By HOMERO VIZEU ARAÚJO*

Considerations on the book by José Falero

The title, But what world do you live in?, challenges the unsuspecting reader, already bringing some disposition for controversy, perhaps demanding that the public pay attention to the world around them. Being a Brazilian book, more than that, a book that deals with Porto Alegre, but a certain Porto Alegre in contrast to Lomba do Pinheiro, the question seems to state the need to know the city, more, to contemplate the peripheral and poor neighborhood of the city.

And perhaps here José Falero already demands that a third adjective be added to the neighborhood: black. Yes, Brazilian life, black, poor in the outskirts of Porto Alegre. In terms that are perhaps abusively abstract on my part (after all, we have chronicles here, not essays), the book clearly shows an extraordinary dynamic between the center (white and comfortable) and the outskirts (black or brown and poor). A dynamic/movement whose pivot is the chronicler José Falero, who recounts his experience of humiliation, poverty and resistance, balancing between the various odd jobs and underemployment he has had in his life.

He, a resident of Lomba do Pinheiro, more specifically of Vila Sapo, is the narrator character, which yields another of the book's notable effects, challenging the reader who, somewhat suspicious as a comfortable white citizen, may wonder to what extent the stories told here may be manipulated, let's say, fictionally by the author. As far as I'm concerned, the more the chronicles are invented, the better: demonstrating the strength and determination of the chronicler.

But what world does this voice that emerges from the periphery speak of? For the middle class, even those who are well-informed and reasonably well-informed, those who have not been carried away by the recent stupid consensus, even for them, this world that Falero recreates with his lean, argumentative and ironic prose is very unreal. In what world do these poor, black people from the periphery live? That is when they are not turning cement and cleaning our floors, as the relentless columnist notes from time to time. Or when they are serving us in supermarkets, bars, stores, etc. Or robbing us? Ordering something at a red light?

And it is already difficult to comment on the book because, going quickly, the end of the last paragraph that has just been read focuses on the commonplace that from the outskirts emerge our servants but also our executioners, in the form of muggers, improvised thieves, drug dealers, etc. But not to notice how much the humiliation and poverty of the outskirts of Porto Alegre is also a gaucho feat would be to lose much of the impact of this book.

By wisely discerning and analyzing the narrative, the author denounces the cliché (violence and degradation of the favela) and exposes the options for resistance, which can range from informed nonconformity (the position of the chronicler José Falero) to the nonconformist conformity of those who endure and survive, or even the violence of those who cannot stand the humiliation and misery and resort to retaliation. These are schematic positions, I admit, although they help to understand the situations and conflicts that the chronicles enunciate and rework. On the other hand, taking into account the consistency of the whole, the book can be read as an astonishing autobiography.

What world do you live in? is the result of an argumentative arrangement, it configures an effort of exposition. The chronicles/stories are divided into four parts, which already states how much organization there is in the whole: 1. Wage earners, 2. Under construction, 3. White is the grandmother and 4. Between the guts and the reason. The combination between the experience of work in the urban center and oppression versus peripheral community and poverty is prominent in 1. Wage earners and 2. Under construction, but runs through the rest.

However, to capture the structured autobiography, and I use the term deliberately, it is necessary to suffer the impact of the accounts of violence under low-paid work, which are in 1. Wage earners, to then extract from the rest of the book the childhood already harassed by the violent approach of the police (Too many exceptions), the janitor father exploited in a middle-class building (Persecution), the school learning experience between useless and humiliating (Minefield), hunger that keeps people away from school (Minefield), challenging authority through solidarity with the rebels (Day D). That an author of such accurate texts, this objective and argumentative thinker, has been practically expelled from school life is proof of the incompetence of the education system, in a situation that is depressing.

I don't think it's obvious, but there is an implicit coherence that yields unity between childhood/youth memories and adult consciousness. Police violence and arbitrariness are present in the childhood that goes out to play in the outskirts, but also in the approach to the poor and almost black worker, therein lies part of the strength and morbid irony of Too many exceptions.

The group of children were playing hide-and-seek in one of the poor housing estates in Lomba do Pinheiro, when a car arrived and screeched to a halt. The children were interrupted by the screaming, bewildered and terrified children.

I had no idea what was going on, of course, but ignorance did not save me from absolute panic. I thought those men would do us the worst of all evils. I thought they were mistaking us for someone who had done something wrong, very wrong. They pointed guns at us. They shouted nonstop. They asked questions that I did not know exactly how to answer. They rummaged through our pockets.

An aunt of mine showed up and made a scene. And to this day, when I think of her, I am unable to dissociate her from a certain heroic aura. It was such a relief to see her appear to save us from a possible beating, or even a possible death.

