RioofTales

Just like the crônica, the short story was a modern genre that found wide acceptance among the first generation of writers in Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro, Machado de Assis was also an absolute master of this brief and difficult-to-succeed-at form.

Following the expansion of the literary field in the then-republican capital, several Rio-born short story writers, such as Lima Barreto - a resident of Todos os Santos - and Marques Rebelo, from Vila Isabel, refined in an exemplary way the relationship that the 19th century had already produced between the short narrative and the city.

There are also writers from different parts of the country who came to Rio and made the city the perfect setting for their stories. The examples are endless, such as Ribeiro Couto, from Santos - author of quintessentially carioca short stories like "Baianinha" and "O crime do estudante Batista" - and Aníbal Machado, from Minas Gerais - with the carnival tragedy "A morte da porta-estandarte".

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Some short-story writers who became famous developed very distinctive styles for showing Rio in their lines. Two of them, however, left eternal marks on the relationship between the genre and the city: Clarice Lispector and Nelson Rodrigues gave the streets of Rio an inescapable presence.

In Clarice's work, we see characters and neighborhoods passing by in a flow of streetcars, buses, thoughts, and affections – such as Ana's arrival at the Jardim Botânico in the short story "Love," the "nocturnal peace of Tijuca" longed for by Carlota in "The Imitation of the Rose," the Largo da Lapa and the "hundreds of people made resonant by hunger" in "Preciousness," the May night in "Mystery in São Cristóvão," the stroll through the Jardim Zoológico in "The Buffalo," and the inconvenient "dead man in the sea at Urca."

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Nelson Rodrigues was an author who not only depicted unique characters from the everyday life of Rio de Janeiro in his time, but also invented many others for posterity. His classic A Vida como ela é, was first published during the 1950s, in Samuel Wainer's newspaper A Última Hora, and compiled into an anthology in 1961. The characters wander through the city amid betrayals, scandals, and secrets at carnivals, parties, bars, public transport, government offices, and squares.

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In one of his most famous short stories, "A dama do lotação" ("The Lady of the Bus"), Solange engages in her "delirious escapades" on the city's buses and claims she cheats on her husband with "half of Rio de Janeiro, yes sir!". Although it doesn't bring explicit references to streets and squares, the whole atmosphere of Nelson Rodrigues's short stories, as well as his plays and chronicles, is thoroughly carioca.

There are other essential short-story writers in the description of the many lives of Rio de Janeiro. João Antônio, for example, made the underworld and the simple life in big cities his refuge, and immortalized Rio in books such as Malhação do Judas Carioca and Ó Copacabana. Sérgio Sant'anna, with his excellent body of work, turned Rio's neighborhoods into settings for inventive plots and narratives, as in "O concerto de João Gilberto no Rio de Janeiro."

The writer and former police officer Rubem Fonseca was an important short-story writer in the literary imagination about Rio de Janeiro. His stories trace stark portraits of a city on the verge of social rupture. He is the author of the emblematic "A arte de andar nas ruas do Rio de Janeiro," an ode to the flaneur spirit of Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, João do Rio, and other Rio-born writers.

Nowadays, among the short-story writers who continue to focus on Rio, there are authors such as Marcelo Moutinho, Nei Lopes, and Geovani Martins, with special mention of Alberto Mussa's work and his deep dive into a historical and mythical take on the city – present both in his novels and in the short stories that make up the "Histórias Cariocas."

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