Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life (49 page)

Now all that was needed was to wait and reap the harvest, and that was not long in coming. The cautious initial print run of 4,000 copies ran out in the bookshops in a matter of days and at the end of April, when 18,000 copies had been sold,
The Alchemist
appeared for the first time on a best-seller list in the weekly
Livres Hebdo
. Intended for the publishing world, this was not a publication for the public at large and the book was given only twentieth place, but, as Mônica had predicted, this was just the start. In May,
The Alchemist
was in ninth place in the most important best-seller list, that of the weekly magazine
L’Express
, where it remained for an incredible 300 consecutive weeks. The book was a success in several countries besides Brazil, but its acclaim in the United States and France would mean that the author would no longer be considered merely a Latin-American eccentricity and would become a worldwide phenomenon.

W
HILE THE WORLD WAS BOWING THE KNEE
to Paulo Coelho, the Brazilian critics remained faithful to the maxim coined by the composer Tom Jobim, according to which ‘in Brazil someone else’s success is felt as a personal affront, a slap in the face’, and they continued to belittle his books. The massive success of
The Alchemist
in France seems to have encouraged him to confront his critics. ‘Before, my detractors could conclude, wrongly, that Brazilians were fools because they read me,’ he declared to the journalist Napoleão Sabóia of
O Estado de São Paulo
. ‘Now that my books are selling so well abroad, it’s hard to universalize that accusation of stupidity.’ Not so. For the critic Silviano Santiago, who had a PhD in literature from the Sorbonne, being a best-seller even in a country like France meant absolutely nothing. ‘It’s important to demystify his success in France,’ he told
Veja
. ‘The French public is as mediocre and as lacking in sophistication as the general public anywhere.’ Some did not even go to the trouble of opening Paulo’s books in order to condemn them. ‘I’ve not read them and I don’t like them’ was the judgement given by Davi Arrigucci, Jr, another respected critic and professor of literature at the University of São Paulo. However, none of this seemed to matter to Paulo’s Brazilian readers, still less his foreign ones. On the contrary. Judging by the numbers, his army of readers and admirers
seemed to be growing in the same proportion as the virulence of his critics. The situation was to be repeated in 1994 when, as well as
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
, he launched a 190-page book,
Maktub
–a collection of the mini-chronicles, fables and reflections he had been publishing in the
Folha de São Paulo
since 1993.

Just as
The Valkyries
had been inspired by the penance Paulo and Chris had undertaken in 1988 in the Mojave Desert, in
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Paulo shares with his readers yet another spiritual experience, the Road to Rome, which he undertook in the south of France, partly in the company of Mônica Antunes. In the 236 pages of the book, he describes seven days in the life of Pilar, a twenty-nine-year-old student who is struggling to complete her studies in Zaragoza in Spain and who meets up again with a colleague with whom she’d had an adolescent affair. The meeting takes place after a conference organized by the young man–who remains nameless in the book, as do all the other characters apart from the protagonist. Now a seminarian and a devotee of the Immaculate Conception, he confesses his love for Pilar during a trip from Madrid to Lourdes. The book, according to Paulo, is about the fear of loving and of total surrender that pursues humanity as though it were a form of original sin. On the way back to Zaragoza, Pilar sits down on the bank of the river Piedra, a small river 100 kilometres south of the city, and there she sheds her tears so that they may join other rivers and flow on out into the ocean.

