Modern Brazilian Short Stories / William L. Grossman.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Grossman, William L., Editor.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (176 p.)

Edition:

Reprint 2020

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, [2020]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

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." 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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Acknowledgments

Contents

Translator's Introduction

The Immunizer

It Can Hurt Plenty

Metonymy, or the Husband's Revenge

The Beautiful Rabbits

The Thief

The Enchanted Ox

Gaétaninho

The Piano

The Bahian

Guidance

My Father's Hat

The Happiest Couple in the World

The Third Bank of the River

With God's Blessing, Mom

At the Side of the Road

The Crime of the Mathematics Professor

Sun

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Sep 2020)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780520312425

0520312422

OCLC:

1198930988