Experimental Friday — trying to make use of the strange haze that my dysfunctional Agfa Optima produced.
The haze is now a place for literature.
A fragment from "The Hour of the Star" by Clarice Lispector, that I'm reading in Dutch:
"I must record a reason for joy here. Namely, that on a sad Sunday without cassava flour the girl experienced an equally unexpected and inexplicable happiness: from the harbour quay she saw a rainbow."
📸 Agfa Optima 200
🎞️ Adox CMS 20 ii
📌 Rio de Janeiro
#filmphotography #believeinfilm #filmisnotdead #blackandwhite #200iso #vintagecamera #agfa #analog #haze #failure #condominium #literature #lispector
#lispector
I read this book last year but never wrote about it here. Not because I didn’t absolutely love it, but because I don’t always write about the books I read. Sometimes, I feel lazy, or I don’t like the photos I take, or I don’t think I have anything particularly interesting to add.
But enough time has passed. A second reading has happened. Now, I feel like I have more to say beyond “this book broke me, it is unfair, it drove me mad, but I loved it.”
This is a novel about poverty and the quiet tragedy of life. It was written in a way that makes you feel like you are unraveling as you spin your way through the lonely and unfair life of Macabéa. I couldn’t help but think about all the lives that are just like hers.
Reading The Hour of the Star in an abstract bubble is one thing. Reading it after walking through Rio de Janeiro is another. It is impossible to ignore the deep inequality that defines the city—the stark contrast between the gleaming glamour of Leblon (or the posh parts of any city) and the sprawling favelas that spiral into the sky. Macabéa, with her empty stomach and unfair life, is not just a character. She is real. She is one of the many invisible lives who are ignored, unheard, and deemed unimportant in a world that has only grown more selfish.
Maybe that’s what makes The Hour of the Star so devastating. Macabéa’s life didn’t matter—not to the people who around her, not to the society that left her behind. And yet, through the book, she exists. We bear witness to her life, hunger, loneliness, dreams, that moment of happiness as she listened to music and danced in her room. She mattered to us. And maybe that is the only kind of justice fiction can offer—to say, if only for a moment, she was here.
Macabéa mattered.
And this, my friends, is why writing and stories matter.
#bookstadon #alwaysreading #lispector #books #readeragonnaread #thoughts
But enough time has passed. A second reading has happened. Now, I feel like I have more to say beyond “this book broke me, it is unfair, it drove me mad, but I loved it.”
This is a novel about poverty and the quiet tragedy of life. It was written in a way that makes you feel like you are unraveling as you spin your way through the lonely and unfair life of Macabéa. I couldn’t help but think about all the lives that are just like hers.
Reading The Hour of the Star in an abstract bubble is one thing. Reading it after walking through Rio de Janeiro is another. It is impossible to ignore the deep inequality that defines the city—the stark contrast between the gleaming glamour of Leblon (or the posh parts of any city) and the sprawling favelas that spiral into the sky. Macabéa, with her empty stomach and unfair life, is not just a character. She is real. She is one of the many invisible lives who are ignored, unheard, and deemed unimportant in a world that has only grown more selfish.
Maybe that’s what makes The Hour of the Star so devastating. Macabéa’s life didn’t matter—not to the people who around her, not to the society that left her behind. And yet, through the book, she exists. We bear witness to her life, hunger, loneliness, dreams, that moment of happiness as she listened to music and danced in her room. She mattered to us. And maybe that is the only kind of justice fiction can offer—to say, if only for a moment, she was here.
Macabéa mattered.
And this, my friends, is why writing and stories matter.
