Moacyr Scliar was a famous Brazilian writer. He was born in the city of Porto Alegre, on March 23, 1937. He later studied Medicine at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. And he combined his profession as a writer with that of a doctor, working in the public health network.
The author, who passed away on February 27, 2011, in Porto Alegre, is a famous novelist, short story writer and chronicler of contemporary Brazilian literature. And his works present themes associated with the Jewish question and emigration. Another recurring element in the writer’s narratives is fantastic realism.
Read too: Luis Fernando Verissimo — another author of contemporary Brazilian literature
Gaucho author Moacyr Scliar was born in 1937 and passed away in 2011.
In addition to being a writer, he was also a doctor and professor at the Catholic Faculty of Medicine.
Scliar is the author of books that are part of contemporary Brazilian literature.
His works feature Jewish themes, fantastic realism and irony.
Moacyr Scliar was born on March 23, 1937, in Porto Alegre, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. He was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. The Bom Fim neighborhood, in Porto Alegre, was where the author lived most of his childhood. Other Jewish families also lived there.
The writer learned to read from his mother, who was a teacher. From 1943 he studied at the School of Education and Culture. In 1948, he was transferred to Colégio Rosário. As a teenager, he wrote his first short stories. In 1952, he entered the Júlio de Castilhos State College, and his short story “The Watch” was published in the newspaper People’s Mail.
In 1955, he began studying Medicine at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. In 1958, he participated in the Jewish Youth Movement, with a left-wing ideology. And he graduated in 1962, starting his residency the following year. He soon started working as a public doctor.
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He was also a professor, from 1964, at the Catholic Faculty of Medicine. In 1968, he published the book of short stories The carnival of animals, winner of the Academia Mineira de Letras award. In 1969, he started working at the State Department of Health, in Porto Alegre. Like this, the author reconciled his career as a doctor with that of a writer.
In 1970, he completed postgraduate studies in Israel. Years later, in 1984, she gave lectures at universities in Germany. In 1988, he received his first Jabuti award. The following year, the award Casa de las Américas. From the 1990s onwards, she also began to participate in literary events.
He worked as a visiting professor in 1993 at Brown University, in the United States, the same year he won his second Jabuti. In 1999, he completed his doctorate in Public Health. The following year, he achieved his third Jabuti, achieved again in 2009. However, in January 2011, he suffered a stroke and died on February 27 of that yearin Porto Alegre.
Elected on July 31, 2003, Moacyr Scliar occupied seat number 31 of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, when he took office on October 22 of that same year.
Scliar is an author of contemporary Brazilian literature, and his works have the following characteristics:
Jewish theme;
reflections on emigration;
social realism;
sense of humor;
fragmentation;
fantastic realism;
lyricism;
denunciation of inequality and prejudice;
historical elements;
sociopolitical criticism;
opposition between Judaism and Christianity;
themes associated with medicine and public health;
consideration of ethical issues;
unusual characters;
allegorical elements;
ironic character.
Book cover Max and the catsby Moacyr Scliar, published by L&PM Editores.
The carnival of animals (1968) — short stories
The war in Bom Fim (1972) — romance
One man army (1973) — romance
Rachel’s gods (1975) — romance
The water cycle (1975) — romance
The Ballad of the False Messiah (1976) — short stories
Stories from the trembling earth (1976) — short stories
Month of naughty dogs (1977) — romance
The dwarf on the TV (1979) — short stories
Doctor Mirage (1979) — romance
The volunteers (1979) — romance
The centaur in the garden (1980) — romance
Max and the cats (1981) — romance
Horses and obelisks (1981) — children’s
The party at the castle (1982) — children’s
The strange nation of Rafael Mendes (1983) — romance
Memoirs of an Apprentice Writer (1984) — children’s
The Japanese masseuse (1984) — chronicles
The enigmatic eye (1986) — short stories
On the path of dreams (1988) — children’s
The uncle who floated (1988) — children’s
The horses of the Republic (1989) — children’s
A country called childhood (1989) — chronicles
Scenes from Tiny Life (1991) — romance
I tell you (1991) — children’s
Tropical dreams (1992) — romance
A story just for me (1994) — children’s
A dream in the avocado pit (1995) — children and youth
The Rio Grande farroupilha (1995) — children and youth
Unusual Traveler’s Dictionary (1995) — chronicles
My mother won’t sleep until I arrive (1996) — chronicles
Madonna’s lover (1997) — short stories
The short story writers (1997) — short stories
The majesty of the Xingu (1997) — romance
Stories for (almost) all tastes (1998) — short stories
