In О Brasil nao é longe daqui Flora Süssekind attempts to outline the process of the historical formation of the fictional narrator in Brazil, finding its roots in travel literature and newspaper variety sections in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. In her journey to the origins of Brazilian fiction, she passes through the influence of the writing of foreign naturalists and their inventories of local flora and fauna, the importance of the development of an encyclopedic vision of the country, and the tendency of early writers to look at Brazil through European eyes. She also discusses such matters as the existence of private libraries in the colonial period and the slow formation of a reading public, both essential for the development of a national literature. Wandering through an impressive array of primary documents and secondary sources, the author shows how a fictional narrator slowly differentiated itself from the more objective narrator of travelogs and scientific accounts. One of the major steps in this process was the shift from a concern with describing the countryside in an almost cartographic fashion to a greater focus on social habits and customs, accompanied by a change from the mobile perspective characteristic of travelers to a fixed spatial position as the imagination began to take precedence over documentary observation.
Although certainly an important work of literary historiography, Süssekind’s study is weakened by its general failure to clearly state its objectives and by its meandering organization, which often leaves the reader confused about the direction her critical analysis is to take. It is further weakened by an elliptical prose style that ultimately becomes manneristic and interferes with understanding.
