt:
Letters to Hermengardo:
Gertrude asks for advice:
Another couple of drunks:
Daydream & drunkenness of a young lady:
Love:
A Chicken:

Has anyone kept reading/listening to these stories?
I confess that I haven't since my post in March though I feel an urge to pick it up again as I'm near completing my latest audiobook.

I have picked it up and put it down a few times; I think Letters to Hermengado was the last one I read. I'm enjoying the stories, but find it hard to comment on them.