HAPPY 1958: THE YEAR THAT SHOULD NOT END

HAPPY 1958! — THE YEAR THAT SHOULD NOT END, by Joaquim Ferreira dos Santos, published by Editora Record, tells the joy of being Brazilian in that smiling finale of the 1950s. Brazil won the soccer world championship for the first time. João Gilberto released a 78 rpm record with "Chega de Saudade" (Enough of Longing) and gave the final touch to bossa nova. JK put the DKW-Vemag on the streets, the first car with 50% of its parts produced here. Everything went well. The author interviewed figures from that year, delved into the archives of O Cruzeiro, listened to tapes from Rádio Nacional, and presented a profile of the most exuberant period of our lives this century. Cinema Novo was just beginning to produce, but the chanchada (a type of comedy) was still strong in 17 films. Zé Celso inaugurated the avant-garde of Teatro Oficina (Workshop Theater), but the TBC (Town Hall Theater) remained on stage. Brazil was moving toward modernity—Oscar Niemeyer was designing Brasília, the Jornal do Brasil was undertaking its graphic overhaul—but it lived without conflict with its past. Unlike 1968, when everything went wrong and the year never ended, as defined in Zuenir Ventura's book, 1958 was so harmonious that it should never have ended. Adalgisa Colombo was crowned Miss Brazil, revolutionizing beauty pageants with a boldness that anticipated the women of the 1960s. On the streets of Rio, beyond the latest developments in the national automobile industry, there was the charm of a city living its final days as the federal capital. Carmen Mayrink Veiga remembers the candlelit dinners at the Country Club, the comments from the gossip columnists and the refrigerator of mink stoles at Casa Canadá, on Rio Branco. It was the year of the hula hoop, of wayward youth, of the creation of Candinha's gossip in Revista do Rádio, of Maria Ester Bueno's victory at Wimbledon, of the launch of Gabriela Cravo e Canela, of Brizola taking over ITT and of the rhinoceros Cacareco being elected councilman at the polls in São Paulo. Democracy was in full swing, and Luiz Carlos Prestes, after being a fugitive for nine years, reappears on TV Rio's Noite de Gala, interviewed by Flávio Cavalcanti. The prospects for 1998 aren't great, but just the possibility of celebrating 40 years of all these events raised by Joaquim Ferreira dos Santos — plus the arrival of the battery-powered radio, Vasco's super championship, Ilka Soares' presence among Lalau's Certinhas — just for this nostalgia alone is worth doing like the stars of Walter Pinto's rebolado theater (more than 30 productions that year) and shouting: "Yay!"