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O Quieto Animal da Esquina
O protagonista-narrador, um pobre e anônimo poeta, é o "animal" calado, paralisado, domesticado, que, em vez de buscar uma situação menos cega, opta pela segurança da mediocridade, pelos cálculos mesquinhos, e torna-se incapaz de recuperar a possibilidade de viver uma história pessoal.
94 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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About the author
João Gilberto Noll
25 books38 followersJoão Gilberto Noll was a Brazilian writer born in Porto Alegre, in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.
His early years were spent studying at the Catholic Colégio São Pedro. In 1967 he began university coursework in literature at the UFRGS-Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, but in 1969 he interrupted his studies to pursue a career as a journalist in Rio de Janeiro, working for the newspapers Folha da Manhã and Última Hora. In 1970 Noll spent a year in São Paulo working as a copyeditor at the publishing house Editora Nacional, but a year later he moved back to Rio and resumed both his work in journalism at Última Hora, writing on literature, theater and music, and his university studies in literature, first at the Faculdade Notre Dame and then at the PUC-Rio, where he received his degree in 1979.
Noll published his first short story as part of a 1970 Porto Alegre anthology entitled Roda de Fogo, but his more formal literary debut came in 1980 when his first book of short stories O cego e a dançarina (English title: The blind man and the dancer) was released, for which he received three literary prizes. One of Noll's short stories from O cego e a dançarina, Alguma coisa urgentemente (Something urgent), was the basis for the film Nunca fomos tão felizes (English title: We've Never Been So Happy) in 1983, directed by Murilo Salles and starring the actor Claudio Marzo.
Noll received early international attention as a participant in the Writer's Program at the University of Iowa in 1982, and when his work appeared in an anthology of new Brazilian writers published in Germany in 1983. After a short visit to the University of California, Berkeley in 1996, he was invited to teach Brazilian literature there in 1997. He was an invited scholar for a Rockefeller Foundation seminar in Bellagio, Italy, was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, and spent a two-month writing residency at the Centre for the Study of Brazilian Culture & Society at King's College London in 2004. All of these experiences were to shape the subject matter of later works.
His first collection of stories was followed by the novels A fúria do corpo (1981), Bandoleiros (1985) and Rastros do Verão (1986). Two of his subsequent and perhaps best-known works, the novels Hotel Atlantico (1989) and Harmada (1993), later came out in a 1997 English edition, translated by David Treece and published by Boulevard Books in London. Another novel, entitled O quieto animal da esquina, appeared in 1991.
From 1998 to 2001 Noll published a twice-weekly series of short stories in the major São Paulo daily Folha de São Paulo, and in 2004 he began to publish longer stories every two weeks in the daily Correio Braziliense published in the federal capital Brasília.
His early years were spent studying at the Catholic Colégio São Pedro. In 1967 he began university coursework in literature at the UFRGS-Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, but in 1969 he interrupted his studies to pursue a career as a journalist in Rio de Janeiro, working for the newspapers Folha da Manhã and Última Hora. In 1970 Noll spent a year in São Paulo working as a copyeditor at the publishing house Editora Nacional, but a year later he moved back to Rio and resumed both his work in journalism at Última Hora, writing on literature, theater and music, and his university studies in literature, first at the Faculdade Notre Dame and then at the PUC-Rio, where he received his degree in 1979.
Noll published his first short story as part of a 1970 Porto Alegre anthology entitled Roda de Fogo, but his more formal literary debut came in 1980 when his first book of short stories O cego e a dançarina (English title: The blind man and the dancer) was released, for which he received three literary prizes. One of Noll's short stories from O cego e a dançarina, Alguma coisa urgentemente (Something urgent), was the basis for the film Nunca fomos tão felizes (English title: We've Never Been So Happy) in 1983, directed by Murilo Salles and starring the actor Claudio Marzo.
Noll received early international attention as a participant in the Writer's Program at the University of Iowa in 1982, and when his work appeared in an anthology of new Brazilian writers published in Germany in 1983. After a short visit to the University of California, Berkeley in 1996, he was invited to teach Brazilian literature there in 1997. He was an invited scholar for a Rockefeller Foundation seminar in Bellagio, Italy, was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, and spent a two-month writing residency at the Centre for the Study of Brazilian Culture & Society at King's College London in 2004. All of these experiences were to shape the subject matter of later works.
His first collection of stories was followed by the novels A fúria do corpo (1981), Bandoleiros (1985) and Rastros do Verão (1986). Two of his subsequent and perhaps best-known works, the novels Hotel Atlantico (1989) and Harmada (1993), later came out in a 1997 English edition, translated by David Treece and published by Boulevard Books in London. Another novel, entitled O quieto animal da esquina, appeared in 1991.
From 1998 to 2001 Noll published a twice-weekly series of short stories in the major São Paulo daily Folha de São Paulo, and in 2004 he began to publish longer stories every two weeks in the daily Correio Braziliense published in the federal capital Brasília.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
December 27, 2020
An oddly divisive novel among Goodreads reviewers, but just another three-star read for me. I seem to have hit a run of books that I like well enough but don't draw me fully into them.
September 11, 2016
Every time I read a book like this — surreal, dreamlike, strange, ethereal — all I can think about is how Jesse Ball does it better. There are some interesting themes at the heart of this slim book, but I didn't get enough out of it to fully justify the time spent reading it. I think for the most part I much prefer this kind of story in film form.
