Contemporary Brazilian literature

This special issue of Romance Quarterly offers its readers a glimpse of the literary production by contemporary Brazilian writers in the last thirty years, with a special focus on narrative fiction. Additionally, readers will find here insightful discussions of questions regarding (self-) representation in literature and of issues affecting the publication and distribution of Brazilian authors and their works. The delimitation of what constitutes contemporary literature is somewhat arbitrary, and some scholars may understand the term to describe all literature written since the end of the Second World War, while others may opt for narrower defining parameters. For others still, contemporary literature may simply mean “the literature of our time, of the present” (Gupta 2)—notwithstanding the permanence and contemporary outlook we find in the works of timeless writers such as our own Machado de Assis, among others.

In determining the focus of this issue, I have considered some key political, social, and cultural developments as markers to delimit the body of works to be discussed in these essays. The opening political event is the 1964 military coup d’état that inaugurated twenty-one years of a dictatorship in Brazil, a period that has drastically impacted all aspects of Brazilian society and continues to have repercussions in the country. The fact that those events are still addressed in our literature today attests to their impact in the life stories of so many Brazilians and in the history of our nation.

On the other hand, considering the cultural and historical developments of the past thirty years in Brazil, we have witnessed the country's return to a democratic state and have seen it suffer through years of hyperinflation and drastic economic measures in the late 1980s and early 1990s—leading a considerable number of Brazilians to emigrate from the country in search of better living conditions—and later its emergence as a leader in hemispheric politics and a strong player in the world economy, only to see it face new political and economic crises in the last several years. These developments have been formally and thematically reflected in literature and other arts, specifically in the literary production of the late 1960s through the current decade of the twenty-first century.¹

Another development, this one of global dimensions, has been the dissemination and availability of new information and communication technologies, a process that began some thirty years ago and that has profoundly changed our perception of reality. Furthermore, these new technologies have altered how we access, produce, and share information and cultural production. It has also led to a relative democratization of knowledge and the circulation of literature and other artistic endeavors, allowing writers and artists to disseminate their works without the need of an intermediary—that is, an editor, a publisher, or a bookstore. In other words, the new information and communication technologies have intervened in an exchange between producers and consumers of culture that many Brazilian writers and intellectuals believe favors a small, select group of names, and commercial profit over literary quality and cultural diversity.² This is certainly not a new phenomenon, but one that has particularly affected writers and artists from minority groups, from Lima Barreto (1881–1922) at the beginning of the twentieth century to the Afro-Brazilian writers who in the late 1970s initiated the publication of Cadernos negros as an alternative to the mainstream publishing venues. What has changed, however, is that today the Internet, blogs, and various social media more easily allow for self-publication and for the expression of more diverse voices and perspectives.

The articles included in this special issue of Romance Quarterly examine a small but representative number of works of narrative fiction and literary manifestos that showcase recent trends in contemporary Brazilian literature. Not by chance, the works discussed here are examples of Brazil's urban literature; if the country began a slow process of urbanization in the first decades of the twentieth century, since the mid-1960s that process accelerated rapidly, resulting in the fast industrialization of some regions and extreme urbanization. Internal migration from rural areas to metropolitan centers has continued to increase, affecting particularly the nation's southeast region and its two megalopolises, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, but also other major capital cities in other regions of the country. Reflecting the social convulsions and new cultural influences stemming from over-urbanization, Brazilian literature has developed a distinctive urban outlook.³ In fact, as Brazil's rapid industrialization and urbanization, compounded by the process of globalization, has pushed the country to a deeper and very evident socioeconomic chasm, the large metropolis has become the frequent scenario and theme of its literature, and noticeably so of its narrative fiction. While literature is always a form of representation, narrative fiction—even in its most experimental, symbolic, poetic, or parodic forms—is particularly concerned with representation. Thus one finds in contemporary Brazilian narrative a continuous attempt to grasp reality, even as it struggles with the “challenge of reinventing Realism's historical forms” (Schøllhamer 14; my translation); as Nelson Vieira points out, “the realist tenor of narratives” has not disappeared from current Brazilian literature (227).

The beginning of Brazil's process of urbanization and the modernization of the nation's capital cities are portrayed in Eu vos abraço, Milhões (2010), the last novel by the renowned novelist and short-story writer Moacyr Scliar (1937–2011), which Regina Zilberman analyzes here. The novel, set in the late 1920s and early 1930s, addresses some critical questions concerning Brazilian politics, society, and national identity the author had repeatedly broached in his fiction. Two such questions are the cooptation of intellectual and political ideals and the corruption of those who had initially defended them; and ambiguity as a deep mark of Brazil's national character. In a manner very characteristic of Scliar's fiction, his late novel mixes fictional and historical characters and events in order to dispel the myth of Brazil's cordiality and of the country as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious democracy. Eu vos abraço, Milhões is a historical novel, but it is, at the same time, a sharp commentary on the country's current state of affairs.

