Pelé’s journey, an investigation into elite drug traffickers and a review of a classic of Czech literature

“The Strictly Guarded Trains”, by Bohumil Hrabal, inspired the film by Jiří Menzel, winner of the Oscar for best foreign film in 1968 (today the category is called “international film”). The book, a Czech classic, follows the emotional and sexual anxieties of a train conductor in Czechoslovakia under Nazi occupation. It is a beauty that resists the horror of war, as Luis Campagnoli’s review shows.

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This week’s publications include journalist Paulo Vinicius Coelho’s focus on the life and work of Pelé, a report by Bruno Abbud on Brazil’s elite traffickers, those who deliver organic marijuana to businessmen who control the air transport of cocaine, and a thought-provoking reflection on artificial intelligence based on psychoanalysis.

“Trains strictly monitored”, by Bohumil Hrabal. Translation: Luís Carlos Cabral. Publisher: 34. Pages: 128. Price: R$57. | Quote: awesome.

Every century authors emerge who, because they have created such extraordinary works, see their lives transformed into myth. It is not uncommon to mention that Homer, who composed the “Odyssey” and lived almost a thousand years before Christ, never existed; and that if he existed, he was not Greek, all because his name can be translated as “hostage”. Shakespeare is another who, even today, insists that he was not someone of flesh and blood, or at most that he was a commoner who was given credit for the poems and plays of an English nobleman.

Nobody doubts the existence of the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, born in 1914. But about his death in 1997, a legend was invented. It is said that the reason he fell from the window of the hospital he was admitted to was because he was trying to feed pigeons. The tragi-comic scene has already made its way and cannot be denied, because it corresponds to the author’s graceful, simple and, above all, compassionate prose.

Brazilian readers can see these and other qualities in the recent “Strictly Guarded Trains,” Hrabal’s first book published in Brazil with a direct translation from Czech. It is a short novel, or short story, which, at the time of its original release in 1965, was very well received, including being made into a film the following year – with a screenplay by Hrabal himself and winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1967.

This is the story of Miloš Hrma, a young man who works in a small train station in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. The village where the station is located follows the rule imposed by the Second World War: it is filled with violence and death. Miloš is a virgin, dating Máša and suffers from premature ejaculation, which does not allow him to consummate his love and feel like a man.

He may seem stupid, but he dresses himself in heroism, first by observing the world with originality in the midst of terror: “(they) had their legs extended towards the sky like columns on which the invisible celestial portal rested”, he reports about three dead horses that the Germans threw from a cart into the ditch next to the railway tracks.

Then, in apotheosis, Miloš is also a hero in the conventional sense, in an act of resistance against the Nazis. However, even when he fights the enemy, he does not abandon his compassion: “He was also a human being, (…) he had neither decoration nor rank, and yet we shot and killed each other, but if we had met in civilian clothes, we probably would have loved each other and talked. »

In “Strictly Guarded Trains”, the history of humanity merges with that of the private world. In the desire to show himself as a man, in the loss of virginity and innocence, Miloš not only achieves personal, immediate and childish development; He also discovers that he is preparing to act for more than just himself: “In 20 minutes my train loaded with ammunition will arrive and I will be able to do something great, because I am no longer a withered lily. I could never have imagined that there was so much strength in me.”

The afterword that is part of the volume, written by Czech professor Šarka Grauová especially for the Brazilian edition, corroborates this confusion between general and particular, quoting the author himself: “(The Strictly Guarded Trains”) is my first committed literature, because I suddenly realized that my story was not only mine, but that it was that of several people, perhaps millions. Hrabal must have known that these millions of people were not just those of that period; Today, we too have been forced to face the fact that Nazis are present, identifiable and seeking power in the world.

Professor Grauová, by contextualizing Hrabal’s entire work, arrives at a precise definition of what became the author’s literature at a crucial moment in his career: “The text that flows without stopping like a river and retains all the emotional energy of living speech will henceforth be Hrabal’s trademark.” So says “Dance Classes for the Elderly and Advanced” (1964), an entire novel composed of a single sentence, with a single period, still awaiting translation in Brazil.

Luis Campagnoli holds a master’s degree in Literature from UFRJ

“Cyber ​​unconscious”

Author: Marcos Bassini. Editor: Bazaar of Time. Pages: 100. Price: 30 R$.

Playwright and psychoanalyst, the author analyzes artificial intelligence in the light of psychoanalytic concepts, suggesting a contemporary and controversial subject: the cybernetic unconscious. According to Bassini, advances in AI require an ethical and professional debate about the limits and role of technology in mental health. The text reinforces that issues such as the subject’s subjective experience are not reducible to algorithms.

Author: Paulo Vinícius Coelho. Editor: Planet. Pages: 272. Price: R$68.90.

A sports journalist for almost four decades, the author tells the story of Pelé, a football genius who made his professional debut at the age of 16, spent 18 years earning more than the biggest stars on the planet, retired and, since then, continues to be compared to stars like Eusébio, Cruyff, Maradona, Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, among others. And he continues to beat them all.

Author: Rodrigo Natividade. Editor: Magnet. Pages: 160. Price: R$64.

In his debut novel, Rodrigo Natividade explores the nuances of the relationship between a black man and a white woman, after a chance meeting in Rio. Although the style refers to the work of Annie Ernaux, to whom the author devotes part of the book, the story overflows with pathos, refusing fiction in favor of the “reality of things”, echoing the best of formative novels.

Author: Bruno Abbud. Editor: Zahar. Pages: 312. Price: R$79.90.

This book-report presents elite traffickers in Brazil. In a reality parallel to the daily life of the war on drugs in the suburbs, several conspiracies and the most varied types emerge: from upper-class young people who deliver organic marijuana in the most exclusive neighborhoods of São Paulo to businessmen who control the air transport of cocaine, connecting producers and customers in Brazil.

“Antônia Marzullo — The actress who spoke with her eyes”

Author: Nelson Marzullo Tangerini. Editor: Autography. Pages: 278. Price: 60 R$.

Grandmother of Marília and Sandra Pêra, Antônia Marzullo has a biography that follows her trajectory as a matriarch and above all as an actress dedicated to the theater, although she also worked in radio and cinema – participating, for example, in the classic “O ébrio” (1946), directed by Gilda de Abreu and performed by Vicente Celestino. Born in 1894 in Rio de Janeiro, she made her stage debut in 1920.

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