Benjamin Moser | |
---|---|
Born | Houston, Texas, U.S. | September 14, 1976
Occupation |
|
Nationality | American |
Education | |
Notable works | Sontag: Her Life and Work (2019) |
Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for Biography (2020) |
Partner | Arthur Japin |
Relatives | Laura Moser (sister) |
Benjamin Moser (born September 14, 1976) is an American writer and translator. [1] He received the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Susan Sontag, titled Sontag: Her Life and Work .
Born in Houston, Moser attended St. John's School and graduated from Brown University with a degree in history. He came to Brown with the intention of studying Chinese, but soon switched to Portuguese, a choice that would have great influence on his subsequent work. [2] He worked briefly in publishing and was living in New York City when he met his current partner Dutch novelist Arthur Japin. [3] Moser then moved to several different cities in Europe before eventually settling in the Netherlands where he earned his MA and PhD from Utrecht University. He is the brother of author and progressive political activist Laura Moser.
Moser’s first book, Why This World , was published in 2009, and was widely recognized as introducing the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, up until that point largely unknown in the United States, to an international public.
"Despite a cult following of artists and scholars, Lispector has yet to gain her rightful place in the literary canon," wrote Fernanda Eberstadt in The New York Times Book Review . "Benjamin Moser’s lively, ardent and intellectually rigorous biography promises to redress this wrong ... His energetically researched, finely argued biography will surely win Lispector the English-language readership she deserves." [4]
Reviews of the book, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, were overwhelmingly positive. “This is rich biographical material that gets only richer as Mr. Moser, a translator and a book critic for Harper’s Magazine , begins to unpeel the layers of her complicated life. Why This World sucks you … into its subject’s strange vortex. … [Moser] is a lucid and very learned tour guide, and his book is a fascinating and welcome introduction to a writer whose best work should be better known in this country,” wrote Dwight Garner in The New York Times . [5]
In The New York Review of Books , Lorrie Moore wrote that the book was “impressively researched ... Well-written and remarkable ... He discusses her work in great detail, book after book, with sympathy and insight, and admirably eschews jargon ... Moser is impressive ... in his interest and take on Brazilian politics. Providing authoritative historical backdrop is his forte.” [6]
The book was translated in many countries and was a bestseller in Brazil.[ citation needed ]
In 2016, Moser published a book of essays in Portuguese called Autoimperialismo: três ensaios sobre o Brasil (Autoimperialism: Three Essays on Brazil). The book was dedicated to Ocupe Estelita. Ocupe Estelita was an attempt to reclaim Brazilian urban spaces from the corporations that were changing the historic city of Recife, seen as attempts to privatize public space for the benefit of the wealthy. Proceeds from the book were dedicated to the movement. [7] In his book, Moser described the constant violence of Brazilians upon other Brazilians as a form of “autoimperialism.” He described the rhetoric around the construction of the capital of Brasília, the statuary in São Paulo that honors the bandeirantes, and the history of building in Rio de Janeiro that aimed to create a city unconnected to its own past through modern architecture. The book was noted for its harsh criticism of Oscar Niemeyer. [8]
The book received positive reviews [9] and was a bestseller in Brazil. [10]
In 2013, he was named the authorized biographer of the American writer Susan Sontag. [11] In 2019, he published Sontag: Her Life and Work , which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2020. [12] The citation called it "An authoritatively constructed work told with pathos and grace, that captures the writer’s genius and humanity alongside her addictions, sexual ambiguities and volatile enthusiasms. [13]
The book received critical attention from a number of outlets.
In Artforum , Terry Castle wrote: “Benjamin Moser’s Sontag . . . succeeds as it does—magnificently, humanely—by displaying the same intellectual purchase, curiosity, and moral capaciousness to which his subject laid so inspiring and noble a claim over a lifetime. ... Moser’s biography is a stunningly generous gift—to readers, obviously, but also to his subject. He is patient with her, truthful yet tender, recognizing both what was thrilling and what was cursed about her.” [14]
In the Times Literary Supplement , Elaine Showalter wrote: “Engrossing . . . [Sontag] was avid, ardent, driven, generous, narcissistic, Olympian, obtuse, maddening, sometimes loveable but not very likeable. Moser has had the confidence and erudition to bring all these contradictory aspects together in a biography fully commensurate with the scale of his subject. He is also a gifted, compassionate writer.” [15]
In The New Republic , Leslie Jamison wrote: “Utterly riveting and consistently insightful . . . The book takes this larger-than-life intellectual powerhouse—formidable, intimidating, often stubbornly impersonal in her work—and makes her life-size again . . . fascinating.” [16]
In February 2023, it was announced that Kristen Stewart would be playing Sontag in a film adaptation of the book, directed by Kirsten Johnson. [17] [18]
This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(December 2023) |
In 2022, Moser published The Upside-Down World, a personal account of his moving to the Netherlands when he was young, and his encounters with the Dutch artists of the age of Rembrandt and Vermeer.
The book was praised as "a personal and stirring guide to the great Dutch painters … an excellent companion to the Dutch galleries: conversational and congenial, essayistic and elevating" by Sebastian Smee in the Washington Post .
