Brazilians in V

[Ted Samsel]

ADinn sez: 
> 
> Interesting Brazilian nugget and aside for the day:
> 
> Brazil's greatest novelist, Joa~o Guimaraes Rosa, has as his greatest
> novel a story called `Veredas: Gran Serta~o. Veredas meaning territory
> carved into great ridges and gullies. Gran Serta~o meaning great
> wilderness. It tells (or rather the Brazilian woodsman/cowboy who
> narrates it tells) of the criss-crossing paths of various characters
> climbing and descending the As and Vs of terrain lying directly south
> of the Amazon basin, home of some of it's mightiest tributaries and
> most remote tribes. Translated (badly, by most accounts) in the early
> 60s as `The Devil to Pay in the Backlands' it is, according to my
> ex-colleague, perhaps the nearest thing in South American literature
> to a `Ulysses' or a `Gravity's Rainbow'. Maybe Pynchon read this too?

Ahem. Isn't THE DEVIL TO PAY IN THE BACKLANDS (OS SERTAOES) E da Cunha's
account of the messianic revolt in the northeast of Brazil in (I recall)
the 1890's? Vargas-Llosa reprised this rather interesting historic event
in his novel, THE WAR OF THE END OF THE WORLD.

(wishing to be able to include a soundclip of some musica nordestinha on
button accordion... forro')

Ted Samsel....tejas at infi.net  *1996* Year of the Accordion~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
         "Home of the brave, land of the free,
          I don't want to be mistreated by no bourgoisie."
AAFOUF# 0000003                           Huddie Ledbetter