Camera in hand, Guarani in your heart (1998) — children and youth
The woman who wrote the Bible (1999) — romance
The hill of sighs (1999) — children and youth
Kafka’s leopards (2000) — romance
The medicine book (2000) — children and youth
The mystery of the green house (2000) — children and youth
PQ commando attack (2001) — children and youth
The everyday imaginary (2001) — chronicles
Father and son, son and father (2002) — short stories
The hinterland will turn into the sea (2002) — children and youth
That strange colleague, my father (2002) — children and youth
Eden-Brazil (2002) — children and youth
The brother who came from far away (2002) — children and youth
Neither this nor that (2003) — children and youth
Learning to love and heal (2003) — children and youth
Ship of colors (2003) — children and youth
A farroupilha story (2004) — romance
In the night of the belly (2005) — romance
Card-carrying jealous (2006) — romance
The temple sellers (2006) — romance
The magic word (2006) — romance
Lonely passion manual (2008) — romance
Book of all, the mystery of the stolen text (2008) — children and youth
Stories the newspapers don’t tell (2009) — short stories
I embrace you, millions (2010) — romance
See too: Milton Hatoum — another well-known writer of contemporary Brazilian literature
In the chronicle The poetry of simple things, the author pays homage to chronicler Rubem Braga (1913-1990). Thus, it is a metalinguistic text, a chronicle whose theme is the chronicle. Furthermore, it analyzes the social importance of the newspaper, without missing the opportunity to make sociopolitical criticism:
Everyone knew him as “old Braga”; and this, I think, since he was a young journalist. And since he had always been “old Braga”, Braga was expected to always stay among us, even when he was old. But not. This disastrous year of 1990 proved to be stronger than this, and other, illusions, and brought us the man who transformed the chronicle, traditionally seen as a minor genre, into a literary category of importance in this country. There are those who consider the newspaper an inadequate vehicle for literature; the book, it is said, has permanence (even if this permanence sometimes only benefits the moths) while the newspaper is a disposable object: nothing older than yesterday’s newspaper, something that is only useful for wrapping fish (the which, again, was only valid when public health permitted it — and when fish could be bought). Braga, however, never believed in this “Macluhanesque” logic. He preferred to follow the path of Machado and Lima Barreto, and transformed everyday life into raw material for a literary work of the first magnitude. In “O Homem Houco”: “The professional journalist Rubem Braga, son of Francisco de Carvalho Braga, portfolio 10836 series 32a, registered under number 785, Book II, Pages. 193, he raises his tired head and inhales with some force. In this air that he breathes, the vulgar reality of things enters his chest, and his eyes no longer contemplate distant dreams, but only a clothesline with a shirt and swimming trunks and, in the background, the washing tank of his narrow bed. backyard, of this rented house where an eviction action is being filed against him”.
That was Braga: a man who treated words with sensitivity, wisdom and mastery.
This kind, slightly withdrawn man knew how to see poetry in simple things. And the shirt that was left flapping in the wind, on a backyard clothesline, now says goodbye to one of our greatest writers.
Already in the chronicle Three coats and their stories, the chronicler narrates a banal, everyday fact, that is, the purchase of three coats. However, with great irony:
I don’t know what it’s like for you, but for me buying clothes — and that’s why I rarely do it — is always an adventure with unpredictable results. I’m thinking, for example, of three coats that I bought, all three in the United States (it’s not snobbery: it’s just that it’s cold there and we end up needing them) each of which would make, if not a novel, at least a short story.
The story of the first coat occurred on my first trip to Uncle Sam’s country. It was winter and I arrived already with my jaw knocked. The Brazilian coat simply didn’t protect me from a New York temperature several degrees below zero. So I went out looking for an American coat. I went into several stores — at those times the spirit of the indecisive Hamlet takes over me, always with that question of to be or not to be (in this case, to buy or not to buy). Finally, in a small establishment whose owner seemed to have left Bom Fim, I found a coat that seemed suitable. It was warm, it was the right size, it was even elegant. I was about to pay when the damn question occurred to me: what if, in some other store, there was a better coat waiting for me? What if I was being hasty?
. Which is an intriguing American habit: they waste a lot of money, but then suddenly decide to sell used things. They might ask for a penny for an old ballpoint pen and they will stay there all morning to sell it, but it is the ethics of capitalism that cannot be contradicted. Well, among the things on display at this “garage sale”, there was a coat, an old velvet coat. I tried it: it was exactly mine…