The influence of Thomas Pynchon and bovarism on the autofictionality of Noite dentro da noite, by Joca Reiners Terron

Abstract

The contemporary Brazilian novel Noite dentro da noite: uma autobiografia, by Joca Reiners Terron, is analyzed in light of its departure from the current autofictional trend of literary realism in the country. Its escape, through a plot filled with implausible fantasies, is characterized as bovaristic, since the protagonist is a voracious reader of war stories and travel diaries. However, we come to understand that this bovarism is, above all, authorial – stemming from a literary influence that shapes both the content and the form of the novel: the American author Thomas Pynchon and his 1970s classic, Gravity's Rainbow.