January 30, 2016
the first of brazilian writer joão gilberto noll's novels to appear in english translation, quiet creature on the corner (o quieto animal da esquina) is the slim, sometimes salacious story of a jobless part-time poet at a loss, however unconcernedly, to understand the trajectory of his life. imprisoned for the rape of a local girl, the poet-narrator soon finds himself sprung from jail and living a more idyllic, opportunistic, and reserved existence in the country. with a propulsive plot and a narrative free of chapter breaks, quiet creature on the corner is stylistically unique, if not more than a little strange. originally published some 25 years ago, quiet creature on the corner is an enigmatic little tale from one of brazil's seemingly most revered postmodern authors.
*translated from the portuguese by adam morris (hilda hilst's with my dog eyes )
a dark broth running from my hands beneath the faucet: i'd lost my job, and was saying so long to all that stubborn grease.
a dark broth running, there went three months, and i'd gotten into the habit of killing time by rambling through the center of town, a slight malaise if i saw myself in the mirror of a public bathroom, nothing a nineteen-year-old guy couldn't shake by going a little bit further.
*translated from the portuguese by adam morris (hilda hilst's with my dog eyes )
June 9, 2018
Not really a bad book so much as an eminently forgettable one, Quiet Creature on the Corner aims to be a stream of consciousness, but instead of pulling the reader into the central character’s interior state, the stream merely washes over one, never offering a real entry point to the material, nor really any material compelling enough to make one desire entry. Sentences and events barely register; pages fly by not because the story is in any way compelling, but because there’s so little that catches one’s interest or attention. The predominance of commas and splices leads to sentences that seem to run downhill, hard-charging instead of drifting; commas don’t seem to brake sentences so much as deter them from ever stopping, as if to specifically prevent the asking of questions or the lingering on the vacuousness of the situation.
Quiet Creature on the Corner is so insubstantial that it’s the rare book where a reveal that the action was all a dream wouldn’t even be a disappointment. It seems to want its meaning to come from without, to be provided by the reader, thus filling the vacuum at the center of the words; it books for metaphoric readings, because a straightforward reading is so utterly bland. Maybe it’s a book about the confusion of aging, of recognizable and understandable routine circumstances suddenly becoming unrecognizable and beyond comprehension? Maybe it’s about writer’s block, about the paradoxical position of our (unconvincing) poet protagonist having nothing to do but write, and still feeling as if there are endless distractions, and equally little inspiration? There are some accumulations of motifs—recurrences of sickness, vertigo, feelings of cowardice; an obsession with masculinity (the narrator’s aging process from boy to man, his repeated urges to himself to “man up,” and his mantra of “I’m a man”—the blandest of all self-definitions)—that would seem evidence of some structuring thoughts here, but motifs alone can’t sustain Noll’s ideas (if he has any) or the reader’s desire for them.
There’s a deliberate lack of weight given from the beginning to everything that occurs, and it makes it impossible to give the book any serious consideration (very briefly, this seems to be for intentional oneiric effect, but the book loses the benefit of the doubt quickly). Death and crime pass quickly and are treated as meaningless rather than momentous. The action is begun by a violent rape for which the central character pays hardly any price; not only is he physically released from imprisonment almost immediately (to a situation more beneficial to himself than even his original one), but there’s no indication that he feels any guilt about his action (indeed, a rhyme exists with Crime and Punishment in that the protagonist seems to think his violent crime was necessary to launch the life he believed existed just out of reach for himself; of course there, Raskolnikov’s belief was disproven). There’s a brief dalliance with the idea of returning to prison somehow being a preferable option, but like most of the potentially interesting concepts which Noll introduces, it’s invalidated and discarded almost immediately.
The protagonist struggles hardly at all with the inexplicable dilemma he finds himself, which keeps the book from even approaching the Kafkaesque mood one can imagine Noll hoping to evoke. Mostly, he just waits for a certain, seemingly inevitable, culmination of events that will be even more beneficial to him; meanwhile, we continue waiting for meaning, substance, eventfulness. Near the close of the novel, we are given a scene that is almost confrontationally mocking of the reader, in which the protagonist literally treads water (in a too-neat metaphor for the book as a whole), teasingly hinting toward more provocative actions but ultimately doing the expected and the easy, taking the path of least resistance. Fitting for a book that provides so little resistance itself, providing so little to hold onto that everything plays out in a vacuum, blurring into disjointed and undifferentiated formlessness.
Quiet Creature on the Corner is so insubstantial that it’s the rare book where a reveal that the action was all a dream wouldn’t even be a disappointment. It seems to want its meaning to come from without, to be provided by the reader, thus filling the vacuum at the center of the words; it books for metaphoric readings, because a straightforward reading is so utterly bland. Maybe it’s a book about the confusion of aging, of recognizable and understandable routine circumstances suddenly becoming unrecognizable and beyond comprehension? Maybe it’s about writer’s block, about the paradoxical position of our (unconvincing) poet protagonist having nothing to do but write, and still feeling as if there are endless distractions, and equally little inspiration? There are some accumulations of motifs—recurrences of sickness, vertigo, feelings of cowardice; an obsession with masculinity (the narrator’s aging process from boy to man, his repeated urges to himself to “man up,” and his mantra of “I’m a man”—the blandest of all self-definitions)—that would seem evidence of some structuring thoughts here, but motifs alone can’t sustain Noll’s ideas (if he has any) or the reader’s desire for them.
There’s a deliberate lack of weight given from the beginning to everything that occurs, and it makes it impossible to give the book any serious consideration (very briefly, this seems to be for intentional oneiric effect, but the book loses the benefit of the doubt quickly). Death and crime pass quickly and are treated as meaningless rather than momentous. The action is begun by a violent rape for which the central character pays hardly any price; not only is he physically released from imprisonment almost immediately (to a situation more beneficial to himself than even his original one), but there’s no indication that he feels any guilt about his action (indeed, a rhyme exists with Crime and Punishment in that the protagonist seems to think his violent crime was necessary to launch the life he believed existed just out of reach for himself; of course there, Raskolnikov’s belief was disproven). There’s a brief dalliance with the idea of returning to prison somehow being a preferable option, but like most of the potentially interesting concepts which Noll introduces, it’s invalidated and discarded almost immediately.