– But what is this? What nonsense is this? Don’t you have anything else to do?

– We’re just doing our job, ma’am. It’s just our job.

It was just their work. And it remained just their work through all the years of my life as they unfolded. (p. 114)

Anyone who has followed the stupid and predictable parade of underemployment and side jobs for salaried workers will find the adult who returns to school to finish high school after the age of 1, after having been expelled by the public education system in his adolescence. It is a kind of apex of iniquity that José Falero enunciates and organizes, between argumentative and humorous, in that informed nonconformist point of view that I try to capture here.

It is a very refined procedure of understanding and denunciation, which does not resort to strident and degrading humor, far from debasement. A strange and disconcerting lucidity, which implies distance, but also visceral empathy. When, in the course of the prose, the sentimental or brutal scene excites the reader's imagination, the author provides the reflection that uses the syntax organized by whose and by causal and explanatory links, a kind of civilizing effort by the author, who, however, judging by the tone and sobriety, does not seem to have much faith in the result of the effort.

The nonconformist seems to explain something that seems obvious, abominable and naturalized to him, something that would not require an explanation if brutalization were not the rule and the exceptions did not exceed the tolerable by far. Finally, the rhythm of the prose and some didactic outburst also include irony and satire, which makes up the complexity of the procedure, the dynamics of which I will try to examine in a chronicle later on.

From the point of view of his psychological profile, the narrator recognizes his tendency towards depression and melancholy, but is always willing to have a sense of humor. In the opening of “Pereba eterno”: “When I arrived, my cousin Jorge Rodrigo Falero Cordeiro, Pereba, was already here, looking for a way to overcome the depression that befalls those of our lineage. It is useless, therefore, for me to try to remember the world without him.”

The text is about his cousin Pereba, who recently died, and with whom José Falero shared conversations and experiences. It is a moving elegy to the talent of his cousin, who left his mark on the community and its people, but a talent that had to endure the awareness of the abjection with which Brazil treats the poor.

Pereba was the exact opposite of resigned and alienated. The bitterness that tormented him in the following years came, I have no doubt, from dissatisfaction, from a lack of perspective, from the awareness that we deserve much more than what is within our reach in this shitty country, from the exemplary degree to which he abhorred the injustices practiced against us every day in all social spheres.

Hence the narrative ends with a fierce and restrained rap section, with the lyricism of the evocation of the dead cousin gaining a brutal beat at the end, in a bold move of rhetoric.

“Insomnia” is a long chronicle that illustrates in great style the heights reached by the author Falero. The opening is commonplace and somewhat obvious.

I tried to sleep, but it didn't work. So, I'm going to tell you a story. Actually, a few stories. All of them are true, as incredible as they may seem.

I won't mention it, so as not to be boring, but the other day, at Cap, where I study, they said that I look like a thief. They said it in no uncertain terms: that I look like a thief.

Next comes the colleague's speech, which is somewhere between rude, good-humored and complacent, all of this at school, where José Falero was determined to finally finish high school. After noting the prejudiced nature of the intervention, the columnist avoids the conflict: “And I even thought about asking the guy what a thief's face looks like, but lately I've been trying to stay out of useless arguments.”

That is, after noting the exercise of prejudice, comes the somewhat malicious retreat, from someone who noted it, but is aware of the solid ideological barrier or conservative common sense, to stick to two well-known variables. After a brief digression, comes the end of the paragraph that opens up to the next episode: “But if there is the face of a thief within the prejudiced common sense of this country, there is also the face of a victim, and I know I do not have that face. Thieves do not seem to see me as a potential victim.”

Here, malice grows, because thieves also move in the terrain of supposed appearances and clichés, in which prejudiced common sense acts. If the face of a thief is prejudice, what configuration does the face of a victim take on? Or rather, in a society divided between thieves and victims, with the destitute and dispossessed enduring segregation and degradation, how can we not fall into the formula that the poor are threats against whom potential victims (more or less comfortable) project their fears?

“Insomnia” continues relentlessly towards the next episode, where our hero finds himself at a bus stop at night when someone asks for a bus ticket. When he refuses, he vents an angry and joking outburst:

– This is tough! I spent the whole afternoon asking people for a ticket, and everyone was acting crazy! I'm not going to walk home, bro. And I'm not going to hitchhike either. In a little while, I'm going to just hitch someone up, seriously, I don't even want to know. I didn't want to do this, but I'm going to have to.

And the chronicler notes that it was not a threat, because the solicitor's features and mannerisms were friendly, that is, the beggar in poverty considered the chronicler a fellow man, a brother. Falero laughed, amused by the expression “Touch someone up”, a euphemistic and plastic formula.

He couldn't hold it in and ended up laughing too.

