Weeks 2 to 4: Clarice Lispector's "Near to the Wild Heart" (1943)

Born Chaya Lispector in what is now part of Ukraine, her family fled the Anti-Semitic pogroms that were all too common during the Russian Civil War when she was still an infant, settling half a world away in Brazil. Upon arrival, they took new names, with Chaya becoming Clarice. The young girl would be especially close to her mother — sick and paralyzed from violence she'd suffered in her homeland — and would make up stories to entertain her. This pall of tragedy amidst survival would deepen when Clarice's mother passed away when she was nine, and deepen further still when her beloved father died from surgical complications in her twentieth year.

She attended prestigious schools, learning in Portuguese along with her native Hebrew and Yiddish, and became interested in literature — as well as becoming a writer herself — after reading Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf at the age of thirteen. Lispector would eventually work as a journalist and circulate among Brazil's young literary generation, while also attending law school, and in 1943 published her first novel, Perto do Coração Selvagem (its title and epigraph come from James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: "He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life"). 

It was an unmitigated success, a phenomenon described as "Hurricane Clarice," and would win her the Graça Aranha Prize for debut novels. Brazilian Poet Lêdo Ivo hailed it as "the greatest novel a woman had ever written in the Portuguese language," while also noting how foreign and un-Brazilian her prose sounded, and in the same fashion, critics would make connections between Lispector's voice and those of Joyce and Virginia Woolf, among others. One key reason for this is her prevalent use of both stream-of-consciousness narrative, as well as a preoccupation with interiority, which provide some semblance of order amidst a non-linear narrative.

Here's how we'll divide up our four classes on Near to the Wild Heart, which will have a long break in the middle:

• Wed. August 30: Benjamin Moser, "Hurricane Clarice" and Part 1, "The Father..." to "Joana's Pleasures"
• Fri. September 1: NO CLASS — You're Welcome
• Mon. September 4: NO CLASS — Labor Day
• Wed. September 6: Part 1, "... The Bath ..." to "Otávio"
• Fri. September 8: Part 2, "The Marriage" to "Lídia"
• Mon. September 11: Part 2, "The Man" to "The Journey"

And here are a few supplemental readings you might find interesting:

• Colm Toibin discusses Near to the Wild Heart and two other Lispector novels in The Irish Times: [link]
• JS Tennant reviews the novel in The Guardian: [link]
• Benjamin Moser reflects upon "The True Glamour of Clarice Lispector" in The New Yorker: [link]

If you're having trouble asking to join the Facebook group . . .

Try it again now. I've switched the settings from "secret" to "private," which will keep posts hidden but should allow you to see the group so you can request membership. As it turns out, secret groups can only be seen by people who've already been added as members. Sorry about any confusion!

Please Read: Making First Day Adjustments for the Eclipse

As you might've heard, there's going to be a pretty remarkable solar eclipse tomorrow afternoon, and while Cincinnati won't be in the path of totality, we're set to have 91% coverage of the sun at its apogee. That will be at 2:28 PM, just after our class is set to wrap up, but I'd like to try to end things by 2:00 or 2:05 at the latest so we can all witness this glorious event with ease.

We can do that if you do a few things in advance of our class meeting tomorrow:

• Read over the syllabus, book list, schedule, and the first few posts here on the blog.
• Come prepared with any questions you might have about.

I'll take a quick spin through the syllabus and book list tomorrow and set us up for Wednesday's first class on Camus, and if you've already acquainted yourself with those materials it'll go much more smoothly. I'll look forward to meeting you all tomorrow!

In the meantime, here are a few eclipse-related links:

• NASA's tips for how to safely view the eclipse: [link]
• a recent UC Magazine article on how faculty will be enjoying the eclipse: [link]
• the Cincinnati Observatory's page on the eclipse: [link]
• NPR's instructions on how to make an eclipse viewer: [link]
• another interesting NPR piece on how eclipses have changed history: [link]

Weeks 1 and 2: Albert Camus' "The Stranger" (1942)

We'll start our semester with our first Nobel Laureate: novelist, philosopher, journalist, and playwright Albert Camus (1913–1960). Born in French Algeria to French and Spanish parents, his early years were marked by poverty, which fostered a sense of sympathy to the plight of the region's colonial subjects. Throughout his life he'd advocate for greater equality for native Algerians though he stopped short of supporting total independence during the Algerian War of the mid-50s and early-60s. 

