Education, Literacy and Literature in Brazil

Interviewing Areacio - in his home in the small city of Morungaba. Morungaba is just 40 km from Campinas, yet many in Campinas and other surrounding cities have never heard of it...

By Citizen Correspondent Antonio Carlos Rix

Date Posted: 01/05/08

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Two blocks from my home there is an old bookstore, “Livraria Pontes”. Mr. Pontes, actually Reinaldo Pontes, is a drear friend fighting to keep his family business alive. It is not easy to keep a bookstore open in a country where books are not very welcome as gifts by many, as an example. I have already seen the look of “why didn’t you give me a chocolate bar or something else” in a couple of faces myself.

Last week I was taking some pictures of an old part of Campinas downtown, some centenary two story homes from a time when many lived downtown. Now, all turned into some sorts of business places. On Saturdays early mornings one may be transported a hundred years back into the past… “hey, look that guy on the horse buggy down the street! Oh wait no, it is just a VW beetle.”

Past Lusitana St., I go across Cesar Bierrenbach St. towards Dr. Quirino st.. From the corner there I can see Pontes’ bookstore. Let me visit Reinaldo and his Sister Eva, I thought to myself. They are probably there, its Saturday, they are open until at least noon some times until later. What a great joyful coincidence, from my beloved Morungaba – a city 40 km away from Campinas – I met Aercio Consolin.

Interviews with Aercio Consolin, Brazilian writer

- Hi Aercio, how’ve been? What are you doing here? So and so…

Guess what, he was there sign up his newly released book “Entreato Amoroso” [freely translated: Loving Interact, the name is a play on words in Portuguese that goes like “interval of loving” ] This is his 6th book, but he’s got many article and sort stories published too. Aercio has one book, which is a collection of four sort stories, translated into French sold in Europe – one of those stories became a movie here in Brazil.

“Entreato Amoroso” by Ateliê Editorial www.atelie.com.br comes after some 18 years silence of the author; it is very good. I wish you all could read Portuguese so you could enjoy it as I did already. Now, to read Aercio you need very good Portuguese, I confess I had to go to the dictionary a couple of times. Aercio is original, sharp, hermetic.