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emilyconstance's review against another edition
5.0
I am in absolute awe of her...of her entire life. Her biography is more mystical, more edifying, more profound than the bible. this is my bible...Lispector is my god.
rochellem's review against another edition
going to restart this when I’m back from holiday
jeanned_arc's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
1.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction, Chronic illness, Antisemitism, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Fire/Fire injury
casparb's review against another edition
before I get into grumbling I'll preface this by saying I think this is worth your time though to do so there's a lot to take in account. if nothing else please read the Edwards article I mention at the end. My feeling reading Why This World was ultimately desperately sad
starting with nice things I liked learning about the children's books CL wrote I want to look at The Woman Who Killed the Fish
anyway about 100 pages in I was going along idly wishing this sort of thing had been in the hands of somebody with the attentive capacities & dedication of a Heather Clark or somesuch. To put it bluntly I never felt like Moser could depict Clarice as human. Also a minor point but I feel dates, years, could have been signalled far better (à la Red Comet) - there were a few times it felt like he'd meant to go back and insert the date later but just forgot to. I guess it's fine that it's not Clarkish in a way- she's a kind of once-in-a-generation biographer. arguably. but Moser was constantly getting distracted with his own missions, and that began to open up other, more serious issues for me
ok so Misogyny
(o and also it's a relatively minor point with everything else going on here but I'm surprised Moser's description of a gay man's attempts to resist persecution as 'correcting' his sexuality (from gay to straight?) made it past an editor. no I'm not saying that Benjamin Moser is some sort of archaic superhomophobe but I think this is a really unfortunate phrasing which it seems should have been immediately picked up and 'corrected' in editing)
I'm going to open by just mentioning a few places in the text where BM is being, just strange. I think a lot of his misogyny serves to both produce and re-produce the Clarice 'myth' in the anglosphere, but we'll get back to The Real World in time. Sadly I only started taking real notes on this later on in the text so I'd like to draw attention to the way Moser has - and continues to treat beauty and the artist.
The blurb for this book opens with the Dietrich-Woolf quote from Gregory Rabassa, which has been reproduced all over the current Penguin CLs under Moser's direction. These are essentially the only Clarices the anglophone world has reasonable access to. Frankly, the Dietrich-Woolf thing is a comment made in the 60s and it should probably have stayed there - what a shock! She's not only smart, she's ALSO pretty! who knew a woman could do the both. what a dear.
Reading Why This World I find Moser doubles down on this bizarrely dated view - as if beauty and intelligence are somehow incompatible in a woman - and it really just runs through the whole text. p.284 he's lamenting that at age forty-six her 'beauty' 'was now in the past'. This is apparently due to her gaining weight. Thank you Mr biographer but I am sure that a beautiful forty-six-year-old (let alone a beautiful forty-six-year-old Clarice Lispector) is not entirely beyond one's capacity to imagine. Moser keeps on this train of how terrible it is that women age and 'lose beauty'. there's a reference in his acknowledgments to meeting Clarice's sister Tania, aged ninety 'dressed to the nines' - he claims he 'fell for her'.
At another point (p.315), Moser is describing the manuscript of Loud Objects, one of the iterations of the inimitable Água Viva. I don't think it's only weird to me that he describes it as at times 'as dull and uninspired as a housewife's neighbourly chitchat'. THAT'S your comparison?? There are countless thousands of hours' worth of entertainment based on the drama of housewifery I assume that is why they are Real. To me it reeks of this super-1950s tired masculine trope that women's domestic lives = inane, airheaded, not worthy of note. It seems I was tired by this point so my marginal annotation reads 'shut up moser'
Anyway I'm kind of glad I didn't start writing down this sort of thing earlier on because trust me we would be here all day. now onto the fearsome Real World
I read about a year ago that Benjamin Moser has problematic edges but I don't think I really investigated. This time I did. I read the piece that started this controversy and a brilliant little supplementary one which I also highly recommend. So let's talk about Moser. He's kind of spearheaded the recent translations of Clarice's, starting in 2017 with Hour of the Star which is his own translation, and he has more or less been involved with the subsequent translations. How, do you ask? Well, here is the crucial part. Please read this article (I mean it, it is not so often I ask for homework): https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/benjamin-moser-and-the-smallest-woman-in-the-world/
written by Magdalena Edwards, the translator of The Chandelier, or, co-translator, as Moser has decided to label her. It's a fantastic investigation into his academic malpractices, imprecisions (such as a pretty shocking lapse in his translation of Hour of the Star), and frankly abusive behaviour toward the team of translators who have together produced the current Penguin Lispectors. She mentions his constant erasure of women's writing, translation, including in his recent 800-page biography of Susan Sontag (brilliantly detailed in This article, also highly recommend: https://www.thewhitereview.org/reviews/she-etcetera/ ). He seems to have a penchant for straight-up making things up in his biographical work. Edwards mentions that a good proportion of Brazilian academics are (rightly) pissed off with him. BM is inclined to charge his biographies with a 'bomb' to drop, his radical new information which justifies writing in the first place. As Edwards discusses, the main one in Why This World is probably the entire narrative of Clarice's mother being raped by Russian soldiers which leads to C's own guilt, a shadow hanging over her. Absolutely everybody (it would seem) in Lispector studies, especially in Brazil, points out that this is nonsense and unsubstantiated. Disregard
Obviously this speaks to the way that the 'international literary community' is So limited by which academics have access to translation. As it stands we have This Guy in charge of the Lispector name in English and look at how that's working out
the anecdotes I'm reading about Benjamin are, yes, anecdotes. But they're more than a little disturbing to read. To cite Barbara Epler as she's quoted in Edwards: 'You can’t say no to that guy,” said Epler. “He finally just put a bag over my head and clubbed me and said he’d do the translation himself in two or three weeks.”