The protagonist struggles hardly at all with the inexplicable dilemma he finds himself, which keeps the book from even approaching the Kafkaesque mood one can imagine Noll hoping to evoke. Mostly, he just waits for a certain, seemingly inevitable, culmination of events that will be even more beneficial to him; meanwhile, we continue waiting for meaning, substance, eventfulness. Near the close of the novel, we are given a scene that is almost confrontationally mocking of the reader, in which the protagonist literally treads water (in a too-neat metaphor for the book as a whole), teasingly hinting toward more provocative actions but ultimately doing the expected and the easy, taking the path of least resistance. Fitting for a book that provides so little resistance itself, providing so little to hold onto that everything plays out in a vacuum, blurring into disjointed and undifferentiated formlessness.
October 21, 2016
An insignificant book with a clunky translation. Would not recommend.
March 9, 2024
"Ela não vai evacuar nunca mais, eu disse."
May 26, 2016
I received a review copy of this title from the publisher.
The first reaction that I had to the writing style and narrative of this book is that it feels like a series of flash fiction stories. When we first meet the narrator he lives in Porto Alegre with his mother is a decrepit, abandoned apartment. Other miscreant vagabonds also spend their days idling around the lobby of this building and doing drugs. The narrator’s actions and thoughts in the book reflect his aimless and disjointed life; he talks to his mother, he tries to write poetry, he sleeps, he wanders around the city.
The writing manages to be both subtle and shocking when he sexually assaults a girl whom he encounters sitting among the ruins of the city and singing. The narrative of this encounter is so oddly non-descript for such a horrible act that I had to go back and read the brief paragraph to confirm in my mind what had just happened. The narrator is then thrown in a jail for his crime and the next few pages of the book deal with the broken and disgusting men he encounters in this jail.
My comparison with flash fiction came to mind because Noll provides us with several different short stories about this narrator. In just a few pages the author gives us just enough of a story to provide an image of a complete setting, but then that story ends abruptly and leaves us with a million questions and wanting more details. What did the narrator suddenly attack this girl? How do they know he is guilty? Why do they set him free so quickly from jail?
The next piece of flash fiction, if we continue with my assessment of the genre, is the narrator’s visit to the countryside once he is suddenly taken from his jail cell. He is put into a clinic in São Leopoldo where the narrator meets Kurt, a German Brazilian. Once again many questions come to mind: What is Kurt’s connection to the institution? Why does Kurt want to help the narrator and care for him? Why is the narrator put in a clinic instead of being kept in a jail cell?
The final, and largest story, takes place on Kurt’s country manor where the narrator is invited to live. Greda, Kurt’s ailing wife, Octavio, a type of handyman and Amalia, a maid, also live on the property. The narrator continues his wandering existence while on the manor, visiting Amilia for nocturnal amorous adventures, taking walks in the woods, and falling asleep listening to the radio. Every once in a while he dabbles at his poetry but in the middle of the narrative he announces that after this period he never writes poetry again.
There are two additional themes that pervade the narrative that are also worth mentioning. Sex and desire are never far from the narrator’s mind. After his attack on his neighbor, his lust does not diminish. He has several lascivious encounters in the book which are quick and never carried out with emotion or feeling. He also notes that at the beginning of the book when he is in Porto Alegre he is a boy and by the time he comes to live with Kurt on his manor he has fully become a man. When Kurt’s wife dies and he is distraught at her passing, he looks to the narrator for comfort who admits this makes him sad. This is the first time in the story that the narrator expresses true emotion and demonstrates that he might have actually matured.
This short book is a fascinating read because of the disjointed, flash fiction feel to the prose; it is a book that leaves us wanting more, not just of the narrator’s story but of Noll’s writing as well. I am hoping that more of this author’s works will be published in English.
The first reaction that I had to the writing style and narrative of this book is that it feels like a series of flash fiction stories. When we first meet the narrator he lives in Porto Alegre with his mother is a decrepit, abandoned apartment. Other miscreant vagabonds also spend their days idling around the lobby of this building and doing drugs. The narrator’s actions and thoughts in the book reflect his aimless and disjointed life; he talks to his mother, he tries to write poetry, he sleeps, he wanders around the city.
The writing manages to be both subtle and shocking when he sexually assaults a girl whom he encounters sitting among the ruins of the city and singing. The narrative of this encounter is so oddly non-descript for such a horrible act that I had to go back and read the brief paragraph to confirm in my mind what had just happened. The narrator is then thrown in a jail for his crime and the next few pages of the book deal with the broken and disgusting men he encounters in this jail.
My comparison with flash fiction came to mind because Noll provides us with several different short stories about this narrator. In just a few pages the author gives us just enough of a story to provide an image of a complete setting, but then that story ends abruptly and leaves us with a million questions and wanting more details. What did the narrator suddenly attack this girl? How do they know he is guilty? Why do they set him free so quickly from jail?
The next piece of flash fiction, if we continue with my assessment of the genre, is the narrator’s visit to the countryside once he is suddenly taken from his jail cell. He is put into a clinic in São Leopoldo where the narrator meets Kurt, a German Brazilian. Once again many questions come to mind: What is Kurt’s connection to the institution? Why does Kurt want to help the narrator and care for him? Why is the narrator put in a clinic instead of being kept in a jail cell?
