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| Subject: 20,000 kilometres through Brazil - A private journal by Errol Lincoln Uys
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Posted on: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 18:26:17 +0000 (UTC)
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On the 20th anniversary of my novel, Brazil, on my website www.erroluys.com
I share for the first time my mighty journey of twenty thousand
kilometers across the length and breadth of Brazil in 1981.
I traveled through the heart of a nation in which the flame of freedom
was newly lit after years of military dictatorship, the journal I kept
colored by the voices and emotions of the era.
http://www.erroluys.com/BrazilTheMakingofaNovelJournal.htm
I searched for the story of Brazil for five years, a literary
bandeirante wandering in quest of Brazil's past. At times I felt the
thorn-studded caatingas closing in and couldn't see the wood for the
trees! Like those bold adventurers with their magnificent obsessions,
I'd no choice but to press forward. What fired my enthusiasm wasn't
golden El Dorado but a real treasure - the untold story of the
Brazilians and their epic history.
In BRAZIL: The Making of a Novel, I explore the exhaustive processes
that go into the making of a monumental novel with a first draft of
750,000 words written in the old-fashioned way, by hand. I reveal the
early genesis of my ideas for plot lines and characters, the detailed
planning of my outline, the initial burst of reading and inquiry that
brought a broad grasp of my subject. I show the detailed research and
background work that went into shaping my fictional characters, as I
went along. While not bound by the constraints of the historian, I
felt myself obligated to get the facts right.
http://www.erroluys.com/BrazilTheMakingofaNovel_000.htm
The writing spanned four years with five drafts in the shaping and
editing of the manuscript. Examples of this creative process are
reproduced from my handwritten originals and various drafts to proof
pages.
Of all the accolades a writer could hope for at the end of an epic
work like Brazil none brought more joy than a simple question asked by
the famed Brazilian historian and sociologist Gilberto Freyre: "I
should like to know if Uys had an unpublished jornal intime of a
Brazilian family?"
There was no private journal, just the will to understand the
Brazilian "thing" and a passion for writing and storytelling, which
lies at the heart of every good novel.
Over the years, readers and reviewers have sung the praises of Brazil,
most notably Professor Wilson Martins.
http://www.erroluys.com/ABraziliansAppreciationofBRAZIL.htm
Les Presses de la Cite are bringing out a new French edition in Fall
2007.
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