Organized by lawyer Pierre Moreau, the book brings together unpublished stories by former ministers such as Eros Grau (STF); José Gregori (Justice); and Miguel Reale Junior (Justice); Eduardo Muylaert; Luis Francisco Carvalho Filho; Luis Kignel; José Alexandre Tavares Guerreiro; José Renato Nalini; Denis Borges Barbosa; Luciana Gerbovic; Luis Francisco Carvalho Filho; Luis Kignel; and Marcelo S. Barbosa; as well as Moreau himself.
Literature and law is a combination that has produced great classics and immortalized many authors. The Letters of the Lawlaunched three weeks ago in São Paulo, doesn't have this ambition, although it does bring together a group of established names with successful legal careers who have in common, among other affinities, the pleasure of writing and good stories to compose. Organized by lawyer Pierre Moreau, the book brings together unpublished short stories by former ministers such as Eros Grau (STF); José Gregori (Justice); and Miguel Reale Junior (Justice); Eduardo Muylaert; Luis Francisco Carvalho Filho; Luis Kignel; José Alexandre Tavares Guerreiro; José Renato Nalini; Denis Borges Barbosa; Luciana Gerbovic; Luis Francisco Carvalho Filho; Luis Kignel; and Marcelo S. Barbosa; as well as Moreau himself. Of the group, lawyer Luciana Gerbovic is the only woman making her debut in the literary genre. Autumn, the short story she wrote, set in a courthouse, portrays the anguish and dilemmas faced by a couple of lawyers moments before the signing of their divorce.
The book is a curious mixture that touches on the law, "but with a different language and the freedom of fiction," says Muyalert, former Secretary of Justice and Public Security for the State of São Paulo and former president of the National Council for Criminal and Penitentiary Policy in Brasilia. In the meeting of friends, which was transformed into a book, Muyalert had a double mission: as well as contributing to ONúmero 36, inspired by the Paris of the 1960s, he was responsible for the photos that illustrate the book, another of his long-standing passions.
Accustomed to producing texts that are closed to meaning and interpretation, literature opens up the possibility of new experiences for authors, explains Pierre Moreau in his introduction to the book. Among the advantages of fiction, he highlights the freedom of writing. "In the book, we are not held hostage by secrecy, time or precision. Here, we are simply devotees of words in their dual and volatile aspects, in the beauty of their broad meaning, in the variety of sounds that reveal tales," he says.
The twelve stories take different paths. The stories are fictional, the authors assure us, but it is clear to the reader that most of them are based on real elements, gleaned from each one's own professional world. Judge José Renato Nalini, the Corregidor-General of Justice in São Paulo, discusses, for example, the trajectory of an ambitious magistrate, an "almost normal person", who spares no effort in his quest for power and prestige. Marcelo S. Barbosa, who specializes in corporate law and holds a master's degree from Columbia University School of Law, follows the same path when he reconstructs the atmosphere of intrigue and rivalry present in the fictitious law firm he created.
It's no different with José Gregori, a name definitely linked to the defense of human rights, both inside and outside the country, who tells the story of Guerino, a former political militant who was physically and psychologically tortured and ended up being a victim of the very group he helped to bring to power. The oppressive bias is also evident in the plot developed by Luis Francisco Carvalho Filho, a lawyer whose curriculum includes an emblematic stint as president of the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances in the first half of the last decade.
The other authors don't always take the same shortcuts and a good example of the plurality of themes and styles can be found at OOmbro de A., by Eros Grau, a full professor at the University of São Paulo and retired Supreme Court justice. In the short story, which opens the collection, an "almost celibate magistrate" spends his life trying to find the woman who, many years ago, gave him "no more than a few seconds of nudity", in a sensual gesture marked by the utmost casualness. As he searches, the character created by the author imagines how everything would have been different if he had broken through infinity, in this case no more than "three palms away".