Searching for elements for a contemporary history of Brazilian literature: a view about "Diário da Queda", from Michel Laub

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute for the understanding of the characteristics of contemporary brazilian literature by analyzing the novel “Diário da Queda”, written by Michel Laub. “Diário da Queda” narrates the episode of the fall of a non-Jewish boy (João), age 13, who suffers an "accident", narrated years later by the man who was responsible for it (grandson of a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz). The implications of the “fall” of João drive the narrator-protagonist in a series of reflections about identity, memory and intolerance. Stating with this novel, we will outline a brief analysis of issues relating to its particular syntactic construction and the diary format. In addition, we discuss about the weakening of the narrator and the downsizing of the narrative. To reflect about the structural characteristics of the novel of Michel Laub, the analysis will be guided, mainly, buy these following authors: Moriconi (1992), Süssekind (2000), Bauman (2001) and Lipovestsky and Serroy (2009) and Castro (2009).