#bookstadon #alwaysreading #lispector #books #readeragonnaread #thoughts
¿Por qué me trajiste a la ciudad? #RafaelAlberti 🌊🏊♀️🚣🏻 https://buff.ly/4excdH0 Te propongo evocar la #orilla del #mar. Con textos y músicas que nos acercan a ella de #FedericoGarciaLorca, Clarice #Lispector, #Vivaldi, #Heinali y una #habanera
Siempre que sueño las playas, las sueño solas. #RafaelAlberti 🌊🏊♀️🚣🏻 https://buff.ly/4excdH0 Te propongo evocar la #orilla del #mar. Con textos y músicas que nos acercan a ella de #FedericoGarciaLorca, Clarice #Lispector, Rafael #Alberti, #Vivaldi, #Heinali y una #habanera
#Balada a la orilla del mar 🌊🏊♀️ https://buff.ly/4excdH0 Te propongo evocar la #orilla del #mar. Con textos y músicas que nos acercan a ella de #FedericoGarciaLorca, Clarice #Lispector, Rafael #Alberti, #Vivaldi, #Heinali y una #habanera
#Balada a la orilla del mar 🌊🏊♀️🚣🏻 https://buff.ly/4excdH0 Te propongo evocar la #orilla del #mar. Con textos y músicas que nos acercan a ella de #FedericoGarciaLorca, Clarice #Lispector, Rafael #Alberti, #Vivaldi, #Heinali y una #habanera
#Balada a la orilla del mar 🌊🏊♀️🚣🏻 https://buff.ly/4excdH0 Te propongo evocar la #orilla del #mar. Con textos y músicas que nos acercan a ella de #FedericoGarciaLorca, Clarice #Lispector, Rafael #Alberti, #Vivaldi, #Heinali y una #habanera
La promesa del mar nos sonríe a lo lejos 🌊🏊♀️🚣🏻 https://buff.ly/4excdH0 Te propongo evocar la #orilla del #mar. Con textos y músicas que nos acercan a ella de #FedericoGarciaLorca, Clarice #Lispector, Rafael #Alberti, #Vivaldi, #Heinali y una #habanera
#Balada a la #orilla del #mar 🌊🏊♀️🚣🏻 https://buff.ly/4excdH0 Te propongo acercarte a la evocación de la orilla del mar. Con textos y músicas que nos acercan a ella de #FedericoGarciaLorca, Clarice #Lispector y Rafael #Alberti, #Vivaldi, #Heinali y una #habanera
Balada a la orilla del mar 🌊🏊♀️🚣🏻 https://buff.ly/4excdH0 Te propongo acercarte a la evocación de la #orilla del #mar. Con textos y músicas que nos acercan a ella de #FedericoGarciaLorca, Clarice #Lispector y Rafael #Alberti, #Vivaldi, #Heinali y una #habanera
Los cuadernos de Vieco
El recuerdo. Clarice Lispector
Escribir es tantas veces recordar lo que nunca existió. ¿Cómo lograré saber lo que ni siquiera sé? así: como si lo recordara. Con un esfuerzo de memoria, como si yo nunca hubiera nacido. Nunca nací…
https://loscuadernosdevieco.blog/2023/05/09/el-recuerdo-clarice-lispector
@JKLund @copim @siusoon @lozross @openreflections @simonxix @Rebekka_Kie @Simon @zBlace
Also helpful in understanding what some of us mean by 'experimental' is this description of Clarice Lispector's later work, especially The Hour of the Star and The Passion of G.H.:
'Resisting both the experimental writing that could be experienced as mere aesthetic or wordplay and the kind of "identitarian" writing that serves to categorize writers by their identity, Lispector's work does neither'.
It's comes from the last chapter of Cynthia Cruz's 2021 book for Repeater: The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class.
#OAbooks #openaccess
#ExperimentalPublishing
#books #experimentalwriting
#lispector
https://repeaterbooks.com/product/the-melancholia-of-class-a-manifesto-for-the-working-class/
everything lives the other, in the desert things know things (#lispector) (the passion according to G.H. )
@MarieVC We’ve sometimes thought about doing an Open Humanities Press version of BookTok (CriticalTheoryTok? CritTok?)
This short article suggests it might not be for us:
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/booktok-tiktok-books-community
It quotes the author Stephanie Danler as writing that on TikTok ‘you can’t just show a book by Clarice Lispector’. The accounts that were successful ‘performed’ being someone ‘“who reads Clarice Lispector”’.
In light of your question, though, it makes me think: is that really so very different from how a lot of us are using #Mastodon here? How much are we part of a community that is engaged in lively (if gentle) conversations? And how much are we performing being a person who is part of such a community, but really we’re blogging and broadcasting? And we’re discussing about as much as people on BookTok are reading The Passion According to G.H.
Cien años de soledad - Gabriel García Márquez
Palinuro de México - Fernando del Paso
La Sociedad contra el Estado- Pierre #Clastres
Capitalismo y Esquizofrenia - Gilles #Deleuze; Félix #Guattari
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. #Tolkien
Cuentos Completos - Clarice #Lispector
Languidez. Fragmentos. Otros poemas - Alfonsina #Storni
La “hora de Clarice”, homenaje a Lispector a 40 años de su muerte http://www.theclinic.cl/2017/12/11/la-hora-clarice-homenaje-lispector-40-anos-muerte/ #escritora #Lispector #homenaje #Cultura #Clarise #Brasil
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