Tiny Puffs of Cloud That Fell to the End of the Earth

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 5

 

Before leaving Portugal for Brazil, I prepared a list of objectives sent in advance to potential contacts in Brazil's cultural and educational ministries, historians and others whose names had been suggested by sources I'd met in Portugal:

 

Notes on Research Project: Brazil    My novel is historical and a major part of my work can be accomplished through a study of published sources.   No matter how assiduously this is undertaken, such bookwork cannot offer on location observation with its inestimable value in bringing comprehension and adding reality to your perspective. The following notes, more or less in line with my envisaged chapter structure, indicate the kind of material and experience I am seeking.   Creative people are not supposed to be as formal as this, but with so vast a project in mind  I have to adopt some kind of organized strategy for the research stage or I'll never put it all together.   1. Rain forest   I want to describe, in detail, a single acre — "God's Little Acre," in a way — before mankind's arrival. I need to speak with experts at a forest research station (outside Belém?), who can explain, in simplest terms, the symbiosis of the forest, its creation and the miraculous web of life that ensures its survival.   I need a geologist to outline the creation of the Amazon basin and the forces that shaped the sub-continent as we know it today. A zoologist to tell me about the animal life of the virgin forest. And a sociologist who can expound on "man and the forest," the forest's effect on man over the centuries, both indigenous and immigrant. (Charles Wagley, An Introduction to Brazil, has some pertinent remarks on this theme.) [READ MORE]

              

Besides these research objectives, I offered a glimpse of my story lines, enough to grasp

my plans for the book and more specific research needs:

 

Notes on Research Project: Brazil   “While I am aware that the role of the rain forest in Brazilian history should not be over-emphasized, I want to open the book with a succinct evocation of the lifecycle of an acre of virgin rain forest; its creation and existence before the advent of mankind.   “The first dwellers in the forest, the Indians, are seen in the period 1492-1500, eight years leading up to the arrival of Cabral's fleet. Emphasis is placed on the Tupi-Guarani branch and, in particular, a Tupinamba and a Tupiniquin group. While a novelistic technique carries the story forward, I am equally concerned with a sympathetic account of their lifestyle and its value-role in the formation of Brazilian society.   “After showing Cabral's landfall, my focus turns to the Portuguese trading empire in the East, stressing Goa and Ormuz, in the period 1506 — 1516 to give the reader a concept of the men and women who first settled Brazil and their heritage.   [READ MORE]

 

These gleanings from my outline and in-depth reading and research were intended to convince those whose help I sought that I was involved in a serious project of which I already had more than a working grasp. A breathtaking and formidable task but which, after my two years with James Michener on The Covenant, I had every confidence of accomplishing.

 

I prepared a draft itinerary that would allow me to touch base with all the important locations in the novel, an itinerary clearly open to revision as priorities demanded.

                               

Draft itinerary for visit to Brazil: July to October 1981   July 2                         Arrive Recife from Lisbon July 3   - 7                  Recife/Olinda July 8   - 12                Recife/Olinda area - "sugar plantation" July 13  - 14               To Canudos - Pernambuco 'backlands' en route July 15  - 16               Canudos July 17  - 18               Salqueiro - Belém (surface) July 19  - 21               Belém (Amazon forest research station etc.) July 22                       Belém - Manaus (air) July 23  - 26              Manaus July 27  - 29              Manaus - Porto Velho (Madeira River?) July 20  - Aug 8        Porto Velho - Madeira-Mamore railroad/                                   Aripuana to Alta Floresta/ environs of Rio                                   Roosevelt etc. Aug 9                        Porto Velho - Brasilia (air) Aug 10   - Aug 15      Brasília Aug 16   - Aug 22      Brasília - Salvador via Sáo Francisco area Aug 23   - Aug 29      Salvador Aug 30                       To Porto Seguro Aug 31   - Sept l         Porto Seguro - Ouro Preto Sept 2   - 3                  Ouro Preto Sept 4   - 10                Rio de Janeiro (lst visit) Sept 11  - 15               São Paulo Sept 16  - 24               São Paulo ( on coffee fazenda) Sept 21                       São Paulo to Asuncion (air) Sept 22  - 24              Asuncion, Paraguay Sept 25  - Oct 3         Asuncion - Humaíta to Missiones area etc. Oct 3    - Oct 17         Rio de Janeiro for consultations with local                                   Historians/contacts Oct 18                        Return to New York.

