An Apprenticeship or the Book of Pleasures

by Clarice Lispector

Book Overview

L?ri, a primary school teacher, is isolated and nervous, comfortable with children but unable to connect to adults. When she meets Ulisses, a professor of philosophy, an opportunity opens: a chance to escape the shipwreck of introspection and embrace the love, including the sexual love, of a man. Her attempt, as Sheila Heti writes in her afterword, is not only "to love and to be loved," but also "to be worthy of life itself."

Published in 1968,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811232212
• ISBN13: 9780811232210
• Release Date: May 2022
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Finding Your Own Way

This book, written in 1969, five years into the military dictatorship in Brazil and one year after the momentous year of revolutions, is far more than one woman's education. It is that too, but like so much of Lispector's writing, the meaning of the book far exceeds what masquerades as the storyline. I find the didactic behavior of the professor in this book maddening. But when I think about it as a story about a paternalistic social (and military) order (represented by the man), then the education of the woman (in spirituality, in pleasure, in love, etc.) becomes more than one woman's solitary struggle. She comes to stand for another way of expressing all the aspects of life that she discovers. In this sense, it then becomes interesting to watch her struggle and be seduced by the examples or lessons of Ulysses/the dominant knowledge-power system and being true to her own discoveries. Ulysses is an important name though I have not entirely figured out its symbolism beyond the notion of a quest (The Odyssey) and wandering (Joyce's Ulysses) that it evokes. I've always felt, ultimately, that Dori could have gone so much further in her quest if she wasn't in an apprenticeship position in relation to Ulysses, and I'm still undecided as to whether this is in part one of the lessons of the the book itself: find your own way, don't merely rely on the One Who Supposedly Knows. Not my favorite Lispector book, but the themes she explores are pretty consistent through her work and her style is certainly one of the most beautiful.

Just One Drink...

Lispector is an incredible writer, the type that causes me to wish I knew a time traveller so I could go back and try my darnedest to seduce her into bed. I say this absurd line because her writing, her style, her heart and her head are unlike any I've ever read or heard, ever. It seems so poignantly to fit the style of thinking that my generation (b. 1982) expresses, when they can express it, and blisteringly articulates in a style like kids my age strive for - when we're at our best, which is to say: longingly ambitious. I safely feel that I'm not projecting. I love Lispector and I hope we can increase the demand for her writing for both its relevance today and its timeless sincere outpouring of this tender Brazilian woman's bottomless heart.

Deep and sensitive, as just Clarice was

The book of pleasures is a wonderful book where a woman, Dori, learns to have pleasure in life. She is a simple woman that was looking for love when she met Ulysses, a phylosophy teacher. He tells her that she does not know how to have pleasure and therefore she was not ready to be with him. She, then, goes into a very deep travel to inside, finding out love, hate, fear and pleasure. It's a wonderful and sensitive book... Specially made for women, with a feminin view of life.