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I read biographies on occasion, and often there is a chapter at the very beginning discussing how the individual’s ancestors came from who-knows-where and bought land in who-knows-where and then – in the next generation – they moved over to Here and bought a parcel at There, et cetera, et cetera. Unfortunately, this serves as little more than a right-of-passage to get into the actual biography, as it bears little apparent relation to the life story that follows.

I’m currently reading (er, listening to) The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, and in the course of the book, she gives just some of that family history. But here’s the key: she gives it about 40% into the book, now that I’m already invested in the characters and can think about how their ancestry might be relevant.

It’s parallel to advice I received from a graduate school advisor (in economics): Don’t write a stand-alone literature review; instead, write about the literature in the course of the paper, wherever it is most relevant.

In the late 1960s, Janice Perlman interviewed 750 people in three favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Thirty years later, she decided to revisit the same people

"We used many approaches and kept following up on leads for the next two years. After securing permission to enter the communities, we began by putting up large colorful posters saying that we were eager to meet people who had participated in the 1968 study. The poster featured a photo of me … from that time and the cover of the Brazilian paperback edition of my book, which I had given to the study participants. Fortunately, due to a newspaper story about my return to Rio to follow up on my favela study, I was invited to be interviewed on the popular Brazilian television show Fantástico. That gave me the opportunity to reach a huge audience and appear to viewers to call in if they or someone they knew had been part of the original study. Likewise, I spoke on popular radio stations and community radio, and we posted ads in the most widely read newspapers in the communities. Then, for one Sunday afternoon in each place our team rented a van with a loudspeaker…and drove around each of the communities announcing a barbecue that afternoon and asking for help in our search for original study participants." (Favela, p49)

She also used more standard methods, using the old contact info, visiting the old neighborhoods: "This was complicated by the fact that many of the dwellings had no numbers or street name at all, and even when we had a partial address, the streets and numbering had long ago changed or been reconfigured, often several times over".

After all that and much more (for example, finding people with the right first name but who didn’t remember if they had participated), they found just 41% of the 750 study participants. This is extraordinary, and yet it seriously compromises the ability to draw inferences from the outcomes of these folks: Are these just the most successful (i.e., not homeless)? or the least successful (i.e., not moved on)?. Perlman recognizes this and tries to deal with it by tracing the overall composition of the favelas over time in addition to just the welfare of her found participants. I applaud Perlman and her efforts.

BUT, having worked with tracking surveys in a Kenya and Brazil and now starting some work in Mexico, the lesson is clear: Don’t wait 30 years to follow up on your people.

As we walked out of the movie theater from Megamind, we entered an all concrete hallway and I said, "Ay no, ¡estamos atrapados en una calabaza!" Hmmm… Maybe that should have been calabozo.

Calabaza = pumpkin

Calabozo = dungeon

What a difference two vowels make…

"It was good to be away from Islamabad – the bubble in the hills, a town barely two decads old, characterised by government and not history, where everything had the antiseptic air of diplomacy with germs rife beneath the surface."

– from the very good Burnt Shadows, by Kamila Shamsie, p150

I am LOVING a podcast called the BBC World Book Club. They choose one book a month, and the author answers selected questions from readers. The dialogue is High Quality.

This month is Barbara Kingsolver talking about the Poisonwood Bible. I LOVED the interview with Carlos Ruiz Zafon, in which we learn that his Cemetery of Lost Books is actually based on the fabulous Long Beach used bookstore Acres of Books. Awesome!

I look forward to this with great excitement. I highly recommend it. It is available on itunes.

"Let me say at this point that the tired old cliché, that there’s a book in every one of us, is a fallacy. However, I have come to accept over the years that most people have experienced a single incident in their life that is unique to them, and well worthy of a short story."

Jeffrey Archer, Cat O’ Nine Tails, p265

"One morning the two big bulls, Gladstone and Brigham Young, thought spring had come, and they began to tease and butt at each other across the barbed wire that separated them."

Book 1 Chapter 8

"Isaiah himself was a prophet of challenge and stern demand. He set high standards, conceived brave ideals, aimed at goals beyond the wider human reach. If you hear him you grow confused because he upsets your notions, if you go with him you run into trouble because you are pushing against the crowd, if you deny him you feel guilty because you know he is right. Ignorance of the prophet Isaiah is the safer way, and the prudent reader will skip the next few pages of this chapter – unless, of course, he has already made Isaiah’s acquaintance, under which circumstance there is no more help for him."

Sheldon Blank, Prophetic Faith in Isaiah, p9

"Flaubert…boasted of Madame Bovary that he had written a ‘book about nothing’"

from Pierre Bayard, How to talk about books you haven’t read, p174

personagem fascinante, filme adequado [2.5/4]

Ao final do filme, um texto aparece na tela, explicando que Chico escreveu mais de 400 livros, mas não aceitou nem direitos autorais nem royalties para nenhum deles. Uau! Este filme biográfico é obviamente solidário com o homem que disse que funcionava como médium para milhares de espíritos, não só escrevendo livros senão cartas dos mortos para seus familiares sobreviventes.

O filme começa no final da vida de Chico, com sua aparição no programa de televisão Pinga Fogo. Se apresenta uma narrativa paralela sobre um casal quem perdeu o filho recentemente e não acha consolo. Então, experimentamos uma série de flashbacks, que mostram o infância díficil e desturbador do Chico, seu reconhecimento de seu dom, o aumento de sua fama, um escândalo sobre o dinheiro, e sua relação dificil com a liderança católica local.

O filme tem momentos de graça, como quando o pai o leva para uma bordel para sua primeira experiência sexual e de repente todos as prostitutas e seus clientes estão ajoelhados em oração, guiados pelo Chico. Outros momentos, como a resolução da narrativa atual com o casal sofrendo, sentem algo forçado.

Ao final, achei momentos chatos mas em geral gostei do filme e da oportunidade de aprender sobre uma personagem verdadeiramente fascinante e que – me pareceu do filme – passou sua vida tentando ajudar aos outros. Antes do filme, passaram o trailer para Nosso Lar [link], um fime baseado em um dos livros de Chico que sai nos próximos meses e que também parece interessante.

Nota sobre o conteúdo: O filme tem classificação livre no Brasil (ou seja, para todos). No começo, observamos um pouco de abuso físico de criança, não tão gráfico.