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 You realize you are sitting in a dominantly Brazilian audience when "The Satanic Verses" author Salman Rushdie walks into the room mostly unnoticed only to see it burst into applause the moment Brazilian-born songwriting legend and novelist Chico Buarque quietly followed after him at the opening of the PEN Festival at the New York Public Library in Midtown Manhattan.
Dressed in a gray outfit and looking tan and incredibly fit for his age (he's pushing 60), Buarque was in town last Saturday to promote the English-language release of his latest novel, "Budapest" (Grove/Atlantic Press).
The event was introduced by Salman Rushdie, the President of PEN International, who joked that he felt uneasy being called "The President", especially when "the other one isn't here".
Buarque spoke in English with Brooklyn novelist Paul Auster, and they discussed "Budapest", how it came together and how he separates his musical persona from the novelist.
The Brazilian author seemed uneasy while speaking English at first, but he later relaxed, probably noticing that over 70 percent of the audience was formed of speakers of English as a Second Language, and the conversation flowed easily.
He explained that in "Budapest", the main character, an unknown writer, goes to Hungary in order to learn Hungarian, which is described as the "only language the Devil respects". The story, however, goes back and forth between that country and Brazil.
The idea for the novel's setting, Buarque said, was that he was intrigued by the Hungarian language, which has no linguistic connection with its neighboring countries but has some similarity to Finnish - something no one seems to be able to explain.
The conversation inevitably drifted into music. "It always happens", he said, "even though I'm probably best known here for being Bebel Gilberto's uncle", and he explained a lot about his songwriting process.
For instance, he explained that he always has the music ready before writing the lyrics ("I couldn't write the lyrics first", he admitted), something that has also happened with his partnerships with the likes of Francis Hime and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
He also explained that during the repressive years of the military dictatorship in Brazil, he was forced to use a lot of metaphors in his lyrics in order to confuse the government.
Music and theater were heavily censored then - playwrights and song writers had to submit their work to official censors - and often songs were banned from radio and TV on the grounds of being "subversive".
"Sometimes I listen to those songs, and I cannot make out what I meant at the time", he admitted, which drew laughs from the crowd.
He later took questions from the audience, who mostly asked Buarque about his music. He seemed frustrated for not having more people curious about his book present.
When questioned about the many songs he wrote "using a woman's voice", he simply replied that often female singers asked him to write songs for them to record.
"At the time, there weren't many female songwriters in Brazil", he said, and it was easier for him to write using a female's point of view instead of having the singer herself invert the gender when recording it.
A NYU professor asked him about his first novel, "Turbulence" (Estorvo), and commented on the Ruy Guerra adaptation for the screen. Buarque replied that he felt that though the director was mostly faithful to his plot, he also felt that Guerra used "his own view" when making the movie.
He said that despite the differences from the original, he had been generally satisfied with the result.
He also explained how he took the leap from songwriter to novelist
"I turned fifty, and I wanted to do something different", he said. "It is something common with people of my age:. we grow older and we want to find something else to do."
Auster asked him about Buarque's next project, and he said that he is now on a music phase.
"It has happened this way lately", he said matter-of-factly. "I go on a writing moment, and then it's time for music after that."
He said that he has a few songs in the works, which he hopes to be finished with by the end of this year, when he will record them and go on tour.
Buarque also read from the English-language translation of his novel, which he said he felt "very satisfied with", admitting that the act of translation itself is something incredibly hard to do, something he was unable to do when friends abroad asked him to explain the meaning of his songs.
At the end of the evening, Auster and Buarque received a standing ovation, which he responded to with an open smile before retreating to the backstage area of the auditorium.
Ernest Barteldes is an ESL and Portuguese teacher. In addition to that, he is a freelance writer whose work has been published by The Greenwich Village Gazette, The Staten Island Advance, The Staten Island Register, The SI Muse, Brazzil magazine, The Villager, GLSSite, Entertainment Today and other publications. He lives in Staten Island, NY. He can be reached at ebarteldes@yahoo.com.
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