The plasticity of Rubem Fonseca’s brutalist tales: the aesthetics of violence and solitude in postmodernity

Abstract

The work of Rubem Fonseca raises several questions for contemporary society. His style shocks readers with the use of a language, considered by Alfredo Bosi (2006) as brutalist, which brings to light the paradoxes of postmodernity. The tale of Fonseca is permeated with narrative suspense, inciting in the reader expectations that the tales usually surpass, with brushstrokes of strong violence, eroticism, unexpected deaths and absurd manias of the characters. The reader senses strangeness by first contacting a text of such an explosive caliber, which makes him a particular plot detective strung by peculiar language. The plasticity of the tales is irreverent, which makes this author one of the greatest brazilian composers. In some short stories published in the 1990s, “À maneira de Godard,” “O buraco na parede,” and “Idiotas que falam outra língua,” we find the peculiarities of Fonseca’s poetics which dialogue with the considerations of renowned poets such as Poe, with respect to the unit of effect, Cortázar, with his tastes: intensity, tension and brevity, and Jorge Luis Borges, who deals with the expectation of reading a certain genre that transports the reader to a world different from common experiences.