                                          

I was to begin my trip at Salvador, the Mother City, the best possible start to a journey in search of the “real Brazil,” as people in the south refer to Bahia. From Salvador I went to Porto Seguro and Cabrália, walking along the beaches and broad bluffs that are the setting for the opening of my book along the same beach where I saw the young Tupiniquin, Aruanã, at the water's edge on a day in 1500.

Porto Seguro,  Brazil

                

      Tiny puffs of cloud had fallen to the end of the earth. Four... five...six were bunched together just above the horizon, and others were coming to join them. Otherwise the sky was perfectly clear, its blue expanse streaked with the blazing color of the lowering sun.

 

     He made a hesitant progress toward the water, squinting into the distance at the strange clouds. But even as he did so and perplexed as he was, he began to see that his first impression had been wrong. Very quickly now the swiftest clouds lifted above the water and he saw a darker line. There was a flash of understanding: Here were great canoes coming from the end of the earth.

 

     Aruanã watched as they came closer. The sun was gone behind the trees, and he found it difficult to discern the craft, but he stood rooted a while longer before he realized that he must hasten to the village and tell what he had seen. This made him gaze at the horizon again, to be absolutely certain, for it was a fantastic discovery for a man who had gone to seek no more than shells for First Child. They were there, darkening images now, these canoes that had come from the end of the earth.

Landing place of Pedro Alváres Cabral, Brazil, 1500

 

A Novelist and the Shock of History

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 4

 

My library forays in New York over three months provided the background for my initial plotting and book proposal. With the outline complete and broad themes of the novel well in mind, it was essential to have firsthand experience of Portugal and Brazil. I couldn't go back five hundred years, but I could make a sincere and honest attempt to know the land and its people.

 

I was writing a novel not a history but was committed to offering as authentic and historically accurate account as possible. In April 1981, I headed for Lisbon and three months later began my journey in Brazil.

 

I based myself outside Lisbon at Sintra, living in a quinta on a hillside below Moorish battlements that overlooked Sintra Palace. I would use this setting for the family seat of the first Cavalcantis to go to Brazil:

 

Sintra Palace



Through his marriage to Inez Gonçalves, Cavalcanti's father had come to possess lands on those serene vales before the Serra de Sintra. Here between jagged rocks of antiquity crowned with fallen battlement of Moor and the distant azure expanse of the Atlantic, here was past and future, and whether Nicolau climbed through the thick woods to the lee of the old Infidel redoubt or stood on the windy headland at Cabo da Roça, he felt an intimacy with both. - (from Brazil)

Errol Lincoln Uys at Serra de Sintra

 I divided my time between the Gulbenkian Foundation, British Institute and Portuguese historic and geographic libraries and visits to sites like Jeronimos Monastery, Belem Tower, Mafra, and traveling to Coimbra, Belmont and Evora, all of which have a place in my novel. Besides 16th century Portugal, I was also interested in the mid-18th century and events surrounding the Lisbon Earthquake of November 1755, one of my Cavalcantis studying law in Portugal at the time.

 

Ten seconds later, there was a devastating shock. The houses opposite Paulo began to sway; the floor beneath him vibrated so violently that he struggled to keep his balance. Chimneys crumbled, loose tiles fell to the ground, crockery in Dona Clara's house shattered. Screams and the pitiful cries of animals rose. But Paulo's perception of these noises was dulled by a thundering in the earth. Terremoto! The word crashed through Paulo's senses. “Earthquake!”

 

Paulo was mesmerized by the houses opposite, rocking on their foundations, walls cracking and splitting, upper stories leaning toward the street, chunks of masonry falling. Terror numbed him. He stood frozen at the window, expecting death.

Three houses suddenly burst open and collapsed, burying the family of four and the servant girls. The old man did not cease his struggle to open his front door, even as the convulsions rocked the street; he, too, was entombed by an avalanche of masonry. Paulo looked beyond the opening opposite him: The city was rising and falling in waves as if upon a storm-tossed sea; landslides swept down the hillsides hurling houses toward the lower ground; distant steeples and towers whipped about wildly; clouds of dirt and dust hung in the air. The thunder of the earth, the sound of breaking timbers, the rain of roof tiles — the inconceivable noises came together in one deafening roar of destruction. - (from Brazil)

Lisbon Earthquake 1755

 

Imagining Brazil

BRAZIL - The Making of a Novel - Part 3

 

As I let Brazil seep into my imagination, my first step was to compile a detailed chronology. Alongside this, I mapped out a genealogical timeline for my major families, initially the Cardosas and the da Silvas. I later changed the Cardosas to the "Cavalcantis."

