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infinimata's review against another edition
5.0
I'm going to paraphrase a line from Penny Rimbaud. I'm not sure if I like "The Hour Of The Star" for the same reason that I'm not sure if I like Lispector herself: she's far too demanding to be liked. But I do know that I love her, and this book, because there's been nothing quite like it, or her, before or since.
One description and critique of Clarice Lispector is that she was to literary fiction what Gramma Moses was to art: self-taught and idiosyncratic to a fault. This means her work pays out very variable dividends indeed. Her novel "The Passion According To G.H." made me roll my eyes with the way it turned the goofiest of molehills into the most domineering and existential of mountains. But I couldn't deny there was a psychological truth at play in the story. Many of our lives are indeed ruled by the tiniest, most subjective, and inexplicable of things. "Star" might well be the best place to start with Lispector, if only because the book is short enough to read in a single setting, and pays out the highest of those dividends.
"Star", the last work Lispector wrote before she died in 1977, gives us a male narrator -- clearly not Lispector, but also clearly sharing qualities with her -- who struggles with himself to write about Macabéa, a woman who may or may not exist. Macabéa is a pathetic figure on the margins of society who doesn't know how pathetic she truly is, and so has a measure of fool's happiness. She's happy when blowing her nose on the hem of her skirt, happy when she eats nothing but hot dogs and Coca-Cola, happy when her thuggish boyfriend treats her like dirt and eventually dumps her. With that last, maybe just the fact she can talk to someone, anyone, and be heard and seen is bliss enough, such that being dumped is for even its own kind of joy. Her life is one of, to use Harlan Ellison's phrase, acceptance on the lowest possible level.
The narrator then offers us the possibility of what might break her happiness, and it's not what you think. To kill off someone like this would be a mercy, perhaps, but a mercy for whom -- the author, or for her, or for us? Why is it a good thing to know a human being -- even one living a pathetic life, even a fictional one, or even one fictional twice over (a fictional creation by a fictional narrator) -- has been given a merciful release?
"Star" brings to mind another, longer, cheekier and more acerbic -- but less ultimately powerful -- work of metafiction, Gil Sorrentino's "Imaginative Qualities Of Actual Things". In that book, the narrator (maybe it's Gil, maybe not) writes about the various hilarious and insufferable Art People types in his social circles, some of whom may exist and some of whom ("Anton") are billed in advance as being fictions that "Gil" doesn't quite know what to do with. But Sorrentino's aim there was to be more cheeky than penetrating.
So much of Lispector's work seems to do nothing more than spin in place and find universes in its navel, although I contend that's one of the reasons to bother with her work in the first place. With this story, though, and with the best of her other work, she introduces something more than just aesthetic metaphysics: what does our compassion for others mean in this world? What does it mean that our heart might go out to Macabéa, or that we might laugh at her, when she doesn't even exist?
Except that she does, in some sense, exist. The world teems with millions of Macabéas, all as anonymous as she, all as unloved and unnoticed. But she was lucky enough to come to our attention through the narrator, to be seen at last and not just ignored like coffee gone cold (to use Lispector's own imagery). We can only love people in the specific, not in the abstract, so if we are to have any love of wretched humanity it has to necessarily include people like Macabéa, or her awful boyfriend, or the duplicitious co-worker who steals him away from Macabéa, and the ridiculous fortune-teller who figures into the story's climax, and so on.
The ending Lispector chose for this story is not about Macabéa, but the narrator -- what he does because he knows he is not up to the job of looking such saintly idiocity in the face (or the brutishness of her boyfriend, etc.) and saying an unreserved yes to it. No, not even up to that job for a fictional character -- which makes us wonder, what would he do with the real thing? Unless Macabéa was, in fact, a real person in the narrator's life, witnessed at arm's length or in composite. The story is, at bottom, about him more than her, but also about how she matters more in the end than he does.
Postscript: I haven't seen the film adapted from the story, but I have to wonder if it could even begin to approach the story's real meaning. The Joyce Carol Oates short story that inspired the film "Smooth Talk" is nothing like the resulting film, even if it's a fine film on its own. But it's still not the same story by a light-year.
