Abstract
One of the defining traits of Lourenço Mutarelli’s text O cheiro do ralo, is its narrative urgency. This urgency is responsible for the representation of accelerated and deflagrating life forms of state of existential torpor that numbs the subject and prevents him from transcending an established daily order. Recognizing the strong presence of this structural element in this narrative, we seek to defend the hypothesis that it presents itself as an efficient formal resource to reach hurried readers. Not to distract or amuse them, but to sensitize them to the representation of accelerated lifestyles, automated and surrounded by a terrifying atmosphere of malaise (as is the protagonist of O cheiro do ralo), about the human anguishes triggered by life forms typical of a society where the media and a voracious capitalism prevail, which, abbreviating the relationship of human beings with time and with the environment to ensure profit through production and consumption in large scale, unleashes, among other things, intense states of mental torpor, cancels ethics, solidarity and affection among men, as well as stimulating the projection of an egocentrism that gets close to perversion.
Keywords:
Lourenço Mutarelli; Brazilian contemporary literature; fiction; urgency