 

As I worked on these timelines, I began to isolate the markers for my characters, the great events where I knew they would have to be present, the sidelines of history where there might be a role for them, as yet undefined and potentially as surprising to me.

 

The original Chronology extends from 8,000 B.C. with north-coast Andes sites of hunter-gatherers to 1981, the year I started my research. So, for example, from 1616 to 1681, the years covering the lifespan of my character, Amador Flôres da Silva, the bandeirante or pathfinder:

 

AMADOR - CHRONOLOGY EXCERPT

 

http://erroluys.com/BrazilTheMakingofaNovelChronology.htm

 



Once the Chronology was complete, I had enough material to flesh out my original plotting ideas in a detailed outline, proposing a saga spanning five centuries and involving multi-generations of two families, the Cavalcantis and the da Silvas whose stories depict the major historical elements in Brazilian society.

 

 

This ninety-page document comprised an Overview of the novel, Family Trees and the Outline itself.

 

My ideas would constantly evolve during a year of research and travel and throughout the actual writing. There would be many variations in the plot for I could not know where the characters I created would lead me but the broad plan held firm.

 

Read a page from the Original Outline



Why Choose Brazil as the Subject of an Epic Novel?

BRAZIL -- The Making of a Novel - Part 2

 

Why choose Brazil as my subject? And why on such an immense scale? I've always believed one should make no small dreams for the results will be commensurate. During our time together, James Michener and I spoke about places that would lend themselves to treatment in epic novels. He mentioned Alaska and the Caribbean, both of which would become locales for Michener books. I suggested Brazil.

 

The more I began to think of Brazil, the more reasons I found for wanting to write about the country. My very ignorance prompted question after question, and when I began to look for answers, I quickly sensed a tremendous story that hadn't been told to the North American public. As an outsider to both nations, I had a singular vantage point unbridled with innate prejudices and chauvinism.

 

Among other compelling reasons for choosing Brazil, not the least was my having just spent two years delving exhaustively into the history of my birthplace. Broadly-speaking, the relations between the races in South Africa and Brazil couldn't have been more different in the 1980s: how, when, why, I wanted to know, did the two nations take such radically different paths? This wasn't something to include in the book I envisaged about Brazil but it gave me a base-line to work from in considering the dynamics of Brazilian society. In Africa, I also traveled widely in Mozambique and Angola, gaining insights into the Portuguese, their history and way of life, a valuable introduction to the colonizers of Brazil.

 

On January 5, 1981, the first working day of the year, I woke up at the usual time when I would leave for the Digest's offices in Chappaqua. This day there was no Digest, only the vast unknown in Brazil and with my future.

 

During the next three months I haunted libraries and second-hand bookstores in New York. I wasn't selective but read anything I came across related to Portugal and Brazil, anything but fiction. In plotting so vast a story one has to take care not to lock into the imagination of others and inadvertently borrowing from their works, a pitfall Michener drew my attention to when we were working on The Covenant.

 

I read hundreds of books and articles on my library forays, not only on my initial three-month plunge

into Brazil but as I went along. A small sampling of my reading list includes some of the classic works on Brazil and Portugal, both contemporary and historic:

 

 

 

                   

The Mansions and the Shanties, Gilberto Freyre  

The Masters and the Slaves, Gilberto Freyre

Order and Progress, Gilberto Freyre  

New World in the Tropics, Gilberto Freyre

Bandeirantes and Pioneers, Vianna Moog

History of Portugal, Antonio H. de Oliveira Marques

Portuguese Seaborne Empire, Charles R. Boxer

Portugal and Brazil, Harold Livermore and W.J. Entwhistle

Colonial Background of Modern Brazil, Caio Prado, Jr.