This colonial dichotomy is also central to the plot of L'Étranger (The Stranger, sometimes translated as The Outsider) — Camus' first novel, published in France in 1942, and first translated into English in 1946 (we'll be reading Matthew Ward's 1989 translation) — which hinges on two key events: the death of Meursault the protagonist's mother, and his subsequent killing of an Arab shortly thereafter. While this might seem overly simple, it's anything but, largely due to the labyrinthine stream-of-consciousness nature of Meursault's first-person perspective and the absurd nature of his existence within its various contexts. While this philosophy is sometimes labeled as existentialist — i.e. exploring the challenges and responsibilities inherent to our having free will and self-determination — Camus was quick to dismiss any association with that movement, and even his youthful fervor for absurdism would fade after the publication of The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus (his great treatise on the question of suicide), both in 1942.

Here's how our three days with The Stranger will break down:

• Wed. August 23: translator's note and part 1, ch. 1–4
• Fri. August 25: part 1, ch. 5–part 2, ch. 2
• Mon. August 28: part 2, ch. 3–5

And here are a few supplemental resources that might of interest:

• Nicola Chiaramonte's 1946 review of the novel in The New Republic: [link]
• Claire Messud reviews Sandra Smith's recent translation of the novel in The New York Review of Books: [link]
• Alice Kaplan, "L’Étranger – Stranger Than Fiction" in The Guardian: [link]
• Ryan Bloom, "Lost in Translation: What the First Line of The Stranger Should Be" in The New Yorker: [link]
• Aaron Gwyn, "Albert Camus' Poker-Faced Stranger Became A Much Needed Friend" on NPR: [link]

Welcome to Our Class

By its very nature, the English major curriculum tends to stay away from works written in other languages. That's understandable, given both the overabundance of worthy texts within the English-language canon, as well as legitimate concerns about the quality and availability of translations for works from other tongues. Nonetheless, we find ourselves in a golden age for international literature where far-flung contemporary authors like Roberto Bolaño, Elena Ferrante, and Karl Ove Knausgård are read widely and justly celebrated by their readers. There's real value in expanding one's literary horizons, and I hope this will be a worthwhile experience for you.

There's not necessarily an overarching theme to the selections I've made, other than attempting to present a diverse array of perspectives. Europe is, as one might expect, well-represented with four selections, but our other six books come from the eastern and western extremes of Asia, and the northern and southern boundaries of Africa and Latin America. Our time frame extends from WWII to the present, and many of the books deal with questions of identity, particularly coming-of-age stories, with special emphasis placed upon female perspectives.

Our Course By the Numbers

Let's lay out the details of the course in the style of Harper's Index:

• number of weeks we'll be spending together  :  15
• number of days off during the semester  :  5[1]
• number of books we'll be reading  :  10[2]
• number of decades spanned by the reading list  :  8
• number of female authors  :  7
• number of male authors  : 3
• number of continents represented  :  5
• number of books originally written in English  :  2[3]
• number of Nobel Laureates in Literature  :  2[4]

A Note on our Class Size

As some of you already know, we had some last-minute upheaval in scheduling last week. Philip Tsang, one of our English Dept. colleagues, had trouble with his passport and visa while trying to reenter the country and was going to be delayed for some length of time. As a result, his section of this course — which many of you were signed up for — was canceled and you were asked to join this section once the enrollment cap was increased. This also necessitated the cancelation of my Contemporary World Poetry class, and some of you have joined this course from that one.

I'm grateful for your flexibility in this matter, and I'm sure that Philip and our chair, Leah Stewart, are as well. I don't necessarily anticipate much change in terms of how I'm planning on structuring and running the course with two small exceptions: 1) because I place great emphasis upon participation and discussion, you'll need to be vocal members of the class to distinguish yourselves among the masses, and 2) though I'm loathe to rely on them, we're probably going to have to have more quizzes than I typically like for the sake of providing more grade opportunities and to see what students are (or aren't) keeping up with the reading.

Notes

1. Cf. our class schedule. Also note that this includes one day that's not an official university holiday when I need to be out of town for a family event — this will mean you'll have an especially nice Labor Day weekend.
2. Cf. our book list for this and the next four points.
3. Specifically, those written by Bessie Head and Zadie Smith.
4. Albert Camus (1957) and Heinrich Böll (1972). One of the pleasures of teaching this course in the fall is that the Nobel Prize announcements will be made in early October, allowing us to see if another one of our authors might be honored (though I'd think Zadie Smith is the only one with a legitimate chance to win).