Terminei estorvo

I finished ‘estorvo’ by Chico Buarque…

I am soooooooo angry! Nothing makes me more upset than reading a bad book, or a book that I do not like in the end…

I gave it a chance more than in one occasion. I gave it a chance… every time I wanted to just quit reading I would convince myself and say “It’s Buarque… it will pick up… at least you’re reading in Portuguese… c’mon you’re almost done… maybe it will fast forward… etc.”

And in the end… nothing… nothing at all…

This is the same feeling I had after reading “The Stranger” by Camus… fucking hated it. Stupid pointless non-climatic simple circular book… arghhhh

Circular: the end of the book describes the beginning, the beginning describes the end. We do not know where is NOW, we just know what happened in the past. The only times he talks about the future are at the end “I hope my sister gives me some money for rent when she returns” and we already know she did because at the beginning “she gave me 6 months of rent since her trip allowed her to heal”

non-climactic: there is no climax. He goes to one place, nothing happens, then returns, nothing happens, then goes somewhere else, nothing happens. Then he returns to the same place. He rushes to get somewhere but never gets there, he waits and walks slowly, he looks for a friend but doesn’t find them, he listens but doesn’t talk.

Simple: nothing happens

Pointless: nothing happens, no lesson learned, no accomplishment, no change of life, no improvement or deterrence, no failure or tragedy, no enlightenment or loss.

stupid: for all the above explained reasons and because the protagonist and the story is so completely paralyzed, passive and inconsequential.

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Published in 1991, this book comes after a large number of songs and at least 5 literary works, it is said to be his first romance.

11 chapters, about 165 pages long… it is a very easy and quick read. With the unnamed main character’s almost stream of consciousness narrative throughout the whole book, we encounter a series of situations that occur to this frustratingly passive man.

Thinking of the title, I explore the many things that it can mean, within and outside the context of the book, and find myself lost. There is no dedication, but a quote before the beginning starting with estorvo… followed by 20 synonyms and ending with estorvo, in what seems to be the first circular thought presented in the book. After finishing it, I still can’t find any explicit/implicit obstacles or estorvos.

Protagonist: a good-for nothing, failed husband, distant brother and unsuccessful writer lives a very lonesome life after his divorce. We meet his rich sister who always gives him money, his pretty ex-wife who he still cares for but wants nothing to do with him, his senile and distant mother who he calls although knowing fully well that she never will and through some memories, we hear of some of his old/odd friends and the odd characters he meets at his old fazenda. Always with simple yet pertinent descriptions, he describes the people at the best of his ability—sometimes by their physical features, their personality and/or their behavior in an endearing way.

Living in Rio and fearing that he might be getting kicked out of his apartment, he finds his wife and then his sister to ask for help.

Both help him in their own way, then having nowhere else to go, he is overcome with the melancholic idea to visit the farm/plantation where he grew up. He finds it abandoned and being taken over by drug-trafficking thugs. During his short visit he is overwhelmed with memories of his father’s cruel ways and times spent with his sister walking in the property, he is kicked out by the thugs and returns to Rio.

Once there he unknowingly crashes a party at his sister’s house and leaves with her jewelry and a good sum of money. He then returns to the property in Posto Brialuz where he gives the thugs the jewelry. Here he is beat up, then given a large luggage with pounds of weed in exchange for the jewelry and is kicked out once again. While in Rio he looks for a place to get rid of this bag, attempts to go to a few places without luck and at last leaves it at his mother’s house without actually seeing her.

As he is running away from the building he bumps into a man that seems a bit odd but they resolve to walk along together. He ends up at the mall where his wife works, there is apparent assault on her store but he flees that scene just to find out that his former walking partner is picked up by a hospital van. He encounters a friend of his sister who cleans him up and takes him to his sister’s house.

Unwillingly there, he has no choice but to watch a tennis match between the thin woman and his brother-in-law while his sister is out of town on a ‘recovering’ trip. He finds out that there had been an assault at his sister’s house, where they killed and beat some of the guards, held the family hostage and raped his sister (hence her recovery trip). Finding out this entire drama at dinner, he then meets the investigating officer who takes him to his property to kick the thugs out due to complaints of his brother in law. Once there, they kill some thugs, get the jewelry back, the protagonist is stabbed and the last thought he has is that his wife might take him back.

THE END

WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is not a romance!