The Brazilians, José Honorio Rodrigues

Latin America, Preston E. James

History of Brazil, Andrew Grant, 1809

History of Brazil, E. Bradford Burns

From Barter to Slavery, Portuguese and Indians, 1500-1800, A. Marchant

Captains of Brazil, Elaine Sanceau

True History of His Captivity, Hans Staden

Discovery of the Amazon, according to account of Fr. Gaspar de Carvajal

The Histories of Brazil, Pero de Magalhaes, trs. John B. Stetson

Hakluyt, the Principal Navigations, Volume XI

A Treatise of Brazil, Padre Fernão de Cardim in Purchas, his Pilgrims XVI

Dutch in Brazil, 1624-1654, Charles R. Boxer

Golden Age of Brazil, 1695-1750 , Charles R. Boxer

Salvador de Sa and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola, Charles R. Boxer

Brazil, Portrait of Half a Continent, T. Lynn Smith

Apostle of Brazil: Padre João Anchieta, Helen G. Dominian

Jews in Colonial Brazil, Arnold Wiznitzer

The Negro in Brazil, Arthur Ramos trs. Richard Pattee

Neither Slave nor Free, David W. Cohen and Jack P. Greene

African Religions of Brazil, Roger Bastide

Brazilian Culture, Fernando de Azevedo, trs. William R. Crawford

Evolution of Brazil, Manoel de Oliveira Lima

Rebellion in the Backlands, Euclides da Cunha

 

One of my early sources was the three volume History of Brazil written by the English romantic poet, Robert Southey, between 1810 and 1819, considered the first comprehensive history of colonial Brazil. I pored over Southey's thousand-plus pages in awe of his achievement, the closest he ever came to Brazil was among the volumes in the library of his uncle, Reverend Herbert Hill, chaplain to the English Factory at Lisbon. I would have the opportunity to visit Brazil and carried Southey with in my thoughts, an inspiration to another outsider making a literary journey of epic proportions. Southey showed that it could be done.

 

 



 

Daydreaming about Anacondas, Headhunters and El Dorado

When I began work on my novel I knew as little about Brazil as the next foreigner. I'd once stopped over at Rio de Janeiro for three days on a flight to Africa, an instant course in cliches of Carnival, samba, beach and jungle. I'd another impression that harked back to my South African childhood, when the country was still tied to England.

 

Every month there arrived from London an adventure magazine for boys, its pages filled with the glories of Empire and conquests of its heroes. Among them, explorer Percy Fawcett who was most often depicted in a tiny canoe paddling past the gaping jaws of an anaconda. Colonel Fawcett went in search of a fabulous Lost City in Brazil and vanished forever in Mato Grosso. The intrepid fortune hunter lived on in the imagination of boys 1ike myself who scoffed at the idea that an Englishman had been killed by headhunters and pictured our champion sitting on a golden throne in E1 Dorado.

 

Living in a day when we still saw the world divided into two parts — those who belonged to the British Commonwealth and those who didn't — I naturally considered Fawcett to be the discoverer of the Brazilian interior. Before his time, I believed, no one dared venture there except the denizens of the impenetrable forest.

 

I remember drawing a huge map of Brazil, days of painstaking work with pen and India ink, with every known river and a myriad tributaries. I marked my hero's route to "Point X" where he disappeared. The map won me a coveted star from my geography teacher, Miss Kane, and a vow to "find" Fawcett. Little did I know that many years later I would visit some of the very places explored by Fawcett that remained as deserted as when he first set eyes on them half a century earlier.

 

As happens with boyhood fantasies, somewhere along the way I left Fawcett behind and got on with my schooling. Then came the real world and a brief and wretched experience as a law clerk. My father knew I wanted to be a journalist but warned that before I wasted my life as a writer, I should get a safe "billet," a favorite word of his. He suggested a career in accountancy or better still, a job with the Johannesburg city council, where I would be guaranteed a pension. (A chilling prospect for a seventeen-year-old!) I tried law but after a couple of years of hounding debtors and licking stamps, I abandoned this course.
 

Then came another round of fantasies with a disastrous attempt to go into business for myself. I founded the Lincoln Swift Organization, an odd mixture of cane furniture factory, pottery distributor, and missing persons bureau. It survived three months. At last, in an act of desperation, I literally threw myself at the feet of the manager of the Johannesburg Star and asked for a job. I got it.

Between daydreams about Fawcett, I'd been writing stories from the age of ten. I was seventeen when I penned my first novel, a three-hundred page saga of teenage angst in a small town in South Africa. Unpublished, I included it with my application to the Star and to my everlasting gratitude, the editors decided to take a chance on me. Three weeks after joining the paper, my name was in print for the first time beneath an article on the editorial page: Happiness is an Unprejudiced Mind.

 

My career as reporter, features writer and editor spanned seventeen   years on three continents. From the Star I went to Post, a newspaper serving the black and mixed-race communities of South Africa. Then to England and the South-East London Mercury, a London weekly; in London I joined Reader's Digest returning to South Africa, where I became editor-in-chief. In 1977, I came to the magazine's headquarters at Pleasantville in the United States. My transfer couldn't have been more propitious.

