Too Much of Life: The Complete Crônicas

by Clarice Lispector, Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)

Reunião definitiva da extensa produção de Clarice Lispector para jornais, Todas as crônicas apresenta pela primeira vez em volume único toda a obra cronística da autora de a hora da estrela. A coletânea traz as colaborações de Clarice para veículos como Jornal do Brasil, Última hora e revista Senhor, incluindo 120 textos inéditos em livro, além das crônicas anteriormente publicadas nas coletâneas a descoberta do mundo e Para não esquecer. Todas as Crônicas permite uma apreciação completa da atividade da autora como cronista. A obra está dividida em três a primeira corresponde ao período do Jornal do Brasil, contendo material que não havia sido publicado na coletânea a Descoberta do Mundo; a segunda engloba as colaborações com outros veículos de imprensa, muitas delas inéditas em livro; a terceira recupera esparsos do livro Não esquecer. A organização da coletânea ficou a cargo do editor Pedro Karp Vasquez, a partir de pesquisa textual de Larissa Vaz. O livro traz ainda prefácio assinado pela escritora Marina Colasanti.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Classics, Memoir, Short Stories, Literature, Brazil

754 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 2018

About the author

Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist. Born to a Jewish family in Podolia in Western Ukraine, she was brought to Brazil as an infant, amidst the disasters engulfing her native land following the First World War.

She grew up in northeastern Brazil, where her mother died when she was nine. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro when she was in her teens. While in law school in Rio she began publishing her first journalistic work and short stories, catapulting to fame at age 23 with the publication of her first novel, 'Near to the Wild Heart' (Perto do Coração Selvagem), written as an interior monologue in a style and language that was considered revolutionary in Brazil.

She left Brazil in 1944, following her marriage to a Brazilian diplomat, and spent the next decade and a half in Europe and the United States. Upon return to Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she began producing her most famous works, including the stories of Family Ties (Laços de Família), the great mystic novel The Passion According to G.H. (A Paixão Segundo G.H.), and the novel many consider to be her masterpiece, Água Viva. Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her life in frequent pain, steadily writing and publishing novels and stories until her premature death in 1977.

She has been the subject of numerous books and references to her, and her works are common in Brazilian literature and music. Several of her works have been turned into films, one being 'Hour of the Star' and she was the subject of a recent biography, Why This World, by Benjamin Moser.

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading this for about five months - and I'm so going to miss Clarice's voice on my commute.

This complete collection of her newspapers columns is glorious: there's just so much life here as Lispector talks - chats in writing - about everything: from literary discussions to dating advice (I mean, dating advice from Clarice - I'm so in!), scenes with her sons (who sound adorable) to her latest haircut; meetings with friends and fans to solitary contemplation of beauty or tragedy. Brimming over with everything from wit to rage to low moments, it's impossible to get bored and this lovely chunky book is like a textual friend who makes you laugh, shares her sadness with you, talks smart and always surprises you.

The individual pieces vary enormously in subject matter, tone and length - some are just a few sentences long, others full column length. But what they share is a vibrant, curious, constantly interested engagement with whatever Lispector comes across that week, in her head or in life.

Having finished this I'm putting the paperback (beautifully produced with French flaps - thank you, Penguin) back on my bedside table to re-read at leisure before sleep. Undoubtedly one of my books of the year.

[Ashley (permanent [?] semi-hiatus)]

screamed because i finished my last supplementary essay and i'm going to write my final exam tomorrow and this came in the mail today so when i'm done writing i get to read 700+ pages of clarice lispector's thoughts AND i'll have a lot of time to read it because my second semester should be pretty easy HELLO i am going to ascend

-

once i get my hands on my beautiful penguin modern classic copy that i ordered from blackwells prepare to be utterly sick of me

[Katia N]

If I am, I am but lightly.
(Sam Beckett)


I’ve got this little personal literary pantheon: Borges, Beckett, Bachmann, Murnane and Clarice. As soon as i finish the last page of any of their text, i am guaranteed to go back to the first and start it all over. In one of these cronicas, Clarice quotes someone’s experience of reading her letter:

On a second reading, I began to familiarize myself with certain passages, just as we get to know the main streets of a town once we’ve walked around it a few times. And so I strolled through the letter again, carefully avoiding the main streets. I peered around the corners of side streets. I walked down them. And I began to enjoy the town once I was brave enough to venture into its cul-de-sacs and forbidden zones.

