Jamil Snege

Jamil Snege (10 July 1939 – 16 May 2003) was a Brazilian writer and advertising executive. He stood out in advertising for his boldness and irreverence in creating highly successful commercial, political and educational campaigns. In the literary field, in addition to the recognised quality of his fictional work, he was notable for systematically refusing offers from major publishing houses, opting instead to finance the publication of his books with his own resources.

Biography

Jamil Snege was born in Curitiba, the son of Antônio Snege, a printer of Syrian-Lebanese origin, and Anita Bassani, a descendant of Italian immigrants from the Veneto region. Jamil Snege grew up in the Água Verde neighbourhood. Around the age of 16, he began attending Curitiba society events and writing in the social columns of local newspapers.

At the age of 18, on the eve of his graduation as an officer from the Reserve Officers' Training Centre (CPOR/PR), he ended up causing a fire during training and was expelled from the corps. In 1960, he opted to complete his military service as a paratrooper in Rio de Janeiro, the same time he worked as a trainee on the editorial staff of the Rio newspaper Tribuna da Imprensa, in whose supplement, years later, Snege would have some of his short stories published.

By this time, when he returned to Curitiba, Snege was already known and respected in the intellectual circles that were forming in the Boca Maldita area and which were also frequented by Dalton Trevisan. At the end of the 1960s, he used to gather his friends on Saturday and Sunday nights at his house, next door to his parents' home in Engenheiro Rebouças street. These weekly meetings were attended by, among others: Roberto Requião, Wilson Bueno, Fábio Campana, Aroldo Murá G. Haygert and Wilson Galvão do Rio Apa.

From the 1990s onwards, working at the Beta Publicidade agency, acquired in 1983, Snege concentrated his advertising activities on political marketing. From May 1997 to May 2003, he published fortnightly chronicles in Caderno G of the Gazeta do Povo newspaper.

Jamil Snege died in Curitiba at the age of 63. In 2013, the Paraná Public Library organised a series of initiatives to commemorate the ten years since the writer's death.

Works

• Tempo sujo (1968; novella)
• A mulher aranha (1972; short stories)
• Ficção onívora (1978; short stories)
• As confissões de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1982; play in 2 acts)
• Para uma sociologia das práticas simbólicas (1985; essay)
• Senhor (1989; poetry)
• O jardim, a tempestade (1989; short stories)
• Como eu se fiz por si mesmo (1994; novel)
• Viver é prejudicial à saúde (1998; novella)
• Os verões da grande leitoa branca (2000; short stories)
• Como tornar-se invisível em Curitiba (2000; articles)

References

• Machinski, Júlio Bernardo (2011). "Às Margens do Cânone: Relendo Jamil Snege," Anais do SILEL, Vol. II, No. 2, pp. 1–17.