{"title":"Juan Benet","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"voce-nunca-chegara-a-nada","title":"You will never amount to anything","description":"As part of the Sabor Literário collection, publisher José Olympio is publishing, for the first time in Brazil, the renowned Spanish writer Juan Benet (1927-1993), with his \"You Will Never Achieve Anything.\" Published in Spain in 1961, the work consists of four short stories: each of them presents themes of ruin and physical and moral destruction—yet also carries a glimmer of hope. Destruction had been a familiar theme in this author's life since childhood: growing up amid the Spanish Civil War, in an environment of hostility, death, and destruction, Juan Benet saw his family participate on both sides of the conflict, lost his father, and was forced to take refuge in San Sebastián. The city he created for his fiction, Région, reflects something of his experience: it is a dry, bare, infertile place, home to dysfunctional, emotionally disconnected families. This \"arid climate\" permeates all the stories, whether in the description of the place or in the attitudes and feelings of the characters. The short story \"You Will Never Achieve Anything,\" written in the first person by a narrator named Juan, is the story of a trip taken years earlier with a friend. His narrative interweaves present and distant times—a technique also used in the other texts—a reflection on the meaning of that search for who knows what. In \"Baalbec, a Stain,\" the character was raised by an unaffectionate mother, who \"I could have believed (...) hadn't cared much about my education. During my early years, she seemed to watch me from afar (...).\" In \"Mourning,\" Don Blanco remembers the loss of his wife every year, in a sad and restrained ritual, through a gradually revived and surprising story. And then, \"After\": the memory of the golden age of a home and a family that now lacks the activity and elegance of yesteryear. All the stories begin with a hostile feeling to subtly convey something that seems to blossom in their characters as if from that environment of destruction and death. They breathe boredom, but within them dwells \"an urgent need for passion.\" After encountering the aridity of the land and a generation marked by war, a different perspective on life is imposed: \"One day you will know what this is, you will know what it is to live, something you only know when it [death] stalks the environment, because everything else is useless, habit, and past; the present, this arbitrary, irresponsible, cruel, involuntary, and foreign part of time (...), so worthy of appreciation that the day you survive it, you will become a man and know how to live. (...) If you think you can bear it, prove it.\"","brand":"Totvsrj-record-dc","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47159897686268,"sku":"9788503009065","price":59.9,"currency_code":"BRL","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0722\/9197\/5420\/files\/4e6e1718bd3c05f7244a038bacc8174c_542d01b0-0465-4801-9f7a-20348b376510.jpg?v=1778324826"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.record.com.br\/en\/collections\/juan-benet.oembed","provider":"Editora Record","version":"1.0","type":"link"}