Centred more upon the rituals and symbols of Catholicism than on the magical themes of his previous books,
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
received unexpected praise from the clergy, such as the Cardinal-Archbishop of São Paulo, Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns, but there were no such surprises from the critics. As had been the case with all five of his previous books, both
Rio Piedra
and
Maktub
were torn apart by the Brazilian media. The critic Geraldo Galvão Ferraz, of the São Paulo
Jornal da Tarde
, branded
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
as ‘a poorly mixed cocktail of mediocre mysticism, religion and fiction, full of clichés and stereotypical characters who spend the greater part of their time giving solemn speeches’. The author’s approach to what he calls ‘the feminine side of God’ was ridiculed by another journalist as ‘a Paulo Coelho
for girls’. The magazine
Veja
handed the review of
Maktub
to Diogo Mainardi, who derided certain passages, comparing
Maktub
to a pair of dirty socks that he had left in his car:

As on previous occasions, such reviews had no effect whatsoever on sales. While derided in the pages of newspapers and magazines,
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
sold 70,000 copies on the first day, more than
The Valkyries
. Some weeks after its launch,
Maktub
also appeared in the best-seller lists. The only difference was that this time, the victim of the attacks was thousands of kilometres from Rio, travelling through France with Anne Carrière in response to dozens of invitations for talks and debates with his growing number of French readers.

Despite the enormous success achieved by the author, Paulo’s presence at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1994, the first in which he had taken part, had made it clear that preconceptions about his work were not just the privilege of Brazilian critics but also of his fellow writers. Although the position of Minister of Culture was, at the time, held by an old friend of the author’s, the diplomat Luiz Roberto do Nascimento e Silva, the brother of his ex-girlfriend Maria do Rosário, when it came to organizing a party of eighteen writers to represent Brazilian literature–Brazil was the guest of honour–Paulo was not included. According to Nascimento e Silva, writers were chosen who were popular with or familiar to German readers. Paulo’s trip, therefore, was paid by Editora Rocco. In order to celebrate the
contracts being signed around the world, his German publisher at the time, Peter Erd, owner of the publishing house of the same name, gave a cocktail party to which he invited all of Paulo’s publishers present at the book fair and, naturally enough, all the members of the Brazilian delegation. The party was well attended, but not entirely a success because only two other Brazilian writers were present, and of the other delegation members, only Chico Buarque was polite enough to phone to give his excuses, since he would be giving a talk at the same time. A lone voice, that of Jorge Amado, who was not part of the delegation, spoke out loudly in Paulo’s defence: ‘The only thing that makes Brazilian intellectuals attack Paulo Coelho is his success.’ In spite of this, in 1995, the fever that the British magazine
Publishing News
called ‘Coelhomania’ and the French media ‘
Coelhisme
’ reached pandemic proportions. Sought out by the French director Claude Lelouch and then by the American Quentin Tarantino, both of whom were interested in adapting
The Alchemist
for the cinema, Paulo replied that the giant American Warner Brothers had got there first and bought the rights for US$300,000. Roman Polanski had told journalists that he hoped to be able to film
The Valkyries
. In May, when Anne Carrière was preparing for the launch of an edition of
The Alchemist
to be illustrated by Moebius, HQ, owners of Hachette and
Elle
, announced that the Elle Grand Prix for Literature that year had been awarded to Paulo Coelho. This caused such a stir that he earned the privilege of being featured in the ‘Portrait’ section of the magazine
Lire
, the bible of the French literary world.

But the crowning glory came in October. After thirty-seven weeks in second place,
The Alchemist
dethroned
Le Premier Homme
, an unfinished novel by Albert Camus, and went on to head the best-seller list in
L’Express
. Two famous critics compared
The Alchemist
to another national glory,
Le Petit Prince
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. ‘I had the same feeling when I read both books,’ wrote Frédéric Vitoux in his column in the magazine
Le Nouvel Observateur
. ‘I was enchanted by the sensibility and the freshness, the innocence of soul.’ His colleague Eric Deschot, of the weekly
Actuel
, shared his opinion: ‘It is not a sacrilegious comparison, since the simplicity, transparency and purity of this fable remind me of the mystery of Saint-Exupéry’s story.’

