Reading Jane Austen in São Paulo

Apologies to the woman who wrote ``Reading Lolita in Tehran,´´ but I couldn´t resist. My novel reading is limited to what I can find in the local used bookstores,. Mind you, I´m not complaining; sometimes it just strikes me as odd to be reaing ``Persuasion´´ on a park bench in São Paulo. Or Thomas Hardy, or Charlotte Bronte, or Graham Greene and Gore Vidal for that matter. Which reminds me: I had to come all the way to Brasil to learn that Charlotte Bronte wrote a book called ``Shirley.´´

I feel bad to have neglected this space for so long. While I was in Rio, my laptop wasn´t working and that limited my opportunities. Brasil seems to be crazy for film festivals, by the way. I thought the one in Rio was large, but next week the 30-somethingth (?) São Paulo festival starts, and it has over 400 movies on its schedule. And I know there are smaller annual festivals in Recife, Forteleza and Porto Alegre. I suppose the U.S. has a gazillion festivals too, to which I have always been oblivious.

I have met several of Heitor´s charming friends and colleagues who are in the film-journalism biz, all of whom are considerate enough to speak perfect English. Since none of them will read this, I will go ahead and say it: My favorite is Neusa Barbosa, an energetic pixie who seemed to be always on her way to or from one film or another in Rio, and still had time to sit in the bar and drink caipirinhas after the last movie of the day. And presumably she did some writing sometime too. She has covered Cannes each of the last eight years, but somehow has never made it to Sundance. I think it is just a matter of nobody has paid her to go there. In 2002 she published a book about Woody Allen´s movies which (I just learned by using Google) was the first in some publisher´s series of People in Cinema. It is odd, isn´t it? I bet the first book in a U.S. series of People in Cinema would not be about Woody Allen.

Maybe one day I´ll be able to read Neusa´s book (ha!). Finally I found the Português teacher I´ve been looking for. She speaks practically no English and that is a good thing. I wanted to find a class with a few other people, because I just think I learn faster in that type of setting....you know, competing to be the best student. But I finally just gave up that idea, because it was going nowhere. So I´m the only student in my class, sitting at my little desk with the teacher giving all of her attention to me. Yesterday was our second meeting and my first official class. We will meet every Monday and Wednesday. I will need to end this soon because she gave me a lot of homework.

Thanks for reading. Stay in touch.