Shopgirl

Uma pessoa pode ser um personagem de livro?

Sim, ela pode.

Há algum tempo eu falei do filme que assisti “Garota da Vitrine” e de como ele me marcou por ser uma cópia tão fiel da minha própria vida.

Como eu disse antes, o filme é baseado no livro “Shopgirl”, do Steve Martin e infelizmente não tem tradução para o português.

Eu estou com as minhas leituras atrasadas eternamente, então comecei a lê-lo há poucos dias.

Já posso dizer que esse caso não foge a regra e o livro está mostrando-se muito mais detalhado do que o filme (ah, jura?). Proporcionalmente vêm as minhas semelhanças com a Mirabelle e as semelhanças dele com o Ray Porter são assustadoras. Perturbadoras.

Gosto de muitas passagens do livro, mas peço permissão para transcrever aqui as que me foram mais significativas até agora. As que mostram como uma pessoa real pode ser/virar um personagem em alguns parágrafos.

“Extrapolating from Mirabelle’s wrist, he understands the terrain of her neck, he can imagine the valley of her breasts, and he knows that he can lose himself in her. He does not know his further intent with her, but he is not trying to get what he wants at any expense. If he thinks he would harm Mirabelle, he would back away. But he does not yet understand when and how people are hurt (....).

(...) These dinner dates, which function mainly to fill a vacumm of loneliness between the hours of 8 P.M. and 11 P.M., cause him more grief than a year of solitary confinement. (...) They are friendly evenings that sometimes end in bed. He incorrectly assumes that whatever is his understanding of the nature of one of these evenings, his date is thinking it, too, and he is deeply shocked and suorised when one or another of these women, whom he has seen over the past several months and with whom he has had several sexual encounters, actually believes they are a couple.

These experiences have caused him to think very hard about what he is doing and where he is going. And the result of all this thinking is that he now understands that he doesn’t know what he is doing or where he is going. His Professional life is fine, but romantically he is an adolescent, and he has begun an education in the subject that is thirty years overdue.

(...) He believes that in these affair [com a Mirabelle], what is given back and forth will be exactly even, and that they will both see the benefits they are receiving. But because he picked Mirabelle out by sight alone, he fails to see that her fragility, which he smelled and sensed and is lured by, runs deep in her heart and is part of her nature, and cannot be separated out for him to fuck”.

Uau. Que medo.