Ballad False Messi

by Moacyr Scliar

English (translation)
Original Portugese

89 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Moacyr Jaime Scliar (born March 23, 1937) is a Brazilian writer and physician.
Scliar is best known outside Brazil for his 1981 novel Max and the Cats (Max e os Felinos), the story of a young man who flees Berlin after he comes to the attention of the Nazis for having had an affair with a married woman. Making his way to Brazil, his ship sinks, and he finds himself alone in a dinghy with a jaguar who had been travelling in the hold.[1] The story of the jaguar and the boy was picked up by Yann Martel for his own book Life of Pi, winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize, in which Pi is trapped in a lifeboat with a tiger

Reviews

[BlackOxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

God Among Us

There is a tradition in mystical Judaism that a Messiah appears in every generation but goes unrecognized or unappreciated. The title story of this collection reflects that tradition. It also captures the essence of Yiddish story-telling - the subtle entry of the supernatural into daily life. This sort of epiphany does not explain or reveal but only reminds those who witness it of the mystery of the world they live in. It is based not on a theology 0f power but one of permanent, impenetrable hiddenness. It strives not to convince but to question the nature of reality. It is confident without triumphalism. And it recognizes that even the Messiah has to make a living.

[Glenn Russell]

If you can get your hands on The Ballad of the False Messiah by Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar, a little ninety-pager published by Available Press, you will be in for a real treat.

What whimsy; what fancy; what caprice; what imaginative power; what sheer delight. To provide a taste of this collection, I will focus on the fifty-page novella, The Short-Story Writers, a highly inventive piece comprised of cameos of how and why and when and where short-story writers write their short-stories.

I've referenced a good number of these cameos below but there are many, many more. I write this review to urge you to read not only this collection but also Moacyr Scliar's other books, novels and stories written in the tradition of Latin American magical realism.

THE SHORT-STORY WRITERS
"Everybody went to Ramiro's afternoon of autographs. Every single one of the forty or fifty short-story writers. I was one of the first to arrive: I didn't want to miss the hot dogs." So begins the narrator's odyssey through the land of the short-story writers. And, by the way, the narrator himself is writing his own short-story called The Short-Story Writers. In the spirit of the writers who give names to the characters as they write their short-stories, I'll give the narrator a name: Lucca.

Lucca reflects: Nathan rhapsodizes about what short-story writers undergo to write their short-stories, including moaning and grinding teeth and says short-story writers write in third person but the "he" is only a method to mask how the short-story writer deals with his own demons, he is really talking about himself; Lucio goes through a whole ritual in preparation for short-story writing - close windows, lighting candles, wearing his tuxedo; Volmir closes himself in his study for two or more days;; Almeirindo insists his short-stories be printed in lower-case letters as contrasted to Cabrao, who wrote an entire chapter where each word took up a full page.

Ramón wrote a series of short-stories about an imaginary country in Central America he called Cuenca. The country had landowners and a rising middle class, many of which were rounded up by the police to be tortured. or sent to jail. Short-story writer Ramón lived in the United States and succeeded in having his book published. It sold fabulously well. A crafty entrepreneur made a bundle by raising money for Cuencan refugees.

Short-story writer Rômulo satirized his Brazilian hometown in his writing. The mayor of the town kicked Rômulo out with threats if he ever showed his face again. But when Rômulo's book of short-stories made the town famous and attracted many visitors thus stimulating the local economy, the new mayor invited Rômulo back so he could be awarded the Metal of Tourist Merit.

Humberto, an algebra teacher, conceived the short-story as a mathematical model; Ramião transcribed his extrasensory experiences and converted into short-stories; John wrote a series of stories under the title 1997, After the Atomic War. One hundred copies were placed in a radiation-proof shelter; Lucca starts thinking of all those around him as not short-story writers but characters within his own story.

Rafa started to give away free copies of his book of short-stories to kids at school and said he himself would award scholarships to any student who committed his book of short-stories to memory and could recite each story by heart.

Rosemberg writes stories with the cadence of waltzes or tangos; Paulo writes only in the morning, his stories being transcriptions of his dreams; Sidney doesn't use swear words since he's afraid he might offend his aunt, an old woman; Reinaldo dreams of a short-story that will write itself; Damasceno writes multiple choice short stories in 2nd person: You were a) home 2) at the movies 3) in the country.

Auro was thinking of coating the pages of his short-stories with hallucinogenic substances so his stories will cause erratic visions (sidebar: this is my personal favorite cameo included here); Jones writes his stories so commuters can read one on their subway ride to work since he sees the subway as the library of the modern world; Cataringo satirizes his enemies by depicting them as animals.

Otaviano writes his short-stories on the walls of public toilets; Pascoal threw parties and recorded his guests and used their dialogues as short-stories. His friends are not amused; Ciao produces a short-story every two hours, thinking a percentage of what he writes must be good; eight-year-old Miguel writes stories of nymphomaniacs; Misael intends to write brief short-stories in smoke up in the sky, using a squadron of airplanes for the purpose; Ernesto mimeographs his stories and hands them out at soccer games; Fischer writes in a trance-like condition, dictating his stories to his secretary.

Lastly, here are three direct quotes from this Moacyr Scliar piece:

"Short-story writer Amilcar was kidnapped by five individuals who got out of a black car. He was taken to an empty house and for a week he was forced to write two short stories a day. Afterwards, Amilcar saw those short-stories published, under different names, in magazines and literary supplements."

"Short-story writers might be aggressive, but they are harmless. In World War I a battalion of short-story writers were decimated; an inspection of their rifles revealed that not a single bullet had been fired."

"Short-story writers are hard to digest. A tribe of cannibals once devoured an entire expedition of short-story writers; the cannibals became sick and suffered from hallucinations during which they kept telling endless stories."

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There are nine other stories in this collection, each one much shorter, from 2 to 8 pages. My favorite is Eating Paper where employees of a life insurance company have to deal with the sadism of the owner's son. Anybody who has ever had experience in either dealing with or working for an insurance company will appreciate ever sentence.

Moacyr Scliar isn't as well-known as some of the other big name authors from South America, but he deserves to be. Fortunately, many of his books have been translated into English.


Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar, 1937-2011