This is a great metaphor for my encounters with the works of literature i know i will love. I need to go through the streets, passages and labyrinths of these ‘towns’ more than once. I need to struggle to find my way; i need to be puzzled and even frustrated sometimes. However it is often even more enigmatic with Clarice’s novels and short stories. They are simply irreducible. The feeling i experience reading them fail to be expressed in a language, even on a level of a verbal thought inside my own head. It is just an irreducible unique experience. Try to describe a colour of green to a person who was blind from birth and never has had an opportunity to see green? This is a similar struggle to the one i face when i try to write about The Passion According to G.H., for example. One should experience that novel. I have not found a way yet of taking about it.

These cronicas is a different matter though. She has started writing them as a weekly column in Jornal do Brasil to earn some cash and never took it very seriously. But gradually it seems, she ended reconciling herself to the idea of this different, much lighter way of self expression and communicating with the wider public. In this column, she has often reflected about writing a column and her feelings were always a little mixed:

Once I know I am writing for a newspaper which is widely read, unlike a book which will only be read by those who are interested in literature, then my style automatically changes. Not that I mind changing my style. On the contrary. But I should prefer any changes to be more radical and deeply felt so that they might be reflected in the writing. But to change one's style for a weekly column? To write in a lighter vein simply to please the general reader? To be entertaining and provide a few moments of distraction? And there is another thing: when I write a book I try to communicate in depth with myself and with my reader. Here in the newspaper, I simply chat to my readers and I am delighted to find that they are satisfied. But to be honest, I am far from satisfied.

This ‘chatting’ mood is indeed very different from her novels. However whatever she talks about, this ‘chat’ is never shallow. Reading these pieces so many years since they were written is still fresh and delightful experience. I imagine myself waking up every Saturday, grabbing a newspaper still smelling of fresh print, walking to a nearest cafe with a view of a turquoise ocean and discovering with a cup of bitter steaming coffee what is Clarice up to this week. I imagine the anticipation...Ok: I am late for fifty years. I do not have a newspaper or an ocean nearby, i’ve got a thick book instead. But her voice is still as vibrant and alive as ever. I struggle to pace my reading and not to ‘binge’ on those pieces as each of them deserves being savoured.

From this column I’ve learned a lot about Clarice as a woman with her insomnia, her daily chores and regrets, but even more so - about her as a person, a beautiful human being deeply belonging to this world in its broadest sense. She knew this risk:

I write at typewriter speed and, when I look at what I’ve written, I realize that I’ve revealed a certain part of me. I think that even if I wrote about the problem of coffee overproduction in Brazil, I would still end up being personal. Am I on the verge of becoming popular? What a frightening thought. I’m going to see what I can do, if I can do anything. I’m consoled by something Fernando Pessoa wrote, and which I read somewhere: Speaking is the simplest way of making ourselves unknown.

Pessoa is partially right of course as reading her novels throws you straight into the unknown depth; while the chatter of these cronicas, even the most sincere one, masks as much as it reveals. Still these little conversations with her are never a waisted opportunity.

She writes about her childhood, budding of her vocation, her friends and family. She has developed a very special relationship with children, pets and animals. She is convinced they are much closer to whatever should be called ‘reality’. She writes about social issues (though always with awareness of her perceived limitations); she communicates with her readers and uses this column to interview other prominent personalities like Pablo Neruda, a former captain of Brazil football team and alike. In this respect this format has reminded me a type of a podcast. And she would be a wonderful tactful, but impactful host. And of course she talks a lot about how she writes. It is still a mystery for her how it happens to her, what is behind it.

However, she does not talk of her work in terms of any particular novels here. I found it very refreshing: as i’ve mentioned her work needs to be experienced, not explained. Personally i not big fan of any author trying to ‘explain’ her individual piece of writing. She mentioned Julio Cortazar saying something that working on a novel is like shooting with a bow and an arrow: put as much effort as you can, release the arrow and then you can relax and drink with friends. At this point, you do not have a control over that arrow anymore. It would either hit the target or it would not. I find this approach very gratifying for both the writers and the readers.

The problem i’ve had with writing about this book was different with my usual Lispector induced muteness. Here, i just wanted to let her talk and shut up myself. I've done it here.

The most poignant pieces of her cronicas are just her momentarily existence where a moment meets infinity, space-time:

The sense of beauty is our link with infinity. It is our way of connecting to it. There are moments, albeit rare, when the existence of infinity is so present that we experience a kind of vertigo. Infinity is a coming into being. It is always the present, indivisible by time. Infinity is time. Time and space are the same thing.

These type of moments. She might try to ‘explain’ a sense of the deepest unity with another human being, something maybe even bigger than what we call ‘love’: ‘i ceased to exist while still continue to be’. She was momentarily ‘the other person and the other person was me’. It is a very rare feeling, but i know this feeling.

