Borges, in part to legitimize his own Europhilia, correctly pointed out that expecting writers to engage with these romantic nationalist tropes was arbitrary and limiting, a genre that was demonstrative of its own artificiality.
ADAM MORRISI translated the novel and still it remains a mystery as to how exactly how this works. Noll thinks more like an experimental filmmaker than a novelist.
More Adam Morris Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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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With My Dog-Eyes by Hilda Hilst got more exposure and reached far more readers than I ever expected.
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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.
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Strength and power in fiction is being able to resist these intoxicating voices, recognizing that they are the signatures of other writers and not one’s own.
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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.
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Jorge Luis Borges had the soapbox and the authority to complain about this myopic understanding of the duty of Latin American writers
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So likewise in João Gilberto Noll, readers shouldn’t expect samba and Carnival and football. The Brazilian national identity is not one of his primary concerns.
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I translated the novel and still it remains a mystery as to how exactly how this works. Noll thinks more like an experimental filmmaker than a novelist.
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The transcendent aspect of the psychedelic experience is totally absent.
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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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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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I only translate authors whose work already interests me as a reader, and that’s a decision I make based on multiple encounters with an author’s work.
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If João Gilberto Noll were writing in French or German or even Russian, it’s likely he’d be more broadly translated.
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