São Paulo writer Reinaldo Moraes participated this Tuesday (20) in the first activity as a guest of the “Hilda Hilst” Program of the Artist in Residence at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IdEA) at Unicamp. He gave the opening class of the free course “Encounters with Reinaldo Moraes: the work and craft of the writer”, open to the Unicamp community and the external public, in the Amphitheater of the Institute of Language Studies (IEL).
With around one hundred students enrolled, the course will cover the different areas of production in which Moraes has worked in his 40-year career. In addition to successful novels – such as “Tanto Faz” (1981, Brasiliense) and “Pornopopeia” (2009, Objetiva) –, the author wrote short stories, children's novels, cinematographic scripts, literary translations, chronicles, articles and soap operas, among other genres. .
Simultaneously with the free course, Moraes will be at Unicamp to teach workshops aimed at IEL students, on Wednesdays, focusing on his most recent book, “Maior que o Mundo” (2018, Alfaguara), the production of which will be detailed. Telling the story of a writer who suffers a creative block after a publishing success, it is the first volume of a trilogy.
The work by Alfaguara, the Companhia das Letras label, arose from an idea for a film script commissioned by director Roberto Marquez. Each week, Moraes will discuss excerpts from the book and general aspects of his literary style, involving students in the process of writing the second volume.
The opening of the course was given by the poet and linguist Carlos Vogt, president of the Scientific and Cultural Council of IdEA, and by the literary critic Alcir Pécora, coordinator of IdEA, who presented to the public the main activities of the Institute and the “Hilda Hilst” Program of the Resident Artist, which began in 2018 with filmmaker Ugo Giorgetti. The director, screenwriter and producer from São Paulo will be back at Unicamp on the 29th for a new three-month cycle in which he will dissect the completion of his new film, “Dora and Gabriel".
The writer and writing
Returning from a ten-day trip to Mozambique, where he did interviews for a new audiovisual project with writers from Portuguese-speaking countries, such as Mia Couto and Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa, Moraes began the course by showing how his involvement with literature and with literary production, writing letters to girlfriends, cousins and friends.
According to him, this epistolary exercise was the first manifestation of an explicit intention to please the reader with his texts. By providing dialogue and practices with professors and students at Unicamp, he proposed to show in principle “the writer before writing” and how his experience resulted in a successful career, despite several setbacks.
“When I received the invitation, I did something I had never done, a kind of retrospective of my life. Talking to professor Alcir Pécora, I thought it would be interesting to approach writing before the writer, all contact with this very ancient activity in humanity, which is writing, and which precedes the first book. But he suggested another approach to me, which was that of the writer before writing, that is, in what way there was a writer in training”, said Moraes, who also recalled what it was like to write his debut work, “Tanto Faz”.
Novelist, screenwriter, translator and chronicler, Moraes won over readers with colloquial language and humor by creating stories filled with sex and drugs in which he stands out for his narrative talent. Reinaldo Moraes' schedule at Unicamp will continue until November. More information on the website IDEA.
Read more:
Writer Reinaldo Moraes is Unicamp's new resident artist
Filmmaker Ugo Giorgetti returns to Unicamp to detail the production of a new film
Giorgetti ends artistic residency at IdEA with contributions to new film
