Dr. Paulo Moreira is Assistant Professor of Spanish & Portuguese at Yale University, and the author of Regionalism and Modernism in the Short Stories of William Faulkner, João Guimarães Rosa, and Juan Rulfo. Originally his dissertation at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Regionalism and Modernism in the Short Stories of William Faulkner, João Guimarães Rosa, and Juan Rulfo is now available in book form in Brazil. He is also currently translating a collection of William Faulkner’s short stories into Portuguese.
In July I had the opportunity to skype with Dr. Moreira. I was in San Diego while he was in Belo Horizonte preparing to attend the 2011 BRASA Conference. This conversation, while presented here in fragments, lasted two hours, and covered a wide range of topics concerning João Guimarães Rosa. I would like to thank Dr. Moreira for his help & support.
Felipe Martinez: Dr. Moreira, I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me.
Paulo Moreira: It’s my pleasure. I really love A Missing Book. It’s very exciting to see something like it in English. You know that Guimarães Rosa is still mostly unknown in the United States, and it’s difficult to find resources in English to share with other people. I attended a meeting last month at Yale where they discussed the idea of expanding the courses on canonized literature, which they call Directed Studies at Yale. They are thinking of expanding it to include Latin America, Asia, and Africa. At this meeting, I talked to people about Guimarães Rosa, and some there, who had never heard of Rosa, were really interested in learning more about him. Unfortunately, we don’t have a really good translation of Grande Sertão: Veredas, but I was able to send them a couple of short stories, and they loved them. You know it’s really all about having translations that are not only “good,” but meaningful. That’s why I’m so looking forward to having a new translation of Grande Sertão: Veredas.
On The Devil To Pay In The Backlands, or Grande Sertão: Veredas 