List Of Books Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas
| Title | : | Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas |
| Author | : | Machado de Assis |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 165 pages |
| Published | : | January 31st 2005 by Luso-Brazilian Books (first published 1881) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Classics. Cultural. Brazil |
Machado de Assis
Paperback | Pages: 165 pages Rating: 4.24 | 15463 Users | 662 Reviews
Ilustration Supposing Books Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas
a sick chicken and the voluptuousness of miserywe read an author and wonder 'how is it possible that this genius is not known?'... yes, only a species as cretinous as ours could ignore machado. along with carpentier and mutis, he takes the top 'what the fuck' spot.
here are three reasons machado must be read, must not be forgotten:
1) as karen pointed out below: "18fucking80". yup. madman machado wrote a modernist masterpiece way back when. joyce and woolf? they don't have shit on machado. nothing. in this hysterical and darkdarkdark nuthouse you get the narrator's crazy drawings (i ripped out the pages and stuck 'em on the wall next to my desk), made-up words, demented philosophical systems, aphorisms, chapters that describe their own uselessness, chapters asking to be inserted within the text of other chapters, and wonderful sections in which the narrator commands us to disregard the text, that he's full of shit, that he's overwritten something to make it sound more literary. yeah. check out the entirety of chapter 45:
"Sobs, tears, an improvised altar with saints and crucifix, black curtains on the walls, strips of black velvet framing an entrance, a man who came to dress the corpse, another man who took the measurements for the coffin; candelabra, the coffin on a table covered with gold-and-black silk with candles at the corners, invitations, guests who entered slowly with muffled step and pressed the hand of each member of the family, some of them sad, all of them serious and silent, priest, sacristan, prayers, sprinkling of holy water, the closing of the coffin with hammer and nails; six persons who removes the coffin from the table, lift it, carry it, with difficulty, down the stairs despite the cries, sobs, and new tears of the family, walk with it to the hearse, place it on the slab, strap it securely with leather thongs; the rolling of the hearse, the rolling of the carriages one by one… These are the notes that I took for a sad and commonplace chapter which I shall not write."
2) because all the modernist shit isn't there for it's own sake. it's in service of a wildly original and terrific book. and if it wasn't written by a black brazilian in the 19th century, but by a white 20 yr old in 2009, it'd still be great. (of course, there'd be a Machado backlash in which he'd be accused of gimmickry and unoriginality and being overly clever and blahblah) i don't laugh from books. i don't like funny books. machado forces me to take back both those statements. salman rushdie: 'the kind of humor that makes skulls smile.'
check this exfuckingtraordinary excerpt, a veritable fuckfest of humor and tragedy:
"'Tis good to be sad and say nothing'… I remember that I was sitting under a tamarind tree, with the poet's book open in my hands and my spirit as crestfallen as a sick chicken. I pressed my silent grief to my breast and experienced a curious feeling, something that might be called the voluptuousness of misery. Voluptuousness of misery. Memorize the phrase, reader; store it away, take it out and study it from time to time, and, if you do not succeed in understanding it, you may conclude that you have missed one of the most subtle emotions of which man is capable.'"
ahhhh! headbashingly great stuff!
3) susan sontag. karen brissette. two tough chicks, one dead & one alive, who push the shit outta machado.
woody allen is a machado fan. as is carlos fuentes, salman rushdie, javier marias, and harold bloom.
and sontag's introduction is, as always, a must read. she makes the interesting point that latin america produced such far-seeing and interesting literature not merely because the dictatorships tyrannies and repressive regimes produced a literature of 'pressure', but because the latin americans were those who were most enamored by laurence sterne... damn. i've really gotta read tristam shandy.
enough said.
you know what to do.
Details Books In Favor Of Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas
| Original Title: | Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas |
| ISBN: | 0850515025 (ISBN13: 9780850515022) |
| Edition Language: | Portuguese |
| Characters: | Brás Cubas, Virgília, Lobo Neves, Quincas Borba |
| Setting: | Rio de Janeiro(Brazil) |
Rating Of Books Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas
Ratings: 4.24 From 15463 Users | 662 ReviewsWrite Up Of Books Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas
it's like a shorter, faster-moving, brazilian tristram shandy, filled with some really amazing metaphors (like the trapeze the man carries inside his head) and a really fun sense of hopeless melancholy. i kinda wish a little more *happened* in it, but i imagine braz cubas feels the same way.the translation is incredible. while it's not quite impossible to believe that this book was written in 1880 (tristram shandy of course was even crazier a hundred years earlier), it is impossible that thisStrangely fascinating. I am no expert in literature and only started reading "serious" fiction works a couple of years back in my quest to read all those works included in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die by Dr. Boxall.Therefore, at first, I did not know how to react to this kind of literary work. Some say it is a novel but the author, the Brazilian Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908) says that is is a memoir. However, a memoir is supposed to be fiction. But how could this be
"You are alive: I wish you no other calamity." (18)It is difficult to believe/accept that this was written in 1880. There is a blurb on the front cover of my copy of David Foster Wallace's Oblivion, which I've always found particularly annoying and off-putting. Zadie Smith gushes: "A visionary, a craftsman, a comedian He's so modern he's in a different time-space continuum from the rest of us. Goddamn him." If that can be said of DFW, then one can only imagine the superlatives that should be
Free download available at Project GutenbergI made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and it will be published by Project Gutenberg.
"Posthumous", not because it was published after the author's death, but because Bras Cubas wrote his memoirs after he died. This is a 19th century work so it's supposed to be the original. Problem is, it didn't come as new to me, having read before the 20th century bestseller "Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold where a murdered girl narrates.There are similarities here with Machado de Assis' other masterpiece, "Dom Casmurro", both in the manner the narrators ended up (alone) and their principal
a sick chicken and the voluptuousness of miserywe read an author and wonder 'how is it possible that this genius is not known?'... yes, only a species as cretinous as ours could ignore machado. along with carpentier and mutis, he takes the top 'what the fuck' spot. here are three reasons machado must be read, must not be forgotten:1) as karen pointed out below: "18fucking80". yup. madman machado wrote a modernist masterpiece way back when. joyce and woolf? they don't have shit on machado.
If you stripped away the ahead-of-its-time narrative tics, the clever self-reflexive games, the subversive style, what you're left with is the heart of this book: the voice. I was less impressed with the stylistic trickery (and enough has been said about that, just read the other Goodreads reviews) than with the voice: often boastful, he still allows you to see all his faults and weaknesses. And though you see all his faults and weaknesses, he still comes across as extremely likeable. Though he
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