{"id":305106,"date":"2016-12-14T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2016\/12\/14\/chronicle-of-the-murdered-house-by-lucio-cardoso-press-release\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:57:22","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:57:22","slug":"chronicle-of-the-murdered-house-by-lucio-cardoso-press-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2016\/12\/14\/chronicle-of-the-murdered-house-by-lucio-cardoso-press-release\/","title":{"rendered":"Chronicle of the Murdered House by Lucio Cardoso [Press Release]"},"content":{"rendered":"

The pub date for<\/em> Chronicle of the Murdered House<\/a> by L\u00facio Cardoso, which is translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, with a biographical note from Ben Moser officially came out on Tuesday, December 13th. To celebrate the release of this Brazilian masterpiece, we’ll be running a series of pieces over the rest of this week, including an interview with the translators, some early reviews, an excerpt, and part of Ben Moser’s piece.<\/em><\/p>\n

We’ll start with this—the press release that was sent to reviewers and booksellers with the galleys.<\/em><\/p>\n

The book is available at better bookstores everywhere, or through our website.<\/a> If you order before the end of 2016, use the code BOOKSEASON<\/span> at checkout to receive 40% off your total order.<\/em><\/p>\n

“When a friend suggested that Chronicle of the Murdered House<\/em> might be the greatest modern Brazilian novel, I was startled. There are so many more obvious candidates, after all. But as I thought about it, I realized that the statement wasn\u2019t as strange as it sounds. The book itself is strange\u2014part Faulknerian meditation on the perversities, including sexual, of degenerate country folk; part Dostoevskian examination of good and evil and God\u2014but in its strangeness lies its rare power, and in the sincerity and seriousness with which the essential questions are posed lies its greatness.“\u2014Benjamin Moser<\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

There are a number of approaches to L\u00facio Cardoso\u2019s life and work that mark the first English-language publication of his Chronicle of the Murdered House<\/em> as a major literary event. <\/p>\n

For one, there\u2019s Cardoso\u2019s influence on the beloved Clarice Lispector, whose own work is currently enjoying an incredible renaissance. Clarice was enamored with Cardoso, and, as Benjamin Moser explains in his introduction, transformed one of Cardoso\u2019s suggestions into the title of one of her most famous books\u2014Near to the Wild Heart.<\/i><\/p>\n

Although their writing styles are quite different, you can see the impact Cardoso had on Lispector while reading Chronicle of the Murdered House.<\/em> The introspective nature of its prose marked a significant turning point in the history of Brazilian writing, carving out a path that Lispector and many others would eventually follow. In contrast to what came before, writing for these authors was less an activity concerned with social or national issues, but, again in Moser\u2019s words, \u201ca spiritual exercise, not an intellectual one.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a lot of readers and critics, this approach is particularly interesting given Cardoso\u2019s position as a gay Brazilian author who was also a member of the Catholic Church. Although Chronicle itself doesn\u2019t address many themes of contemporary gay literature, Cardoso\u2019s sexual orientation does influence a lot of his writings, especially in terms of the role homosexuals could play in Brazil during that period.<\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

The comments about Cardoso\u2019s spirituality\u2014as a Catholic and in terms of the goal of his writing\u2014are particularly interesting in context of the morally suspect situations found throughout the book. In isolation, or as part of the jacket copy at least, these bits sound almost overly sensational. There\u2019s incest. Madness. Adultery. An obese, cross-dressing character locked up in his room. There\u2019s a cultured woman from the city whose very presence calls into question generations of familial habits. <\/p>\n

The novel is never sordid just for the sake of being sordid though, and beyond the machinations of the plot\u2014which twist and turn like great mid-century, or even Victorian, works\u2014there is the form through which Cardoso tells his story. With shifts of tone and point of view, he utilizes confessions, diary entries, letters, statements, reports, to bring to life this once great family that is now represented by a crumbling estate that they can\u2019t afford to maintain. (A very Faulknerian image.) <\/p>\n

This a book that is a \u201cclassic\u201d on a number of counts, including its scope, its literary style that approaches but doesn\u2019t always embrace the high modernists, and in its import to Brazilian literature as a whole. A book of this import\u2014that\u2019s spectacular and complex\u2014requires a brilliant translator to really make it work in English. Thankfully, Margaret Jull Costa\u2014translator of such literary giants as Javier Mar\u00edas, Fernando Pessoa, Jos\u00e9 Maria E\u00e7a de Queir\u00f3s, Jos\u00e9 Saramago, and many more\u2014was willing and able to undertake this task. With the help of Robin Patterson (translator of Jos\u00e9 Luandino Vieira), they have fully captured the intricacies and beauty of Cardoso\u2019s writing, producing a rendition that\u2019s as linguistically powerful as the original.<\/p>\n

For such a lengthy book, Chronicle<\/em> is a rather quick read. It embraces its page-turner impulses, and uses a non-linear structure to stimulate and engross the reader. From the very opening chapter, the reader can get a sense of the overall pattern of dissolution driving the lives of the characters, but keeps reading in order to witness all the juicy details and see just how crazy things can get. (Answer: As crazy as the wake scene in the final chapters.) It\u2019s a book that fills in a gap in our collective knowledge about Brazilian literature from the twentieth century, and hopefully will spark a resurgence of interest in one of Brazil\u2019s greatest literary stars. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pub date for Chronicle of the Murdered House by L\u00facio Cardoso, which is translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, with a biographical note from Ben Moser officially came out on Tuesday, December 13th. To celebrate the release of this Brazilian masterpiece, we’ll be running a series of pieces over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[24866,9196,64816,25506,64826,13566,28166,1646,64836],"class_list":["post-305106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-benjamin-moser","tag-brazilian-literature","tag-chronicle-of-the-murdered-house","tag-clarice-lispector","tag-lucio-cardoso","tag-margaret-jull-costa","tag-open-letter-books","tag-review","tag-robin-patterson"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315756,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305106\/revisions\/315756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}