The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior translated by Johnny Lorenz (Verso), Portuguese/Brazil

Just finished it and I thought that it's quite a rich novel, evoking history and culture through a single action.

I picked this up last fall not knowing anything about it and really enjoyed it and felt I learned a lot about a specific place and culture. I was hooked immediately with the opening scene and thought the whole first section was very strong and that the author was particularly skilled at bringing the setting and landscape to life.

Since I read it a few months ago the details aren't fresh but I wrote in my review that I found it a little repetitive and not in a stylistic way and that the characters lose a bit of their depth in the second half as the author widened the scope and began focusing more on the socio-political backdrop.

The feeling that remains with me, however, is very positive and I was very excited to see this on the longlist.

Title of thread wrong? WP longlist? 🤨

ANC wrote: "Title of thread wrong? WP longlist? 🤨"
Thanks - fixed now.

Enjoying this so far

Though in a sense this is the sort of traditional novel I expect from Latin American writing - if (the Brazilian setting aside) I had read this blind and you’d told me it was the lost Garcia Marquez novel I could believe it. Or perhaps Jorge Amado is a better comparison.

Whereas Out of Earth and Dark Side of Skin - two other award winning Brazilian novels - in contention this year are more modern in style. Eg I suspect this isn’t a book Charco would publish.

Agreed, Paul. It’s hard to read this without comparing it to Out of Earth.

It is hard - but it’s also a bit unfair.

Ultimately have to judge this versus the others on the longlist and on that basis this is a possible winner for me.

That’s a fair point. I’m still in the opening chapters so I’ll hold my tongue.

Paul wrote: "Or perhaps Jorge Amado is a better comparison."

Coincidentally I was reading Crooked Plow while in the midst of an Amado novel, but perhaps one that is not the most representative of his style (Captains of the Sands). Will continue reading it today.

As for Crooked Plow, things picked up sufficiently in the second part and made this a good novel – I just thought the prose wasn’t anything spectacular, actually rather dull in the long run, but the story kept me interested until the end.

I get impression from reactions to the original that this sort of rural novel might be more unusual in Brazilian literature than it is in the sort of novels we tend to get in translation and from the wider region.

Incidentally would have been nice to have it mentioned somewhere on the cover, even on the flaps, that this is a translation. Certainly rules out the rumour that Fitzcarraldo didn’t make the cut this year because of their stance on #namethetranslator.

I can see the Jorge Amado comparisons, and yes, it is incident-rich but the prose isn't exactly blowing me away.

Itamar's more direct comparison would be the 1930s/1940s author Graciliano Ramos, one of key representants of our literary "regionalism" movement. NYRB classics published one of his most famous books years ago: São Bernardo.

"Regionalist" literature, set in the rural countryside of Brazil, was actually a quite relevant trend in the 20th century. João Guimarães Rosa is a key reference, and is considered the Brazilian James Joyce, his The Devil to Pay in the Backlands is one of the best novels I've ever read (and I am usually cautious when using such superlatives) - unfortunately the English translation is out of print, but I've heard that a new translation is almost ready for a new us/uk edition.

Having said all that, authors such as Itamar and Stênio Gardel (who won the last National Book Awards with The Words That Remain), are somewhat reviving these countryside stories, but now with voices representing the minorities that never had the chance to publish their stories when the regionalist movement first appeared. There is a debate among Brazilian literary circles whether this new movement (also including the urban side, because the country of course has changed) actually brings something new apart from the minority voice dimension - it is a discussion with a lot of controversies (Itamar himself accused a literary critic of being racist because of a less-than-laudatory newspaper review for his most recent novel). The fact that those books are also enjoying market success adds a curious ingredient to that discussion.

Thank you Daniel for these insights. I am really thrilled that a new translation of The Devil to Pay in the Backlands is ready to be published (Which mean we have to wait another 3 years) but stills it is a great news. Once, I asked an Arabic transltor (a friend of mine too) about the novel and if he can translate it, he replied by saying that it will take him almost 8 years to finish it.

I finished this. Maybe I’m just in a bad mood after a spate of 3-star reads, but I was underwhelmed by this. A lot of complaints are craft-based: not enough time was spent with the characters to justify the emotional way I was supposed to feel about them later, and those girls were just so articulate and brave and calm in the face of vast power imbalances and always had the right answer for their oppressors. I perked up when Part III promised the viewpoint of an encantada, but I never felt that perspective was really “possessed,” no pun intended.

It was interesting to read about this culture and area, which is why I pushed through to the end, but I didn’t find this a very literary book.

that first part alone took me forever to read. I had to force myself to keep going. in the end it didn't do much for me, I found it repetitive and, sometimes, didactic with dull prose.

I wonder how much of the style was adopted from popular fiction in order to reach a wider audience.

it was an underwhelming choice for the longlist, specially compared to other Brazilian eligible books such as The Dark Side of Skin and Out of Earth

I really didn't get on with this at all - I found the prose pretty uninteresting and the subject matter quite grinding.

Also, the idea that you would find a knife and put it in your mouth, for some reason, baffled and irritated me and I couldn't quite move past it.

I'm still reading but am on Team Underwhelmed so far: it feels popular and conventional and I don't respond well to this sort of sweeping style that doesn't bother with details (Though I didn't like The Details either!)

I can see connections to the simplified anti-colonial theme of Undiscovered and a lite version of the labour politics which Mater 2-10 commits to more seriously.