– But yeah, man! Damn, what's the harm in paying for a ticket for the guy, right?

The columnist takes advantage of the opportunity and reveals that at some point in his life he began to think of strategies for when he was mugged. Despite not having the right profile, as he revealed above, it is always good to be prepared for some novice thief or aggressive and inattentive amateur. The text moves on, without further ado, to another occasion, another bus stop, an exceptional occasion and stop, who would have thought. It was the only time Falero suffered an attempted mugging. He was accompanied by a friend and they were approached by two robbers, one of them with a knife.

José Falero tries to argue (“Damn, bro, you’re going to rob us, is that right?”), receives an aggressive response, but the scene deteriorates into a division of misery between the poor, as hilarious as the scene with the beggar from the previous stop, but framed by the mistake of threats and a knife on display. The columnist explores the situation that is already causing laughter in the more relaxed partner of the robber with the knife:

– Dude, I asked if you were really going to rob us because that’s what you’re seeing: we’re screwed here, bro. We have nothing and you’re going to rob us?

The columnist clings to his pedagogical effort and continues: we have nothing to offer, my partner and I waiting for the bus, with unkempt beards and smoking cheap cigarettes. The argument is interrupted by a car alarm on the other side of the avenue, a signal triggered by a couple leaving a restaurant. Having established empathy with the robber, the warning goes out.

I pointed it out in his face:

– Look there, bro. Look at the money going away. That’s where the money is, bro, not here at the bus stop. There’s nothing but shit here.

The guy with the knife looked at me very seriously. Then he shook his head and said:

– Okay. Give me a cigarette, then.

And I gave them the cigarette and they left. (FALERO, 2021)

This failed robber and his relaxed partner are called “bros” and accept the journalist’s patter, who appeals to the robbers and points out the consumers who, satiated by a meal, apparently look like victims. Alarm, car, restaurant, a set of signs evoking a pattern of consumption that the guys at the bus stop can only contemplate, envy, attack, etc.

Let us remember: at the first bus stop, the columnist is enchanted by the metaphorical expression (to push someone up) in the context of the hypothesis of a robbery, a robbery among the poor perhaps, to obtain the money to pay the fare. At the second stop, the context evolves into an unsuccessful robbery in which the convincing rhetoric – and, for the reader, artistic – opens space for alliance, advice and incitement to attack those who have something to lose.

Of course, the good will and interest of the educated reader, who also frequents a restaurant, are tested here. The good humor and swing of the dispossessed quartet took on more sinister overtones, in which some advise, and perhaps plan, while others execute. It is arguable that José Falero's judgment on prejudice at the beginning of the column suffered a serious blow. The appearances that feed prejudice are deceiving, but not that deceiving, which is to say that the rich and well-off feel threatened by the poor for excellent reasons, that is, the reasons of those who are objectively privileged and complicit in an unequal society on an abject and delirious scale.

Between parades, concepts, popular speech and conversation between brothers, the columnist sets up the situation in which the protest against prejudice is contested, and, if I am not very mistaken, the contrast leads from stupid prejudice to a revealing and provocative contemporary scene, in which pathetic humor also appears. It is a kind of Brechtian sketch in which the zigzag of the class dispute is captured from a supposedly pleasant point of view, in which the gentle and lyrical partnership between columnist and reader, so typical of Brazilian chronicles, undergoes a not-so-subtle twist, between gentle and provocative. Or hostile and malicious? Ambiguous and pedagogical? As is to be expected in complex prose, the layers interconnect. For me, a remarkable and exceptional aesthetic feat. But the chronicle is not over yet, let's see.

José Falero cuts in and notes that, among other low-paying jobs, he was a doorman in a building in a comfortable neighborhood in Porto Alegre. In this capacity, he had some contact with a young woman from the countryside. Since she voted for Aécio Neves against Dilma, their quasi-friendship suffered some damage, with José Falero being excluded from Facebook. Towards the end of the text, we find this malicious and devastating excerpt.

“She had come from the countryside to study law in Porto Alegre. And her father had simply bought her an apartment. In Bela Vista. In the building where I worked. I also remember the brand new car she got a while later, and the latest generation iPhone she had. This iPhone was stolen from her in a robbery, and she replaced it the following week, buying another brand new latest generation iPhone, like someone buying banana candy.”

After this consideration, comes the opportunity to talk about robberies, losses and damages, in which José Falero narrates part of the attempted robbery at the bus stop. And the young girl, excited by the narrative coincidence, interrupts:

– That’s right, creature! We have nothing and they come to steal from us! Isn’t that absurd?

The columnist prepares to laugh at the joke that doesn't exist, realizes the irremediable misunderstanding and reinforces the girl's misunderstanding.

