Blog #9 - The Hour of the Star
I have many thoughts and feeling after reading The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector. Firstly, I felt like I was trying to listen to a story being told by a defensive, unaccountable, insecure narrator who seriously struggled with attention deficits. By page 11, I found myself losing patience and flipping forward trying to find where this narrator stopped telling me I would never be able to grasp their incredible writing and where the actual story started. I took a moment and tried to read this novel as though I was sitting with an old, lonely man desperately trying to tell his story to anyone, and grasping on to any moment where my attention was his. Once I imagined this, I was able to move through the impatience and read the novel as though it was a monologue. In saying all of this, my impatience doesn’t equate a dislike of the novel… I actually quite liked it.
In terms of the questions posed in the lecture video, I think the title makes a difference in terms of what I feel like I am “meant” to take from a book. The title The Hour of the Star made me feel as though Macabéa finally got her “Marilyn Monroe/star” moment through having us as her audience. If the title had been It’s All My Fault, I would have felt like the narrator was finally taking some damn accountability. To answer the other question, it affects us to read a book that declares that it is still being written while we are reading it, by making us hold the accountability for what happens in a sense. If I stop reading — the book stops being written. Macabéa’s end will never come. If I had considered this more, I would have stopped reading the moment after she received her future, the only moment in the book where, from my perspective, she was not suffering. On this note… did anyone else read that story in pre-k about Oscar the Grouch, titled something like The Monster at the End of This Book? Well it is basically that — the story continues on BECAUSE you turn the page. My 4 year old self felt the same anxieties reading that as reading this.
On another note — I just feel terribly for Macabéa. I know she doesn’t really know any better, but the way the characters in the book speak to her, and the way she passively accepted it and apologized made my skin crawl and made me put the book down more times than once. This poor woman. I wonder what she would have been like had she had two loving parents… and some love rather than head slaps and walls to kiss. Poor, poor Macabéa.
My question for discussion — If you could pick any title (of the titled listed from the front) which one carries that most meaning for you?
"If I stop reading — the book stops being written. Macabéa's end will never come." This sensation also accompanied me while reading... perhaps as a reminiscence of the García Márquez novel that we just read. There is a hyper-awareness of the moment of writing, where again the existence of the fictional character coincides with the creation process. However, with the mediation of the narrator Rodrigo, we have a further distance and for this reason the story begins more slowly, while Macabea is formed. This does not prevent us, however, from feeling sympathy towards her (a sympathy that the narrator does not always feel towards her). The key, it seems to me, is not to read Lispector impatiently.
ReplyDeleteReading your blog I would persnally be more interested in renaming the book "Its all my fault" mainly becuase as you mentiones, it would in a way force the narrator to take accountability with his participation and involvement in the plotline.
ReplyDelete-Montserrat A
Hi Cadence, I enjoyed how you imagined sitting with an old man desperately trying to share his story. It put it into perspective for me and I could totally see that! If I had to pick an alternate title, I think "Cheap Tearjerker" would suffice, as I felt sympathetic for Macabéa throughout the whole story.
ReplyDeleteHi Cadence! You have made some very interesting observations! The words you chose to describe the narrator, "defensive, unaccountable, insecure narrator", are quite accurate. By the end of the book I had come around to enjoy the overarching nature of the narrator and his rather blunt way of being. That being said, after you pointed out the way you felt by p.11 - that did make me recall that I was waiting for the pace to pick up a bit at the beginning. To answer your question, the title "She Doesn't Know How to Scream" would be my choice of alternate title. Having her fortune be predicted seemed to be the turning point towards Macabea seeing her past more for what it was and that she has endured quite a lot. I feel that title is fitting because she spent her whole life without questioning her experiences and unable to give herself credit for the difficulties she goes through.
ReplyDelete