look I could go on but I'm going to put a lid on it here
EDIT - ok no disregard the lid. page 9, my marginal annotation: oof. Description of a picture of Clarice, beautiful, with the author/memorialist Carolina Maria de Jesus. despite Moser's description of her writing as 'harrowing', Moser sees fit to describe a black woman stood next to Clarice as 'out of place, as if someone dragged Clarice's maid into the picture'. WHAT HOW DID thIS GET THROUGH EDITiNG IN 2009
here's the posthumous clarice interview if you've not given it the time before. It'll give you a much more useful impression of Clarice Lispector than the stuff wot this guy reckons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1zwGLBpULs
tl;dr please read this: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/benjamin-moser-and-the-smallest-woman-in-the-world/
and if you have time left over, this: https://www.thewhitereview.org/reviews/she-etcetera/
starting with nice things I liked learning about the children's books CL wrote I want to look at The Woman Who Killed the Fish
anyway about 100 pages in I was going along idly wishing this sort of thing had been in the hands of somebody with the attentive capacities & dedication of a Heather Clark or somesuch. To put it bluntly I never felt like Moser could depict Clarice as human. Also a minor point but I feel dates, years, could have been signalled far better (à la Red Comet) - there were a few times it felt like he'd meant to go back and insert the date later but just forgot to. I guess it's fine that it's not Clarkish in a way- she's a kind of once-in-a-generation biographer. arguably. but Moser was constantly getting distracted with his own missions, and that began to open up other, more serious issues for me
ok so Misogyny
(o and also it's a relatively minor point with everything else going on here but I'm surprised Moser's description of a gay man's attempts to resist persecution as 'correcting' his sexuality (from gay to straight?) made it past an editor. no I'm not saying that Benjamin Moser is some sort of archaic superhomophobe but I think this is a really unfortunate phrasing which it seems should have been immediately picked up and 'corrected' in editing)
I'm going to open by just mentioning a few places in the text where BM is being, just strange. I think a lot of his misogyny serves to both produce and re-produce the Clarice 'myth' in the anglosphere, but we'll get back to The Real World in time. Sadly I only started taking real notes on this later on in the text so I'd like to draw attention to the way Moser has - and continues to treat beauty and the artist.
The blurb for this book opens with the Dietrich-Woolf quote from Gregory Rabassa, which has been reproduced all over the current Penguin CLs under Moser's direction. These are essentially the only Clarices the anglophone world has reasonable access to. Frankly, the Dietrich-Woolf thing is a comment made in the 60s and it should probably have stayed there - what a shock! She's not only smart, she's ALSO pretty! who knew a woman could do the both. what a dear.
Reading Why This World I find Moser doubles down on this bizarrely dated view - as if beauty and intelligence are somehow incompatible in a woman - and it really just runs through the whole text. p.284 he's lamenting that at age forty-six her 'beauty' 'was now in the past'. This is apparently due to her gaining weight. Thank you Mr biographer but I am sure that a beautiful forty-six-year-old (let alone a beautiful forty-six-year-old Clarice Lispector) is not entirely beyond one's capacity to imagine. Moser keeps on this train of how terrible it is that women age and 'lose beauty'. there's a reference in his acknowledgments to meeting Clarice's sister Tania, aged ninety 'dressed to the nines' - he claims he 'fell for her'.
