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…
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
- - - - -
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.
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.
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:
“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.