The final, and largest story, takes place on Kurt’s country manor where the narrator is invited to live. Greda, Kurt’s ailing wife, Octavio, a type of handyman and Amalia, a maid, also live on the property. The narrator continues his wandering existence while on the manor, visiting Amilia for nocturnal amorous adventures, taking walks in the woods, and falling asleep listening to the radio. Every once in a while he dabbles at his poetry but in the middle of the narrative he announces that after this period he never writes poetry again.
There are two additional themes that pervade the narrative that are also worth mentioning. Sex and desire are never far from the narrator’s mind. After his attack on his neighbor, his lust does not diminish. He has several lascivious encounters in the book which are quick and never carried out with emotion or feeling. He also notes that at the beginning of the book when he is in Porto Alegre he is a boy and by the time he comes to live with Kurt on his manor he has fully become a man. When Kurt’s wife dies and he is distraught at her passing, he looks to the narrator for comfort who admits this makes him sad. This is the first time in the story that the narrator expresses true emotion and demonstrates that he might have actually matured.
This short book is a fascinating read because of the disjointed, flash fiction feel to the prose; it is a book that leaves us wanting more, not just of the narrator’s story but of Noll’s writing as well. I am hoping that more of this author’s works will be published in English.
June 26, 2019
Some moments, but not amounting to what I'd hope for.
Not poetic enough, just a little. Not surreal enough, just a little. No there there. Just a few interesting touches. I wanted more from this.
Not poetic enough, just a little. Not surreal enough, just a little. No there there. Just a few interesting touches. I wanted more from this.
May 27, 2020
My God, what did I just read? What weird acid trip of a book. Excellent translation.
June 27, 2019
I found this Brazilian novella yesterday in a pile of books I’m giving away and read it. Sadly, I did not enjoy it. The disturbed narrator rapes a young girl and is sent to prison for a day, then to a clinic, and then to a manor with mysterious benefactors. The set up is interesting, but the narration is emotionless and cold, jumps in time, and does not explore anything presented. There may be something more here, but I did not get it.
January 14, 2017
Weird (in the best way) book...don't think I'll forget about it soon....
January 12, 2018
Well this was shit.
January 28, 2024
À Manoel da Costa Pinto coube o mérito de sugerir, na orelha do livro, que “O Quieto Animal da Esquina” fosse classificado como “romance de deformação”. A obra de João Gilberto Noll, nesse sentido, representaria um contraponto ao tradicional romance de formação, em que o processo de desenvolvimento do personagem, desde a sua infância ou adolescência, é descrito de forma pormenorizada até que ele cresça e se torne mais maduro. Em Noll, o personagem não amadurece.
A história se inicia por uma juventude já fragmentada em suas relações sociais. Seu pai havia abandonado a família e ele morava com a mãe num subúrbio de Porto Alegre, enquanto procurava emprego e fazia poemas. Um dia foi acusado de estupro e foi levado para a prisão. De lá, foi para uma clínica correcional, até virar agregado numa família de alemães. Todo esse processo não representa uma grande transformação no personagem, embora toda mudança tivesse a sua dose de ilusão.
Assim é que ele credita até mesmo à cadeia a missão de mudar a sua vida de forma positiva. É com indiferença e quase com esperança que ele vislumbra as suas possibilidades de transformações ao ser preso. A situação se repete quando é transferido para a clínica, e encontra seu auge quando passa a morar com os alemães. Admirado com tudo que representava morar numa casa como aquela, e convivendo com aquelas pessoas, o personagem pergunta a si mesmo se aquilo tudo irá realmente durar muito tempo, e até que ponto isso fará com que ele se transforme e encaminhe o seu destino.
Mas o tempo vai passando e, como diz Pinto, a sua experiência “não leva ao aprendizado ou à transformação – mas a um mergulho metódico em relações sociais e afetivas deterioradas”. A ilusão de que a família alemã representa algo essencial para seu crescimento se esvai à medida em que o tempo passa e os acontecimentos se sucedem. As pessoas que conviviam na casa (uma propriedade rural e isolada) se tornaram estranhas, estão deslocadas dentro do seu destino, e só encontram sua razão de ser – na distorcida visão do personagem – porque futuramente poderão representar uma mudança na sua vida. São, em suma, peças utilitárias, umas mais que as outras, e todas, ao final, serão fatalmente descartadas, quando enfim a transformação for realizada e ele não precisar mais delas. É nessa esperança que o personagem parece se apegar.
A busca desse personagem é por um estado em que as coisas poderão, finalmente, serenar, e assim talvez ele possa repousar e ser aquilo que realmente pensa ser. É um instante fugidio que, na verdade, ele sequer tem noção de como conseguir. Fosse possível encontrá-lo, e talvez o personagem errante poderia enfim se encontrar e amadurecer. O único desenvolvimento fatal que não lhe escapa é o físico. Consola-se, então, repetindo para si que, afinal, agora era um homem – e que não estava apaixonado, como se isso pudesse representar todo o seu crescimento. Impotente, e vendo frustradas suas esperanças de conforto, o homem se deixa levar pelo universo estranho que passou a ser seu – e que, afinal, ao menos lhe era alguma coisa de seguro.
A história se inicia por uma juventude já fragmentada em suas relações sociais. Seu pai havia abandonado a família e ele morava com a mãe num subúrbio de Porto Alegre, enquanto procurava emprego e fazia poemas. Um dia foi acusado de estupro e foi levado para a prisão. De lá, foi para uma clínica correcional, até virar agregado numa família de alemães. Todo esse processo não representa uma grande transformação no personagem, embora toda mudança tivesse a sua dose de ilusão.