At another point (p.315), Moser is describing the manuscript of Loud Objects, one of the iterations of the inimitable Água Viva. I don't think it's only weird to me that he describes it as at times 'as dull and uninspired as a housewife's neighbourly chitchat'. THAT'S your comparison?? There are countless thousands of hours' worth of entertainment based on the drama of housewifery I assume that is why they are Real. To me it reeks of this super-1950s tired masculine trope that women's domestic lives = inane, airheaded, not worthy of note. It seems I was tired by this point so my marginal annotation reads 'shut up moser'
Anyway I'm kind of glad I didn't start writing down this sort of thing earlier on because trust me we would be here all day. now onto the fearsome Real World
I read about a year ago that Benjamin Moser has problematic edges but I don't think I really investigated. This time I did. I read the piece that started this controversy and a brilliant little supplementary one which I also highly recommend. So let's talk about Moser. He's kind of spearheaded the recent translations of Clarice's, starting in 2017 with Hour of the Star which is his own translation, and he has more or less been involved with the subsequent translations. How, do you ask? Well, here is the crucial part. Please read this article (I mean it, it is not so often I ask for homework): https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/benjamin-moser-and-the-smallest-woman-in-the-world/
written by Magdalena Edwards, the translator of The Chandelier, or, co-translator, as Moser has decided to label her. It's a fantastic investigation into his academic malpractices, imprecisions (such as a pretty shocking lapse in his translation of Hour of the Star), and frankly abusive behaviour toward the team of translators who have together produced the current Penguin Lispectors. She mentions his constant erasure of women's writing, translation, including in his recent 800-page biography of Susan Sontag (brilliantly detailed in This article, also highly recommend: https://www.thewhitereview.org/reviews/she-etcetera/ ). He seems to have a penchant for straight-up making things up in his biographical work. Edwards mentions that a good proportion of Brazilian academics are (rightly) pissed off with him. BM is inclined to charge his biographies with a 'bomb' to drop, his radical new information which justifies writing in the first place. As Edwards discusses, the main one in Why This World is probably the entire narrative of Clarice's mother being raped by Russian soldiers which leads to C's own guilt, a shadow hanging over her. Absolutely everybody (it would seem) in Lispector studies, especially in Brazil, points out that this is nonsense and unsubstantiated. Disregard
Obviously this speaks to the way that the 'international literary community' is So limited by which academics have access to translation. As it stands we have This Guy in charge of the Lispector name in English and look at how that's working out
the anecdotes I'm reading about Benjamin are, yes, anecdotes. But they're more than a little disturbing to read. To cite Barbara Epler as she's quoted in Edwards: 'You can’t say no to that guy,” said Epler. “He finally just put a bag over my head and clubbed me and said he’d do the translation himself in two or three weeks.”
look I could go on but I'm going to put a lid on it here
EDIT - ok no disregard the lid. page 9, my marginal annotation: oof. Description of a picture of Clarice, beautiful, with the author/memorialist Carolina Maria de Jesus. despite Moser's description of her writing as 'harrowing', Moser sees fit to describe a black woman stood next to Clarice as 'out of place, as if someone dragged Clarice's maid into the picture'. WHAT HOW DID thIS GET THROUGH EDITiNG IN 2009
here's the posthumous clarice interview if you've not given it the time before. It'll give you a much more useful impression of Clarice Lispector than the stuff wot this guy reckons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1zwGLBpULs
tl;dr please read this: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/benjamin-moser-and-the-smallest-woman-in-the-world/
and if you have time left over, this: https://www.thewhitereview.org/reviews/she-etcetera/
cvall96's review against another edition
Fills in many holes, opens a myriad others.
horfhorfhorf's review against another edition
3.0
It's strange to read a biography written by an author so obviously a fan of their subject. Will need a second pass to fully assess at a later date.
canadiantiquarian's review against another edition
2.0
Clarice Lispector left both a lot and little for her readers to sift through when trying to understand her. There are her books, subtly exploring her inner turmoil and personal experiences. There are her letters. There are remnants to form into a whole.
Moser clearly admires his subject, but the clear takeaway in this bio is the question of whether we should try to understand her further than her own words - if we should dare to try and flesh out the story. Even in detail, CL remains elusive. This is a bio of fragments linked into sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. It's a barrage of names and situations surrounding her, not an exploration of her.
After a clear exploration of her youth and the family and turmoil she came from, she becomes an impossible to catch figure--a Carmen Sandiego traveling the world, and through time, as others try to catch and encapsulate her.
If you want to know Clarice, read her.
Moser clearly admires his subject, but the clear takeaway in this bio is the question of whether we should try to understand her further than her own words - if we should dare to try and flesh out the story. Even in detail, CL remains elusive. This is a bio of fragments linked into sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. It's a barrage of names and situations surrounding her, not an exploration of her.
After a clear exploration of her youth and the family and turmoil she came from, she becomes an impossible to catch figure--a Carmen Sandiego traveling the world, and through time, as others try to catch and encapsulate her.
If you want to know Clarice, read her.
sacharosel's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
The ultimate book to discover everything there is to know about the mysterious and talented master Clarice Lispector was. Benjamin Moser leads us through her life and writing by shedding light on an overlooked side of her work - her Jewish background - adding new possible interpretations to her books. A must-read.
booksinblossom's review against another edition
4.0
Gepassioneerde biografie over één van de meest fascinerende schrijfsters. Door Clarice' leven en persoonlijkheid beter te leren kennen, krijgt haar werk meer gelaagdheid. Hierdoor bewonder ik haar nog meer.
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(De indeling van de hoofdstukken en de cryptische titels vond ik jammer genoeg minder bevattelijk.)
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(De indeling van de hoofdstukken en de cryptische titels vond ik jammer genoeg minder bevattelijk.)