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

Still, I considered it a tremendous injustice that Noll had not been more widely translated and was determined to rectify it.

English can be tricky because there are so many false cognates, but sometimes, as long the idea conveyed is not wrong, these false cognates can themselves offer synonyms or lead to a better alternative word or phrase in translation.

Jorge Luis Borges had the soapbox and the authority to complain about this myopic understanding of the duty of Latin American writers

Even my editor at Melville House, who championed the project form the outset, told me she was surprised by the response. After this, editors began asking my opinion about which Latin American writers ought to be translated.

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.

If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to see there; and third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there.

I grew up under demanding people, that demanded things from you, expected you to toe the mark.

Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.

No pretentions to beauty or even good looks, was something he had not expected. But falling in love, he had always understood, was unpredictable, and, as far as he was concerned, irrevocable.

People cannot remain good unless good is expected of them.

Perfect. Why was this so hard to find?”The other type of perfect is the type you never could have expected and then could never replicate.

If I’m expected to keep your messages, and everybody else’s, then there should be a law that says, you need to keep all of these.

As expected life isn’t that sweet at all. When I came to Tokyo I thought I could achieve anything with my own two hands. It’s not like that.