Idea and Plot in the Stories of Monteiro Lobato

To Jose Bento Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948), the conto or short story was not an easy genre because of its brevity. He found great contistas rarer than great novelists but suspected nonetheless that the novel was a form with greater possibilities for achievement, calling it "a epica dos tempos modemos e o campo dileto dos espiritos verdadeiramente criadores."' Though at times complaining of the difficulty and restrictions of the short-story form, he cast his own major work in that mold, attempting the novel only once.2 He stated his preference and his concept of the short story in a letter of 1909: