glabnob
A plodding read; I moved quite slowly through this one, at times because it required it of me, and at times just because I required a bit of a break from it. It’s easy to say that I enjoyed this book and then harder to explain to someone why it took me so long to finish it and why I probably couldn’t recommend it widely. Lispector uses her unconventional prose to circle and eventually touch upon so many experiences which come to us so naturally without the language to convey them neatly. Knowing this, she unmakes and recreates language in a way that allows us to recapture those, but this way is anything but neat. Similarly, we follow the tumultuous process of a man unmaking himself to others, then unmaking himself to himself, then reversing this process as he rebuilds a self for him and then painfully rebuilds it again to be consumable by others, one at a time, to understood coarsely, then more honestly and finely, then finally to become trapped in this experience of being understood and to prioritize it over being honest, losing himself then into the performance of a self rather than the experience of oneself. The way that Lispector writes out the direct experience of contact with the world, with our sense of self, and with other people is unmatched in my opinion. We are always hearing new examples of how someone expresses an idea, but reading hers feels at times like discovering entirely new ways to understand these experiences.
A plodding read; I moved quite slowly through this one, at times because it required it of me, and at times just because I required a bit of a break from it. It’s easy to say that I enjoyed this book and then harder to explain to someone why it took me so long to finish it and why I probably couldn’t recommend it widely. Lispector uses her unconventional prose to circle and eventually touch upon so many experiences which come to us so naturally without the language to convey them neatly. Knowing this, she unmakes and recreates language in a way that allows us to recapture those, but this way is anything but neat. Similarly, we follow the tumultuous process of a man unmaking himself to others, then unmaking himself to himself, then reversing this process as he rebuilds a self for him and then painfully rebuilds it again to be consumable by others, one at a time, to understood coarsely, then more honestly and finely, then finally to become trapped in this experience of being understood and to prioritize it over being honest, losing himself then into the performance of a self rather than the experience of oneself. The way that Lispector writes out the direct experience of contact with the world, with our sense of self, and with other people is unmatched in my opinion. We are always hearing new examples of how someone expresses an idea, but reading hers feels at times like discovering entirely new ways to understand these experiences.