New Directions paperbook #1538

Read by Roxanne Hernandez

In the magnificent feast of Clarice Lispector's books, her crnicas―short, intensely vivid newspaper pieces―are the delicious canapés. "The things I've learned from taxi drivers would be enough to fill a book. They know a lot: they really do get around. I may know a lot about Antonioni that they don't know. Or maybe they do even when they don't. There are various ways of knowing by not-knowing. I know: it happens to me too."The crnica, a literary genre peculiar to Brazilian newspapers, allows writers, or even soccer stars, to address a wide readership on any theme they like.Chatty, mystical, intimate, flirtatious, and revelatory, Clarice Lispector's pieces for the Saturday edition of Rio's leading paper, the Jornal do Brasil, from 1967 to 1973, take the forms of memories, essays, aphorisms, and serialized stories. Endlessly delightful, her insights make one sit up and think, whether about children or social ills or pets or society women or the business of writing or love.This new, beautifully translated work presents a new aspect of the great writer―at once off the cuff and spot on. "This long flirtation with her readers was a triumphant metamorphosis for the avant garde author." "Her crnicas muddied demarcations between nonfiction and fiction, resurrecting the oldest question of form: Where does nonfiction truly end and fiction begin?" "Clarice Lispector had a diamond-hard intelligence, a visionary instinct, and a sense of humor that veered from naif wonder to wicked comedy...[about] the 'marvelous scandal,' as Lispector puts it, of life." "Page after page of thoughts, worries, inspirations, and commentaries…Topics include men, women, sons, maids, cooks, and taxi drivers…[and] ruminations on weariness and rage…[that] speak to contemporary readers." "Among the era's most brilliant essayists. She is masterful, even reminiscent of Montaigne, in her ability to spin the mundane events of life into moments of clarity that reveal greater truths. Superb, wonderfully obsessed with exuberance and what it unlocks and reveals." "Sphinx, sorceress, sacred monster. The revival of the hypnotic Clarice Lispector has been one of the true literary events of the twenty-first century."

Mode of access: World Wide Web