 

In 1978 because of my background and the Digest's long-standing relationship with James A. Michener, I was assigned to work with the writer on his South African novel, The Covenant. My two years with Michener convinced me that were I ever to be an author I would have to make a total commitment to writing, not pecking away at manuscripts in the dark of night but out in the open. At the end of 1980, I resigned from the Digest to begin work on Brazil.

 

BRAZIL - The Making of A Novel - Part 1

Inside Brazil - Take A Magical Journey Beyond The Clichés and Stereotypes

"A masterpiece! Brazil has the look and feel of an enchanted virgin forest, a totally new and original world for the reader-explorer to discover. -- L'Express, Paris

Brazil is a spellbinding saga of two powerful families that depicts five turbulent centuries in the history of a remarkable land. From colony to kingdom, from empire to nation, Brazil is filled with memorable people living through one of the great adventures in human history.

When writer Errol Lincoln Uys sat down to tell the story of Brazil, he had a key objective in mind: Avoid the stereotypical images of Brazil and its people.

"I rejoice in Carnival, samba, soccer," says Boston-based Uys (pronounced 'Ace'). "Like so many gringos, I knew little else about Brazil. In writing my novel, I discovered one of the great adventures in human history -- the story of an extraordinary people who built the dynamic nation we see today."

Two powerful families drive the story alongside an awesome array of characters, fictional and real. The Cavalcantis are among the original settlers and establish the classic Brazilian plantation -- vast, powerful, built with slave labor. The da Silvas represent the second element in both contemporary and historical Brazil: pathfinders and prospectors. For generations, these adventurers have set their eyes on El Dorado, which they ultimately find in a coffee fortune at Sāo Paulo.

Brazil is an intensely human story, brutal and violent, tender and passionate. Perilous explorations through the Brazilian wilderness . . . the perpetual clash of pioneer and native, visionary and fortune hunter, master and slave, zealot and exploiter . . . the thunder of war on land and sea as European powers and South American nations pursue their territorial conquests... the triumphs and tragedies of a people who built a nation covering half the South American continent, all are here in one spell-binding saga.

Just how successful Errol Lincoln Uys is in capturing the Brazilian epic is best judged by what Brazilian reviewers and readers say about Uys’s 800-page masterpiece devoted to their country.

“Brazil is a classic which will be enjoyed by many in the years to come.” — Agenor Soares dos Santos

“Brazil is a country of enormous contrasts and you had great insight in reflecting such differences in your book through the lives of two fictional families, one from the north and one from the south. When I read your book those feelings I had about the contrasting reality we face daily in Brazil were translated into words. I felt that a puzzle was finally put into place. I hope that writing this book has given you as much pleasure as I had in reading it. “ — Maria Pereira de Queiroz Brandão Teixeira

“Your book gave me a completely new way of viewing Brazilian and Portuguese history. Suddenly everything seemed clear: The raw truthfulness that was the reality of those times and which never comes across so clearly or vividly in history books. Truly, Brazil is a masterpiece!” – Vasco Cartó

“A beautiful work! It took more than a month to read your book, but I enjoyed every moment. It's one of the most solid researches I've seen covering five centuries of Brazil's multi-faceted history. The story line is gripping, easy to understand. My sincere congratulations. “ — Professor Max Justo Guedes

“Brazil is a monumental novel. It shows the juxtaposition of sensual/brutal Brazil...It is amazingly on target not only in the historical sense but insightful for the complex modern Brazil, principally the all-important extended family. A theme vividly illustrated in the first chapters and carried throughout the novel.” — Edson Nery da Fonseca

“I am Brazilian but have lived in the United States since the age of two. After reading your novel, I feel I can regain the culture that I lost — I feel more Brazilian! I don't believe I would ever have felt this strongly about my people if I hadn't read your book.” — Moises A. dos Santos

Says Wilson Martins, one of Brazil’s most eminent literary critics: “Errol Lincoln Uys is the first to write our national epic in all its decisive episodes – the first outsider to see Brazil with total honesty and sympathy. Descriptions like those of the war with Paraguay are unsurpassed in our literature and evoke the grand passages of War and Peace.”

