![]() ![]() It is necessary, then, that this potential reader “whose outlook is fully formed,” hand in hand with the protagonist, assumes with her all the risks of this katabasis, this movement of descent into the underworld that few, very few, can withstand. This is a book in which everything contributes to a shock experience, a limit experience centered on G.H.’s encounter with the insect. Perhaps from that moment it is possible to understand why Clarice would be happy with a certain type of reader. This gesture triggers the human deconstruction of the character and imposes a sudden (in)comprehension of this “difficult construction that is called life.” devours the white, pasty mass of the dead cockroach. The decisive moment of the plot and discourse is when G.H. Repulsed by the insect, she decides to smash it against the closet door. The cleaning has barely started and she sees a cockroach. ![]() Yet one step into the novel and we find a first-person narrator, G.H., in a state of absolute concentration and interior expansion after crossing what would become for her a limit experience. In the lines that precede the opening of this novel, Clarice Lispector addresses her “potential readers,” stating that the book is “like any other book,” but that she would be “happy if it were read only by people whose outlook is fully formed.” If we considered only the plotline by itself, The Passion According to G.H. would perhaps be a book like any other. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |