It is undoubtedly the best known and recognized book by the public of the writer João de Melo. This is a family saga that crosses several countries and that evokes the inner islands .
It is autobiographical in some way?
João de Melo : Somehow, not entirely, maybe not even half . Why? Maybe we have to revise the concept of fiction. Some people say that fiction is a pure lie that masquerades as being true, we give you the guarantee of writing, we published, we do book , etc. There are still others who say it is not so. Let's say there is a personal starting point of the author, of what is, what he lived and the sites and the people who knew that help to understand better the reality that he wants to talk about, although he can carry from place to place as a testimony of reporting . But in the case of " happy people with tears " the idea was essentially the following to suit the narrative to the Portuguese time that height , in the Azores, which was characterized by extreme poverty and families with many many children, as a kind of family clan where the father figure was a kind voice of authority. A huge need of the island getaway and it is from this that the book clearly takes off from the Azorean childhood called to populate other destinations either Azorean , Madeiran, or continental , because it opens the paths of emigration. And from the moment we saw the book identifying these routes, we 're already not properly speaking of a family, but a country that goes to Africa, which has the experience of war, going to Canada and the mainland. After the narrative evolved in spiral for the Portuguese time and makes a sort of sunken Portuguese daily life of its own over these 40 years.
But those who have read the book say it addresses the essence of being islander , how was a suffer life in the islands and not so much a portrait of the country .
JM : Of course it 's there, but I accept all types of readings sportingly and a cheerful face of any book of mine, but note that insularity does not exist only on the islands , on a village in a region such as the Serra da Estrela, or Tras-os -Montes will find islands , islander people that has no sea around, but has mountains, large rocks that spoke Torga and the same instinct of leaving the "curse land" to go out in search of economic liberation and that is part of the contemporaneity Portuguese chronicles. Deep down I wanted this book to be deeply and authentically Azorean, not to stay there, but also to propose the island as an analogy to other places, other sites in other countries. And there was much beautiful things said about this book , I remember lots of them, this is a book that has 25 years of existence, but one of these beautiful ideas that are said about " happy people with tears " was that it was a book about inland islands, when it was translated into Spanish and was told that could be a Spanish book and I like that. These things, of course, fall nicely in the heart of the author , which is a sign that the write has a cause, or to identify the human condition attached to the place and time, which is as you know, same here, in China, or Japan and we have all the same anxieties .
Addressing the 25 years of "happy oeople with tears " think looking back could have done another book or not ? At least different?
JM : "Happy people with tears " was a book that slipped off my hands, because it was to be like the first part, three brothers fighting for their life, and their adventure in the second part would be narrated by them. Only that there is a time when the book has 800 pages and I said this cannot be. Or is it a trilogy, or is a pile that no one will read, so I returned back to rewrite it in a spiral and customize the figure of Nuno and his marriage to organize the story. But note that I could have made a trilogy because it would , but things are as they are , it happens by chance that I found myself with that just happened and that's how the audience liked it. I have no guarantee that if it had been a trilogy would have been a success, because if it were to first, second and third volume, or something, there is always an abrupt end to the prospect that the book is not complete and could not have had the fortune of criticism that had so far. Call it a very remarkable case.
Speaking the language of this book, there is a very direct very cruel tone that is unusual in Portuguese literature that fond of big words, metaphors and analogies.
JM : The book is very oral because it lives of someone who hears the stories , is a gentleman, often wonders who it is, but we know it 's there and had to have a more or less oral style. No one talks the way it writes, orality is the thread of the narrative , but then there are other books and then have the author emerges as a prose writer, more or less poetic. Then there is the characteristic way of speaking migrants when they are already contaminated with a foreign language and adopt terms and create words that did not exist before, for example , in the Azores of my childhood there were no frizers and it is evident to all that left Achadinha, County of Northeast and go to Canada and when a refrigerator appears on the island, they call it frizer and call television not televisão, I wanted it also to appear in the book the English expression "do you know ?" as part of everyday language and I heard many times on trips I made with migrants from North America . In the book this discourse are trademarks of orality and that somehow I can also drag the reader .
Which of the characters cost you more ?
JM : The part that cost me to write calls the another version of Martha, who is the wife of Nuno describing their marriage and divorce, it cost me why? Because it is difficult for a man to describe the feminine language, because it is not just this, is the temper, is all. That's tough and I had many doubts about the long monologue of Martha when passes all chronicle of her failed marriage with Nuno Miguel . Later when they made multiple approaches of the book has been said that was the best part and others that was the worst part of the book. I think it is the medium that there is the virtue, because if we ask a female writer to make a speech in the male character, she'll have the same problem , although the literature is essentially male .
Incidentally , there is an opinion of Inês Pedrosa who claims that large female characters contrary to what it says were written by men and vice versa .
JM : But , then I think she refers more to the psychologism and I think both in Anna Karenina, Madame Bouvarie as the writer can get there, because there is a part in a woman and I also did it with Marta and other other books, man looks at the woman and verifies that humanism is already done, which is held soon, we allow ourselves to fascinate and invented a language for it, sometimes it hits, sometimes not. Man are least humanist, because it is unfortunately the major cause of the great tragedies , although the world is a wonderful thing , however, is not complete because it has a lot of shame and misery and I think it is the power of man that prevent the world from being something else, because if it depended on women would be a very different place .
You have a favorite character or are all ?
JM : I do not. I grab more to small parts that were done better, more elaborate paragraphs that were good, in a language that I try to use inside the book and the description of some environments. I think the characters as I went behind them and then they took me back, I was walking and trying to preserve the voice of each so that there were mixtures. For example, Amelia who also speaks is another character who has a female speech with which I had to be very careful, could not be equal to her brothers. As to them, the speech is a deeper than the other and also by reason of a having studied and the other's not. In the background is a game of stones, a puzzle that we ride in the back, corrects and amends. A book is a work of self - requirement when it is just done is a relief, is an almost heroic act .
The title does not somehow an irony ? It is a book about love and the lack of it, a quest to obtained the paternal figure approval and throughout your life . They are not happy because of this relentless pursuit ...
JM : I wanted the title to be contradictory. I think it's good because people loved and used a lot already. I experimented with the people, I said to them : You know how it is going to call the book of this guy, " happy people with tears " and they told me it was cute and barely knew it was my book. Basically the moral of the story is that it is people who get their economic freedom through emigration, or learn, study and progress in Lisbon, as is the case of Nuno , but we hit a tranquility that, despite the many tears that had lifelong and are not entirely overcome, there is a kind of permanent mourning mixed with happiness , as a disease that has not yet had full cure.
In all the journeys made thru these countries where Portuguese emigration installed, they came to you and tell you they saw themselves in this book ?
JM : Yes and happened poignant, extraordinary things happen, people with book in hand and with tears in their eyes that tell me that was written for them. We embrace soon a very large dimension of humanity. I remember, it seemed almost a miracle , so far away in California and suddenly they know that I am there and it is a queue of people with the book under their arm for me to sign and each one needs to talk about it and there is a space of identification that the author discovers . What is hard is to code it before the object exists, isn't? To know that this is the right direction and hit the target, the writer must take risks and when he has an expectation for a book its sometimes happens that is not fulfilled. I happened to think this book is good , seems to be the best and want to be successful and it is not. Others I think is another and the opposite happens .
That happened with this ?
JM : Yes, because it was a great book that fatigued me greatly. Wrote it frantically, but I was very, very restless and is actually all my books is the one who found the favor of the public, this sea of people who gathered were enought to populate a city .