She would described how she was stealing roses as a child from someone’s else garden. How she was mesmerised by the flower to the point of wanting to ‘possess’ it. Roses in general seem to be a constant feature of her life. Any flowers are spiritual alive creatures in her eyes. An orchid would be ‘a magnificent woman, this cannot be denied. It can also not be denied that it is noble; it is an epiphyte, that is, it is born on another plant without, however, taking nutrition from it.’ Jasmine is very different:

Night-blooming Jasmine—Has the scent of the full moon. It is phantasmagorical and a little frightening: it only comes out at night, with its intoxicating smell, mysterious, silent. It belongs also to deserted street corners and darkness, to the gardens of houses with their lights turned off and their shutters closed. It is dangerous.

Jasmine scent is so special. It changes depending how close you are, mysterious and silent indeed. In late May it lets me know that a new summer has again started. With jasmine she has also reminded me of Borges when he experienced an eternity falling through the time in his essay A New Refutation of Time. He stood at a deserted street at night and suddenly ‘felt for a signing bird a small bird-size of affection’; ’easy thought ‘I am somewhere in the 1800’ ceased to be a few careless words and become profoundly real’. He wrote about a smell of honeysuckle, but my imagination adds a jasmine’s scent to his slightly scary disorientating sense of timelessness.

She sketches the images from her travels: Switzerland, Africa, Italy and London of course. ‘People drink disgusting coffee, in large cups, but the coffee steams. Steams like the whole island, whose blackened bridges loom out of an almost constant fog. The fog is exhaled by the paving stones and envelops the bridges.’ The bridges are not blackened anymore, coffee scene is much more varied, but the prevalence of large steaming cups on a go in a fog is still here. As well as an impression that ’in the streets, people wear clothes so badly made that they end up becoming stylish.’

A lot of artists tried to paint or photograph her. I loved the image she has created of one of less successful attempts. A sculptor didn’t like the head he made of her. He ended up throwing it in the coal outside her house: ‘I only forgave him because it looked rather pretty, that head half-cracked open among broken lumps of coal. Then heavy snow fell (in silent flakes), and the result was black coal, pure white snow and a cracked head.’ She thanked him for that image. I can see why. She has got such a light touch and gentle sense of humour in these scenes. And she is never afraid to laugh at herself.

Insomnia is another mystery accompanying her. It is wondrous how she is embracing this state and her ability to place her readers right inside of the moment:

It is three in the morning. I am having one of my bouts of insomnia. I made myself some coffee since sleep seem unlikely. I put too much sugar and the coffee tested horrid. I can hear the waves beating against teh shore. Tonight is different because as you asleep I am talking to you. I break off, go out on the terrace, look down on to the street, the long, narrow strip of beach and the sea. It is dark. I think of my favourite people: they are all asleep or out enjoying themselves. Some of them even might be drinking whisky. My coffee tastes even sweeter and becomes quite undrinkable. The night turns darker. I am sinking into painless melancholy. It is not bad. Only to be expected. Tomorrow i might experience some happiness, not exactly ecstasy, just happiness. And that is not bad either.

Whatever she is talking about be it a moment of early swim, moments of insomnia with coffee, it is always this unbearable lightness of being with her. (I tried but could not avoid Kundera’s phrase.), a sheer trembling existence. Even death is not denied but desired as a mysterious transition rather than a sad fact of life.

Some of her memories feel contagious somehow:

Until day began to break, almost very slowly to break. No one was tired, although it was high time that we were. We walked. And on the street corners of Paris, San Tiago discovered the first flower sellers. Impossible to say how many roses he bought me. I know that they were too many for me to hold, and roses spilled onto the ground as I went. If I’ve ever been pretty, it was on that early Paris morning with roses overflowing from my full-to-the-brim arms. And a man who heaps a woman with flowers like that is not coldly lucid.

She has written this in a such simple way. But I am transported into that moment. Moreover I feel as if it was me, not her. Is it a bad feeling?

Another aspect of this chronicles are social issues. She acknowledges how conflicted she feels about using her writing for this purpose:

‘Long before I felt “art,” I felt the profound beauty of struggle. But I have a simpleminded way of approaching social issues: I wanted to “do” something, as if writing were not doing.’ (It is true as a teenager she went to study law because she wanted to reform penal system in Brazil.) ‘What I’m incapable of doing is using writing for that purpose, however much that inability pains and humiliates me. The problem of justice is for me so obvious and basic a sentiment that I cannot feel surprised by it—and if I’m not surprised I cannot write. Also because for me writing is seeking. The sense of justice was never something I needed to search for, never something I discovered, and what shocks me is that this isn’t equally obvious to everyone.’