Paulo received news that he had leapt into first place in
L’Express
while he was in the Far East, where he had gone with Chris to take part in a series of launches and debates with readers. One afternoon, as the
shinkansen
, the Japanese bullet train taking them from Nagoia to Tokyo, was speeding past the snow-covered Mount Fuji, the writer made a decision: when he returned to Brazil, he would change publishers. The decision was not the result of some sign that only he had noticed: it came after a long period of reflection on his relationship with Rocco. Among other disagreements, Paulo was demanding a distribution system that would open up sales outlets other than bookshops, such as newspaper stands and supermarkets, so that his books could reach readers on lower incomes. Rocco had asked for a study by Fernando Chinaglia, an experienced newspaper and magazine distributor, but the plan went no further. On 15 February 1995, the columnist Zózimo Barroso do Amaral published a note in
O Globo
informing his readers that ‘one of the most envied marriages in the literary world’ was coming to an end.

The other newspapers picked up the scoop and some days later, the entire country knew that, for US$1 million, Paulo Coelho was moving from Rocco to Editora Objetiva, who would publish his next book,
O Monte Cinco
, or
The Fifth Mountain
. This vast sum–more than had ever been paid to any other Brazilian author–would not all go into his pocket, but would be divided up more or less as it had been with Rocco: 55 per cent as an advance on royalties and the remaining 45 per cent to be invested in publicity. This was a big gamble for Roberto Feith, a journalist, economist and ex-international correspondent with the television network Globo, who had taken control of Objetiva five years earlier. The US$550,000 advance represented 15 per cent of the publisher’s entire turnover, which came mostly from sales of its three ‘big names’, Stephen King, Harold Bloom and Daniel Goleman. The experts brought in by the firm were unanimous in stating that if
The Fifth Mountain
were to repeat the success of
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
, Objetiva would get the US$1 million investment back within a matter of months. Apparently the change caused no resentment on the part of his ex-publisher, for although Paulo had moved to Objetiva, he left with Rocco his entire backlist, the profitable collection of seven books published there
since 1989. In fact, a month after announcing the move, Paulo Rocco was among the author’s guests at Paulo’s traditional celebration of St Joseph’s feast day on 19 March.

Inspired by a passage from the Bible (1 Kings 18:8–24),
The Fifth Mountain
tells of the suffering, doubts and spiritual discoveries of the prophet Elijah during his exile in Sarepta in Phoenicia, present-day Lebanon. The city, whose residents were well educated and famous for their commercial acumen, had not known war for 300 years, but it was about to be invaded by the Assyrians. The prophet encounters religious conflicts, and is forced to face the anger both of men and of God. In the prologue, Paulo once again reveals how he interweaves his personal experiences with the themes of his books. When he states that, with
The Fifth Mountain
, he had perhaps learned to understand and live with the inevitable, he recalls his dismissal from CBS seventeen years earlier, which had brought to an end a promising career as an executive in the recording industry:

The book was ready to be delivered to Editora Objetiva when Paulo unearthed information on periods in Elijah’s life that had not been dealt with in the Scriptures, or, more precisely, about the time he had spent in Phoenicia. This exciting discovery meant that he had to rewrite almost the entire book, which was finally published in August 1996 during the fourteenth São Paulo Book Biennial. The launch was preceded by a huge
publicity campaign run by the São Paulo agency Salles/DMB&B, whose owner, the advertising executive Mauro Salles, was an old friend and informal guru on marketing matters, and the book’s dedicatee. The campaign included full-page advertisements in the four principal national newspapers (
Jornal do Brasil
,
Folha de São Paulo
,
O Estado de São Paulo
and
O Globo
) and in the magazines
Veja-Rio
,
Veja-SP
,
Caras
,
Claudia
and
Contigo
, 350 posters on Rio and São Paulo buses, eighty hoardings in Rio, and displays, sales points and plastic banners in bookshops. Inspired by Anne Carrière’s idea, which had worked so well in the French launch of
The Alchemist
, Paulo suggested and Feith ordered a special edition of numbered, autographed copies of
The Fifth Mountain
to be distributed to 400 bookshops across Brazil a week before the ordinary edition reached the public. In order to prevent any disclosure to the press, every recipient had to sign a confidentiality agreement.