Word: angelo
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...Angelo's words are only bearable when they accept responsibility for the creation of a narrative event--be it memories of masturbation or a teenager buying his first pair of pyjamas. When these infrequent reference points do emerge, they last only long enough for the reader to make a desperate grab at gaining understanding of Angelo's fiction before the memory fades or the reader--absorbed in the tales--chances upon a boy full of lead, upon more of the author's stylistic violence...
...WHILE ANGELO'S language grows more insidious as the book progresses, the tales gain coherency. The first tale "Conquest" never rests upon any firm literary ground. The main characters Mr. de Moura and Sir Henry fade into one another. The narration slides betwee choppy dialogue and run-on unparagraphed pages shifting between business letters and unabashed seduction. At times the story simply disintegrates into what seems like a list of x-rated magazines or lubricants...
...story, the text even defies the author, forcing him to abdicate his control, leaving him the power only to make wry interjections. With the collapse of any external control the words become coldly manipulative and unbearable--more terrifying than in the first two tales, in which the violence of Angelo's language interrupts the reader's attempt to identify with the characters...
...THIS BOOK that leaves no foothold for the reader, there does remain something outside and parallel to the story--the author's native country, Brazil. The repressive police, poverty, unemployment and brutally manipulative government are not merely the imaginative creations of Ivan Angelo...
...plays with his words to create a state of intellectual torment in his readers to make them confront his country's predicament. His artistry lies not in an ability to write pleasant fiction, but in his powerful ability to use an inherited form in novel ways. Angelo's book offers no repose to its readers, no chance to lapse into a happy understanding with the text. One can only laugh and skim through the pages, as the narrator does at times, or wrestle with the book...