The seventeen stories in this anthology have been carefully chosen
to provide a wide, representative range of recent and contemporary
Brazilian themes and styles. The scenes vary from a nearly
abandoned village or a ranch in the northeastern backlands to the
streets of Rio and Sao Paulo. The characters, equally diverse,
embrace wealthy land-owners, middle-class merchants, cowboys,
thieves and prostitues. There is a diversity too in modd.
Especially striking is the irony found in most of these stories.
Characteristic of much of the best Brazilian fiction from Machado
de Assis to Guimaraes Rosa, this irony tempers the underlying
warmth of the stories with a certain wryness. Incidentally,
Guimaraes Rosa, the giant of contemporary Brazilian fiction, is
represented in this collection by an unconventional and
unforgettable little masterpiece, "The Third Bank of the
River."Â Brazilian humor is siad to be much like North
American humor. In any case, it is here in abundance, variously
mordant, hilarious, casual, homely, nostalgic, and, in Graciliano
Ramos's story of an inept thief, almost Chaplinesque. But there is
also a certain voluptuous melancholy, the much bruited tristeza
brasileira. In such stories as "My Father's Hat," it blend with the
humor to produce and enchantment profoundly Brazilian in ton and
feeling. "The Crime of the Mathematics Professor" is a
strange plunge into the mystery of a man's sense of guilt. With
this sole exception, the stories in the present anthology are
thoroughly Brazilian and yet, by a sort of mass literary miracle,
universal. The reader may find the setting and the manners exotic
at times, but he will understand the people. For there is a
pervasive humanity in Brazil's best writers and, even when the
"local color" is striking, they are never merely parochial. When
their settings are provincial it is because the provinces are where
they can see the human comedy most vividly. This title is
part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates
University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate
the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing
on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality,
peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using
print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in
1967.
General
Imprint: |
University of California Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
April 2022 |
First published: |
1967 |
Translators: |
William L Grossman
|
Dimensions: |
216 x 140 x 15mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover
|
Pages: |
176 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-520-35891-1 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-520-35891-0 |
Barcode: |
9780520358911 |
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