It is noteworthy that, unlike Scliar's previous fictional works, Eu vos abraço, Milhões is not set exclusively in his native Rio Grande do Sul, but rather takes place mostly in Rio de Janeiro, the nation's capital city through 1960 and emblem of the country's cultural modernization. With Scliar's protagonist displacing himself from his hometown of Porto Alegre to Rio de Janeiro, the novel illustrates a geo-political-cultural opposition or contrast not infrequent in contemporary Brazilian fiction—namely, the contrast between the megalopolis of Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo, on one hand, and a medium-size city, on the other, as, for example, Manaus in Milton Hatoum or Araraquara in Ignácio de Loyola Brandão. The old dichotomy of city versus rural space—so significant in Brazilian fiction in the first part of the twentieth century, with exponent authors such as Raquel de Queirós, Graciliano Ramos, Jorge Amado, and others—thus seems to have diminished in importance today. This dichotomy, however, has not disappeared completely, but the rural space has either acquired a mythic dimension in dystopian urban novels such as Caio Fernando Abreu's Onde andará Dulce Veiga? (1990; Whatever Happened to Dulce Veiga?, 2000), or has been replaced by pockets of green areas that stand in sharp contrast—and sometimes as a brief respite to—life amidst the concrete and chaos of the urban space as, for example, in the novels and short stories of Sonia Coutinho (1939–2013), a writer whose fiction is set mostly in Copacabana, the utmost symbol of urban decadence.⁴

In the critically acclaimed 2003 novel Ponciá Vicêncio (English translation, 2006), by Conceição Evaristo (b. 1946)—which Regina Dalcastagnè briefly discusses in her article in this issue—the rural versus urban space dichotomy articulates the conflicts experienced by the protagonist and other characters whose lives, dreams, and self-identity are impacted by slavery and its legacy. As in novels from the Regionalist movement of the 1930s or in narratives from the last part of the twentieth century, such as Clarice Lispector's A hora da estrela (1977; The Hour of the Star, 1986) or Marilene Felinto's As mulheres de Tijucopapo (1982; The Women of Tijucopapo, 1994), the characters in Ponciá Vicêncio leave their homes in Brazil's interior in order to move to the city in search of a better life, only to find hardship and a deep sense of displacement and non-belonging. For Evaristo's protagonist, however, her dislocation in space (and in mythic time) leads eventually to a reconciliation with her family history and African heritage and to an affirmation of her self-identity. In this case, then, the dichotomy of rural space versus urban environment illustrates the conflictive ideology still pervasive in Brazil today: a nation driven to be a modern, cosmopolitan society and global economy but still “relentlessly shaped by lingering colonial/patriarchal attitudes and authoritarian behavior” (Vieira 224), an ideological conflict that has tragic consequences for Afro-Brazilians who, still today, suffer from the legacy of slavery and racism.

The dichotomy of countryside versus city has been displaced in contemporary Brazilian literature, with a different form of opposition taking place entirely within the urban perimeters: the conflictive relationship between the poor populations of the urban periphery and the “center,” as Dalcastagnè argues in her article. Both Dalcastagnè's and Rex Nielsen's pieces discuss works of literature—novels and literary manifestos, respectively—that represent the experience of individuals from the urban periphery who demand to be heard as subjects of their own discourses, adding their voices to the wide portrait of urban life that contemporary Brazilian literature presents. Nielsen's critical essay introduces his translations of recent literary manifestos by writers from the socioeconomic periphery of the largest city in Latin America—São Paulo. Significantly, these manifestos were all initially posted on the Internet, and some of them later published in print venues. It should be stressed, however, that access to the Internet still has not been made available to all segments of Brazilian society, and thus its reach and impact have been limited.

The printed word still carries a considerable degree of influence but, as Dalcastagnè explains, the current state of the editorial field in Brazil severely limits who gets published and the types of books that are more easily found in bookstores. This situation may result in a kind of indirect censorship, and some writers seem to opt for literary formulas that appeal to a reading public more fond of foreign themes and scenarios than of national ones. Nevertheless, Dalcastagnè's analysis highlights the importance of local settings and themes in novels from the past ten years—even as these novels contrast diverse subjectivities shaped by race, class, and economic standing—and suggests that the preference for the local in our literature reflects the experience of disenfranchised groups whose voices are now more strongly heard in the literary scene. Their voices also challenge the idea of a homogeneous and unified national culture and identity by making their readers acknowledge the existence of various centers of cultural production with distinct social profiles and realities.

