Osman Lins (1924–1978)

O fiel e a pedra recorre ao simbolismo do confronto entre o fiel da balança e a pedra de moinho para apresentar a luta de um homem essencialmente ético contra um inimigo poderoso, num mundo pouco afeito à retidão de caráter. No Nordeste dos anos 30, Bernardo, no limiar dos quarenta anos, perdeu um filho e deixou o emprego público para não compactuar com desonestidades. Sem alternativa e quase sem nenhum dinheiro, aceita a oferta de um amigo e vai, com a mulher, administrar a venda de uma propriedade distante. O amigo, entretanto, ao descobrir que a mulher era adúltera, passa para o nome do irmão, Nestor, algumas propriedades, a fim de salvá-las da partilha de bens do divórcio, e acaba tendo uma morte suspeita. O confronto entre Bernardo e o novo patrão é sinuoso: Bernardo só tem a certeza de nunca ter traído as próprias convicções. Nestor, mais que destruir o adversário, quer cooptá-lo. Essa luta desigual é narrada numa estrutura de capítulos curtos que produzem, no conjunto, um relato mítico do confronto arquetípico entre o bem e o mal.… (más)

The best way, I think, to communicate the allure of this book is by quoting it:
The narrator himself describes the novel on page 45:"At this point I conceive of something unfeasible: a work that would present itself as double, built in layers and purporting to be its own analysis. For example, as if there were no Julia Marquezim Enone or The Queen of the Prisons of Greece, as if the present piece of writing were actually the novel by that name and I myself were a fiction."
Again, on page 96: "The hybrid space, in which a fixed space and a mobile space come together, is more suggestive and intriguing than the option favoring one alternative or the other."
And, on page 149: "the nature of the artistic object, which is never a depository of meaning but rather a detonator of meanings";
And finally, on page 177: If Maria de Franca's disease (here not so much mental as verbal),"making words like before and after impenetrable, tends to dilute the book in time,the occurrence of real historical events--not in the sequence in which they would have taken place but disconnected, loose, contingent upon random encounters with outdated snatches of news."… (más)

(could this review be a spoiler?) I enjoyed this book very much at the beginning but by the end I found it hard going. Which I guess is part of the point. But I got worn out with the literary discussion. I think I saw some of the humor but I didn't exactly find it humorous. And I wasn't sure. I think the book he writes about is supposed to be really bad, and some of the joke is all the incredible imagery and careful plotting and profound content he is finding in it. But I wouldn't bet the house on it. Maybe it is just supposed to be "modern" without necessarily being good or bad.… (más)