Elephant cemetery

Drunk in bars and parks, miserable and unhappy, old newspapers folded in their pockets, very white girls one step away from death or one step away from pleasure, sad, lonely types, hidden loves, empty streets, light rain. Overweight or too thin, dirty and sick, anguished, lost or wanting to be lost. These are the characters of Dalton Trevisan, a 76-year-old Curitiba native who is one of the most important living Brazilian writers, a master of the short, dry story, sharp as the cold Curitiba wind, the setting for his characters. It is through its streets that the fish market elephants walk, or drag themselves, Dinorá, the girl of pleasure, the fat Carlota and her daughter Lili, Dorinha weak of heart. Ordinary characters, in stories where there are no great tragedies or exceptional subjects, as Fausto Cunha says in the introduction to this Elephant Cemetery, and who advises the reader: "Don't worry about the stories. If they don't end, it's because the characters have returned to their normal lives, or Dalton didn't want to accompany them any longer. They are all alive; the distance between the pages of this book and reality is shorter than that between one street and another." The setting for his stories, Curitiba is also the hermit's cave of Dalton himself, who debuted in 1945 with Serenata ao Luar (Serenata ao Luar), which he disowns, as well as Sete Anos de Pastor (Seven Years as a Shepherd), published the following year. Between 1946 and 1948, he edited the magazine Joaquim, which featured articles by intellectuals such as Antônio Cândido, Mário de Andrade, and Otto Maria Carpeaux, as well as translations of Joyce, Proust, and Sartre. In 1959, he published *Novelas não exemplares*, which won the Jabuti Prize (along with *Cemitério dos Elefantes*), but which the author did not go to receive. This gave rise to the myth of the recluse who refuses to be photographed, refuses to leave Curitiba, refuses to answer the phone, and communicates with the world through notes signed simply "D. Trevis." A fame that turned the title of one of his books, The Vampire of Curitiba, into a nickname, and which he nurtures, as in the text he used to give to journalists seeking interviews: "The vampire hates people he doesn't know. He doesn't consider himself a difficult figure; he runs into you every day on every corner of Curitiba." He is the author of 34 books, which have been translated into Spanish, English, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, and Danish, and his book The Conjugal War was adapted for the cinema by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade in 1975.