"A masterpiece! Brazil has the look and feel of an enchanted virgin forest, a totally new and original world for the reader-explorer to discover. -- L'Express, Paris

"Pulsing with vigor, this is a vast novel to tell the story of a vast country. Uys depicts Brazil's evolution from colony to empire to republic. Lacing the tale together are two families: the Cavalcantis, planters and slave owners; and representing another fundamental social stream, the da Silvas, prospectors, adventurers, seekers of El Dorado." Publishers Weekly

"No one before knew how to bring to life Brazil and her history. Uys's characters are brilliant and colorful, combining elements of the best swashbuckler with those worthy of deepest reflection. Most stunning is that it took a South African, now a naturalized American, to evoke so perfectly the grand but interrupted dream that is Brazil." -- Le Figaro, Paris

What better way for the reader-explorer of an epic as vast as Brazil to discover a totally new and original world! A great summer read!

FREE ONLINE EXTRAS

AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO BRAZIL, THE NOVEL – WITH 300 IMAGES AND MAPS

AUTHOR’S JOURNAL FROM A FOUR-MONTH, 15,000-MILE TREK FROM THE AMAZON JUNGLE TO THE SOUTH OF BRAZIL

THE MAKING OF A NOVEL, WRITER’S GUIDE TO THE AUTHOR’S FIVE-YEAR QUEST FOR BRAZIL

What James Michener Said About "Brazil" by Errol Lincoln Uys

James A. Michener was in Alaska, working on his novel, when Brazil landed in the bookstores. To my delight I received this letter from him: 

“Dear Errol,

On this little island, in this little town, the little bookstore carries in its window a copy of  Brazil prominently displayed as one of the fine novels of the season. Glad to see on my latest walk that the copy had been sold.

I’m delighted with the reception so far and hope that the book enjoys, as it should, a long, long run.

Best of good fortune in all you attempt. You know how to write.”  -- Jim

(Sheldon Jackson College, Sitka, AK, August 28, 1986)

Mr. Michener supported Brazil with generous grants totaling $20,000 over the five years I took to write my epic.  Along the way, Michener read many chapters as I wrote them.  When invited by my publisher to comment on my manuscript, he had this to say:

“I read with considerable care the substantial segments you sent and can, with honesty and propriety say the following:

‘Since Brazil is larger in size than the United States it merits a full length novel which summarizes and dramatizes its remarkable history. Errol Lincoln Uys, a distinguished writer born in South Africa but resident in America for many years, has written such a book.

‘The flow of his narrative is compelling. His characters are hewn from the history of Brazil. And the timeliness of his philosophical comment is striking.

'He has produced a book that will captivate and instruct and I hope it will find many readers.’"

(Sheldon Jackson College, Sitka, AK, 7 September, 1985)

Before writing Brazil, I worked with Michener on his South African novel, The Covenant, a controversial collaboration fully archived on my website The Secret Covenant - Working with James A Michener  I was involved in every aspect of the novel, from its plotting to the final manuscript. Of my story-telling, Michener had this to say:

“Uys showed such a mastery and predilection for plotting that again and again he came up with dazzling ideas that again and again attracted my attention. I am no good at plotting, hold it to be almost an excrescence, and pay far too little attention to it, so that Uys's bold suggestions were often appreciated.

“He really was a remarkable man in his ability to visualize instantly and I rarely had to waste a moment explaining anything. Also, he had the capacity and willingness to catch an idea and run with it in his own direction, often proposing something so far from my intention that I was bedazzled. I judge he could plot six novels a year with intricate beauties; he should have been in G-2 in some complicated war situation.

"Never once did I say, 'So now we have this Englishman at the Mission Station in 1819. How does he get to the Orange River?'  without his having nine or eleven possibilities, all good, all logical, all beautifully coordinated. Often I would say, 'too complicated for our boy,' or 'I doubt that our boy would go that far,' but just as often I would say, 'That might be just what he would do..'

"Once we broke away from his conception of a super-dramatic novel, at which he would have been excellent, he grasped immeidately and totally my concept of a novel which would unfold all the qualities of the Afrikaner heritage, and althrough he sometimes tooka dim view of that heritage,he was brilliant in bringing to my attenbtion aspects which I could not have though of by myself, even though I had done and was doing considerable work in the field."

When I set out on my long literary quest for the heart and soul of Brazil, Michener sent me off with these encouraging words:

"Every excerpt, every page you have written for my book shows that you are a writer with a superb use of the English language, a remarkable vocabulary and a very special turn of phrase…You unquestionably have the talent to write almost anything you direct your attention to. You are a great researcher, as your copious notes prior to our work sessions together indicated.

