The newspaper chronicle: from the tip of the line to the final straw

Abstract

The representation of Brazilian reality assumes several forms mixing narratives with each author's subjectivity. To explore the dialectics between text and event this article sketches a brief panorama of Brazilian chronicle, detaches the relevance of the Machado de Assis' chronicles and registers an initial analysis of Arnaldo Jabor's chronicles in the Folha de S. Paulo and O Estado de S. Paulo. The modern newspaper chronicle of which Jabor is an important name bets in its images with a "social psychoanalysis" function. It's a reelaboration of the heritage of the "culture at the window", left by João do Rio. For readers, the effect it is the perfect communion: anybody can feel a little "author" of the chronicle. After all, the perplexity that the reader doesn't know to express is there, funny, ironic, analytic and conclusive. However, that's not enough for the formation of a national conscience, because the reader can't train an own rationality, resultant of the background brought by the text. Only Machado de Assis' chronicle has offered that formation, with political, social and philosophical notion about the history of the Brazilians social formation. Besides, the literary value of the Machado's columns (Bons dias! and A Semana) resides in the perspicacity of a narrator' s elaboration, supplying an inexistent unit in the current chronicle.