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| >> Books |
| PRINT CULTURE
- May 29, 2003 |
| by CHRISTOPHER
WIEBE |
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New World odour
Calgary writer Paulo da
Costa’s short story
collection The Scent of a Lie
(Ekstasis Editions, 132 pp.,
$18.95), is the most uniformly
fresh, sprightly, meaty work of
Canadian fiction I’ve read
in a long time. It came as a
shock to me that the book had
difficulty getting published. Now
accumulating the attention it
deserves, Da Costa’s book
won the Commonwealth Prize for
Best First Book (Canada and
Caribbean Region)—as did
similarly groundbreaking works
such as Icefields by Thomas
Wharton and Chorus of Mushrooms
by Hiromi Goto—and just this
week it was awarded the City of
Calgary W. O. Mitchell Book
Prize.
The linked collection of stories
centres on the inhabitants of two
small communities on the
Portuguese coast, from a wealthy
landowner to a soldier fighting
in the Angolan Civil War, to
Florindo Ramos, a dreamer whose
love of trees saves his village:
“Florindo believed the
world’s knowledge entered
trees through their leaves and
needles and the irrecoverable
story of the world was buried in
their roots. The trees stored
thoughts in their roots. If
turned into stumps, they became
unable to exhale their memory,
unable to release their
stories.” The title story is
reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia
Marquez’s The Most Beautiful
Drowned Man in the World, but the
collection does not easily fit
into the slippery category of
“magic realism.” Da
Costa traces its
“fantastical” qualities
to Catholicism’s openness to
the miraculous and the pagan
influences, via Celtic invasions,
on the Portuguese literary
imagination.
Born in Angola, Da Costa moved to
Portugal when he was five and was
exposed to a cross-pollinating
range of aesthetics and
languages. He moved to Calgary in
1989 and soon became involved
with the literary journal Filling
Station, becoming its general
editor four years ago. He has
also published four chapbooks of
poetry in English.
As a writer, Da Costa tacks back
and forth between Portuguese and
English, inhabiting a linguistic
space that reminds me of Conrad
or Nabokov. These days, all of
his fiction is written in
English, while much of his poetry
is written is Portuguese. This
“in-between-ness,” Da
Costa explains, has given him
unusual freedom from the
strictures of either tongue.
“The two languages access
different selves,” he says.
“My writing in Portuguese is
more intellectual, while my
English writing is completely
different, more playful, less
bound by the rules. One’s
mother tongue has certain natural
rigidities in it. English,
because I entered it through the
back door, has offered me greater
freedom of movement.”
There is an allegorical dimension
to Da Costa’s stories that
explores the massive changes in
Portuguese society after the fall
of the dictatorship in 1974. His
parents’ village went from
being peasant agrarian to a
heavily industrial area in the
space of 20 years, the forests
eliminated for eucalyptus
pulpwood plantations, the
vineyards cut down to benefit
mechanized wine production in
France and Spain. “My work
tends to weave into larger
themes,” he says of the
mythic, universal resonance of
his stories, “which runs
against the trend in current
writing by emerging Canadian
writers.”
His work has been more visible
overseas, in places like Brazil,
France and Australia, than in
Canada. “This collection was
rejected by many
publishers,” says Da Costa,
“who said it didn’t fit
in their literary line. That is
sad for Canadian readers because
editorial committees are only
interested in certain literary
flavours. We are entering the
industrialization of literature,
a sort of cultural impoverishment
growing out of
globalization.” Da Costa
currently has two manuscripts
searching for a publisher,
including a collection of
“sudden fictions.” One
hopes that his rising acclaim
will make the journey less
arduous.
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