the vampire from my hometown

I've been meaning to write about this topic for some time since it combines elements I adore namely vampires, my beautiful hometown and moral depravity.

This vampire was the author Dalton Trevisan which gained him this nickname because of his private and reclusive behavior, and also because of a collection of short stories named Vampiro de Curitiba (The Vampire of Curitiba) written by him. It's difficult to write about him without mentioning this book since his identity and personality intertwines with it, plus the fact that we don't have much information about his personal life and it will remain this way since he passed away recently.

His literary work, which are mostly short stories, is based in the city of Curitiba from the brazilian state of Paraná, where the behavior of the society around him is described in a cynical and brutal manner, dealing with the vices and perversions caused by human relationships. It represents a disenchanted vision of humanity, which is often cruel and sadistic, the existential absurdity is omnipresent featuring unredeemable characters obsessed with hedonism which presents itself in social vampirism.

I always wondered how despite Dalton being an important regional author my teachers never made us read or even mentioned his works, only after actually reading it I understood why. His main work, O vampiro de Curitiba is not about a vampire as a supernatural creature, he doesn't have fangs or wear a cape, the main character, Nelsinho, is nothing but a repulsive man, consumed by addictions and repressed desires, his lust is not for blood, but for the pleasures of the flesh, he drains humanity and dignity in the same way one would do their daily chores, serving as nothing more than a slave to libertinage. 

We accompany, in 15 short stories, his journey, the stories are independent from each other but have similar themes: the constant exposure of human decay. The setting speaks for itself, Curitiba feels like a urban purgatory where the grotesque is everywhere you look. A cold and silent city that is passive to everything that happens around her, characters trapped in moral deviations, all that remains is to mourn this cycle of disillusionment and violence. The whole book is a merciless revelation of what hides behind a mask of normalcy, there is no redemption or moralism, just a harsh reality.

Perhaps the most apparent feature, and also a favorite of mine, about Dalton's writing is his laconic style, a product of southern brazilian culture, his sentences are very straight-forward, short and sometimes ending abruptly, these gaps are there to force the reader to fill the blanks and adds to their psychological immersion. Some things are best left unsaid, his fragmented writing brings the reader closer, making them feel part of the inner emptiness and cold ambience of the story, a way of bringing decay in a written form.

Social critique and interpretation is up to the reader, it's not shown, but appears as consequence. Misogyny, machismo, alienation and bourgeois hypocrisy are presented in the mundane context of everyday life, where the darkest face of human relations and urban life reflects upon us with no mercy. 

The main character doesn't act the way he does because of an external force or for supernatural reasons, he embodies evil in its essence in the rawest possible way, it deconstructs the vampire genre forcing us to reflect that evil is not hiding in a castle, but all around us through invisible structures, the most apparent one in this book being the patriarchy, that manifests violently in all spheres of society.

Unrelated trivia: When I was 7 years old, my state launched an oral hygiene campaign in schools that was basically a theater play that featured vampires. The main story followed a detective/dentist that was sent to investigate a family of vampires in their castle, he was called by the vampire wife because she felt her husband Boleslaw (I only remember his name because it was the same name as my greatgrandfather lol) was acting weird and distant towards her. After some work he realizes the reason Boleslaw was acting like that was because he had toothache and couldn't bite anyone, instead he secretly robbed blood banks to satisfy his blood needs. The play ends with the family conciliating and a message about taking good care of their oral higyene. This thing is probably lost media by now but remains a fun memory to me.

The man himself.

I recently went to an exposition of his works so I will leave a few pics I took.

I tried to keep it as spoiler-free and short as possible. Thank you for reading.