The Art of Flâneur

A lot has been written on the flâneur. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the term came into existence to mean someone who strolls: an idler, a loafer, someone who wastes time. Since then the term has taken on a whole range of connotations and has been the subject of many notable writers, among them Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, and Susan Sontag. When you think of a flâneur today you probably still think of a French aristocrat, equal parts lazy and adventurous, strolling through the streets of Paris, taking in the city around him.

And yet the flâneur is all around us, even in the fiction of Brazilian author João Gilberto Noll. Both Two Lines Press titles Quiet Creature on the Corner and Atlantic Hotel feature characters who stroll through life in a state of semi-numbness, wandering in and out of scenes that feel pulled out of the mind of David Lynch.

These books will completely upend your idea of what a flâneur can be. Take, for example, the protagonist of Quiet Creature on the Corner, whose reckless propulsion leads him to commit a heinous crime and then take off to a remote country manor where he spends his days being taken care of by strangers and writing poetry. Or the narrator of Atlantic Hotel, whose seemingly eternal wanderings take him across Brazil, his identity shifting along with his surroundings: is he a dying man, an alcoholic in search of detox, a soap opera star, or a priest? Cleaver Magazine described Atlantic Hotel in these terms: “Touches of Don Quixote and Odysseus, hints of The Stranger and a taste of the pantomime and absurdity of Fellini’s early 1960s films.”

As you can see these are no ordinary flâneurs. Far from the familiar streets of Paris, we find them navigating the unruly world of Brazil during its transition from dictatorship to democracy, a world in which morality seems to have lost all meaning and hopelessness is always heavy in the air.

Noll is recognized as a literary giant in Brazil and his death earlier this year marked a huge loss for Brazilian literature, not to mention literature worldwide. Thanks to the incredibly nimble translations by Adam Morris, Noll is available to an English-speaking audience for the first time. If you’re feeling ready to embark on the strange and addicting journey that is reading Noll, now is a great time to pull the trigger (so to speak). Through the end of the month you can purchase both Quiet Creature on the Corner and Atlantic Hotel in the collection The Art of Flâneur, on sale for only $10. We hope you enjoy your stroll.