Björn recenserade Blåsa liv av Örjan Sjögren
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4 stjärnor
Clarice Lispector finished this (if she did finish it) while dying of ovarian cancer. Killed by that which can give life. (Which is bullshit essentialism I guess, but it's hard not to imagine the metaphor occurred to her in a book about death and creation.)
In the beginning was the Word. So in A Breath of Life she creates a nameless male author who creates a female character named Ângela, who, The Author tells us, is a lousy writer and will never finish a book, but will be useful to him to investigate the big questions of, y'know, life the universe and everything. Ângela, of course, doesn't know she's fictional, and goes about storming language and thought itself, looking for permanence, looking for clarity, looking for essence in the face of fleeting time, impending death.
The whole book reads like a lopsided dialogue; The Author makes his grumpy analyses; Ângela …
Clarice Lispector finished this (if she did finish it) while dying of ovarian cancer. Killed by that which can give life. (Which is bullshit essentialism I guess, but it's hard not to imagine the metaphor occurred to her in a book about death and creation.)
In the beginning was the Word. So in A Breath of Life she creates a nameless male author who creates a female character named Ângela, who, The Author tells us, is a lousy writer and will never finish a book, but will be useful to him to investigate the big questions of, y'know, life the universe and everything. Ângela, of course, doesn't know she's fictional, and goes about storming language and thought itself, looking for permanence, looking for clarity, looking for essence in the face of fleeting time, impending death.
The whole book reads like a lopsided dialogue; The Author makes his grumpy analyses; Ângela her breathless (sorry) freewheelins on God; The Author tells us (or whoever is supposed to be reading him) that she's stupide, a typical woman, with neither the wits nor the endurance to understand and communicate; she just works to ecstatically be, unafraid and clear.
I won't say this is my favourite Lispector. Whether unfinished or not, it's fragmentary by design, occasionally frustratingly vague. Maybe if I'd read this before Stream of Life I wouldn't feel like I'd read some of this before. But in a sense, I guess that's the point; the novel doesn't so much put a full stop on a life, a career, as disseminate it and open it up, in that magnificent finale, find Grace. Even if I don't believe in that, I do believe in this book.