This passage distills two wider themes she constantly comes back to: her attitude towards social issues (she is shocked that the sense of justice is not an obvious value for everyone) and her approach to her own writing as a form of art (for her - more a form of existence really). She needs to be surprised in her ‘seeking’ while she writes. That is the main purpose why she does it at all. And she does not find the issues of social justice inspirational in this sense. As a reader, i can totally relate to this conflict. There is a place of fiction making social issues its main focus. But for me personally the art aspect would always be dominant. Maybe partly it is because of sheer prevalence of social realism works being published in the last two centuries that they crowd-out everything else and now AI sameness. I’d prefer a sharp journalism to a didactic fiction. But it seems a law of supply in demand is in works in here and not in my favour.

In any case in the cronicas, Clarice does not shy away from the social issues. She does not spend a lot of words on this, but her takes are sharp and prescient even now. She talks about having maids: ‘call them servants—is an offence against humanity’. There is inevitably a touch of hypocrisy in this but it seems pretty innocent. She is much more sharp in terms of protection of the rights of indigenous population: ‘The Indians were sacrificed to the large farms and plantations or the big cities...If we continue to be the object of other countries’ ambitions, we Brazilians will continue to be the poor wretches we are and will continue to kill not only Indians, but ourselves too.’ She is unapologetic about the causes of prostitution: ‘It is clearly a social problem. Behind this lies another deeper problem: many men prefer to pay precisely because they want to avoid feelings or affection, precisely because they want to humiliate and be humiliated.’ She does not want to ‘forgive’ Virginia Woolf for her suicide: ‘Our horrible duty is to keep going to the end. And not to rely on anyone. Live your own reality. Discover the truth. And in order to suffer less, numb yourself slightly.’

She is categorical that in Brazil of the early 70s ‘it’s practically impossible to live on what you earn from books. The solution is to become a journalist and have another job on the side: by accumulating side jobs you can cobble together the money you need to live reasonably well, financially speaking.’ Her take on artificial intelligence is even more prescient:

Man was programmed by God to solve problems, but he has started to create them rather than solve them. The machine was programmed by man to solve the problems that he created. But the machine is actually beginning to create problems that disorient and swallow up man. The machine continues to grow. It’s huge now. To the point where man ceases to be a human organism.

It is strange to write this piece on a day when some short story that seems to be written by an AI has won a competition and has been published by Granta magazine without being aware who was the author. However, the fact Clarice has written this almost fifty years ago gives me hope: a man still pretty much a human organism. Human authenticity might be harder to find in future, but it would be still valued, maybe even higher.

Many of her ideas were so passionate and engaging that they made me silently argue with her while admiring her conviction that i definitely lack. An example is in the first comment.

I wish I would devote more of it discussing Clarice’s way writing here. It is the area that fascinates me the most. It is of course more central to her novels than the crónicas. But she talks about it here as well. She rejects many conventions. She does not think a writer needs to be an intellectual or even well read at all. She ‘shamelessly confesses she has no great learning and still to read the great works of civilization.’ There were periods when she read ‘only detective stories’. Interestingly both Wittgenstein and Gertrude Stein were similar to her in this respect.

I only write when things come to me spontaneously and I genuinely feel like writing. Does that make me an amateur? So how would I describe myself? I am someone with a heart which often intuits things, I am a person who has tried to express in words a world which is both unintelligible and impalpable. Above all, a person whose heart beats ever so gently with joy whenever it succeeds in expressing something about human or animal life.

It seems writing for her is the only available tool to her consciousness. With her language, she getting closer and closer, but never close enough. In this respect she experiences something similar to Beckettian ‘failure’. But her ‘failure’ is less desperate, more promising, more mysterious. I am still looking forward to write about her novels one day and spend more time talking about this. She is a phenomenon ‘using a word as bait, with the word fishing not just for words, but more for what lies between the lines. When this nonword nibbles the bait, something is written.’

I leave the pages of these crónicas feeling ‘lighter’ and knowing that I am coming back soon. They exert irresistible pull. I am not even sure I will put the book back on a shelf. I do not know the other writer with such a profound lightness inside, profound freedom. And I do not know other writer who get so close to unsayable.

When you cannot find the words to express what is actually there, you have the impression of being blind. At such moments one stops for a coffee. Not that coffee helps one to find the right word but it represents a wild gesture of liberation, a gratuitous act which brings freedom.

.

[Leilaniiii]

If I read this I’ll forever be at peace I just know it.

[Bagus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clarice Lispector is mainly known for her fiction. But being a single mother of two, she used to earn extra income by writing a weekly column (in Brazilian Portuguese, crônica) for the Rio-based newspaper Jornal do Brasil since 1967. Around 80 per cent of this volume contains Clarice’s crônicas in the Jornal do Brasil between 1967 and 1973, while the remaining contains some other crônicas published sporadically in various magazines and newspapers. Clarice’s crônicas provides a great introduction to readers unfamiliar with this form of literary expression. In Brazil, crônicas have a unique place in newspapers where writers would communicate with their readers about daily topics (for Clarice, her crônicas appeared every Saturday).

