Conversation: Considering Clarice

Imagine never hearing the name "Franz Kafka" or "Virginia Woolf" -- nearly unthinkable given their places in the Western canon. 20th century writer Clarice Lispecter has been enthusiastically compared to those literary giants, despite never gaining popular, international recognition. A major literary celebrity in Brazil, her work ran the gamut from articles in women's magazines to compelling, philosophical novels. A Ukranian refugee whose family fled to Brazil after suffering significant atrocity during the Russian pogroms, Lispecter became the glamorous wife of a diplomat, and the adored author of works that explored the way her faith had been tested by the horrors of her childhood. Few know her in America, but "Benjamin Moser":http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/09/0082647, an editor at Harper's Magazine, hopes to change that with his new Lispecter biography, "'Why This World.'":http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/LiteratureEnglish/WorldLiterature/Jewish/?view=usa&ci=9780195385564 I spoke with him earlier this week about the writer's richly complex life and work while he was in Houston, Texas.