A Brazilian Attempts Touristing into the Heart of the Amazon
There seems to be a pattern that these popular Latin American writers are also politicians, as Andrade “served as the founding director of Sao Paulo’s Department of Culture” and organized Semana de Arte Moderna (Week of Modern Art) in 1922, which popularized modernism in Brazil.
As I started reading the brief “Introduction”, I was still unsure if this an autobiography about a trip the author took, or if this is a fictional novel. The editor does clarify the former is the case, as he quotes from Andrade’s letter to a friend that reports his preparations for this expedition, and the surprise obstacles he began immediately encountering. The first of these is that he had been promised that many socialites would attend, but only one lady and her two friends also came as a tourist. Then, there is an explanation how Andrade’s poetry differed because he used the authentic language spoken in the streets. “As European artists drew inspiration from the ‘primitive aesthetics of the tropics, their Brazilian colleagues were driven to do the same—the key difference being that their inspiration came from a rediscovery of their own land.” The reality of the enormous challenges Andrade finds during this “rediscovery” is contrary to what Europeans had been writing in their books about the Heart of Darkness or other wild places because “Conrad’s” version was ghostwritten by Sir Francis Burnand, who studied at Cambridge before becoming a periodical editor, without hardly any experience traveling outside of Britain. The Heart of Darkness avoids mentioning any specifics about the wildlife on the Nile, and instead expresses the narrator’s horror of such foreign places. Andrade has instead been convinced by such tales that such exploration is a romantic endeavor, and he ends up coming out with a matching horror of wild travel to Burnand’s. It might not be helpful to cultures in Latin America to buy into the myths that were told about them by Europeans: or that their culture is Mayan folklore, and jungle-life. Mainstream novelists define what the culture of a place is for the world, and perhaps the economy of Brazil would profit if its novelists presented it as a modern place with industrialized tastes, as opposed to presenting its peripheries or the impoverished rural communities as its main culture. There are plenty of poor rural people in every country: in America they are ostracized under categories such as “poor white trash” or “hillbillies”. The British Workshop made a lot of money by selling adventure narratives into wild, foreign lands. It would be logical for people who live in these places to similarly profit from such adventure-fiction, but, as Andrade proved, if you actually attempt to experience adventure in the wild by living in it, you are not likely to write the same type of light surface plot-driven account.
As the editor explains, Andrade had previously written Macunaima using a similar outsider strategy as the Brits used. He briskly churned it out while staying at a friend’s farm, and without venturing into the “rainforest”, where he takes his “shapeshifting Indigenous (anti)hero”. This lack of direct research let to it being “de-geographized” or a “hodgepodge of flora, fauna, slang, historical figures, and landmarks from all across Brazil, almost nothing placed where it ‘ought’ to be.” He initially wanted to take this trip to the Amazon to revise these mistakes in the forthcoming-for-publication Macunaima. The described trip out of Sao Paulo took place between May 7, 1927, and August 15. If there are any details in Heart of Darkness, Burnand would have plagiarized these out of other ghostwriters’ actual travelogues. Similarly, as the editor observes, some of the details in Andrade’s account “is shot through with allusions to previous chronicles of tropical Brazil, from Jose de Alencar to Pero Vaz de Caminha to Euclides da Cunha, and dotted with a similarly ‘de-geographized’ array of references to everything from Dante to Bocage.” He appears to have been distracted from recording precisely what he was seeing by love entanglements or “flirtations with women”, which he mentions “throughout the book”.
The “Note on the Translation”, by Flora Thomson-Deveaux, explains that “Andrade’s prose is unfailingly radical”, as he “favors a deliberate colloquiality”. There are so many oddities in the usage that the translator was frequently frustrated: “As I translated, I’d often find a phrase peculiar, throw it into a search engine, and discover that it seemed to be the only registered occurrence in written Portuguese.” This obviously meant that the translator had to invent a definition for it himself based on context, and then figure out what would be an equivalent word or phrase in English. I have seen some awful translations of Gogol into English, where the translator just ignored the use of folk-slang, and misspellings, and other oddities, and instead translated it as if it was a children’s book by using the simplest dictionary-translation, if the spelling errors were removed. This translator’s note regarding her sensitivity to this problem gives hope that he avoided this pitfall.
