TLS Crossword 1133 by Praxiteles – July 8, 2016: Bom Dia Senhor. E como são todos vocês hoje?

A terrific piece of work, this, which I unraveled in 47.56, with some recourse to Google’s algorithms for confirmation and enlightenment (vide infra 1ac, but not before I had manfully found several checkers). One of the reasons I appreciate the TLS in its current incarnation is that I keep on learning things and filling in gaps in my knowledge. Another is that delicious frisson when your own “special” bits of knowledge are suddenly useful.
The &lit, in my opinion is a tricky act to pull off well. There are/is a plethora of &lits in this set, in quality and quantity deserving of a round of applause.
Aufklärung, such as I can offer, follows. with clues, definitions, and SOLUTIONS

Across

1 Personable Portuguese poet? (8,6)
FERNANDO PESSOA If you know your Portuguese poets (this one’s several of them) and/or you know pessoa is Portuguese for person, this is a doddle. If not, wait for some crossers and use a solver. I did. Personable may also be a hint as to Pessoa’s capacity to create alter egos – dozens of them – with distinctive styles of writing
8 Sweet girl, but eccentric – am I right? (4)
IRMA Has to be, in the end, as an anagram of AM I R(ight) though at least six other arrangements of the letters are attested girl’s names. The reference is to Irma la Douce (sweet in French), a 1963 romantic comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, directed by Billy Wilder.
9 Did he notice one to bury finally taking in aftermath of assassination? (4,6)
MARK ANTONY A stunning &lit! Notice: MARK, one: AN to: TO, bury finally: Y, aftermath of assassination: N to be “taken in”. “Friends, Romans, hipsters, let me clue you in” (Mad magazine, 1958)
10 Writer with a hangover? This year a poet (8)
HAMILTON  Patrick H wrote Hangover (sic) Square in 1941. This year: Hoc Anno plus MILTON the obscure poet.
11 In which on radio you’ll go over celebrity’s latest? (6)
EULOGY Another fine &lit. On radio, you’ll sounds like EUL if you please, go over gives the OG, and celebrity’s latest provides the Y
13 Drama skills coach giving little credit to George (10)
STAGECRAFT So not Stanislavsky, then. Coach is STAGE (as in Deadwood), little credit is, in this case, just the C, and George provides the RAFT
15 & 7. Springsteen song inspired by Rechy novel? [Three-word answer] (4)
CITY OF NIGHT fulfils both criteria. In my circles, The Boss is better known than American writer John Francisco Rechy. Shame on me, I expect.
16 Onomastically, Peter & Iona, eminent leaders, in youth culture (4)
OPIE The leading letters of the first four words gives our answer. Ono-thingy just means relating to names, but again we have something of an &lit. Peter and Iona Opie were co-authors of The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes inter alia, hence the youth culture.
18 Enlightenment produced by briefly following a lank guru? (10)
AUFKLÄRUNG An anagram. A LANK GURU could hardly be anything else, but it needs the F of “briefly Following”. Produced by is the anagram indicator. Aufklärung is what the Germans called the enlightenment after Emmanuel Kant plagiarised Voltaire et al for his PhD thesis “The Critique of Pure Reason.” Not all of this is true.
21 & 22. Reserve from among girl’s quite eccentric collection of Portuguese person’s prose [Three-word answer] (4,2)
BOOK OF DISQUIET The best known of 1ac’s output, produced for us by reserve: BOOK, from among: OF, girl’s: DI’S, quite eccentric: QUIET. The heteronym used by Pessoa for this work is at 27.
22 See 21 (8)
Do
24 Let this turn out to be belles lettres? (10)
BESTSELLER Yet another &lit (kinda) LET plus the answer is an anagram of belles lettres.
26 Man, for instance, featuring in cheerless Böcklin painting (4)
ISLE Böcklin created “The Isle of the Dead”, which qualifies as pretty cheerless. Of course, Man is another example of an Isle, but with its TT races and big wheel, is a lot more fun.
27 So, readers, Baron Bizarro turns out to be a person’s heteronym (8,6)
BERNARDO SOARES An anagram of SO READERS BARON, indicator Bizarro (!). Our Portuguese person (remember him?) created many alter egos, of which this was one.

Down

1 Do well, for example, to reach Thailand, where Mrs Leonowens went (3,4)
FAR EAST Do well: FARE, for example: AS, Thailand: T. Mrs L was (among other things, the original and real I in The King and I, and indeed her given name was Anna. Formidable lady.
2 Can you stand to peruse a book here? (7,4)
READING DESK I think a neat cryptic definition
3 Acknowledge “mad bad” appeal (5)
ADMIT Ignore the Byron connection, this one’s quite safe. Mad “bad” gives you the ADM bit, and appeal is IT.
4 Gwendolen at last adored madly by him? (7)
DERONDA Daniel, as in the George Eliot novel was indeed enamoured of Gwendolen, but you can also get there by an anagram (madly) of ADORED plus Gwen’s last letter. M. P, wiz all zese end lits, you are really spoiling us.
5 “The Marsupials stand … below the — mammals” (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man) (9)
PLACENTAL. Wait for the checkers, or look it up.
6 MacDiarmid’s drunk man to note top of thistle (3)
SOT Scots poet MacD wrote “ A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle” which gives us an approximation of our clue, but all that’s needed is, I think, the note SO plus the first letter of Thistle. Sot is not peculiarly MacD’s word or even Scotland’s.
7 See 15 (2,5)
Do
12 He designed cubes with oriels mostly, right? (2,9)
LE CORBUSIER The enumeration is kind, and the clue bids us rearrange CUBES and ORIEL(s). A fair approximation of the French architect’s output. I think we have to count another &lit, with “designed” doing double duty as definitive and anagram indicator
14 Chandler didn’t know from whom he got “The Big Sleep” (9)
CHAUFFEUR Right, this is a bit complicated. The Chauffeur Owen Taylor is a bit player in Chandler’s novel The Big Sleep”, who dies when (or a bit before) his car takes a long drive off a short pier. When Howard Hughes came to make the movie, he wanted to know who killed the chauffeur, and Chandler is said to have replied “I have no idea”, or, according to other sources “damned if I know”. So rearrange the syntax of the clue. Chandler did not know from whom the chauffeur got his dose of the big sleep.
17 Call me sound linguistically (7)
PHONEME a simple conflation of “phone me”
19 Pizzaro’s plan I foiled cunningly (7)
FIDELIO An anagram of I FOILED. I think the Pizzaro from whom Leonore, disguised as a prison guard, rescues her husband Florestan, is a reworking (shall we say) of Don Pizarro, the prison governor, in Beethoven’s opera. Pizzaro is, of course, an Italian impressionist painter, or indeed a celebrated Italian eatery in downtown Dubai (sic)
20 Look into Aagaard’s decorative works (7)
NIELLOS Not a misprint for Asgard. The Aagaard you’re looking for is NIELS, a Danish scholar of the C17. You may have read his “Vindication of the Style of the New Testament”. You also need to insert LO for “look” to complete the word for “a method of ornamenting metal by engraving, and filling up the lines with a black compound; a piece of work so produced”. Which I did know.
23 “El — was making his fight on a hilltop” (Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls) (5)
SORDO Guess, drag it from memory, or look it up.
25 How many Christie started with, then first of house-guests is lost (3)
TEN as in Little N_____s, Agatha’s original title, now “And The There Were None” after the Americans thought that she couldn’t get away with “Ten Little Indians” either. Take the innocuous word THEN, and remove the first letter of House-guests. Could well be seen as a final &lit.