Whatever Happened to Dulce Veiga? : A B-Novel (Texas Pan American Series) - Softcover

Abreu, Caio Fernando

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0292705018 ISBN 13: 9780292705012

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2001

Synopsis

A forty-year-old Brazilian journalist reduced to living in a dilapidated building inhabited by a bizarre human fauna—fortune-tellers, transvestites, tango-loving Argentinean hustlers—is called upon to track down and write the story of Dulce Veiga, a famous singer who disappeared twenty years earlier on the eve of her first big show. Thus begins a mad race through an underground, nocturnal São Paulo among rock bands with eccentric names, feline reincarnations of Vita Sackville-West, ex-revolutionaries turned junkies, gay Pietas, echoes of Afro-Brazilian religions, and intimations of AIDS . . .

Constructed like a mystery, the novel unravels over a week, evoking a decadent and contaminated atmosphere in which the journalist's own search for meaning finds its expression in the elusive Dulce Veiga, who constantly appears to him as if in a dream, her arm pointing heavenward. Whatever Happened to Dulce Veiga? is a descent into the underworld of contemporary megalopolises where, like the inside of a huge TV, life intermingles with bits of music, film clips, and soap opera characters in a crazy and macabre dance, moving toward a possible catharsis.

About this title

About the Author:

Caio Fernando Abreu (1948–1996) was an award-winning journalist, novelist, short-story writer, and playwright who portrayed, as no other contemporary writer, the myriad contradictions of urban Brazil. His untimely death, as well as his courageous stand on AIDS and the growing popular interest in gay literature, will likely result in renewed attention to his playful yet urgent brand of postmodern writing.

From Booklist:

Award-winning Brazilian writer Abreu's posthumously translated novel is a masterful, multidimensional account of a cynic's journey to self-knowledge. Seemingly a densely plotted homage to Dashiell Hammett's Phillip Marlowe, the story's action focuses on a nameless and existentially empty Brazilian journalist who's fallen on hard times. He lands a job finding and reporting on Dulce Veiga, a famous singer who vanished 20 years prior. His quest leads him through Sao Paulo's underground, where he encounters rock musicians, transvestites, hustlers, smack, crack, and gay Pietas. His descent into this contemporary inferno is rendered in seven sections, each corresponding to a day of the week, over which is woven a delicate web of symbols referencing AfroBrazilian cults and their gods, or orixas. Part literary detective story, part spiritual quest, the journalist's search is set to a streaming cacophony of snippets from various cults, American pulp fiction, songs, and films. Not since Alfred Appel's annotated Lolita clarified the subtle wordplay and allusions found in Nabokov's masterpiece has there been such an accessible assemblage beneath the packaging of compelling entertainment, all neatly explicated by translator Frizzi's analysis and glossary of terms. Whitney Scott
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About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0292705018
• ISBN 13: 9780292705012
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192