NOVEL

São Paulo Blues by Jim Chaffee

São Paulo Blues unravels like a detective story. It offers sex, violence, and an informed look at one of the last free markets in the world: Brazilian free-lance prostitution. Ranging over bars, clubs and brothels from São Paulo to the ancient colonial city of Parati, a paradise on the pristine coast of Rio de Janeiro, the story plays out in casual sex and sudden violence. It is meant for an intellectually mature audience—the sort of people who understand T. S. Eliot when he writes—
…'I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'—
—as he flees the snickering eternal footman holding his coat.

Sao Paulo Blues is as simple as an Escher stairway; you'll think you rode the Escher escalator when you're finished. It's a Zen koan for the mathematically handicapped in need of an information e´clat.

Jim Chaffee has published short stories, essays and a memoir of his Vietnam experiences. Much his previously published work, including the memoir with additional photos, several short stories, and some essays are exhibited on this site. His work can also be found on literary websites such as Nth Position, Unlikely Stories, and Amarillo Bay or from time to time in print publications.

Tom Bradley writes:

Chaffee has caused us to behold the Age of Kali herself. Like a great Tantric adept's cryptic code scrawled in menstrual blood on strips of banyan bark, this book is laying out a method, in mythopoeic form, by which we might gain such lurid illumination as remains available in our penultimate aeon of rot....

The heroine of this novel embodies the wildness of matter in the final suctions of surface tension before total entropy sets in. Every left-path magician, from the Mohenjo-Daro of the Dravidians to the Pasadena of Jack Parsons, aspires to couple with this elemental monstress before it's too late and the shit hits the fan. That Chaffee survived his liaison, and not only retained the ability to hold onto a pen, but to write with it, speaks volumes about his own status as a modern-day Aeneas.

—Tom Bradley, author of The Sam Edwine Pentateuch and a hell of a big dude

Read Bradley's review at Exquisite Corpse

Exactly like US foreign policy: brutal and pointless. A joyous read.

—Betelgeuse Star and Telegraph

available from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble

Also avaliable as an ebook from ebookmall.com in pdf, lit and prc format. We suggest the pdf format for this work.

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