The crônicas produced by Clarice possess some unique characteristics, albeit she admits in some of her crônicas that she didn’t enjoy writing these columns and mainly did it to supplement her meagre income as a writer in Brazil (as she describes it back then, only two Brazilian authors were capable of living entirely from their writing, namely Erico Verissimo and Jorge Amado). Having to raise her two children by herself following her divorce from a Brazilian diplomat, was a practical decision on her part. Yet Clarice’s crônicas are far from substandard. They’re witty, full of surprise and full of reflections on the nature of life. There are frequent times when conversations she had with her children would appear in her crônicas, reflecting the informal nature and the relaxed attitude of how she addressed the readers.

Clarice is also fond of addressing her readers directly in her crônicas. There were instances when she would admit to having no inspiration of some sort and would just fill her column with responses to letters she received from her readers. Some other time, it was another cronista (the term for people who write crônicas) in Jornal do Brasil, such as the case of Armando Nogueira, who became her target. Armando challenged her to write a crônica about football, while he wrote one “about life”, a challenge they both met. Her crônicas also at times feature various taxi drivers with whom she conversed, when once a taxi driver decided to give her “a life lesson” by telling his life story of leaving his previous job as a beggar and climbing up the ladder to finally own a taxi of his own.

It is also apparent that Clarice never eyed a publication of her collected crônicas since as her son later admits at the afterword of this volume, there are instances when recycled crônicas would appear in later years between 1967 and 1973 in deadline-induced panic, as Clarice believed that her readers would not be aware of this practice. The practice more or less shows the nature of authorship at that time, with people having no way to find out duplication of texts through search engines. Writers at that time also needed in one way or another make duplicates of their writings, since they had no way to rewrite them if they got lost. There was no laptop or cloud computing back then. In 1966, Clarice experienced a severe burning of her hands and legs after she fell asleep with a lit cigarette. Her right hand almost got amputated and she had to rely on her nurse to deliver her crônicas to the newspaper.

More than anything else, Clarice’s crônicas are a celebration of life with its multitudes. Clarice was the kind of person who could see the beauty of life even in the unlikeliest circumstances, in situations that we’d rather avoid such as talking to some taxi drivers. And for readers who have been acquainted with Clarice’s works, the crônicas also provide intimate information on Clarice’s personality and how she viewed her literary works spanning several years of her most productive period as a journalist.

Second reading (29/03/2025):
I spent 3.5 months on my second reading of this book, and now I feel as though I've just lost a friend who had been accompanying my days through thick and thin. I feel like I can appreciate Clarice's columns now, and see why she loved life just as much bit too much.

[Mari Amaral · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the Chronicles of Clarice Lispector" is a volume that presents in a single edition the work in chronological order that was signed by Clarice when she worked for Jornal Brasil (between 1967 and 1973). Ideal for those who still don't know her or are afraid of her writing, or for those who already know and want to know more about the author's opinions on the most diverse subjects.

Don't be alarmed by the size of the book, more than 700 pages, it is a delight to read the intimate thoughts of a writer who is practically an entity within Brazilian literature. In 2017, in a similar edition, I read "All the short stories" it took me almost a year to read it, because Clarice is Clarice and why the hurry? Unlike the short stories, which needed more time for reflection, the book of chronicles flowed very well, it's still Clarice, but a little more accessible.

Officially we do not have a biography of the author, but this book is the closest we will know about her daily life, political positions, musical and literary tastes. We also see writings about the relationship between the author and her children, her internal revolution, the search for the self... In the preface we already have a glimpse of how special the book will be.

Marina Colasanti, another extraordinary writer, reveals how she met Clarice, as she worked at the newspaper and would be responsible for receiving her texts. Marina tells us about Clarice's requests: Not to lose the texts, as they were unique, without copies.What a responsibility!! She also asked her not to change anything in her texts, not even the commas.

The book was organized by Pedro Karp Vasquez and Larissa Vaz did the textual research. The work is divided into three parts: the first presents the chronicles published in the "Jornal do Brasil" and some texts that did not appear in the collection "The discovery of the world". The second part brings together texts published in other media outlets, many unpublished in book form. The third part retrieves some texts from the book "Not to forget". In summary, this work is a definitive collection of Clarice Lispector's production of chronicles for newspapers and magazines and we received 120 unpublished texts as a gift.

