Invitation – Book Signing: “Hi Dad, Imaginary dialogues between a son and a father who has died.”

Dear Friends,

I am publishing a book here in São Paulo, Brazil, this coming week. I know many of you cannot be here but I wanted to share it with you. See the description of the book below. Note that the book will be publish only in Portuguese.

Title: Hi Dad, Imaginary dialogues between a son and a father who has died.

When: August 10  (he would be 86 years old on that day)

Where: Bookstore Chapter 4 (Livraria Capítulo 4 – Rua Tabapuã, 830, São Paulo)

Schedule – from 7:00 as 10:00 pm – Music and performance to happen at 8:30 pm

Take care, Cláudio

From the Prelude:

Prepare your heart for the things of Mr. Waldemar that Cláudio tells us, and the many conversations they will have. Prepare your heart for this liturgy of songs and tears. Prepare your heart for the banquet prepared by a Brazilian poet condemned to be a theologian, liturgist and pastor of words, who talks about the most complex things – things of life and death – with simple words, without showing off or arrogance… Prepare your heart to read a text that reads you… This and much more, in the conversation of a son who misses his father terribly.

Ruy Costa, Brazilian theologian – From the Prelude

About the book:

This is an uncommon book. It is a narration of many imaginary conversations of a son with his father who died and became enchanted. For a whole year, Cláudio Carvalhaes went to coffee shops in New York and wrote these conversations as if he and his father were talking, drinking coffee together and spending time together. These stories are as much about his dad as they are about himself and the interruption of a relationship of love terminated by his father’s sudden death. Using various language forms, theology, liturgy and critical theory, the book brings a wealth of diverse and unexpected issues from these (dis)continued talks. Fractured by the presence of an absence and hoping for a time of gentleness, this book offers, in the words of a famous Brazilian poet Chico Buarque, is “a time that can redo what was undone”

And in the words of the author in the introduction of the book,

As I describe these stories and the imaginary conversations I had with my father, I present the life of my father, a fascinating Brazilian citizen, engage with the remains of death and try to find ways to wrestle with those remains during the first year after his death.

The Bulgarian-French writer  Julia Kristeva once made a distinction between stories/fictions of the ego and stories/fictions of the subject.

For her, stories/fictions of the ego has to do with the reality-shows so popular nowadays and intend only to feed the ego of the individual and expose him/her to ridicule, leaving the expectator, outside of the story, with an uncompromised distance. The current popularity of reality-shows exposes our penchant for stories/fictions of the ego.

On the other hand, stories/fictions of the subject, the stories of the individual intend to offer some sense of emotional/historical/philosophical support that has the benefit of connecting the reader with the life of the subject and his/her stories. Such a connection offers the possibility of mutual engagement and historical transformation for both the reader and writer.

I hope the stories in this book will fit the stories/fictions of the subject pattern and offer support, engagement and transformation for those who live on after the pain and strange blessing of the death of beloved ones.