Back-of-the-envelope Lispector
My scrappy notes on The Hour of the Star
Hello all and a very special welcome to all the new subscribers joining us as other newsletters start to recommend The Booktender. Thanks so much for opening, reading and recommending this newsletter.
Speaking of thanks and stars: Is it creepy to know that Substack gives writers a list of their subscribers with star ratings? The formula seems to relate to how regularly you open these messages—or not.
While I appreciate a “Passion for the Void” (the title of Colm Tóibín’s introduction to The Hour of the Star, the book I’m serving up with a side of scrappy how-to today), screaming into it is another story, you know? So it made me happy when I discovered I could sort the subscriber list by star rating to identify a group of regulars. Cue the Cheers! theme song.
I recently I checked in with some ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ subscribers who have been here all year to say thanks for reading. If I didn’t do that for you yet and you have been reading consistently— it’s just because I’m still intimidated by your brilliance in some way. I’ll get over it soon.
None of them are my mom, but many of these people have been good friends for a long time. So I was surprised by some of their responses. Like my friend Kathy, who when I mentioned my gratitude said twice, “I can’t believe someone so smart wants to be my friend.” Which: okay. I accept that maybe I did not seem very smart all these years, while you were teaching me to ride my bike with my shoes clipped into the pedals for the first time, or while wretching into a bin when you visited me in the hospital after surgery, or while banging my head against the wall again about the same tiresome conflict with you-know-who.
But also: red flag alert! Throughout my life, I’ve learned slipping into “know-it-all” mode is the fastest way to lose friends. Since I’m writing this newsletter as a new way to connect with others over my favorite thing after I giving up on book clubs and Goodreads, I’m taking note. It’s time to be a bit more vulnerable about how exactly my thoughts about books come together.
Today I let go of any shred of superiority by sharing a play-by-play to show you how I used my 8 Step Scrappy Notes Method to turn this challenging book into a favorite. Low on sophistication and unimpressively messy, the Scrappy Notes approach lowers my expectations for “getting it”or feeling smart to the point I almost can’t help but exceed them.
If you’re still in your know-it-all era, feel free to skip to the end where I’ll link to a secret post I didn’t send by email. It will help you find smarter people to read. For everyone else, here we go!
1. I chose an intriguing author/book that also intimidates me.
Anything Lispector fits this profile. She’s been trending among English language readers since Benjamin Moser published his Lispector biography Why This World, finalist for the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award, and subsequently a series of translations of her work. A lot of writers I admire are fans. And though I have a lot of love for Latin American literature and was first introduced to her in school in the original Portuguese decades ago, I’ve been hesitant to join the party.
As I remember it, I found her words simple but the structure of the narrative and the feelings the images evoked complex, making for a frustrating combination. I didn’t trust my understanding or my ability to grapple with my thoughts and questions about the work in a third language. This experience left a residue of inscrutable strangeness I’ve carried into encounters with Lispector since.
All this to say: I don’t use the Scrappy Notes Method with something that’s very commercial and story-forward. We’re all above average here, all right? I reserve this method for a book, like The Hour of the Star, that taps into a pre-conceived mental block, or when form or language makes it hard to get into a book but I sense it must be worth reading because other above-average people keep going on about it.
2. I found a used envelope.
This is by design an unserious process, but I’m serious about this part. A beautiful notebook or even a clean, blank page creates too high of expectations. I need the most useless scrap of paper I can manage. In this case, I stuck a pink envelope from an overdue water bill (apologies City of Tucson—payment on the way!) into the book. Library checkout receipts also work— in these situtations borrowing the book from the library rather than buying it contributes to keeping the stakes low.
I chose a fun pen though. I am entitled to some pleasure, however this turns out.
3. I set aside enough time to read up to 30 pages.
I also gave myself explicit permission to read less. I began The Hour of the Star on a Wednesday lunch hour I’d have otherwise spent with a handful of almonds, deleting vendor emails. I wouldn’t start a book like this when I’ve got a whole afternoon to while away, or right before bed. I want to be uninterrupted, yet not too excited about what else I could be doing at the time.
4. I skipped the intro.
Does the book have a foreword or introduction by someone fancy? Do not pass go, do not collect $200. I resisted the temptation to read any pages with Roman numerals at the outset. They’re there to tell me why the book’s important, allude to its greater meaning, contextualize it within the author’s oeuvre, creating pressure to get it right. Yes there’s a place for the intro, but it’s in jail for now.
