Uma leitura de Vagao ‘J’

Vergilio Ferreira began his literary journey in 1943, with O caminho fica longe [It’s a long road]. The year after he published another novel, Onde tudo foi morrendo [Where everything died], in the Novos Prosadores [New Prose Writers] collection (linked to with Portuguese neo-realism), and in 1946, also in this collection, the novel Vagao ‘J’ [Wagon ‘J’] was published. In 1974 the writer republished the last title; in the preface he informs the readers that, after many years of hesitation, this was the novel he had chosen to represent his so-called neo-realist phase, and he excluded the first two volumes of the work. Without intending to attribute Vagao ‘J’ an aesthetic and anthropological importance that the author himself does not acknowledge, there is however a technical-narrative mastery in this novel, put at the service of the neo-realism mindset, which cannot fail to be pointed out, as I shall seek to show in the reading that I present.