@thereader2408

[Luka · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book literally changed my life! I’ve missed having Clarices sharp witt and incredibly unique voice whispering in my ear during the time it took me to read this book.I started to feel lonely without this book by my side and i fully cherish the relationship she has created with her readers. Reading the way she understands life and explores the human condition throughout a decade of ‘chronicas’ has changed my perspective on the world and my ability to look deeper into what makes things tick. Literally the GOAT 🐐 Everyone should read this book I know I will be rereading this for the rest of eternity!

[Anastasiia Mozghova · Rating 5 out of 5]

so much daily joy and pain in one person!

[Geri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Наскоро някой ме попита как се справям със самотата. Снощи, отваряйки за пореден път на случайна страница от книгата, разбрах. Справям се, четейки дневници и писма на близки на сърцето ми автори. И ето - понякога просто имам нужда от компанията на Кларис Лиспектор. Който е имал удоволствието да чете “Чуждестранният легион”, която излезе на български преди няколко години, знае колко наситено, гъсто, дълбоко и първично е писането й. Тя дълбае навътре в личната митология и прави дисекция на съществуването; интерпретира света през Себе си. Поради тази първичност и свобода в писането й, исках да разследвам отвъд и навътре нейните лични разсъждения за битовото… За съботите. За балконите. За мисленето като игра на ума. :) От 1967 г. до 1977 г. Кларис пише статии за съботното издание на Jornal do Brasil. Вече известна с експерименталните, за времето си, книги - интроспективни и метафизични, в своите crônicas тя дисектира ежедневото и отваря врата съм собствения си живот. Тези текстове са преведени и публикувани в над 700 страници на английски със заглавието Too much of life през 2022 г. от Penguin Classics. Защо това заглавие ли?
“Споделих на приятелка:
Животът винаги е изисквал твърде много от мен.
А тя отговори:
Не забравяй, че ти винаги си изисквала твърде много от живота.
Да.”

"Everything about the place reminded him of Clarita — the name of the dead girl, which startled me because it was so like my own name, making me feel at once both dead and loved."

Playing in Thinking
Perhaps because I'm in the habit of naming things or out of a sudden desire to have an unblotted exercise book as I did at school, I wrote: list of. And it was then that the desire to be frivolous arrived. That is the first sign of the animus brincandi if you take up thinking as a hobby. And so I blithely wrote: list of feelings.
Then I began to draw up a brief list of feelings for which I have no name.

Spring Suite Swiss-style
The worst thing is this wide-awake brightness, the streetlights of Berne buzzing with mosquitoes. And how we walk and walk. Dust on my sandals, no destination. Ah, at last, the Cathedral, shelter, darkness. But the Cathedral is warm and wide open. Full of mosquitoes.

In Favor of Fear
Yes, but having a slightly skewed heart has its advantages: it means I have a good nose for things, a sense of which way the wind is blowing, wisdom, keen instincts, experience of deaths, an ability to read the future in a pool of water, as well as being happily maladapted, for maladaptation, I find, has proved to be my wellspring. [...] And I know with my heart that, having for centuries always avoided the spot-light, lurks in the shadows to the left—I know that one is a stranger to oneself, but his very innocence means that he is also natural. No, my oblique heart is absolutely right, even if the facts openly contradict me. A paseito means certain death, and the victim's horrified face gazes up, glassy-eyed, at the full, full-of-itself moon.

[prashant · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5. gotta love her

[Mandel]

This volume contains all the columns Lispector wrote for the Jornal do Brasil from 1967-73, as well as various columns she contributed to other publications during and after her stint there. The genre of the crônica is unique to Lusophone literature - informal essays written as daily or weekly columns for newspapers and other periodicals. This format serves as a perfect vehicle for Lispector's unique voice. Her writing is very intimate, as if it were written directly to and for the reader. She recounts conversations with famous writers, musicians, athletes, actors, and artists, but also taxi drivers, her young sons, her friends, and random strangers she's encountered. Or, she responds to correspondence, or reflects in a philosophical or social-critical vein about Brazilian life, life in general, love, suffering, and God. Or, she composes ecstatic bits of what we'd now call flash fiction. Or, she writes about her most intimate feelings and her daily experiences, as if writing an entry in a diary.

And on, and on, and on. In other words, Lispector seems to have imposed no restraints on what she would write each week, so that the hundreds of short pieces in this volume meander across a stunning range of styles, genres, and tones. The best comparison I can think of is anachronistic, but, it seems to me, apt: this is a blog avante la lettre, in which Lispector poured her creativity each week for six years until she was summarily fired from the Jornal do Brasil after an influx of Arab investment in the newspaper led to the firing of all of its Jewish writers and staff.