The Wall Street Journal wrote that "Benjamin Moser confronts the world through the eyes of Vermeer, Rembrandt, Hals and others. He is an exemplary museumgoer, the kind we should all aspire to be … Here, Moser interweaves personal memoir with observations he has gleaned from years of faithful looking at Dutch paintings."
Following his publication of Why This World, Moser was named Series Editor at New Directions Publishing for a new translation of the complete works of Clarice Lispector. [19] The ongoing project, which now stretches to eleven volumes, was carried out with a team of translators, with Moser contributing several translations of his own.
The series has been recognized for its contribution toward the increased readership of Lispector. "The revival of the hypnotic Clarice Lispector has been one of the true literary events of the 21st century," wrote Parul Sehgal in The New York Times. [20]
For his work as biographer, editor, and translator of Lispector, Moser was awarded the Prize for Cultural Diplomacy from the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations in 2016. [21]
On October 7, 2021, he was elected to one of the twenty chairs reserved for foreigners at the Brazilian Academy of Letters , [22] a lifelong position. [23]
In addition to translations from Portuguese, Moser has also published translations from French. [24]
Moser served as New Books Columnist for Harper's Magazine from 2009 to 2011, [25] and was a Bookends columnist at The New York Times Book Review . [26]
Moser is currently a contributing writer at The Nation . [27]
Moser has lived in France, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. [28] He currently lives in the Netherlands [29] and in France. [30] His partner is the Dutch novelist Arthur Japin. [31]
Hélène Cixous is a French writer, playwright and literary critic. During her academic career, she was primarily associated with the Centre universitaire de Vincennes, which she co-founded in 1969 and where she created the first centre of women's studies at a European university. Known for her experimental writing style and great versatility as a writer and thinker, she has written more than seventy books dealing with multiple genres: theatre, literary and feminist theory, art criticism, autobiography and poetic fiction.
Susan Lee Sontag was an American writer, critic, and public intellectual. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp' ", in 1964. Her best-known works include the critical works Against Interpretation (1966), On Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978) and Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), as well as the fictional works The Way We Live Now (1986), The Volcano Lover (1992), and In America (1999).
Clarice Lispector was a Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist and short story writer. Her distinctive and innovative works delve into diverse narrative forms, weaving themes of intimacy and introspection, earning her subsequent international acclaim. Born to a Jewish family in Podolia in Western Ukraine, as an infant she moved to Brazil with her family, amidst the pogroms committed by Soviet authorities after the First World War.
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Giovanni Pontiero was a Scots-Italian scholar and translator of Portuguese fiction. Most notably, he translated the works of José Saramago and Clarice Lispector, two celebrated names in Portuguese-language literature.
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Elisa Lispector was a Brazilian novelist.
The Hour of the Star is a novel by Clarice Lispector published in 1977, shortly before the author's death. In 1985, the novel was adapted by Suzana Amaral into a film of the same name, which won the Silver Bear for Best Actress in the 36th Berlin International Film Festival of 1986. It has been translated into English twice by New Directions Publishing with Giovanni Pontiero's 1992 translation followed by Benjamin Moser's version in 2011.
Near to the Wild Heart is Clarice Lispector's debut novel, written from March to November 1942 and published around her twenty-third birthday in December 1943. The novel, written in a stream-of-consciousness style reminiscent of the English-language Modernists, centers on the childhood and early adulthood of a character named Joana, who bears strong resemblance to her author: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi", Lispector said, quoting Gustave Flaubert, when asked about the similarities. The book, particularly its revolutionary language, brought its young, unknown creator to great prominence in Brazilian letters and earned her the prestigious Graça Aranha Prize.
Idra Novey is an American novelist, poet, and translator. She translates from Portuguese, Spanish, and Persian and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Paulo Rónai was a Hungarian-Brazilian translator, philologist, and critic.
Freud: The Mind of the Moralist is a book about Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, by the sociologist Philip Rieff, in which the author places Freud and psychoanalysis in historical context. Rieff described his goal as being to "show the mind of Freud ... as it derives lessons on the right conduct of life from the misery of living it."
Senhor was a monthly cultural magazine published in the period of 1959 and 1964. The magazine was headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
A Breath of Life is the last novel by Brazilian author Clarice Lispector. It was published posthumously in Brazil in the late 1970s. The book takes the form of dialogue between a male "Author" and his female creation, Angela Pralini. The god-like author infuses the so-called breath of life into his creation who speaks, breathes, lives and dies at his behest. The author loves yet wants to destroy Angela even though he can not ultimately separate her from himself.
Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector is a book by Benjamin Moser published by Oxford University Press in 2009. Benjamin Moser details the majority of Clarice Lispector's life and then discusses the connections between her life and her work.
Hiroko Oyamada is a Japanese writer. She has won the Shincho Prize for New Writers, the Oda Sakunosuke Prize, and the Akutagawa Prize.
Sontag: Her Life and Work is a 2019 biography of American writer Susan Sontag written by Benjamin Moser.
Água Viva is a 1973 novel by the Brazilian author Clarice Lispector. The novel has an unconventional form and uses no other form of structure other than double paragraph breaks, lacking chapters or sections. It also does not feature conventional plot or named characters and is framed as a directionless monologue from an artist, perhaps speaking to a lover, the public, or the work itself. In the novel, Lispector states that her goal is to fire "an arrow that will sink into the tender and neuralgic centre of the word".