Assim é que ele credita até mesmo à cadeia a missão de mudar a sua vida de forma positiva. É com indiferença e quase com esperança que ele vislumbra as suas possibilidades de transformações ao ser preso. A situação se repete quando é transferido para a clínica, e encontra seu auge quando passa a morar com os alemães. Admirado com tudo que representava morar numa casa como aquela, e convivendo com aquelas pessoas, o personagem pergunta a si mesmo se aquilo tudo irá realmente durar muito tempo, e até que ponto isso fará com que ele se transforme e encaminhe o seu destino.
Mas o tempo vai passando e, como diz Pinto, a sua experiência “não leva ao aprendizado ou à transformação – mas a um mergulho metódico em relações sociais e afetivas deterioradas”. A ilusão de que a família alemã representa algo essencial para seu crescimento se esvai à medida em que o tempo passa e os acontecimentos se sucedem. As pessoas que conviviam na casa (uma propriedade rural e isolada) se tornaram estranhas, estão deslocadas dentro do seu destino, e só encontram sua razão de ser – na distorcida visão do personagem – porque futuramente poderão representar uma mudança na sua vida. São, em suma, peças utilitárias, umas mais que as outras, e todas, ao final, serão fatalmente descartadas, quando enfim a transformação for realizada e ele não precisar mais delas. É nessa esperança que o personagem parece se apegar.
A busca desse personagem é por um estado em que as coisas poderão, finalmente, serenar, e assim talvez ele possa repousar e ser aquilo que realmente pensa ser. É um instante fugidio que, na verdade, ele sequer tem noção de como conseguir. Fosse possível encontrá-lo, e talvez o personagem errante poderia enfim se encontrar e amadurecer. O único desenvolvimento fatal que não lhe escapa é o físico. Consola-se, então, repetindo para si que, afinal, agora era um homem – e que não estava apaixonado, como se isso pudesse representar todo o seu crescimento. Impotente, e vendo frustradas suas esperanças de conforto, o homem se deixa levar pelo universo estranho que passou a ser seu – e que, afinal, ao menos lhe era alguma coisa de seguro.
September 3, 2016
Rating: 3.75* of five (rounded up)
The Publisher Says: When an unemployed poet finds himself thrown in jail after raping his neighbor, his time in the slammer is mysteriously cut short when he’s abruptly taken to a new home — a countryside manor where his every need seen to. All that’s required of him is to . . . write poetry. Just who are his captors, Kurt and Otávio? What of the alluring maid, Amália, and her charge, a woman with cancer named Gerda? And, most alarmingly of all, why does Kurt suddenly appear to be aging so much faster than he should?
Reminiscent of the films of David Lynch, and written in João Gilberto Noll’s distinctive postmodern style — a strange world of surfaces seemingly without rational cause and effect — Quiet Creature on the Corner is the English-language debut of one of Brazil’s most popular and celebrated authors. Written during Brazil’s transition from military dictatorship to democracy — and capturing the disjointed feel of that rapidly changing world — Quiet Creature is mysterious and abrupt, pivoting on choices that feel both arbitrary and inevitable. Like Kazuo Ishiguro, Noll takes us deep into the mind of person who’s always missing a few crucial pieces of information. Is he moving toward an answer to why these people have taken him from jail, or is he just as lost as ever?
**TWO LINES PRESS PROVIDED ME WITH A REVIEW COPY AT MY REQUEST**
My Review: João Gilberto Noll might not be known in the USA yet, but that will change with the publication of this fine novella. It has that certain something, that extra dimension, that comes from a beautiful book being very well translated:
And so we're firmly established in the stream of a wastrel's consciousness, a kid whose pointless little life has been spent in a slum without even an idea that he could be anywhere else. In this moment, he is unable to sleep, probably because a short time earlier he forced himself on a young woman from his slum; he is human enough to find this troubling, not quite self-aware enough to prevent this casual, indifferent violation from occurring. Oh, and that mother referred to here? She's packed off to another city before his rape is discovered, and completely forgotten, never even referred to again.
So is this youth merely solipsistic, as most youths are, or is he a full-blown sociopath? This story is about the experience of being unmoored in time, only slightly connected to place, and that solely in reference to an older man's rescue of him from a certain prison sentence. Kurt show up at the courtroom and whisks our narrator away to his country estate, there to be fed and ignored, left to do whatever he wishes to do. He writes poetry, he bangs the maid (consensually), he chats up the handyman, in short his rootless aimless existence doesn't leave any mark on even his, let alone the, world:
The narrator isn't alone in this musing. It is the slightly seasick effect of having no contact with anything real, tangible, requiring effort. There is no reason for Kurt to feel happy with the narrator, and no special reason for him to feel unhappy either. So what is this sudden real smile, this pleasure in seeing, that's all, just seeing, the narrator? It makes the reader as well as the narrator uneasy.
Soon enough, Kurt's wife Gerda needs to go to Rio in order to have her late-stage cancer treated. It is clear to all that Gerda will not be coming home, that her disease has reached its final crisis. Kurt takes the narrator with him to Rio, either as company or simply to have him nearby instead of alone at the estate. It's the slum-born narrator's first time visiting Rio and his first time staying in the brave new world of a luxury hotel:
He has the money? Interesting. Kurt's fortune, most likely Gerda's before Kurt's, pays for the narrator's very existence. Now the narrator has been with Kurt and Gerda long enough that he has assumed the mantle of privilege. How much time has passed since the narrator was bought out of his prison sentence? Unknown. In fact, unknown to the narrator, bobbing as he is in the currents of life and time.
