If João Gilberto Noll were writing in French or German or even Russian, it’s likely he’d be more broadly translated.
ADAM MORRISWhen I think about literature, I think about it in the three languages I read easily – English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
More Adam Morris Quotes
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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.
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When I think about literature, I think about it in the three languages I read easily – English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
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The transcendent aspect of the psychedelic experience is totally absent.
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The authors I prefer are all very different and are not limited to certain genres or even certain time periods.
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I am not one of those translators who think that working closely with the writer will yield the best translation.
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With My Dog-Eyes by Hilda Hilst got more exposure and reached far more readers than I ever expected.
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Some critics have commented that understanding the specific Brazilian political context of the novel is helpful for reading Quiet Creature. This may be true, but it’s not prerequisite for understanding it.
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Unless you count the political backdrop, which in any case is a familiar one to many international readers
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Dreamlike sequencing is perhaps one of João Gilberto Noll’s most remarkable triumphs in Quiet Creature on the Corner.
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Jorge Luis Borges was lamenting a variety of Orientalism that was used to measure the alleged authenticity of Argentine and Latin American writers in the midcentury.
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The fiction I’ve written and published is certainly inflected by the work of authors I was reading or translating at the time.
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The Argentine literary tradition was believed by many, including many Argentines, to be concerned with a national imaginary in which the gauchos and the pampas and the tango were fundamental tropes.
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And these are universal relational matters, not necessarily particular to any country.
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Still, I considered it a tremendous injustice that Noll had not been more widely translated and was determined to rectify it.
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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.
ADAM MORRIS