THE CLUB of ANGELS 2021 Celebrating the Pleasures of Reading Brazilian Literature #Brazilianlitreadingpleasures
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VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB – EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON 2021-Pleasures of Reading Brazilian Literature #BrazilianLitReadingPleasures VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB|LUÍS FERNANDO VERÍSSIMO|GULA -O CLUBE DOS ANJOS| THE CLUB OF ANGELS 2021 Celebrating the Pleasures of Reading Brazilian Literature #BrazilianLitReadingPleasures 17th JUNE 2021, 18.30-21.00 GMT (Gula:)O Clube dos Anjos (1998) by LUÍS FERNANDO VERÍSSIMO (1936-) translated as The Club of Angels (2001) 1 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL @BrazilEmbassyUK VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB – EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON 2021-Pleasures of Reading Brazilian Literature #BrazilianLitReadingPleasures Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins: ten affluent men nurture their unquenchable desire to feast wallowing in increasingly more sophisticated gourmet dishes; they satiate their desire for exceptional food with some good conversation but watch out for grotesque twists in Luís Fernando Veríssimo’s second novel! A wickedly humorous story with biting dark bizarre satirical content. A commissioned novel for a series revisiting the seven capital sins, a theme reiterated by the Brazilian publisher Objetivain the late 1990s. Why is there a discordance between the ‘Picadinho’ Club (Brazilian Beef Stew Club) and the title of the novel? Is it a club of fallen dark angels engaging in profane transgressive behaviours? Is the novel easy to digest? Yes, readers can enjoy skimming through the surface narrative, and being gripped by the plot totally disregarding everything else: Those ten gourmand friends continue the dining club meetings for twenty-one years. At one point one member dies (as we are all bound to), a rather mysterious replacement chef is found by a chance encounter at a wine shop. It is sprinkled with snippets of recent Brazilian history. The plot thickens with a twist reminiscent of the satirical humour of Dalton Trevisan (1925-) or/and Rubem Fonseca (1925-2020). Or readers could try and discern what the writer’s ploy was in adding layers of overt and covert parody and reference, for instance: various Ancient and Mediaeval Angel tales, Trimalchio's Dinner in the ancient Roman novel Satyricon, the diseased foot of Philoctetes in The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Cypria, and The Little Iliad, and numerous quotations and borrowings from William Shakespeare’s King Lear, the pre-Roman Celtic king of Britain at the time of a collapse of civilisation and some of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and Poirot. Our book club read and discussed two novels by Luís Fernando Veríssimo, see details and download the posts: The Spies https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul-bookclub-13-osespioes.pdf Borges e os orangotangos eternos http://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul-bookclub-52-verissimo.pdf DETAILS OF AVAILABLE PUBLICATIONS: ENGLISH 2001- The Club of Angels translated by Margaret Jules Costa (1949- ) published by New Directions ISBN-10: 0811217558 ISBN-13: 978-0811217552 ASIN B005F3GMFE 2 https://books.google.com.et/books?id=G5cn9BrD6d0C&printsec=copyright Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL @BrazilEmbassyUK VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB – EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON 2021-Pleasures of Reading Brazilian Literature #BrazilianLitReadingPleasures PORTUGUESE 1998 - Gula: O Clube dos Anjos, Plenos Pecados, Objetiva. ISBN-10: 9722019171ISBN- 13: 978-9722019170 Various reprints in Brazil, the most recent of which is the 2019 by the publisher Alfaguara ISBN-10: 8556520847 ISBN-13: 978-8556520845 Free downloads: ➢ https://lelivros.love/book/download-clube-dos-anjos-luis-fernando-verissimo-em- epub-mobi-e-pdf/ ➢ https://www.sjose.com.br/download/bruno/Clube%20Dos%20Anjos%20- %20Luis%20Fernando%20Verissimo.pdf ➢ https://sites.google.com/site/reitafirspa/nm6bhjrwfdhj1qve9l SHORT HISTORY OF THE BOOK AND TRANSLATION Luís Fernando Veríssimo is very prolific and has always pursued profit-making writing ventures. Many appreciate his satirical humour and comic television series have made him popular. The story of how he wrote Gula: o Clube dos Anjos or O Clube dos Anjos: Gula reflects his chosen approach to writing his version of whodunits. The novel was commissioned by the publishing house Objetiva for its series ‘Plenos Pecados (Fully-fledged Sins - N.K.) in the 1990s. It was not the first series on the theme of seven capital sins in Brazil but Objetiva revived it in novel format. Commissioning literary texts to maximise sales has increasingly become a strategy of commercially minded publishers everywhere. The practice has often been frowned upon or even scorned, and its products usually regarded as lesser works. Many argue that, in such business practice, the commissioning editor and/or publishing house taints or/and hinders the individual author’s independence and creativity by setting up contrived rules and patterns. These types of works seem to try and create bridges between pulp literature/best sellers and great literature. Great timeless literature is creative work which mirrors both the limitless capacity of human imagination and uniquely creative minds. Obviously, the ethical 3 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL @BrazilEmbassyUK VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB – EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON 2021-Pleasures of Reading Brazilian Literature #BrazilianLitReadingPleasures dimension in editorial commissioning practices is brought to the fore in instances of commissioning fiction. In addition, the practice may include a covert/overt element of product placement as well. Readers will certainly not miss the reiteration of the name of a foreign wine in Gluttony: The Club of Angels. Further to exhibiting a degree of hubris as a wine connoisseur, at one point the reader finds that the novel snobbishly derides the local Brazilian wine, particularly bad as the state of Rio Grande do Sul is one of the major wine producers in Brazil. In the twentieth century, publishers in Brazil eagerly adopted theme-based commissioning. Various publishers began to engage in creating popular series in the first half of 20th century. However, in the second half, they adopted a much more targeted and aggressive commercial strategy. For example, the publishing house Civilização Brasileira Editora (founded in 1929), now part of the Record Publishers Group, commissioned a short- story anthology based on the theme of the seven capital sins in1964 from writers who had already achieved a degree of success: Mário Donato, Guilherme Figueiredo, Carlos Heitor Cony, Otto Lara Rezende, José Condé, Lygia Fagundes Telles and João Guimarães Rosa. In 1965, Civilização Brasileira commissioned an anthology on the theme of the ten commandments engaging the following authors: Guilherme Figueiredo, Carlos Heitor Cony, Jorge Amado, Marques Rebelo, Orígenes Lessa, Campos de Carvalho, João Antônio, Moacir C. Lopes, and Helena Silveira. The two volumes achieved satisfactory sales and inspired other publishers to purse the same approach. In 1998, the publishing house Editora Objetiva (purchased by Penguin Random House in 2014, now part of the German private multinational conglomerate Bertelsmann, and by Companhia das Letras in 2015) revisited the theme used by Civilização Brasileira, the seven capital sins, adopting the heading ‘Plenos Pecados (Fully-fledged Sins)’ commissioning established writers: Zuenir Ventura, José Roberto Torero, Luis Fernando Veríssimo, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, João Gilberto Noll, Ariel Dorfman and Tomás Eloy Martínez and the publication was completed in 2002. It innovated by inviting two South American writers (Chile and Argentina). Other publishers, such as Nova Fronteira, and Rocco also embarked on such commissioning editorial strategies in the awareness that they would be able to generate profit. The ploy attracted the attention of the national media helping publishers in promoting their commercial endeavours. Gula: o Clube dos Anjos has ten short chapters and just over 130 pages. The epigraph at the start of the novel is ‘Todo desejo é um desejo de morte possível’ (All desire is a desire for a possible death) followed by ‘a Japanese maxim’. Original English translation MJC 1 O Encontro The Meeting 2 A Escama The Fish Scale 3 O Primeiro Jantar The First Supper 4 A Teoria do Cio The Discourse on Sexual Desire 5 As Xipófagas Lésbicas The Lesbian Siamese Twins 6 A Escama 2 The Fish Scale II 4 7 Wanton Boys Wanton Boys Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL @BrazilEmbassyUK VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB – EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON 2021-Pleasures of Reading Brazilian Literature #BrazilianLitReadingPleasures 8 Chocolate Kid - Detective The Chocolate Kid - Detective 9 O Cluble das Moscas The Club of Flies 10 A Visita do Sr. Spector Mr Spector’s Visit The original cover is by the graphic artist Victor Burton (1956-) featuring