One cannot discuss Brazil's contemporary literature without considering the sociopolitical context and impact of the military dictatorship and its aftermath. Brazilian literature written between the late 1960s and early 1980s was profoundly marked by the dictatorship and its mechanisms of repression, and many writers were led to formal experimentation as a strategy to avoid censorship, while denouncing the abuses of the military. One such example is Reflexos do Baile (1976) by Antonio Callado (1917–1997), a polyphonic collage of letters, notes, memos, and diaries whose authors and addressees are never fully identified. Callado's short novel was written at the darkest period of Brazil's dictatorship and revolves around the kidnapping of the US ambassador in Brazil by leftist guerrilla groups, a daring move that took place in Rio de Janeiro on September 4, 1969. This event and its repercussions in a young woman's life are narrated in Ana Maria Machado's (b. 1941) novel Tropical sol da liberdade (1988), which I examine in my essay here. Coincidentally, while in Reflexos do baile Callado used formal experimentation to both evade and depict censorship during the military regime, creating a rather cryptic language, in Tropical sol da liberdade the protagonist sees her linguistic abilities affected by the trauma of the dictatorship, which renders her writing also unintelligible. Similarly to Scliar's and other works examined in this issue, Machado's novel strongly questions the myth of Brazil's cordiality and its conciliatory character as masks for repressive and exclusionist sociopolitical practices.

The last two articles in this issue discuss recent novels by writers of a younger generation than Machado's; Paulo Scott's (b. 1966) Habitante irreal (2011) as well as Ronaldo Costa Fernandes's (b. 1952) Um homem é muito pouco (2010) address the many unresolved conflicts and scars the military dictatorship has left on the country. Scott's Habitante irreal—a parodic novel whose complexity and ramifications are thoroughly explored in Luiz Fernando Valente's essay—is about a protagonist who came of age in the post-dictatorship period and highlights the disillusion caused by the country's failure to fulfill the political promises implied in the euphoria surrounding its return to democracy. Habitante irreal both evokes Mário de Andrade's Macunaíma (1928) in its movement among various Brazilian cities and reflects a globalizing trend in Brazilian literature by moving the narrative to London and back to Brazil. It is, according to Valente, a sharp political novel that dialogues with many of Brazil's literary traditions to create a critical picture of the country's present situation.

Finally, Rogério Lima situates Fernandes's fictional work within the current context of Brazilian literature and in light of the writer's own critical inquisitions into the status of the narrator as a privileged and critical observer of his or her time. Lima focuses particularly on Fernandes's Um homem é muito pouco, a novel that narrates the traumatic memories of the military dictatorship period, exploring at the same time the connection between subjectivity and the urban setting through the voice of a self-reflexive protagonist.

While the essays in this issue comprise only a small portion of the vast and heterogeneous body that is contemporary Brazilian literature, the works discussed here and their authors do appropriately represent what Giorgio Agamben defines as “contemporary.” Like the narrator that occupies Fernandes's critical inquiries, the contemporary subject is the one able to develop a particular relationship with his or her own time, a relationship that is both intimate and distant, and it is this distance as well as this intimacy—in other words, this unstable relationship—that allows for a critical look at one's own reality (Agamben 58–59; 63–64). To be “contemporary,” according to Agamben, is to sense the urgency of the times and to respond to the urge to capture the present reality, while knowing well that such reality is always slippery, always “obscure,” but its obscurity is precisely what merits further scrutiny (Agamben 63). The role of contemporary literature is, thus, the very endeavor of illuminating the present and of sharing with its readers the insights it is able to gain. This has been the intent of this special issue of Romance Quarterly: to offer illuminating insights into Brazil's contemporary literature and, through it, into the times we are living—globally and locally.

Notes

1. For a valuable systematization of Brazilian literature since 1964, see Karl Erik Schøllhammer's Ficção brasileira contemporânea (2009).

2. There has been a steady discussion of such issues among Brazilian writers, journalists, and other intellectuals, in the printed media and on the Internet. See, for example: Phellipe Marcel da Silva Esteves, “A precarização do trabalho e os ‘frila fixos,’” in which the author, a university professor and journalist, discusses several aspects of the current cultural-editorial situation in Brazil—among them, the consolidation of smaller publishers into single large publishing houses; the monopoly of very few publishing houses as book suppliers for public schools and libraries; and the preference of Brazilian publishers for books by US writers instead of national authors. This ongoing public debate has led to the organization of “Letra Viva – Literatura de Confronto,” a three-day seminar held in São Paulo in September 2015 that brought together fiction writers, poets, journalists, and academics, among them Márcia Denser, André Sant'Anna, Sebastião Nunes, and Paulo Sandrini.

3. On the urban character of Brazilian contemporary literature, see, for example: Cristina Ferreira Pinto-Bailey, “Tales of Two Cities: The Space of the Feminine in Sonia Coutinho's Fiction;” Regina Dalcastagnè, “Sombras da cidade: o espaço na narrativa brasileira contemporânea;” Beatriz Rezende, Contemporâneos: expressões da literatura brasileira no século XXI; as well as Schøllhammer's book mentioned above.

4. See, for example, Sonia Coutinho's short story “Josete Killed Herself.”