“One of my methods for developing my own voice in fiction, a process I am taking very slowly and deliberately, is through these very intense encounters with certain writers.”

I was confident that I could find an editor and the readership for a translation

Dreamlike sequencing is perhaps one of João Gilberto Noll’s most remarkable triumphs in Quiet Creature on the Corner.

This neglect of a very important Brazilian writer is, in my view, the result of Brazil’s relative isolation from what metropolitan tastemakers.

Unless you count the political backdrop, which in any case is a familiar one to many international readers

When I think about literature, I think about it in the three languages I read easily – English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Noll is highly respected in Brazil, and at the same time divisive, somewhat like Hilda Hilst. Neither of them enjoys the universal acclaim you might associate with Clarice Lispector, whom everyone adores, myself included.

If João Gilberto Noll were writing in French or German or even Russian, it’s likely he’d be more broadly translated.

This makes his writing very pleasing to read: João Gilberto Noll pays attention to detail, but only to certain details. And it’s never easy to foresee which details will send the narrator or the plot in an unsuspected direction.

I have a few minor rules for myself but I break them all the time. For example, when translating from Romance languages to English, there is often a choice between a Latinate cognate and a Germanic equivalent.

I primarily write nonfiction. Research, reflection, and spending time with ideas are important to me. So, this is how I spend most of my time writing – in thought.

English offers both obscurity and dark or darkness, and some translators will tell you the Latinate word is generally reserved for poetic and figurative expressions, while the Germanic word is used for colloquial and idiomatic use.

The Brazilian national identity is not one of João Gilberto Noll primary concerns. This does not mean social critique is absent: race, gender, and class relations are considered in Quiet Creature.

Which sometimes forecloses their unique modernism and experience of modernization in favor of a mythic past or an artificially constructed ideal national subject.

Once I looked into it, I was taken aback to learn that pretty much nothing by Joao Gilberto Noll was available in English translation.

With My Dog-Eyes by Hilda Hilst got more exposure and reached far more readers than I ever expected.

I am surprised by the word psychedelic. João Gilberto Noll does not accept realism in a straightforward way, but I am more inclined to call Quiet Creature a realist text than I am to call it a psychedelic one.

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.

In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.

My favourite authors are Milan Kundera and Jeanette Winterson.

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world – they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.

When you dream, you are an author, but you do not know how it will end.

If God is the author of life, there must be a script.

There is no greater discovery than seeing God as the author of your destiny.

I do not read a book; I hold a conversation with the author.