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Driven by an unfulfilled desire for the unattainable, ultimately indefinable Other, the protagonists of the novels and stories of acclaimed Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector exemplify and humanize many of the issues central to poststructuralist thought, from the nature of language, truth, and meaning to the unstable relationships between language, being, and reality. In this book, Earl Fitz demonstrates that, in turn, poststructuralism offers important and revealing insights into all aspects of Lispector's writing, including her style, sense of structure, characters, themes, and socio-political conscience.

Fitz draws on Lispector's entire oeuvre—novels, stories, crônicas, and children's literature—to argue that her writing consistently reflects the basic tenets of poststructuralist theory. He shows how Lispector's characters struggle over and humanize poststructuralist dilemmas and how their essential sense of being is deeply dependent on a shifting, and typically transgressive, sense of desire and sexuality.

A true-to-life impression of Storyville, the only legally established red light district in the US

At the turn of the twentieth-century, there were hundreds of red-light districts in the United States, ranging in size from a discreet “house” or two in or near small towns and cities to block after bawdy block of brothels in larger cities such as Chicago and San Francisco. Storyville, New Orleans: Being an Authentic, Illustrated Account of the Notorious Red Light District seeks to offer the reader a reasonably true-to-life impression of Storyville, the most famous of the large districts and the only such district in the United States that was legally established.

Storyville was an area, carefully defined by law, outside of which prostitutes or women “notoriously abandoned to lewdness” were not permitted to live or work. Prostitutes working within the District were considered to be engaged in legal enterprises so long as they confined themselves to prostitution and other related activities such as dispensing food and drink to their customers.

From the early days of the French colony of Louisiana, a great number of prostitutes, women from correctional centers, and those with so-called “loose morals” were transported to the New World, resulting in a large proportion of the earliest female residents in New Orleans engaging in prostitution. During the course of Storyville’s legal existence from January 1, 1898 to November 12, 1917—it is evident that in establishing this district the New Orleans city council acted out of a sense of frustration after decades of attempting to deal rationally with a serious social problem. As the author says in the preface, “You may see this as a disorderly book about disorderly houses—and so it may be. But I doubt you will find it dull.”