One description and critique of Clarice Lispector is that she was to literary fiction what Gramma Moses was to art: self-taught and idiosyncratic to a fault. This means her work pays out very variable dividends indeed. Her novel "The Passion According To G.H." made me roll my eyes with the way it turned the goofiest of molehills into the most domineering and existential of mountains. But I couldn't deny there was a psychological truth at play in the story. Many of our lives are indeed ruled by the tiniest, most subjective, and inexplicable of things. "Star" might well be the best place to start with Lispector, if only because the book is short enough to read in a single setting, and pays out the highest of those dividends.
"Star", the last work Lispector wrote before she died in 1977, gives us a male narrator -- clearly not Lispector, but also clearly sharing qualities with her -- who struggles with himself to write about Macabéa, a woman who may or may not exist. Macabéa is a pathetic figure on the margins of society who doesn't know how pathetic she truly is, and so has a measure of fool's happiness. She's happy when blowing her nose on the hem of her skirt, happy when she eats nothing but hot dogs and Coca-Cola, happy when her thuggish boyfriend treats her like dirt and eventually dumps her. With that last, maybe just the fact she can talk to someone, anyone, and be heard and seen is bliss enough, such that being dumped is for even its own kind of joy. Her life is one of, to use Harlan Ellison's phrase, acceptance on the lowest possible level.
The narrator then offers us the possibility of what might break her happiness, and it's not what you think. To kill off someone like this would be a mercy, perhaps, but a mercy for whom -- the author, or for her, or for us? Why is it a good thing to know a human being -- even one living a pathetic life, even a fictional one, or even one fictional twice over (a fictional creation by a fictional narrator) -- has been given a merciful release?
"Star" brings to mind another, longer, cheekier and more acerbic -- but less ultimately powerful -- work of metafiction, Gil Sorrentino's "Imaginative Qualities Of Actual Things". In that book, the narrator (maybe it's Gil, maybe not) writes about the various hilarious and insufferable Art People types in his social circles, some of whom may exist and some of whom ("Anton") are billed in advance as being fictions that "Gil" doesn't quite know what to do with. But Sorrentino's aim there was to be more cheeky than penetrating.
So much of Lispector's work seems to do nothing more than spin in place and find universes in its navel, although I contend that's one of the reasons to bother with her work in the first place. With this story, though, and with the best of her other work, she introduces something more than just aesthetic metaphysics: what does our compassion for others mean in this world? What does it mean that our heart might go out to Macabéa, or that we might laugh at her, when she doesn't even exist?
Except that she does, in some sense, exist. The world teems with millions of Macabéas, all as anonymous as she, all as unloved and unnoticed. But she was lucky enough to come to our attention through the narrator, to be seen at last and not just ignored like coffee gone cold (to use Lispector's own imagery). We can only love people in the specific, not in the abstract, so if we are to have any love of wretched humanity it has to necessarily include people like Macabéa, or her awful boyfriend, or the duplicitious co-worker who steals him away from Macabéa, and the ridiculous fortune-teller who figures into the story's climax, and so on.
The ending Lispector chose for this story is not about Macabéa, but the narrator -- what he does because he knows he is not up to the job of looking such saintly idiocity in the face (or the brutishness of her boyfriend, etc.) and saying an unreserved yes to it. No, not even up to that job for a fictional character -- which makes us wonder, what would he do with the real thing? Unless Macabéa was, in fact, a real person in the narrator's life, witnessed at arm's length or in composite. The story is, at bottom, about him more than her, but also about how she matters more in the end than he does.
Postscript: I haven't seen the film adapted from the story, but I have to wonder if it could even begin to approach the story's real meaning. The Joyce Carol Oates short story that inspired the film "Smooth Talk" is nothing like the resulting film, even if it's a fine film on its own. But it's still not the same story by a light-year.
feastofblaze's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
funny
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
prisci_reads's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
svetilnik_boris's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
anniieriika's review against another edition
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
andi__reads's review against another edition
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.5
ghosttears's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
juuu's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
unicornmistyy's review against another edition
2.0
Lispector seems to be the pretend-you-understand-it author in vogue for instragram book influencers at the moment. Hopefully something was lost in translation for this often praised novella, because it is currently lost on me. The final segment of having a meta-author discuss something he "cannot", "would never", do to his characters, only for this to in-fact still occur is just not something I found poetic nor interesting. One could zone out for entire pages of this yet still experience it with the same pleasure, I find. It will be a while before my next Lispector.