Bliss Is Not Enough
RODMAN, SELDEN
Bliss Is Not Enough Showdown By Jorge Amado Translated by Gregory Rabassa Bantam. 422 pp. $18.95. Reviewed by Seiden Rodman Author, "South America of the Poets, " "The Brazil...
...In over 20 years he'd never missed...
...But this witty and resourceful raconteur has been transformed into a literary icon, a Grand Old Man of Letters and part of the price he has paid is getting smothered with adulation...
...His younger Latin American friends seem to have dropped their critical guard toward him altogether...
...In his pack were four infallible remedies: Miraculous Elixir, Women's Health, Sào Lâzaro Pomade, and castor oil...
...The story of their love, the novel's most moving episode, culminates in Diva's tragic death: After surviving the flood that almost wipes out Tocaia Grande, she falls victim to a plague...
...There are flashes of early Amado in Showdown's evident feeling for the dispossessed, but they are overwhelmed by the author's affectionate portrayal of feckless bliss...
...He laughs off the prejudice he encounters, using his fists only as a last resort...
...Lying in wait for the hired guns of Colonel Elias Daltro, his boss' rival, the brave and wily Natârio manages to exterminate them to a man...
...The flood and the plague are not the only harbingers of grim times ahead...
...They are intent on converting the heathens and destroying their idols...
...It's too bad in a way that this has changed: Without any political bite, the erotic capers that have recently won him a measure of popularity in the United States are becoming predictable and repetitious...
...All the women, wives and prostitutes alike, want him, but Tiçâo has his eyes on Diva, a young white virgin...
...Such unmeasured praise is bad tonic for a writer, no matter how brilliant...
...Reviewed by Seiden Rodman Author, "South America of the Poets, " "The Brazil Traveler" Once upon a time Jorge Amado was a Communist in good standing who spent his spare time defying the Brazilian military dictatorship and taking refuge from it in Moscow...
...Sidling up to Natârio, he says, "The Old Man should have a plaque put here...
...The novel opens with an ambush led by the benevolent Colonel Boaventura Andrade's lieutenant, Natârio da Fonseca...
...Showdown begins and ends with a massacre...
...The way they do on battlefields...
...The other substantial character is Castor Abduim, called Tiçâo, a handsome young black who has brought his candomblé spirits with him and set up a forge to shoe the horses...
...Because nobody here orders anybody else around, everything is done by common consent and not out of fear of punishment...
...With the interest he earned, Fadul watched his nest egg grow and saw the time coming to throw off his peddlar's pack forever...
...Natârio took careful aim at Venturinha's head...
...Tiçâo and the Turk give a good account of themselves in the one-sided conflict, and the badly wounded Natârio survives to greet the surveying party that follows -led by Venturinha and his laughing Russian mistress...
...With your permission, Colonel...
...Natârio, who is imagining the people's paradise that can now be established, turns away in disgust...
...Since every one of the good people of Tocaia Grande is slaughtered at the end and their places are taken by fascist bureaucrats, the novel's message seems to be: Forget and enjoy while you can...
...Even the usually perceptive Mario Vargas Llosa, for instance, declares: "Not only is Jorge Amado one of the greatest writers alive, he's also one of the most entertaining...
...A Lutheran half-breed stands up to the priests, telling them that a more civilized people than the Tocaia Grandeans is not to be found in the whole cacao region of southern Bahia: "And do you know, Reverend Fathers, why...
...Tocaia Grande-the novel's title in the original Portuguese-is the site of both, as well as the setting for the carefree life that a motley collection of cacao cultivators, tradesmen and prostitutes lead in the intervening period...
...But two of its gentle pleasure-seekersthe only two characters the author has endowed with personalities of their own -sense the trouble that will surely come...
...Later Colonel Boaventura's good-for-nothing son, Venturinha-who has been wasting his father's fortune pursuing a law degree while sampling the fleshpots of Rio and the capitals of Europe-comes to look over the scene of the carnage...
...I hate to say that about Amado, who on my first two visits to Brazil in the late '60s was friendly and helpful...
...Tocaia Grande grows and prospers...
...The priests sneer and retire to the big city...
...His novels, especially the latest, Showdown, display his artistic mastery and constitute a profound, wholly irreverent exploration of Latin American realities...
...Soon a military force descends on the shantytown, charged with putting it under "the law," and in a matter of a few bloody hours the idyll is over...
...Is it too late to hope that Jorge Amado still has it in him to confront Brazil's surrender of its old idealism and attack its present floundering hedonism with something of his youthful ferocity...
...If you, Reverend Fathers, will permit my opinion, I can tell you that the natural paradise of the Bible is here...
...One is Fadul Abdala, nicknamed "the Grand Turk," although he is actually a Lebanese merchant: "A carpetbagger, carrying his shop on his back, Turk Fadul frequently practiced medicine, did priestly duties when necessary...
...Inquisitorial priests also arrive, the vanguard for interested landowners...
Vol. 71 • March 1988 • No. 4
