Yasmin Taketani
A máquina de Joseph Walser, de Gonçalo M. Tavares
notes
“ Como se a guerra fosse precisamente uma concentração excessiva de milagres. Um abuso de acontecimentos no mais curto espaço de tempo, uma aceleração sobrenatural, um atrevimento humano, e, mais que indelicadeza: uma rudeza exercida sobre o tempo.
Os acontecimentos necessitam de intervalos significativos entre si. Não se devem acumular como se fossem mercadorias medíocres, os acontecimentos não são mercadorias medíocres, são coisas valiosas, disse Klober. ”
“Likeability” of characters
For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections? Any of the characters in Infinite Jest? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter? If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t “is this a potential friend for me?” but “is this character alive?”
— Claire Messud
“When we accept the suspension of disbelief, we agree to a logic—the story’s premise and its extension as, and eventually into, a created world; and we need empathy to make our experience in the reading. But empathy is not appreciation, infatuation, or the feeling that an author and her characters are decent people. (…) At any rate, reading into persona is a waste of time and life; our empathy will not be engaged but our narcissism might, and our experience will likely come without deeper emotional and spiritual recognitions and awakenings. The author maneuvering for love is commonplace and ordinary, and the work of fiction that seductively asserts the brilliance or importance or easy affability of its creator is an insubstantial thing.”
— Donald Antrim
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/05/would-you-want-to-be-friends-with-humbert-humbert-a-forum-on-likeability.html
“ Sorrow like a ceaseless rain
Beats upon my heart.
People twist and scream in pain —
Dawn will find them still again;
This has neither wax nor wane,
Neither stop nor start. ”
Dorothy Parker
