Who is this Brás Cubas? The question keeps returning as the reader engages with his ‘posthumous memoirs’. Is it the author himself? Is this a Proustian tale? If so, it’s Proust refracted through a kaleidoscopic Brazilian lens. The novel of approximately 250 pages is divided into 160 chapters. Some no longer than half a page. Several make comments on previous chapters, or the telling of the story. The effect is one of a mosaic. Long before the arrival of Derrida, we have a shattered text, the pieces of which the author is assembling into something resembling a story, albeit a chaotic, at times incoherent story. At the same time, there are details, such as the author’s description of his affair with Virigila, the wife of a politician, which feel as psychologically precise as anything in Proust. The writing captures the mechanics of the affair, as it wheels its way through the tortured stages of passion, disinterest, guilt and despair. Brás Cubas feels like a real person, albeit one who approaches the business of storytelling in a fashion that is not normally permitted in novels, full of diversions and asides. Much like real people actually think, rather than the pseudo coherence of the normative idea of character espoused in the western novel. In this sense, we can almost hear the faint sounds of the lumbering approach of Joyce and Woolf, or perhaps the distant rumble of Sterne. Machado de Assis’ novel brims with an energy which sometimes overflows, but which propels the book forwards even when the apparent line of advancement feels utterly baffling. In the end, one could analyse the novel in purely story terms, tracing the life of the narrator as he navigates the waters of Rio’s political and social life. But this would be to ignore the thing that distinguishes the novel, which is its capacity to incorporate a shade of madness into an otherwise matter-of-fact story.
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