High Art by Rubem Fonseca

 

 

Rio de Janeiro - setting for the majority of the action in High Art

Fantástico! Brazilian author Rubem Fonseca's High Art is among the greatest of Latin American boom novels. I’m not alone in my praise – in his glowing New York Times book review, Mario Vargas Llosa judged the author’s work a stunning accomplishment, a combination of amusing detective novel and an elegant literary experiment of the topmost aesthetic and intellectual order.

A fictional fiesta. Certainly one of the high arts of High Art is the art of breathtaking storytelling. To attempt a synopsis would be ridiculous as there are too many colorful stylistic spirals and as many unexpected curves and curls as there are feathers on a Hyacinth Macaw or Toco Toucan. Rather, I'd like to share my excitement for this book that I've read three times and counting by noting a number of captivating characters and dazzling details:

Mandrake the lawyer: The novel’s first-person narrator goes by the cartoonish name of Mandrake. We can judge such a name as a parody of pulp detective fiction. He’s a criminal lawyer in Rio and is teamed up with a hardworking Jew by the name of Wexler. All the many references to Wexler’s Jewishness can also be seen as a parody, this time of social stereotyping. Mandrake doesn’t work nearly as hard as Wexler when it comes to defending clients because he’s continually sidetracked by investigating the truth behind the crimes he’s drawn into.

Mandrake the irresistible playboy: Actually, Mandrake has to deal with another major distraction: beautiful women. His leading girlfriend at the moment is tall, thin, ravishing Ada with her long legs and neck slightly curved forward. Ada would like nothing more than to wed Mandrake and start a family. Good luck, dear lady! Although you are in the lead, there are at least two or three or four (I lost count!) other attractive, vivacious sexpots who keep knocking on the playboy's door.

Mandrake, the eccentric: How eccentrically oddball? One morning our Sherlock Holmes wannabe accompanies two real detectives at the apartment of a rich socialite. They find the young lady’s bloated corpse on her bed, having been strangled sometime the previous evening. And where is Mandrake’s attention? Why, he’s making remarks about the fashionable décor, all the furniture, paintings, lamps and carpets speaking to an owner bathing in luxury. And while the head detective is busy gathering evidence, Mandrake scrutinizes the magazine covers on the coffee table: Amiga, Status, Donald Duck and then pleads with the other detective to let him feed the exotic tropical fish in the aquarium lest they go belly up.

Camilo Fuentes: An enormous, powerful Bolivian from Indian stock, a man who doesn’t mess around when it comes to conducting his business trafficking drugs for gangsters and seeking out targets to be murdered. Camilo especially hates Brazilians since they have always looked down on him as a Bolivian and as an Indian, as someone who is poor and badly dressed, but most of all, he despises Brazilians because, in his eyes, they are all disgusting dogs.

Hermes: Specialist in Persev, a code word for a set of tactics and skills of knife handling and knife combat. In the aftermath of being stabbed himself, Mandrake seeks out Hermes, a former client who owes him one since the Rio lawyer got the knife expert off a murder charge. Mandrake takes his combat lessons to heart and from this point forward wears a leather shoulder strap for his new Randall. Rubem Fonseca delves into the details on what it means to make a knife an extension of your very arm. "Hermes reached out his hand and picked up the knife. A friend of mine raises birds. I once saw him stick his hand in a cage and grasp a bird to transfer him to another cage. This was the way Hermes held the Randall, as it were alive, capable of escaping from his hand."

Iron Nose: Nickname for the black dwarf José Zakkai, kingpin of a gangster mob, a man keen on accumulating and wielding power. When asked his specialty, Zakki answered: “Survival. When I was born my mother took one look at my hands and fainted. I had webbing between my fingers. . . But here I am, a first-class chatterbox, though I still haven’t grown much.” Even hardened gangsters and murderers realize Iron Nose is not a man to laugh at (although his cover is working as a clown for a circus) – you just might be forced to eat huge hard-shelled cockroaches if you don’t give Nose the information he wants, fast.

Rafael: Knife fighter and professional killer, a students of the Professor (Hermes) whose hobby is the cultivation of roses. “I have more than a hundred and fifty different species. My mother had the prettiest roses I’ve ever seen, to this day. And I think they’re the most sublime flower of all.”

Ricardo Mitry and Lima Predo: both men wealthy, completely self-centered, cruel and vicious – in the grand tradition of Latin American multigenerational tales, we are even treated to the particulars of their family genealogy. During one memorable party at his apartment, Mitry brings out a silver tray containing several small mirrors with fine lines of white powder along with a crystal vial filled with pills of every color. In attendance are two young glamorous prostitutes, Titi and Tata, well dressed, well tanned and absolutely scrumptious. During a dance in the nude, Mitry pinches Tata’s ass and proclaims to all: “The newest dream of the powerful – that flesh should have the durability of synthetic rubber.”

Pop Culture: One hip, shapely Rio goddess wears a shirt that says: COCA-COLA – THE PAUSE THAT REFRESHES, another upper class call girl sports one reading: I (big read heart) NEW YORK. There’s references galore to popular movies, both old time black and white and current ones playing in living color: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Vincent Price in The House of Usher, the pornographic Orgy of the Perverts. Radio programs, television shows, videocassettes, glossy magazines, sensationalist newspapers - as we turn the pages, no mistaking the fact we are in hopped-up, with-it, trendy Rio.

High Culture: Not only a plethora of general historical and literary allusions but more specifically, Ajax, Zeus, Achilles are among the copious references to all things Greek: Greek mythology, Greek history, even Greek philosophy. As Mario Vargas Llosa acknowledged in his review, such mentions and citations add a certain dignity and aesthetic dimension to Rubem Fonseca’s novel.

High Art: As in deft, nimble style, as in a story jam-packed with such flamboyant characters and absorbing scenes, the book will almost hop out of your hands to dance the samba. Is there any question about how I can’t recommend High Art highly enough?


 

Brazilian author Rubem Fonsica, born 1925. Photo of the novelist around the time of publication of High Art in 1986.



 

Tell it like it is, Rubem! Here is our author today, declaring to reporters how everyone has their own ambitions, dreams and life experiences, only that these have to be strong enough so that the person feels compelled to tell a story.