A Place for Pop.(Paulo Coelho is sworn into the Brazilian Academy of Letters.)

Paulo Coelho does not levitate anymore. The rock and roll, the drugs, the Magus shtick--that's all over, too. And don't even ask whether he can still make it rain. Not long ago, Coelho was a self-styled visionary, wandering the world--and the reaches of his chemically altered mind--in frayed bell-bottoms. Then he wrote down all the dreams and delirium, called it self-discovery and became a literary pop star, Brazil's Timothy Leary. Today, with 45 million books in print in 56 languages, the graying 55-year-old ranks among the world's five best- selling authors. But for all his international cachet, one honor has always eluded the soft-spoken Rio native: critical acclaim at home. "A man must achieve victory in his own village," he likes to say.

Now it's going to happen. This week Coelho will be sworn into the Brazilian Academy of Letters, an august association of writers, politicians, philosophers, clergy and economists who fancy themselves the guardians of Brazilian culture. For the past 105 years, the Academy has been the bastion of the Portuguese language and a fortress of refined taste and intellectual hauteur. The country's elite have dreamed, plotted and often brawled for the chance to occupy one of the 40 velvet chairs in the Petit Trianon, the Academy's mustard-colored neoclassical bunker in downtown Rio de Janeiro. Members, elected for life, are known as "immortals"--and accorded nearly royal clout. Only 225 luminaries have ever donned the pompous gold-embroidered frock and ostrich-plumed felt cap that comes with the position. "Many people think it's a joke, that we dress up like parakeets and take 5 o'clock tea," says Alberto da Costa e Silva, a diplomat and Academy president. "In fact, the Academy represents the true intellectual elite of the nation."

So what is Coelho doing there? After all, he made his name--and a bundle, besides--turning out pleasant, bite-size tales of enlightenment, replete with conversations with angels and the like. Think Jack Kerouac, combined with Carlos Castaneda and a dollop of J.R.R. Tolkien thrown in. The critics have been far from kind, calling him a charlatan, copycat and literary featherweight. "Mysticism with Coca-Cola," sniped one Brazilian intellectual who was passed over by the Academy. "The Academy always defended a literature of high esthetic quality," says Silviano Santiago, a respected Brazilian ...