It's remarkable to me how versatile Lispector was. Anyone who has read difficult, mystical novels like The Passion According to G.H. and Agua Viva will find here a very different mode of writing - accessible, charming, highly personal, and funny. And yet, Lispector's voice shines through all of the formal differences among these texts - a testament to just how distinctive that voice really is.

[Carolina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um livro que recebi de prenda de Natal (vejam lá, só agora cheguei a ele, haha) e que me encantou do início ao fim.

Até agora, ainda só li um romance de Clarice Lispector, que me surpreendeu pela sua clareza na linguagem e análise do personagem. Nestas crónicas, encontramos uma Clarice mais próxima e mais familiar, que nos aborda como uma amiga a quem se convida para tomar um café.

Conta-nos histórias da sua vida e das coisas que lhe foram acontecendo, misturando tudo isso com uma análise profunda e emocional sobre o próprio acto de escrever. Assim, para uma pessoa que escreve este livro é uma bíblia de inspiração, perdida em frases soltas dentro das curtas narrativas que Clarice nos conta .

Escrito com uma perfeição técnica arrasadora, este conjunto de crónicas acompanha a própria história do Brasil moderno. Recomendo vivamente.

[Ruby H · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish Goodreads had a top four like Letterboxd so I could put this book at number one and recommend Lispector to everyone because this shifted my life on an atomic level and turned me inside out and back again

[Živa · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I’m absolutely livid that I don’t know the end of the story, and, I imagine, so are you.”

[Braden Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Don’t forget that you have always demanded too much of life.”

Over the span of ten years Clarice Lispector wrote in a column of a newspaper weekly cronicas—entries that blend short story narrative, philosophical reflections on quotidian life, interviews with Brazilian writers and sculptors and painters, letters, and even transcripts of phone calls from devoted readers. What one gains by reading these cronicas is access to a lighter, more readily available, Lispector. Unlike her lofty, dense, metaphysical prose found in “The Passion According to G.H.” or “Agua Viva”, here you find sentences such describing the habits of bees, buying a backup typewriter, and and pithy thoughts on psychoanalysis, the smell of the sea, knitting sweaters, table etiquette, and quantum physics.

What struck me most was Lispector’s writing about writing. She writes that “writing is a curse…a curse that saves.” Writing has something to do with learning to live with guilt, with shame, a way to take care of the world, a way of being responsible for what exists, it’s a silent communication that breaches the chasm of loneliness between two people. Writing is an act of affection, a refusing to be numbered, a return to the original biblical creative act of naming the world. And yet with full seriousness she writes, “when I’m not writing, I have absolutely no idea how to write…what do you do with that blank sheet of paper gazing calmly up at you? I know that, however baffling, there is only one answer: by writing.”

In addition to the many entries recording her insomniac coffee-drinking late-night reflections on parenting and Brazilian politics, I enjoyed in particular Lispector’s thoughts on turtles, which happen to be my favourite animal. “What use, dear God, is a turtle?” she wonders. She queries: “how do you understand a turtle? How do you understand God?” In 2013, when I lived in Northern California, I asked myself similar questions when I watched turtles every day at a creek near my house. I love that even great writers like Lispector have these same strange puzzling questions, questions that “deepen the hours”, that act as an art of the unconscious.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took a long time to finish (being almost 800 pages in length), but every minute was worth it. I am now convinced that Clarice Lispector is a great writer and that her Too Much of Life: The Complete Crônicas is a modern day classic of literary journalism. Some 80& of the pieces were written for the Jornal do Brasil and contain some of her best work from the late 1960s to the early 1970s.

As Clarice's son Paulo Gurgel Valente writes in the afterword to the Cronicas:

For me, reading Clarice was at times like watching a hummingbird in flight, its wings beating furiously, keeping itself airborne while fleetingly sipping nectar. She wrote her columns whenever inspiration struck; she didn't sit down to write simply because she had a deadline to meet....

Her Cronicas exist as a vast gold mine which one can dip into and come out crusted with treasures.

I had the book out from the library for 9 weeks and had to return it last Friday. So that I could finish the final 10% of the book, I ordered it on Kindle; so it is now part of my permanent collection. I can see myself returning to it again and again for inspiration.

Now I will have to read more of Clarice's fiction. That shapes up to be a great pleasure.

[actuallymynamesssantiago · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Soy tan misteriosa que ni yo misma me entiendo”

[roro · Rating 5 out of 5]

realising everything i’ve been reading lately is essentially a form of self-help

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection of vignettes that the Brazilian author wrote between 1967 and 1977 for ‘Jornal do Brasil’, Rio’s long-established newspaper. The vignettes were published in the Saturday morning edition. Her column is sometimes flippant, sometimes with news and information, reflecting her individuality, her life at the time, including descriptions of incidents she was involved in. Scattered throughout this book there are short comments on how she goes about writing, her writing experience, the time of day she wrote, the number of drafts she revised, even the typewriters she used!