This reminds me I forgot to mention step 0. Before choosing this book, I did Google “Where to start Lispector?” and turned up this skimmable gem from Moser who recommends starting with The Hour of the Star. Unless you don’t like it. Then pick something else. I think that’s good advice, if you want to reckon with a challenging author: unless you don’t like it, start with their last work.
5. I scribbled 1-2 words and the page number of anything I liked.
A quick scribble to capture anything I find appealing in the moment anchors my attention like breath can do in a certain kind of meditation. It offers just enough focus to keep the mind open. I move intuitively, trying to capture just a single word or two, staying low on the ladder of abstraction and in the “flow” of reading.
It turns out the The Hour of the Star contains a lot of stops and starts. The narrator, Rodrigo S.M., introduces himself as a middling writer. He provides quite a bit of philosophical preamble to the story and discusses the sources of his writerly procrastination. These 30 pages feel disjointed and odd— but the point of Scrappy Notes is not to focus on what’s distracting or hard about getting into the book. Instead, I try to immediately let go of anything that offers resistance and lean into whatever is working on me.
The photo above of the envelope from my initial reading of The Hour of the Star includes: Titles = 13!, Simplicity/effort, GRASS, HORSE, PAYDAY, HORSE, CAT (fried) as examples. As you can see, scribble is the important word here. I let myself write in all caps, like a child.
You might also notice if you look at the photo a few exceptions to this 2-word rule. I scratched down a full sentence: “On Sundays, she got up early to have more time to do nothing.” It sood out for its tragi-comic feel. There are no hard or fast rules— but with Scrappy Notes I don’t spend time copying out full quotes perfectly. I note what I enjoy and keep flowing.
When I got to page 30, I had a few minutes left in my break and found I wanted to keep going. One more flip of the page, I thought. It was Wednesday, May 7 a date that appears in the last part of page 33, exactly where I resolved to end my session.
Do you ever take pictures of sentences from a book? I don’t usually, but maybe I will start an album.
Before getting back to work, I quickly read over my scrappy notes and thought about else intriguing I remembered. I had noticed this pattern, the word (Explosion) inserted in various paragraphs like the one in the photo above. And I remembered an image, Rodrigo summing up the life of his protagonist with, “What a thin slice of watermelon!” I wrote the key words, without page numbers, on my list of memorable images.
6. I made a conscious decision to finish the book.
A list of 12 intriguing things within 33 pages is a good sign. At the same time, though almost halfway through I still wasn’t used to the style of the narrator. He infringes upon the story of his main character, Macabéa, a typist and orphan transplanted from northeastern Brazil to Rio de Janeiro. He contradicts himself repeatedly as he fortells her doom.
I more or less subscribe to the Nancy Pearl Rule of 50 for giving up on a book (when a librarian gets her own action figure, you pay attention!). But when I’m in Scrappy Notes mode, there are no such commitments. Continuing always has to be a deliberate choice.
I was enjoying the striking images and intrigued by the list of 13 possible titles at the beginning. The fun synchronicity of the May 7 date of my reading and the date of the main character’s awakening sealed my decision to stick with the book.
7. I used my Scrappy Notes as a reading guide.
The Scrappy Notes method is about trusting my instincts as a reader, knowing from experience that the beginning of the book is where the writer offers me the touchstones I’ll need to navigate it, especially if they’re unreliable and shifting like in The Hour of the Star.
My list of 12 notes would be my map for teaching myself how to read this challenging book on its own terms and enjoy it along the way. But relying on a map is what tourists do. Did I want to feel like a tourist for the rest of the book? Walking back through what I’d already read to get more familiar is an option I like to consider at this stage.
There’s no wrong answer. With a longer book, or a more propulsive plot line emerging in the beginning, I might have chosen differently. In this case, I decided spending less than an hour to retrace my steps before moving forward would be time well spent.
This time, I picked a time when I’d have a couple of hours to read if I wanted to and I reviewed my map so I could decide where I wanted to put my attention.
The list of 13 potential titles stood out as a unique landmark. As I reviewed them I felt like I had encountered similar language in the 33 pages I’d already read, so I copied them onto a legal pad so I could refer to them as I went along.
As I re-read, I noted page numbers where I encountered similar language to keep my bearings. I also kept an eye out for the context for the images I’d captured in my first back-of-the-envelope read through, to see what they might have to show me about this world. When I came across them, I’d spend a little more time exploring their context.
