Themes
The Hour of the Star deals with the problems of the rural Northeast versus the urban Southeast of Brazil, poverty and the dream of a better life, and, of an uneducated woman's struggle to survive in a sexist society. [3] Another prevalent theme is that of the narrator's powerful position in delivering the plot, including a form of intrusive narration in which the narrator speaks directly to the reader. In February 1977, Lispector gave her only televised interview, with Júlio Lerner of TV Cultura in São Paulo. In it, she mentioned a book she had just completed with "thirteen names, thirteen titles", referencing the thirteen alternative titles on the title page of the novella. (They are: "The Hour of the Star", "It's All My Fault", "Let Her Deal With It", "The Right to Scream", ".As for the Future.", "Singing the Blues", "She Doesn't Know How to Scream", "A Sense of Loss", "Whistling in the Dark Wind", "I Can't Do Anything", "Account of the Preceding Facts", "Cheap Tearjerker", and "Discreet Exit Through the Back Door".) According to her, the book is "the story of a girl who was so poor that all she ate was hot dogs. That's not the story, though. The story is about a crushed innocence, about an anonymous misery." [4] [5]
Plot
The novel starts with the narrator, Rodrigo S.M., discussing what it means to write a story. He addresses the reader directly and spends a lot of time talking about his philosophical beliefs. After some time, he begins the story, which centers on Macabéa, an impoverished 19-year-old living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She leads a difficult life, but seems to be oblivious to this fact. She starts dating a boy named Olímpico, who mistreats her and eventually leaves her for her co-worker, Glória. Feeling guilty, Glória recommends that Macabéa visit a fortune teller named Madame Carlota. She predicts that Macabéa's life will soon turn around, saying that she will be rich, happy, and marry a foreigner named Hans. However, none of this comes true as Macabéa's life comes to an abrupt end when a yellow Mercedes runs her over.
Style
While the narrator in The Hour of the Star reveals to the audience his wish to ensure the novel's simplicity (in terms of writing) and stray from philosophical tangents, in reality the story is marked by complicated existentialist notions of identity. The author often reflects on his conscious effort to do so:
"Like every writer, I am clearly tempted to use succulent terms: I have at my command magnificent adjectives, robust nouns, and verbs so agile that they glide through the atmosphere as they move into action. For surely words are actions? Yet I have no intention of adorning the word, for were I to touch the girl's bread, that bread would turn to gold—and the girl … would be unable to bite into it, and consequently die of hunger." [7]
As the novel unfolds, it becomes apparent that this quest for identity is as much about Macabéa's search for self as it is the narrator's own. Notions of being, who we are and who we aren't, and the struggle to finding meaning are all touched upon.
Clarice Lispector was a Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist and short story writer. Her innovative, idiosyncratic works explore a variety of narrative styles with themes of intimacy and introspection, and have subsequently been internationally acclaimed. Born to a Jewish family in Podolia in Western Ukraine, as an infant she moved to Brazil with her family, amidst the disasters engulfing her native land following the First World War.
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.
Glória Maria Cláudia Pires de Morais is a Brazilian actress. She is best known for her roles in TV Globo telenovelas such as Dancin' Days, Vale Tudo, Mulheres de Areia and O Rei do Gado. She is also known for starring in films such as Academy Award-nominated O Quatrilho, box-office hit If I Were You and its sequel, and Lula, Son of Brazil, which is the second most expensive Brazilian film of all time, after Nosso Lar.
Fernando Tavares Sabino was a Brazilian writer and journalist.
The Passion According to G.H. is a mystical novel by Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, published in 1964. The work takes the form of a monologue by a woman, identified only as G.H., telling of the crisis that ensued the previous day after she crushed a cockroach in the door of a wardrobe. Its canonical status was recognized in 1988 by its inclusion in the Arquivos Collection, the UNESCO series of critical editions of the greatest works of Latin American literature. It has been translated into English twice, the first time in 1988 by Ronald W. Sousa, and then by Idra Novey in 2012.
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Elisa Lispector was a Brazilian novelist.
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Hour of the Star is a Brazilian film directed by Suzana Amaral and released in 1985. The film is an adaptation of a book by Clarice Lispector with the same name. In 1986, the actress Marcélia Cartaxo won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 36th Berlin International Film Festival, for her role as Macabea. It was selected as the Brazilian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 59th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.
Benjamin Moser is an American writer and translator. He received the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Susan Sontag, titled Sontag: Her Life and Work.
Júlia Valentina da Silveira Lopes de Almeida was one of the first Brazilian women to earn acclaim and social acceptance as a writer. In a career that spanned five decades, she wrote in a variety of literary genres; however, it is her fiction, written under the influence of the naturalists Émile Zola and Guy de Maupassant, that has captured the attention of recent critics. Her notable novels include Memórias de Marta, the first Brazilian novel to take place in an urban tenement, A Família Medeiros, and A Falência. Immensely influential and appreciated by peers like Aluísio Azevedo, João do Rio and João Luso, she is remembered as an early advocate of modernized gender roles and increased women's rights, as a precursor to later women writers like Clarice Lispector, and for her support of abolition. She was married to the poet Filinto de Almeida.
Paulo Rónai was a Hungarian-Brazilian translator, philologist, and critic.
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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.
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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".