After a deeply discomforting passage where Gerda, in her final moments, mistakes the narrator for Kurt, the surviving pair return to Porto Alegre, there to...well...continue, I suppose, to go on living in their weird ménage. Unknown amounts of time pass before Kurt reveals his true feelings about Gerda's passing and his own aging:
The sheer breathtaking ingratitude of the man! The astonishing, if indulged, self-centeredness! It was here that my opinion of him as a sociopath solidified once and for all.
At the end of the day, I was very enrapt by the tale of our nameless rapist, mostly because he has no sense of himself as a moral actor. He simply does things he wants to do, damn the consequences, and ends up smelling like a rose. It's blindingly infuriatingly unfair, but so is life. Noll's first English-language appearance is a tale of rootlessness, of anomie, and was written about the time the last set of generals were loosening their grip on the country's government. It reflects that moment, the weird and unsettled time between things as they were and as they could possibly be. It's a wonderful story. It will reward your dollars and your eyeblinks.
The Publisher Says: When an unemployed poet finds himself thrown in jail after raping his neighbor, his time in the slammer is mysteriously cut short when he’s abruptly taken to a new home — a countryside manor where his every need seen to. All that’s required of him is to . . . write poetry. Just who are his captors, Kurt and Otávio? What of the alluring maid, Amália, and her charge, a woman with cancer named Gerda? And, most alarmingly of all, why does Kurt suddenly appear to be aging so much faster than he should?
Reminiscent of the films of David Lynch, and written in João Gilberto Noll’s distinctive postmodern style — a strange world of surfaces seemingly without rational cause and effect — Quiet Creature on the Corner is the English-language debut of one of Brazil’s most popular and celebrated authors. Written during Brazil’s transition from military dictatorship to democracy — and capturing the disjointed feel of that rapidly changing world — Quiet Creature is mysterious and abrupt, pivoting on choices that feel both arbitrary and inevitable. Like Kazuo Ishiguro, Noll takes us deep into the mind of person who’s always missing a few crucial pieces of information. Is he moving toward an answer to why these people have taken him from jail, or is he just as lost as ever?
**TWO LINES PRESS PROVIDED ME WITH A REVIEW COPY AT MY REQUEST**
My Review: João Gilberto Noll might not be known in the USA yet, but that will change with the publication of this fine novella. It has that certain something, that extra dimension, that comes from a beautiful book being very well translated:
I doubted I'd be able to sleep with a downpour starting to rail against the window, the water blocking my view outside. I thought how my life was really taking its time figuring things out, and my mother snored as if saying don't even start—and there I was, staring at streams of raindrops that wouldn't let me see outside, unable to sleep, without even a way to take a walk in the street due to the rain, so I went to the living room, the light was still on, and I could've stolen my mother's wedding ring right off her finger, and even taken my time rolling out since she wouldn't wake up, but that wedding ring probably wasn't worth a nickel, and I was a coward anyway: I called out to her, asked her to make me a tea because I was feeling woozy, ready to vomit.
And so we're firmly established in the stream of a wastrel's consciousness, a kid whose pointless little life has been spent in a slum without even an idea that he could be anywhere else. In this moment, he is unable to sleep, probably because a short time earlier he forced himself on a young woman from his slum; he is human enough to find this troubling, not quite self-aware enough to prevent this casual, indifferent violation from occurring. Oh, and that mother referred to here? She's packed off to another city before his rape is discovered, and completely forgotten, never even referred to again.
So is this youth merely solipsistic, as most youths are, or is he a full-blown sociopath? This story is about the experience of being unmoored in time, only slightly connected to place, and that solely in reference to an older man's rescue of him from a certain prison sentence. Kurt show up at the courtroom and whisks our narrator away to his country estate, there to be fed and ignored, left to do whatever he wishes to do. He writes poetry, he bangs the maid (consensually), he chats up the handyman, in short his rootless aimless existence doesn't leave any mark on even his, let alone the, world:
I passed Kurt in the hallway, and for the first time he showed me a real smile. What's happening? I wondered. what am I doing that could make him so decisively happ?
The narrator isn't alone in this musing. It is the slightly seasick effect of having no contact with anything real, tangible, requiring effort. There is no reason for Kurt to feel happy with the narrator, and no special reason for him to feel unhappy either. So what is this sudden real smile, this pleasure in seeing, that's all, just seeing, the narrator? It makes the reader as well as the narrator uneasy.
Soon enough, Kurt's wife Gerda needs to go to Rio in order to have her late-stage cancer treated. It is clear to all that Gerda will not be coming home, that her disease has reached its final crisis. Kurt takes the narrator with him to Rio, either as company or simply to have him nearby instead of alone at the estate. It's the slum-born narrator's first time visiting Rio and his first time staying in the brave new world of a luxury hotel:
I ran a hand over my chin, summoned the elevator, the uniformed operator asked me smilingly which floor—everyone was smiling at me in that four-star joint—I remembered I wanted to have a whiskey in the hotel bar, asked for the first floor, the bartender treated me like a prince, yeah, I shaved, I told him, also smiling, a whiskey poured over the stones in my glass, and the bartender saying he hadn't recognized me with my face like a baby's bottom, then turned back to the same chatter as always, recommending where to go later, at night, beaches, bars, women, I barely followed what he was saying, but it pleased me to confirm that someone behind the bar was capable of busying himself with my day's itinerary just because I had the money to pay for the hotel and leave tips.
He has the money? Interesting. Kurt's fortune, most likely Gerda's before Kurt's, pays for the narrator's very existence. Now the narrator has been with Kurt and Gerda long enough that he has assumed the mantle of privilege. How much time has passed since the narrator was bought out of his prison sentence? Unknown. In fact, unknown to the narrator, bobbing as he is in the currents of life and time.
