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The Art of Brasília pp 89–112Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Creative Communion in Nicolas Behr’s Brasília

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Part of the book series: New Directions in Latino American Cultures ((NDLAC))

Abstract

This chapter contends that Behr’s genre-bending 2014 book BrasíliA-Z: cidade-palavra represents Brasília as having always been a vibrant city of the arts, refuting the dominant image of the capital as a cultural wasteland. BrasíliA-Z functions as a palimpsest that overlays decades of examples of creative communion—affective exchanges in which Brasília residents convene around art. As the subtitle “city-word” conveys, the book engages the idea of reading the city as text. But it also suggests how, in creative writing, a city represents more than an objective reality. In BrasíliA-Z, Behr’s capital—the place he lives in, remembers, and invents—offers art, love, laughter, and contentment. Most profoundly, however, Behr’s Brasília is where creative communion elicits emotional fulfillment, as the metaphor of the palimpsest seeks to express.

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  1. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Sophia Beal

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  1. Sophia Beal
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Beal, S. (2020). Creative Communion in Nicolas Behr’s Brasília. In: The Art of Brasília. New Directions in Latino American Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37137-1_4

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