Apprentice was first-published in Brazilian in 1928, and a new edition was released in 1943, as indicated by a “Preface” from the author from this year. The first entry on “May 7, 1927” opens with Andrade expressing a stereotypical “fear of Indians”, to guard against who he has brought “an enormous bamboo cane”, which he soon learns was “silly”. He almost seems to be writing anti-Brazilian propaganda in the second entry on May 8th as well: “I find Rio an awfully ugly city, but people do say it’s beautiful…” Though this is a frank perspective that I appreciate. I have found all among the many cities I have visited to have been ugly… no matter the continent. It is as if builders make more money by maximizing the ugliness.
The first entry as they set of becomes dense with enticing details: “The water moans, oily and leaden, lazily throwing back the frisky lights from the beaches.” While the intro explained that he was only accompanied by the women, they are soon joined by “Swiss naturalist, Professor Hagmann”, and others. Hagmann is “teaching” them “about Amazonia” by May 14, by “saying the most obvious things.” They enter the Amazon on May 19, after going through a developed agricultural region. Before getting of this luxurious boat he has been on, he comments: “We take pride in being the only great (great?) civilized country in the tropics…”
Since the first days were very pleasantly touristy, I turned to page 61, which covers the June 8 meeting with “The Tribe of the Pacaas Novos”. In the middle of this description there is an explanation that this tribe habits are unique. “When they feel it is their business to do their business, they do it wherever they please and in front of whoever may be there, even on the feet or legs of others, without the slightest hesitation, as naturally as our country folk hawk and spit.”
On June 23, he reports “the guide” had “teeth” that “were black from chewing coca.” But the villagers begin to wear the same clothing as them, and they sleep in a large house. Then, on July 16, they visit “The Do-Mi-So Indians”. The opening sentence against seems to be an anti-Brazilian propaganda: “they believed only in evil gods. They had no good deity to speak of. Their mythology was a downright demonology, perverse as the devil.” He assesses that they seem to have a pessimistic language that lacks a phrase for “I am full”. It is puzzling how he could have done a serious linguistic study, and a dictionary during this brief interaction. Did he have a translator with him? Was one of the locals bilingual? Did he sit down for the entire stay and attempt to create a dictionary of this isolated language? He does not explain how he gathered this data. He only cites a couple of terms for friend/enemy, and having grasped this distinction he concludes that they are referring to him as a “peculiar enemy of an inferior race, hence worthy of scorn.”
If I had the leisure to stop and read a book cover-to-cover for fun, I would read this travelogue. Thus, I recommend it to those who are seeking a strange adventure travel narrative. Just don’t believe that it is wholly or largely true. As the introduction explained, much of the contents that are detailed are borrowed from other travelogues. Most travelers who attempt to venture into such jungles are likely to experience shocking and horrifying events that cannot be anticipated. Some might catch malaria, or other tropical diseases. Some might be attacked by a deadly spider or snake. Some might, apparently, be violated by natives who use the restroom on their foot. Or as the narrator comments on July 17: “The first mate explains to us that he’s very rich, his parents are dead of malaria or something, and he lives on his own in the rubber plantation.” Okay. Who knows what can happen. There must be some truth among the lies here, and it is mostly hilariously told, even if to the detriment of the Brazilian travel industry. This is a deserved classic, so libraries of all types should purchase this book to make it accessible to casual and researching readers alike.
--Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Summer 2024 issue

"The Apprentice Tourist" is an entertaining animated novel that reveals more about the narrator’s own notions of the cultures and environments in which he indulges as opposed to the adventurous voyage itself. Playing on common stereotypes, fantastical images, and sociological references, the author examines the idyllic and substandard elements of Brazil, as well as his those of his own beliefs. A fairly intriguing novel to those that are interested in fiction that reads like an intimate diary or a piece of literary nonfiction; however, the unedited nature of this book may often find readers needing to step back ad catch a quick breathe of streamlined thinking and comprehensive understanding.