After a deeply discomforting passage where Gerda, in her final moments, mistakes the narrator for Kurt, the surviving pair return to Porto Alegre, there to...well...continue, I suppose, to go on living in their weird ménage. Unknown amounts of time pass before Kurt reveals his true feelings about Gerda's passing and his own aging:
I sat down at the other end of the table and thought, I don't want this: What good did it do me to have him bail me out of jail just to get caught up in illness and old age? First Gerda, then Otávio, and tonight I get home and find him drunk and besides that all rotten, telling me he's not going to die. What do I get out of this?
Or, if I wasn't going to get anything from it, why was he telling me all this? Wouldn't I be better off among the prisoners, who lacked any appetite for reward?
The sheer breathtaking ingratitude of the man! The astonishing, if indulged, self-centeredness! It was here that my opinion of him as a sociopath solidified once and for all.
At the end of the day, I was very enrapt by the tale of our nameless rapist, mostly because he has no sense of himself as a moral actor. He simply does things he wants to do, damn the consequences, and ends up smelling like a rose. It's blindingly infuriatingly unfair, but so is life. Noll's first English-language appearance is a tale of rootlessness, of anomie, and was written about the time the last set of generals were loosening their grip on the country's government. It reflects that moment, the weird and unsettled time between things as they were and as they could possibly be. It's a wonderful story. It will reward your dollars and your eyeblinks.
July 29, 2020
This book was sent to me when I subscribed to Two Lines Press.
There are shocking scenes (warning, rape and degrading attitudes towards women), but that was not the primary reason I did not enjoy this title. The narrative is first person and seems to be an attempt at a uncensored and unstructured exploration of the character's mind and experience based on his actions and interactions with others. The somewhat undramatic narration (perhaps banal in an Arendtian sense) I understood as an attempt to illustrate the sociopathic (or is it psychopathic?) nature of one who engages in cruelty without remorse, or even an awareness that his behavior is harmful to others. That is the intent, it seems.
However, the banality of the narration leads instead to an flavorless play by play of what the narrator does and sees and who he engages with. I did not find much to draw from this character's experience, other than that people can commit cruelty that is hard to witness but seems insignificant to those committing the act.
I have a friend who is Brazilian and loves reading literature. She said that this author is revered by some in Brazil. I personally did not see it.
There are shocking scenes (warning, rape and degrading attitudes towards women), but that was not the primary reason I did not enjoy this title. The narrative is first person and seems to be an attempt at a uncensored and unstructured exploration of the character's mind and experience based on his actions and interactions with others. The somewhat undramatic narration (perhaps banal in an Arendtian sense) I understood as an attempt to illustrate the sociopathic (or is it psychopathic?) nature of one who engages in cruelty without remorse, or even an awareness that his behavior is harmful to others. That is the intent, it seems.
However, the banality of the narration leads instead to an flavorless play by play of what the narrator does and sees and who he engages with. I did not find much to draw from this character's experience, other than that people can commit cruelty that is hard to witness but seems insignificant to those committing the act.
I have a friend who is Brazilian and loves reading literature. She said that this author is revered by some in Brazil. I personally did not see it.
April 26, 2021
2.5
I'm genuinely surprised how, despite finding most of my issues with Atlantic Hotel apply here, Quiet Creature On the Corner is a much better book. What everyone and the kitchen sink describes as its surreal quality ("realistic surrealism" if you're Simon Chandler in the Kenyon Review ), or how Christopher Fletcher writes the anti-hero "embodies the dual meaning of homo sacer (sacred and accursed) in that he has his needs taken care of and given a space for art, while also being used as a mere body," vitally improves the qualities that failed for me in Atlantic Hotel. I even found the translator's, Adam Morris', case for the book in Asymptote compelling.
Not that much, though. It still reads as the stereotype of Gen X - this grungy, disenchanted, masculine fascination with bastards. A continuation of the robber-as-hero, except you apparently can't have heroes in the 20th century. Here there's a sense that this disenchantment is playing out against time, space, politics, faith, etc and not just in a mild angst about social identity. The derangement of narrative flow by sudden time skips, the landscape and their meanings appearing and receding all at once as with the campfire at the end of the novel, all ground the novel (hence the "realistic" surrealism moniker, I suppose). Which is refreshing. Nevertheless, the weird and excessively annoyed energy Morris brings to the Asymptote interview regarding "safe spaces" and "identity politics" seems like the embodiment of Noll's authorial style. Also, to be fair, an embodiment of 2016, when the interview was conducted.
I think this brief passage speaks for itself, and for the novel at large, regarding its conflicting cynicisms and optimisms, regarding its discomfort in its own existence, so I'll quote it in whole and end it there:
I'm genuinely surprised how, despite finding most of my issues with Atlantic Hotel apply here, Quiet Creature On the Corner is a much better book. What everyone and the kitchen sink describes as its surreal quality ("realistic surrealism" if you're Simon Chandler in the Kenyon Review ), or how Christopher Fletcher writes the anti-hero "embodies the dual meaning of homo sacer (sacred and accursed) in that he has his needs taken care of and given a space for art, while also being used as a mere body," vitally improves the qualities that failed for me in Atlantic Hotel. I even found the translator's, Adam Morris', case for the book in Asymptote compelling.