I’ll focus on the HORSE as an example of what I found but there are a lot of patterns one could choose instead, anything related to time or stars (explosion!) being most obvious.
Warning: if you want to discover this book entirely on your own, you have enough information already. The rest of this post will not reveal spoilers per se, but it may take away some of the thrill of unlocking your own unique experience of it, like relying too heavily on TripAdvisor for recommendations in a new place can do.
The original image on page 23 caught my attention from the narrator’s point of view: “When I see my horse free and running through the field—I feel like leaning my face against his vigorous and velvety neck and telling him the story of my life.” This time through, I noticed that paragraph starts with, “Anyway. I’m getting used to it but I still can’t get a grip,” which seems like a non-sequitor from the prior paragraph describing Macabéa’s hunger so strong that before falling asleep that she’d “chew paper into a pulp and swallow.”
The images draw a contrast between the narrator’s life of open fields and horse ownership and Macabéa’s cramped and starving existence, the dismissive “anyway” and centering of his own life story revealing his disregard for her suffering.
But what to make of “getting used to it” and “getting a grip”? Facts are the thing we get a grip on. An Account of the Preceding Facts was one of the potential titles on the list of 13, and on my legal pad I had noted a reference to that on page 19. Flipping back to it, I traced the thread of the narrator’s thought: “There are a few facts to relate and I myself still don’t know what I am informing on”— the narrator is still getting comfortable with this story himself, still trying to figure out what exactly he’s doing here. No wonder I am, too.
And two pages later, a reference I missed initially continues that thought: “The things that can be defined are starting to fatigue me a bit. I prefer the truth that is in the foreboding.” The narrator is getting used to is the tiresomeness of the facts of Macabéa’s story. Now I feel I am getting used to it, too. I am getting a grip: the contrast between Maca’s life constrained by its grim facts and the narrator’s poverty in truly caring even as he purports “I alone love her,” is one of the things the novella is capital-A About.
Then I noticed something else about context for Rodrigo’s horse running in the field to feed my interpretation. “My God! I get along better with animals than with people,” he writes. Oh Rodrigo, you sad sack.
When I came again to the second reference to a horse in my scrappy notes, it’s significance made more sense. Macabéa passes her free time listening a program called Clock Radio, which intersperses regular time checks with observations of facts. The program is Maca’s only way of knowing things, but the facts are useless for improving her situation, for example “She’d also heard that the only animal that does not mate with its offspring is the horse.” While Macabéa dwells in a world of crude facts, knowing little, the narrator waxes poetic. He knows more but is void of truly caring about any of it.
This unlocked The Hour of the Star for me. I read the rest in one sitting, able to now appreciate the style and contradictions as the key to the power of this tiny book.
When the horse reappeared again twice, as an image in the finale to Maca’s story, I felt astounded to realize I’d fallen for Rodrigo’s (and Lispector’s) scheme exactly as designed.
8. Time to nerd out
This is a bonus step, when a work surprises me and I get really into it like I am now into The Hour of the Star. I read the Introduction and the Translator’s Afterword. I Googled “interview Clarice Lispector,” turning up a previously unpublished Moser featured in the New Yorker last year.
And yes— a horse appears in that interview, too.
And there you have it:
A quick-and-dirty approach to using embarassingly low expectations to trick myself into reading smarter and enjoying it at the same time. You earned yourself a drink.
If you’ve read it, what images in The Hour of the Star stood out to you and how did you make sense of the book? If you’ve also been intimdated by Lispector or another author, does this approach make you feel like you could “get” one of their books after all?
More to Enjoy
I published the second installment of the BookStack Directory. Too long for email, but click on through to discover certified book industry pros who share their literary leanings for free:
If you missed my conversation with author Sarah Tomlinson, I’ve added the recording to the related post, for paid subscribers. It was great fun and I hope more of you will be able to join me live for the next author conversation (TBD).
I write notes down on my phone or in a notebook but its not cutting it with Lispector. She is a wild one and honestly if everyone didn't rave about it I might have chucked the thing right out of the window already. I'm going to try and let go a little like your process
Love this Abra. For years I tried to keep notes but I kept losing them! In the past year I have started using sticky tabs (for books I own) and even underlining or writing notes in the margins! The old me would never have behaved in such a manner but I am enjoying the freedom of marginalia.
I always enjoy seeing others methods of annotation so this is great. Thank you.