Machado de Assis: A Literary Life

Description

Novelist, poet, playwright, and short story writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908) is widely regarded as Brazil’s greatest writer, although his work is still too little read outside his native country. In this first comprehensive English-language examination of Machado since Helen Caldwell’s seminal 1970 study, K. David Jackson reveals Machado de Assis as an important world author, one of the inventors of literary modernism whose writings profoundly influenced some of the most celebrated authors of the twentieth century, including José Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, and Donald Barthelme. Jackson introduces a hitherto unknown Machado de Assis to readers, illuminating the remarkable life, work, and legacy of the genius whom Susan Sontag called “the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America” and whom Allen Ginsberg hailed as “another Kafka.” Philip Roth has said of him that “like Beckett, he is ironic about suffering.” And Harold Bloom has remarked of Machado that “he’s funny as hell.” Contents Preface Acknowledgments Part 1: The Literary World of Machado de Assis 1. The Wizard of Cosme Velho 2. The Formative Period 3. Novels of the 1870s 4. The Literary Modernism of Machado de Assis Part 2: Reading Machado de Assis 5. Machado’s Pendulum 6. Breaking the Frame: The Rhetoric of Substitution 7. Machado’s World Library 8. Time’s Invisible Fabric: Telling What Cannot Be Said, Saying What Cannot Be Told Part 3: Three Exemplary Modes 9. Theater and Opera: Machado’s Operatic Theater of the World 10. Delirium, Hallucination, and Dream: Flying Through Time on a Delirious Trapeze 11. Humanitas and Satire: Machado’s Mad Philosopher Part 3: The Actor-Authors 12. Brás Cubas, Basso Buff 13. Bento Santiago’s Grand Dissimulation 14. The Love-Death Theme of Counselor Ayres Part 3: Conclusion 15. Machado and the Spectacle of the World Notes A Note on Sources Credits Index