João do Rio

He entered the streets, temples, theatres, docks, salons, and night cafés of Rio de Janeiro and made the modern city report on itself.

João do Rio was the best-known pen name of Paulo Barreto, born in Rio in 1881. He began working in the press as a teenager and became a journalist, chronicler, short-story writer, and playwright. His reported series As religiões no Rio and O momento literário became books; A alma encantadora das ruas, Dentro da noite, Vida vertiginosa, and his social chronicles turned urban observation into literature. He wrote under several pseudonyms, brought techniques of modern street reporting into Brazilian journalism, and was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1910. In 1920 he founded the newspaper A Pátria. He died in Rio the following year.

João do Rio watched respectability from the pavement. The city looked stranger, sharper, and less innocent when he wrote it down.