“The Hour of the Star,” to use “Gen Z” terms is a book full of “yapping” but in my opinion good and insightful yapping. With a book of many titles Lispector gives a very unique experience to the reader as she writes about an author writing about a girl, named half way through the book, Macabea. Is it bad I could feel even before reading the book that this was going to be another book where I feel for (and maybe relate a little to) our female protagonist (I know the male author is our supposed protagonist but I love Macabea okay?)? Like genuinely when Olimpico showed up I thought to myself “boy I already know I am going to hate him and talk about how much I hate him.” But the thing is if I talk about him then this blog post will just reflect all my past blog posts and I will get comments like “I also did not like (insert character)”.
I want to talk titles. “The Hour of the Star”, even with all the proposed titles this is the one that the book was published with. I will say I don’t know if I’m just so on theme for this week but I also had a hard time picking a title for my blog post. See I thought of “These books make my exes look like saints (explosion)”, but decided against it. I think we as readers take titles for granted. See why I didn’t pick that title was because I wanted to stop the narrative of men and how men treat women from being the centre of our discussion. So that’s evidence of how much a title can impact how we perceive a book. I think the beauty of this book is the fact that it has so many titles. I think it really adds to the fact that this book seems like a writer’s rough draft. It shows the ability the indecisiveness that comes into writing. I loved knowing what the “author” was thinking when creating Macabea’s story.
Now I cannot just neglect Macabea in this post. I loved Macabea, I felt heavily for her and the fact that everyone in her life gets rather bored of her, even her author, makes me very sad. I had a lightbulb light up moment in IKB when Jon states that Macabea picked up snippets of culture through a radio. The fact that what she discusses with Olimpico what she thought was culture but what was really radio ads and consumerism. It really talks to Lispector writing about poverty but not outright. The fact that Macabea dreams of being someone who indulges in culture but it just being illusionary consumption, even borrowing money just to go to a fortune teller. She strives to live like those who have money but what she perceives as such is painted falsely through consumerism.
I wish I could write more but I’m nearing the limit. Question: Which title is your favourite?
This is over limit but mine is cheap tear jerk, I think it speaks to the books irony.
Okay Bye!
Hi! I really enjoyed your blog, it made me laugh. To answer your question my favourite title is “The right to scream”. I feel like life for Macabéa is so tough and she feels she has to be happy all the time but she doesn’t know that she has the right to be angry or frustrated. Also this book made me want to scream multiple times
Maxene, I had to look up what is yapping! I also appreciate you pushing yourself to talk about something different! Especially since its my first blog about the many titles. I also quite like the idea of a writing always being a draft, I think there is a nod there to some of the stories told about Lispector.
Thanks for your comment!
Hi Maxene, I really liked how you incorporated a more modern linguistic term, yapping, to describe the book. I also feel like the the “yapping” is also what could perhaps allows for there to be a sense of you being the narrator whose writing about Macabea.