A review by rheen
Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
3.0
"First and foremost, she thought, she understands life because she isn’t intelligent enough not to."
This book perplexed me, at times it bored me, it also made me feel stupid, like I wasn't smart enough to understand the ramblings of this woman named Joanna because she was 10x smarter than me, but later I realized that is what everyone thinks of her because she makes herself deliberately difficult to understand, or maybe subconsciously because she also doesn't understand almost all of the things she thinks. Everything she thought was so profound but also so immensely convulated that it sometimes made whole pages entirely incomprehensible; and that was frustrating and dissatisfying, exactly how Joanna felt about life.
Joanna is probably one of the most interesting characters I have ever read about, she is also really, really simplistic. She's just lonely. She has made her solitude so thick that it has become impossible to penetrate for anyone- even her own self. There's this Richard Siken quote I love, "Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them", that is what Joanna has done to herself, she got so close to understanding the mystery of her personhood it flipped her inside out, she ended up outside of her, bewildered and frightened and totally incapable of ever being reunited with her own self- that is why I think mystery is important. The thirst for knowledge is important too, don't get me wrong, I also suffer from the "I want to know everything" disease, but after reading this book I'm considering taking my attention from myself to the world, I have to live and witness the world before I can venture the one inside of me.
I especially loved the interactions between the women, they were revelatory and simplified a lot of life.
As frustrating as she is, I love Joanna, I identify with her to some extent, to feel like nobody understands you- to not understand yourself can be intensely frightening. But I also want her to realise that she is not alone in this experience, that the self is the most incomprehensible thing to the self, that sometimes you don't need to know everything.
Someday, I hope she figures out what being happy is for.
Mostly, I hope for her to find out what it is like to be happy.
This book perplexed me, at times it bored me, it also made me feel stupid, like I wasn't smart enough to understand the ramblings of this woman named Joanna because she was 10x smarter than me, but later I realized that is what everyone thinks of her because she makes herself deliberately difficult to understand, or maybe subconsciously because she also doesn't understand almost all of the things she thinks. Everything she thought was so profound but also so immensely convulated that it sometimes made whole pages entirely incomprehensible; and that was frustrating and dissatisfying, exactly how Joanna felt about life.
Joanna is probably one of the most interesting characters I have ever read about, she is also really, really simplistic. She's just lonely. She has made her solitude so thick that it has become impossible to penetrate for anyone- even her own self. There's this Richard Siken quote I love, "Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them", that is what Joanna has done to herself, she got so close to understanding the mystery of her personhood it flipped her inside out, she ended up outside of her, bewildered and frightened and totally incapable of ever being reunited with her own self- that is why I think mystery is important. The thirst for knowledge is important too, don't get me wrong, I also suffer from the "I want to know everything" disease, but after reading this book I'm considering taking my attention from myself to the world, I have to live and witness the world before I can venture the one inside of me.
I especially loved the interactions between the women, they were revelatory and simplified a lot of life.
As frustrating as she is, I love Joanna, I identify with her to some extent, to feel like nobody understands you- to not understand yourself can be intensely frightening. But I also want her to realise that she is not alone in this experience, that the self is the most incomprehensible thing to the self, that sometimes you don't need to know everything.
Someday, I hope she figures out what being happy is for.
Mostly, I hope for her to find out what it is like to be happy.