ated. This realism of approach, so characteristic of Lobato, made of his figure Jéca Tatu a symbol that has in many minds replaced the idealized image of Pery, from Alencar's "Guarany." Jéca thus stands for the most recent critical reaction against national romanticism.
"I recognize now," continues Lobato in the letter, "that I was cruel, but it was the only way of stirring opinion in that huge whale of most rudimentary nervous system which is my poor Brazil. I am not properly a literary man. I take no pleasure in writing, nor do I attach the slightest importance to what is called literary glory and similar follies. I am a particle of extremely sensitive conscience that adopted the literary form,—fiction, the conte, satire,—as the only means of being heard and heeded. I achieved my aim and today I devote myself to the publishing business, where I find a solid means of sustaining the great idea that, in order to cure an ailing person he must first be convinced that he is, in fact, a sick man."
Here, as elsewhere, Lobato's theory is harsher than his practise. He is, of course, a literary man, and has achieved a distinctive style; but he knows, as his letter hints, that his social strength may prove his literary weakness. The truth would seem to be that Monteiro Lobato is not so much a teller of stories as he is a critic of men. The three tales by which he is represented in this booklet come from his "Urupês"; they exhibit him at his favorite pursuit of caricaturing his fellow men, of deriding their political foibles, their personal weakness, their social shortcomings. "Modern
