The Vampire of Curitiba and Other Stories by Dalton Trevisan. New York. 1972. Knopf. Translated From The Portuguese By Gregory Rabassa. 269 pages. Jacket illustration by Ann Dalton. Jacket design by Lidia Ferrara. 039446645x. November 1972. Translations taken from the following collections: Novelas Nada Exemplares, Cemiterio de Elefantes, O Vampiro de Curitiba, and A Guerra Conjugal).
DESCRIPTION - THIS IS THE FIRST English-language collection of the best stories by the best story writer in contemporary Brazil-selected from his entire published work and superbly translated by Gregory Rabassa. THE narratives and sketches that make up THE VAMPIRE OF CURITIBA AND OTHER STORIES speak for the lost and the lonely, the irresponsible and unfaithful, the people who are the odds-and-ends of life. They are revealed, and reveal themselves, at the point of confrontation: with one another, with death, with memories and illusions. A woman’s rantings about her husband, whose sight, sound, smell, and touch she cannot bear, are counterposed to the absent offender’s barroom eloquence. Fraught with the exaggerated sensibility of four o’clock in the morning, an insomniac’s anti-paean to his surroundings is interrupted by an encounter with a cockroach, a fellow sufferer. A young man seeks solace not so much for his father’s death as for his absence from it. A young couple struggle unsuccessfully for privacy from a beer-drinking granny who hears all. A father and son confront each other across a chasm of mutual blame and derision. A woman, mortally ill, resists the dying of her lamp’s flame. A man separated from his wife and daughter attempts to impose his own reality on an uncooperative world. An anonymous, repeated accusation of unfaithfulness is the bit of dirt which grinds to a halt the shaky machinery of a marriage. Two men quarrel violently over a debt, While the children of the debtor look and listen. The truth about a multiple rape elusively changes form as the story is seen from varying points of view. A young man sits over a cognac watching women pass by and addresses a silent, lusty, bittersweet monologue to each in turn. With a style that is deceptively simple, chillingly casual, Dalton Trevisan, in each of these direct yet subtle tales, impales on a single moment the fears and passions and despairs of men.
DALTON TREVISAN was born in Curitiba, Brazil, in 1925. He studied law but soon abandoned the profession in favor of his family’s ceramic business. In 1945 an accident in the factory brought him close to death and led him to begin his writing career. He published a literary magazine called Joaquim from 1946 to 1948, worked as a police reporter and film critic for Curitiba newspapers, and published his own stories in cheap newsprint editions. In 1959 José Olympic published his first collection, Novelas Nada Exemplares, which was quickly followed by Morta na Praca, Cemitério de Elefantes, 0 Vampire de Curitiba, Desastres do Amer, and A Cuerra Conjugal.
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