This book provides the reader with an appreciation of who Clarice Lispector was, from her perspective. If you are interested in this author then I also recommend Benjamin Moser’s ‘Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector’.

This book was first published in English in 2022.

[Nick (11th Volume)]

I come with great regret to say that I’ve decided to place this on hold, for now. I have demanded too much of Lispector, and it has demanded too much of me. We will part ways for a while, but I shall return.

[anfal]

“life has always demanded too much of me”
“don’t forget that you have always demanded too much of life”
it is bittersweet that i finished this book. i will miss my daily dose of clarice immensely <3

[Asya · Rating 5 out of 5]

throughout my whole semester abroad this book accompanied me everywhere, spiritually. nobody can understand me more than Clarice, a Ukrainian born sagittarius woman. and to her i give thanks for this masterpiece of love, gratitude and mysticism.

[Dannie · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was probably a lot better to read while it was an actual weekly newspaper column.

overall, fun, personable, not at all like her books, some cool interviews, lots of info on brazils culture

[Natalia Hernández Moreno · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Not everything I write is fully realized, it's often only an attempt. And that is also a pleasure. Because I don't want to grasp everything. Sometimes I want only to touch. And sometimes what I touch blossoms and then other people can grasp it with both hands.”

“Literature, according to him, doesn’t bring you friends; at most it brings you a handful of friendly rivals. In literature he feels very lonely; in life he gets around a lot.”

I thought the inherent awe I was left in after The Passion According to G.H. was unrepeatable. But these crônicas make me want to crawl into Lispector’s brain. The only relevant question after devouring this volume is: did the Journal do Brasil ever realize the literary POWER BOMB they published?

[Getzemaní · Rating 5 out of 5]

Decidí empezar a leer Todas las crónicas de Clarice Lispector porque la cantante mexicana Julieta Venegas lo recomendó en un podcast literario. Es decir, Julieta Venegas recomendó iniciarse en la literaura de Clarice con las crónicas, luego pasar a los cuentos y finalmente terminar con las novelas.
La misma Clarice Lispector acepta que sus crónicas no sabe muy bien qué son; son como multiples reflexiones sobre infinidad de cosas. Yo puse especial interés cuando habla de su creación literaria, pero habla de todo, del hambre, de Dios, de los taxistas, de cómo vestirse para las citas románticas, de otros autores que le gustan o disgustan, disgregaciones metafísicas, porciones para hacer café, futbol, sus hijos, su incendio, sus perfumes, el mar, la belleza; su belleza que sobrevivió a un incendio.
Muchos de ustedes son jóvenes, pero hace años cuando una chica te gustaba leías su blog para conocer sus pensamientos y sus gustos. Lo digo porque lo leí con esa emoción, leyendo el blog de la chica que me gusta y algunas tardes me bebí cientos de páginas. La lectura fluye muy bien porque los temas que trata son interesantes.
Muchos de sus lectores le escriben a Clarice y ella responde las cartas más interesantes en su columna; una de las cosas que más le comentan es lo fácil que es leer las crónicas en contraposición con sus novelas. Yo no puedo opinar, pero sí me han dado ganas de seguir explorando el maravilloso cerebro de esta escritora. Si se le compara con Virginia Woolf creo entender de dónde viene su complejidad y es una complejidad que, en lo personal, me gusta mucho.

[tesni · Rating 4 out of 5]

so glad i managed to finish it before the year is out!! finishing it feels like a real achievement. i've read four of lispector's novels and never really been wildly fond of any of them, but i always start each one thinking "maybe this is the one i'll like." i was beginning to think she and i just can't get on, but i'm glad to have discovered the crônicas and to realise they're the works of hers for me.

[Arquivo de leituras · Rating 4 out of 5]

*4,5

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading like a few pages of this every few days for 2 years. Every passage is its own little gift.

[em · Rating 4 out of 5]

“But there is life that is to be lived intensely; there is love. There is love. That must be lived to the last drop. Without fear. It doesn’t kill.”

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating in its enigmatic yet intimate character, this collection contains Clarice's chronicles and commentary on everything from naming dogs, chasing after taxis, travelling (physically and metaphysically), watching soccer and drinking coffee, writing letters and seeing (or trying to see or trying to avoid) friends, conversing with God, conversing with her sons, smelling roses, voicing her anxieties on writing and living, to dreaming of scenarios and making scenarios out of dreams.

So perhaps for Clarice, there's always "too much of life" but never enough living to fill it. I know at least for me, it- I mean the book- is accessible and sometimes funny and somewhat comforting and always beautiful.