“And you know how to put words together most skillfully as your work on the manuscript proved. With such talents you stand a remarkably good chance in whatever you try. You have also, from what I gleaned in our conversations on the long walks, an acute sense of timeliness in subject matter. That's a rare combination; the most promising I've met with in years of talking with would-be writers."

I know that when James Michener rejoiced in seeing Brazil in the window of that little bookstore in Sitka, Alaska, his expectations  were fulfilled.

Brazil – The Light at the End of the Long Tail

 

It has been 25 years since my 1,000-page epic novel Brazil rolled off the presses. A best-seller in Europe and in South America, Brazil was orphaned in the United States when its editor left Simon and Schuster only two months before its publication in April, 1986.

Six weeks after publication I was told, "Brazil didn’t take off." I had one press interview and one radio interview before my book vanished from local shelves.

In France, critics hailed the novel as a "masterpiece," a first printing of 14,000 copies sold out in three days, and the book became a summer blockbuster. It went on to sell over 400,000 copies in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, Israel and Brazil.

I was buoyed as much by my international sales figures as by the words of eminent Brazilian literary critic, Wilson Martins, who wrote in the prestigious Jornal do Brasil:

“Uys has accomplished what no Brazilian author from José de Alencar to João Ubaldo Ribeiro, as well as others including Jorge Amado and Bernardo Guimarães was able to do. He is the first to write our national epic in all its truly decisive moments.

“Uys is the first to have the talent required for the task, to see us with total honesty and sympathy, the first to understand Brazil as an imaginary creation, coherent in its apparent inconsistencies, organic in its historic development. Descriptions like those of the war with Paraguay are unsurpassed in our literature and evoke the great passages of War and Peace.”

French reviewers were similarly enthusiastic about my work: “A masterpiece! Brazil has the look and feel of an enchanted virgin forest, a totally new and original world for the reader-explorer to discover,” crowed L'Express, Paris. “No one before knew how to bring to life Brazil and her history. Uys's characters are brilliant and colorful, combining elements of the best swashbuckler with those worthy of deepest reflection. Most stunning is that it took a South African, now a naturalized American, to evoke so perfectly the grand but interrupted dream that is Brazil,” lauded Le Figaro.

  



I began my writing career as a newspaperman on the Johannesburg Star and at the helm of the Cape edition of Post, then the country’s biggest weekly publication serving its African and mixed-race population. Following a stint in London, I became Editor-in-Chief of Reader’s Digest in South Africa. In 1977, I emigrated to the United States to work at the magazine’s international headquarters.

I met the American author James A. Michener through my work at the Digest and became assistant and researcher for Michener’s South African saga, The Covenant. Commenting on our two-year collaboration, Stephen J. May, Michener’s most recent biographer, concluded: “Michener committed a scarlet literary crime and used his celebrated influence in publishing to get away with it." – The affair is chronicled in an extensive literary archive on my website.

"The road will always be longer and harder for some of us," Michener told me. Controversial as our work on the South African book was, the experience convinced me that I could go out and dedicate myself to writing Brazil, as grand a theme as any that Michener undertook.

I spent five years’ time on the writing of Brazil. I devoted a year to my primary research, including a 15,000-mile trek through Brazil, almost entirely by bus in order to get a feel for the vast country and its people at ground level. My journey took me into the Sertão, the arid backlands of the Northeast, and to the Casas Grandes of coastal Pernambuco. I voyaged the Amazon River from Belém to Manuas and explored southernmost Rondônia. I roamed the highlands of Minas Gerais and followed the route of the bandeirantes, the Brazilian pathfinders, from São Paulo to the south.

I returned to the United States at the end of October, 1981 to begin what would become a 750,000-word manuscript written entirely by hand. It took a further four years to complete my task seeking a vision of the Brazilian El Dorado, not beyond the next hill or the river ahead but deep within the soul.

Like my fictional hero, the bandeirante Amador Florés da Silva, I knew periods of utter loneliness and fear, times when I felt the sertão closing in on me but always, I broke through the barrier. I never lost the will to understand the Brazilian genius.

I needed to call on the same steely resolve after seeing my work founder in the United States market. Despite Brazil’s overseas triumph, my follow-up book proposals (including an epic on Mexico) were submitted to no avail. I was more successful with my non-fiction efforts, publishing Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move during the Great Depression, a companion volume to the Peabody Award-winning documentary made by Michael Uys and Lexy Lovell, my son and daughter-in-law.