Not that much, though. It still reads as the stereotype of Gen X - this grungy, disenchanted, masculine fascination with bastards. A continuation of the robber-as-hero, except you apparently can't have heroes in the 20th century. Here there's a sense that this disenchantment is playing out against time, space, politics, faith, etc and not just in a mild angst about social identity. The derangement of narrative flow by sudden time skips, the landscape and their meanings appearing and receding all at once as with the campfire at the end of the novel, all ground the novel (hence the "realistic" surrealism moniker, I suppose). Which is refreshing. Nevertheless, the weird and excessively annoyed energy Morris brings to the Asymptote interview regarding "safe spaces" and "identity politics" seems like the embodiment of Noll's authorial style. Also, to be fair, an embodiment of 2016, when the interview was conducted.
I think this brief passage speaks for itself, and for the novel at large, regarding its conflicting cynicisms and optimisms, regarding its discomfort in its own existence, so I'll quote it in whole and end it there:
In another drawer there were envelopes, and as I folded the letter and stuffed it in an envelope I felt the pleasure that I usually felt when I told a fat lie, the feeling of completely pulling the wool over somebody's eyes-a thing I knew how to do in writing but not in speaking-into which would creep the compulsion to be caught lying: I guess I 'd get a cunning glint in my eye, look askance, I guess my face burned with a fire I could extinguish if I really wanted to, but this time, since I was writing someone a lie that I had the feeling they were ready to believe, I got swept up in euphoria, as if I were close, very close, to a state that would represent for me, just maybe, a kind of emancipation.
May 13, 2017
The narrator is some kind of antisocial pervert abuser but he's a hard nut to crack because he doesn't acknowledge his own differences, why they might be significant, or how the consequences might affect his life.
"I could take advantage of the silence to write a poem, pull a piece of paper and pen from my pocket: images of undulating things pursuing me, perhaps a thin stem, very thin, adrift on the breeze. That was when I heard someone singing, a high-pitched voice. I looked around — undulating things, the thin stem, very thin, adrift on the breeze would have to wait for another time."
March 16, 2020
CW: Rape, Sexual Abuse
I'm really quite tired of stories of rapists. The whole book reeks of misogyny and desperation; the smell of a boring, needy man unable to find fulfillment in any stage of life and therefore finds every excuse to take out his inner violences on the world. It trembles with the superstition that a bad person, given every opportunity for freedom, will learn and do better but provides absolutely no instruction, introspection, or real consideration of the matter.
I thought the premise of the novella was absent, and the myriad of sexual plots were trite tools intended to force time to push forward and pages to turn.
I'm really quite tired of stories of rapists. The whole book reeks of misogyny and desperation; the smell of a boring, needy man unable to find fulfillment in any stage of life and therefore finds every excuse to take out his inner violences on the world. It trembles with the superstition that a bad person, given every opportunity for freedom, will learn and do better but provides absolutely no instruction, introspection, or real consideration of the matter.
I thought the premise of the novella was absent, and the myriad of sexual plots were trite tools intended to force time to push forward and pages to turn.
March 12, 2019
What a strange trip this was--the first and final thirds of the book were the best for me. The book flows at a pretty steady clip until he decides, whimsically, to rape his neighbor. The next 30-40 pages were a weird fever dream of events and moments and people coming in and out of his life, a life inexplicably allowed to continue, with little consequence despite his crime, at a manor? The book was at its best from the moment he borrows Kurt's car, has a random hookup, then comes back to Kurt and the scene in Kurt's room and the ocean were almost touching. What a strange, strange book.
November 2, 2022
I purchased this book at an indy bookstore based solely on the great title and the comparisons to Camus's "The Stranger." It is certainly disturbing, surreal, and existential. It has a semi-linear plot, but definitely doesn't the follow the standard story format. It has a classic "unreliable narrator," (who's a truly despicable person.) There isn't much clarity on the passage of time, nor the narrator's twisted motivations, nor the other characters' place in the narrator's strange journey. If outside-the-box reading is your thing, this may be a book for you.
January 18, 2018
A strangely poetically compelling dreamlike story of a man going from one curious encounter to another, with little in the way of story logic or consequence. Things happen, one after the other, and we're carried right along with them. Very good, very unusual writing. Simple, yet evokes an emotional depth that's hard to put one's finger on.
December 19, 2019
1.5 stars. This slim, nightmarish little story reminds me of everything I hated in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled but with nothing that ultimately made that book enjoyable (or if not enjoyable at least recognizable as genius). I understand Noll is himself considered a wonder, but this book didn’t show that to me. At least it’s very, very short.
April 22, 2024
João Gilberto Noll kan skrive, men han vælger at skrive for mærkeligt for min smag. Mærkeligt for mærkelighedens skyld. Eller også er jeg bare ikke kvik nok til at fange subtiliteterne.
Læs hele min anmeldelse på K’s bognoter: https://bognoter.dk/2024/04/22/joao-g...
Læs hele min anmeldelse på K’s bognoter: https://bognoter.dk/2024/04/22/joao-g...
December 12, 2017
Really raw and maybe felt too stunted/short but what Noll does is dark and fragmented and I'd read more for sure
September 13, 2018
This book was weird and I loved it. It read like a dreamy bad dream where you feel paralyzed and you're in and out of it and everything and nothing. Nightmarish.
August 29, 2016
A fascinating and surreal trip through the oblique timeline of a protagonist's life. This brief novel is filled with unexplained events and some detestable behavior, written in an ambiguous way that's sure to make the reader do a double take. The story plays out with a darkly avant garde filmic quality, as if something dangerously wrong might pop up at any time.
July 19, 2016
One of the strangest books I've read in a long time, but totally engaging, haunting, and I understand why people want to read it a second time: for the writing, the ideas, and the "what does he mean by that?!" factor. It leaves you thinking, or maybe "feeling".
March 21, 2017
Dark, obscene, vague. Definitely a re-read as it took too long for me to emotionally follow in one session.
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