a major obstacle in my understanding of TRUE LITERATURE is that i'm just not all that bright. when i asked around for lispector recommendations, i was told the hour of the star is a good short choice for beginners (read: midwits such as myself)
i found i had a hard time understanding rodrigo's narration sometimes. he's an interesting framing device, but i don't really understand the point. however, i think i understood macabéa...or whatever rodrigo tells me of her. there's something industrial in the narrator's artistic ownership of this girl
here's what i mean--when i studied the history of anglo work culture for a paper, i had to squint to see the laborers behind the big picture. most urban workers from the early modern period onward lived like our heroine (tiny dwelling, multiple roommates, precarious job, scanty education, poor health, few pleasures other than those which mass popular culture brings them). the only proofs of their existence nowadays are a handful of legal records. the vast majority of this population just didn't write much that has made it to the present; their more educated contemporaries could misrepresent them out of ignorance, condescension, or prejudice