If my spirits ever sank, I had only to re-read Wilson Martins’s review of Brazil. -- Professor Martins truly understood the scope and nuances of my work. As time passed, many other readers who stumbled across the book sent me their own appreciations of Brazil.

“I don’t believe I would ever have felt this strongly about my people if I hadn’t read your book – I feel more Brazilian!” wrote Moises dos Santos, a Brazilian living in the United States. Birdie Hope effused: “I read your entire book aloud to my husband on a series of trips we made — he drove as I read. We started in Mato Grosso, Brazil and finished somewhere in Kansas! The edition we read was an even 1,000 pages. Loved it! It's fabulous! Congratulations for writing it.”

In 2000, I signed a reprint agreement with Silver Spring Press, a small publisher in Connecticut. I added an afterword bringing the story up to Brazil’s 500^th anniversary celebration. Seven years later, my French publisher also issued a new edition of Brazil (La Forteresse Verte.)

Brazil was on the "long tail" at Amazon riding on that river sea with its vast schools of customers. Occasionally, sales of the new edition and secondhand copies sent Brazil rippling upward from the tip of the tail to somewhere in the fat middle. It was enough to satisfy a passionate author that someone, somewhere was dipping into his book. This encouraged me to keep paddling, no matter the current.

Then came Kindle, and for Brazil, a totally new world opened up. Having fought so long and hard for my masterpiece, I was ready for this new challenge. I took three decisive steps to launch the e-book, producing:

·        Kindle Illustrated Guide to Brazil

Linked to the e-text is a unique and free online guide with more than 200 images and maps, providing an indispensable companion on a fictional journey through five hundred years of Brazilian history. Captions drawn from the narrative enhance the reader's sense of immersion in time and place. The novel guide is also interwoven with the author’s original Brazilian journal and working notes.

·        Errol Lincoln Uys – A Writer’s Website

A wide-ranging personal website sharing the author’s archives, journals and working notes. The Making of Brazil and Michener’s Secret Covenant offer meticulously documented and intriguing insights into what went into the writing of these two books, from conceptual outline to final printed manuscript.

·        Twitter Edition of Brazil

I am also tweeting my 340,000-word book in 140 (or fewer) - character tweets for thousands of followers. Brazil is the first huge epic to be micro-blogged on Twitter, each tiny “episode” contributing to daily installments of 20 to 50 tweets. The novel’s Twitter handle is @BrazilANovel

The spectacular rise of the nation of Brazil over the past two decades couldn’t be timelier for me, as events like the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics loom on the horizon. Twenty-five years ago, people made light of ‘'Brazil, land of the future and which always will be." This is no longer so today, as Brazil takes its place among emergent nations.

The timing for a big book on Brazil is perfect. Brazil is ranked No 1 on Kindle’s Brazilian-related books, the e-book’s success driving strong sales of the print edition.

If I’ve one thing to be thankful for – and there are many – it’s that I never stopped believing passionately in Brazil.

Top 10 Reasons Why Readers Like "Brazil"

One of a writer's special joys is hearing from readers who've been inspired by his or her work.

Over the years, I've collected these personal notes from my readers. Some are from Brazilian immigrants in the United States, for whom Brazil brings their children an extraordinary understanding of the land of their heritage. Some are from people with a profound knowledge of our neighbor to the south. Some are from readers like Birdie Hope:

"I read your entire book aloud to my husband on a series of trips we made. --He drove, I read. -- We started in Mato Grosso, Brazil and finished somewhere in Kansas! The edition we read was an even 1,000 pages. Loved it! It's fabulous. Thanks for writing it."

My mind boggles as I think of Birdie and her husband trekking all the way from the Pantanal to Route 66.

I've posted a selection of letters from my readers on my website. Here's a list of the Top 10 reasons why they liked Brazil:

1. "Truly a Masterpiece - a fantastic journey through the centuries"

2. "A Brazilian Rite of Passage"

3. "A Truly Amazing Read"

4. "Brazil is a Classic"

5. "I feel more 'Brazilian’ after reading Brazil'"

6. "A Monumental Novel - As Great and Grand, as Michener's 'Source'"

7. "Brazil draws me as surely as the mystery of South America itself"

8. "I Am Mesmerized"

9. "Loved it! It's Fabulous!"

10. "A Beautiful Work! It’s gripping, easy to understand."

It is both humbling and heartwarming to know just how much Brazil has meant to those who have taken this literary journey to the heart and soul of a great nation.

http://erroluys.com/BrazilReaderComments.htm