Terror, Death & Giant Dentures in Latin America
by Steven Gurr
Zero by Ignácio de Loyola Brandão; Avon Books, 317 pp.
Zero is by no means a typical novel. It follows the adventures of José Gonçalves, a man of no political or social significance, as he tries to survive in—and make sense of—a world gone completely mad. José holds a number of menial jobs during the course of the novel, among them killing mice in the local movie theater, writing bottle caps, running a successful freak show, robbing banks, assassinating minor political figures, and searching for the Boy with Music in His Belly. The plot is energetic, though serpentine. As the novel progresses, it is not always clear just what is real and what is not; howver, these hallucinatory moments are neither frequent nor distracting enough to destroy the flow of the novel.
Zero is a knife-edged satire of the politics of Latin America. The setting is a nameless Latin American country gripped by rampant commercialism, incomprehensible bureaucracy and a brutally repressive government. Death squads and terrorists roam the streets. The nation is so filled with violence that any report of murders, fires, explosions or robberies is received with a disinterested shrug by the citizens. During the coarse the story, the government becomes more and more brutal as it tries to keep its citizens in line, and the bureaucracy becomes so labyrinthine that ultimately it's just silly.
And as if all this weren’t enough, José’s country is also home to Giant Dentures that gnaw on buildings; Superskeleton, the mindless superhero cop; the Revolving Restaurant, where diners get one revolution in which to eat their meals before the food is taken away; the Human Wheel; and much more. The supporting characters have names like The Man, Hero, Atila, El Matador and Horse. Government officials bear titles like the Chief of the Repressive Political Council on Terror and Subversion for the Cohesive Maintenance of Order in the Nation (RPCTSCMON).
Zero is at once hilarious and disturbing.
José needs to rebel against the ridiculousness and repressiveness of the ruling regime but he is unwilling to allow himself to be wooed into the ranks of the terrorists, called communs (official proclamation prohibits spelling “commun” with a capital “c”). José senses that there is really very little difference between the government and the terrorists and as with the unending civil wars in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, the struggle for power in José’s country has lost any meaning it may have originally possessed. Therefore, allying himself with the communs only when convenient, he conducts his own war against the government…a war the regime largely ignores.
Brandão
does not confine his political satire to Latin America. Though the influence of outside forces is peripheral, it is present in
the every day actions of the government and that presence suggests that these
external governments are not so dissimilar to the regime (or the terrorists). The absurdity of José’s nation mirrors the absurdity of the
interfering nations. There is no place safe for the Josés of the world.
Zero is a fascinating book: energetic and entertaining, philosophical and political.It is a condemnation of the faceless brutality that is so pervasive in society. As we follow José on his journey through his crazy world we discover that his needs are needs we all share: he is an average man who needs to feel that there is some meaning to the madness around him.
* Originally published in a somewhat different form in 1989 in The Animal: Utah’s Stage and Screen Review.