– Oh. Put “absurd” in that!

With this ending, we return to the arrangement of the first scene of the chronicle, in which we avoid getting into useless discussions. There, we were trying to reveal the prejudice of those who associated Falero with a mugger; here, it is the privileged condition embodied in the girl, who associates herself with the chronicler as a victim of a mugging, making the dialogue an exercise in misunderstanding. In the first moment, there at the beginning of Insônia, the accusation emerged that the chronicler seemed capable of the mugging; in the second moment, there is an unfounded association between the mugged, with José Falero actually being sympathetic to the mugger, but mistakenly associated by elitist means with the mugged woman, who is kind, aecista and somewhat distracted. In the upscale neighborhood, there is a comical and outrageous misunderstanding between the young white woman and the black/brown employee.

From another angle, the anecdotes about the assault gain contrast and perhaps poignancy, now illuminated by the recent political dispute and the Facebook debate, which also qualifies the inclusion of the columnist. The break on Facebook did not prevent the relatively calm verbal contact between the two, whose outcome, however, is a disagreement mediated by class brutality and complacent self-deception, since the girl does not consider herself found.

Social hostility and ideological disagreement guide the set of texts and establish a great unity in the book, but it is possible to guide the chronicles of an entire book without the literary form reworking the content. Here there is a literary form that explores hostility and disagreement with breadth and density, bringing, to the plot and prose flow, the friction between center and periphery, city and poor suburb.

A friction that could turn into satire on the lyrical and emotional disposition of the columnist, who is said to have fallen in love with another unsuspecting young woman, also middle class, according to the column “Leite derramado” (Spilled Milk). Falero and his friend, a “witch”, meet on a bus when the wizard attacks their romantic illusions. At the bus stop or on it, these are places of sociability for those who spend hours commuting to or from Lomba do Pinheiro, it should be noted. I reproduce an excerpt from the extraordinary rhetoric of the good-natured and pessimistic wizard, who evaluates the possibilities of love between the lady and the sentimental black man from the outskirts.

“No, no, that’s just the arrival, that’s just the arrival. Imagine later, the two of you holed up inside the shack, it’s a thousand degrees inside, half an hour banging on the fan to make it work, and when the thing finally works, there’s hot air everywhere, that gust of wind, it’s like a hair dryer. The girl is used to flat screens, Smart TVs, Full HD and the whole shebang, and then you turn on that old fourteen-inch TV of yours, which even belonged to your grandmother, the one with the shark fin, from the time when the knobs were for turning, and in fact the little plastic part of the knobs has already disappeared and you can only change channels and increase the volume with pliers. The image is all blurry, full of ghosts; the sound, just a hiss; and you’re throwing the antenna here and there, trying to tune in to Faustão. Meanwhile, the afternoon breeze, instead of helping you and going to the other side, no, it comes all the way to your stall, bringing the aroma of the ditch that runs behind there. Oh, bro, call me! And then the poor girl is covered in sweat inside that oven that is your shed, the poor girl has never sweated so much in her life, and she asks to take a shower, almost crying. Bah, imagine the fiasco! You at the window, yelling at your aunt not to turn on the shower at her house because the girl is going to take a shower, and if you turn on two showers at the same time it's a mess, it goes bad, the circuit breaker trips and turns everything off, everyone is left without power, because there's only one cat for everyone and the thing can't handle two showers on at the same time. Great, then the girl is there, taking a shower and someone comes to ask if you have some coffee powder to lend. There's always some, it's amazing! That's a lie, you know? He doesn't even want any coffee powder, he just wants to gossip, he found out that you were with that girl there and he wants to peck on her suit and then go around talking, and then he comes with this coffee powder, right in the face.” (FALERO, 2021, p.90).

This wizard, with his popular and playful verve, is an example of the rhetorical variation that punctuates the texts and ensures, among other means, the density of the prose. In a melancholic and ferocious tone, the slang of the slums yields the terrible “Nego Pumba”, which is about an old partner of the narrator who degraded himself with crack. However, it is worth noting that beneath the comedy of the hardships of love, the condition of peripheral sub-citizenship pulsates in contrast with the social prerogatives of some elite, that friction referred to above.

In the collection of chronicles and their organization into a book, what emerges is an implacable antagonism, displacing the friction to the more pleasant moments of the chronicles. I dare say that this volume is an aesthetic event to salute our gaucho exploits, an ironic homage to the civilized pretensions of Porto Alegre, our pleasant capital.

*Homer Vizeu Araujo is a full professor of Brazilian literature at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS).

Reference

José Falero. But in What world do you live in?. New York, New York Times, 2021, 280 pages.https://amzn.to/4hjxtjq]

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