He always talks about wanting to travel and wanting to change… but at the same time admits that he doesn’t mind “being suspended in time” and he assumes an almost irreversible apathy for himself, his situation and his future.

This motif is furthered by the fact that he keeps ending up at the same places… always at the will of someone else or by the development of circumstances he has no part in… apathy, circularity, passivity… did not like the book at all.

Things I liked:

Yes, it is indeed very Buarque. I like recognizing the style, I like recognizing his voice but I was promised a romance and DAMMIT, I wanted one!

Narration was in somewhat stream of consciousness and also in a ‘if’ creative/imaginative way. He would make up a situation and guess the rest of the events. “The man that was standing the door is now gone. He will go home, have dinner, feel frustrated for not having found the man he was looking for and as he walks into his living room, he will remember the phone number where he might be able to find him. Knowing that the phone won’t ever be answered he will resolve to wait outside his apartment the following day again.”

“She wasn’t smiling, instead she twisted her lips in the same way that a resentful woman who is planning to execute the bastard that betrayed her would do. She was plotting the vengeance, she probably remembered what happened that night and was getting ready to turn me in to the cops, or humiliate me in front of my sister so that she might be satisfied. That’s what she’s going to do, enter into the house, explain she found me in the room, with the jewels after looking for them in the closet, she will yell out accusations I will be unable to deny and then I will be caught. Or she will ask me to show her the jewels, she will again try to seduce me with her drugs, her riches and lifestyle and after I agree, she will leave me.”

“She probably heard the phone but was so enthused in the magazine article she was reading that she didn’t answer, probably thought that if it was important the phone would ring again, and after it only rang 3 times, she probably knew it was me and would have liked to call me back but not knowing where, she would think it was pointless. She would then regret in the back of her mind that she wasn’t close to her son but would go back to her magazine and forget about it.”

Quotes I liked:

“E ele me conhece o suficiente para saber que eu poderia ate receber um estranho, mas nunca abriria a porta para alguém que se fato quisesse entrar.”

“fica á vontade”

“Sinto que, ao cruzar a cancela, não estarei entrando em um algum lugar, mas saindo de todos os outros”

“mas é de mulher feita o pequeno corpo que caminha, que escolhe casa passo com um critério de corpo, e que portanto caminha mais com orgulho que com direção”

“o sono chega como um barco pelas costas, e para partir e necessário estar desatento, pois se você olhar o barco, perde a viagem, cai em seco, tombe donde você esta”

“mas um homem sem compromisso, com uma mala na mão, esta comprometido com o destino da mala”

“no dia em que ele fez esse gesto eu não achei nada, e na certa não tinha nada que achar. Mas hoje, alem do gesto, descubro um brilho em seus olhos que me incomoda. O brilho deve ser reflexo do horizonte que ele olhava, mas na minha lembrança não entra o horizonte, e os olhos brilham por brilhar… torno a me lembrar meu amigo olhando o horizonte, seus cabelos molhados negros como nunca, e ele agora se penteia com mas vagar que antes. Provavelmente se sentindo lembrado, tira longo proveito da situação. Traga um cigarro, que na lembrança anterior nem existia, e fica se deixando olhar, como um ator de perfil…pelo rabo do olho da lembrança consigo vejo todo.”

“Ainda esta claro no sitio, mas o ar que respiro e noturno. Nas arvores que vejo a luz do dia, o movimento das folhas já se revezou, e é um movimento noturno; como são noturnos certos cheiros e ruídos; como ha bichos noturnos e flores que não se abrem de dia, como ha pensamentos tão claros que só a noite se percebem.”

“prossigo a viagem olhando para baixo, como quem procura uma religião”

“Lembro que nos fins da tarde eu passava a noite sozinho ali em cima, tendo aprendido que a noite e superior ao dia. E que quando amanhece, não e o dia que nasce no horizonte, e a noite que se recolhe no fundo do vale.”

There are no names in the whole book. We meet his sister, her husband, the child, the thin friend, the twins, the blonde, the little girl with the curly hair, the old man, his ex-wife, etc. I didn’t notice this at first, but now it does seem interesting. In one way or another, it distances the main character from his own story or it distances the reader even more from the story, in a true Brazilian fashion. What I mean is that in my experience with Brazilians, they are somewhat cautious of their territory and always keep at a safe distance socially. They are not overly eager to make friends and when they do, they are not overly eager to allow such friends into the circle. In this sense, the circle includes the names of the people close to the protagonist.