The Slum (Library of Latin America)

Rating:
Summary: Colorful Descriptions, Weak Naturalist Plotting
Review: Azevedo's 1890 book depicting life and death in a Rio de Janeiro slum is one of Brazil's early masterpieces. It follows the fortunes of Joao Romao as he expands his business interests from small-time shopowner to upwardly striving slumlord. Dozens of neighborhood denizens wander in and out of the story, fighting, singing, working, copulating, and dying. The characters, dialogue, and scenery are vivid -- the slum comes alive as blacks and mulattos scramble with Portuguese and Italian immigrants to climb off the bottom of the social food chain. Women's roles are fascinating: virgin/prostitute, submissive head of family, object and subject. Race relations are critically examined. For modern readers seeking a developed plot line, the story might seem to slip off the rails. Identified with the Realist/Naturalist literary schools, Azevedo's slum seeks to broadly describe and illuminate a social setting rather than the stories of particular characters. Even so, the imagery is colorful and the language powerful. Brazil's slums don't seem to have changed much in the century since Azevedo wrote about them.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best so far
Review: By chance did I pick up this book and by chance did I discover one of the best literary writings. This book is addictive; it gives you the real view of Brazil at the end of the last century; it makes you find out what Aluisio Azevedo sees.
I am amazed at the few people that have even heard about it, let alone read. It should be a required reading in any International Studies class.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: This book is a masterpiece for several reasons. It is filled with complex and interesting characters, none especially likable but all interesting. Some of the passages, including the scene where Jeronimo stands, hypnotized, watching Rita Baiana dance for the first time, rank among the best prose I have ever read (I hope the translator does it justice). Structurally it is unusual because no individual person is the main character. The main character is the Slum itself, which is treated as an organic unit. This fact brings me to my next point- Azevedo's idea of treating a neighborhood as an organic entity predates Chicago School Sociologists like Wirth and Zorbaugh by 40 years. People interested in Urban Studies will be fascinated by Azevedo's description of the birth of the slum and it's growth to the point where, towards the end of the story, it begins to fill up with students and artists and starts to gentrify. It also serves as a valuable historical document, showing what day to day life was like for poor Brazilians and immigrants in Rio de Janeiro during the twilight of the Empire. Apparently, one of the main differences between then and now in Brazil is that in those days, slums actually had owners. Today, most Brazilian slums are formed by squatters and this (judging from this book) seems to be an improvement. All This is not to say that the book doesn't have its flaws. One thing that I find troublesome with a lot of naturalism, including the Slum, is that it focuses almost entirely on sadness and tragedy while giving the appearance of objective storytelling. In any event, evil characters are often more interesting than good ones and the slumlord Joao Romao is one of the great literary hypocrites of all times.