Topografias da solidão

Abstract

The present work is constituted by a literary work, which, under the title Topografias da solidão, groups fourteen stories. They are fictional stories that, however, contain a strong memorialist burden. In the stories I try to reconstruct the image of my hometown, that is, a territory where I no longer live, and a past time. Also included in the paper are five essays, in which I reflect on the exercise of memory and narrative technique. The essay "Verdades construídas", based on the theory of Henri Bergson, Maurice Halbwachs, Joël Candau, Paul Ricoeur, among others, deals with the presence of the trauma in some stories of Topografias da solidão. In the text "Em busca da esfera", I evoke the theory of sphericity, formulated by Julio Cortázar, on the contemporary short story. Here, the focus is on the fragmentary structure and transcendent effect of the short story. I reflect on deletions, changes and additions of text made during writing. In "Vibrar a superfície", Eduardo Galeano and John Gardner, among others, help me to reflect on the importance of choosing words so that, with them, the writer provides a lively, expressive and continuous reader. Still in the same essay, I reflect on the limitations of the narrators, according to Norman Friedman's classification, and on the creation of dialogues, using as an example the novel Boris e Dóris, by Luiz Vilela. Two short essays also deal with the genesis of the short stories "Todo esse tempo" and "Um olhar entre as acácias". This work still carries collages and, as an attachment, a notebook of memories. The collages were produced by me and, somehow, could function as metaphors of the fragment and memory. As for the notebook, I used it as a memorialistic exercise. Place of catharsis, not in form, the notebook partly documents the creative process of Topografias da solidão.