Friday Explorations: “The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas" by Machado de Assis, Read by Joseph Coté

Every Friday, at 11:00 am, on the library’s KZbin Channel and Facebook Page, the library will stream a brand new recording of local thespian, Joseph Coté reading aloud selections from a wide variety of fascinating and entertaining books of fiction and non-fiction.
For April 14, Coté will read aloud from Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis’ novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas.
“One of the wittiest, most playful, and . . . most alive and ageless books ever written.” -Dave Eggers, The New Yorker
A revelatory new translation of the playful, incomparable masterpiece of one of the greatest Black authors in the Americas.
Summary: The mixed-race grandson of ex-slaves, Machado de Assis is not only Brazil’s most celebrated writer but also a writer of world stature, who has been championed by the likes of Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, Allen Ginsberg, John Updike, and Salman Rushdie.
In his masterpiece, the 1880 novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (translated also as Epitaph of a Small Winner), the ghost of a decadent and disagreeable aristocrat decides to write his memoir.
In his memoir, Braz Cubas, the wealthy nineteenth-century Brazilian, examines (from beyond the grave) his rather undistinguished life in 160 short chapters that are filled with philosophical digressions and exuberant insights.
He dedicates it to the worms gnawing at his corpse and tells of his failed romances and halfhearted political ambitions, serves up harebrained philosophies, and complains with gusto from the depths of his grave.
A clear forerunner of Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges, Epitaph for a Small Winner is one of the wittiest self-portraits in literary history as well as “one of the masterpieces of Brazilian literature” (Salman Rushdie).
Wildly imaginative, wickedly witty, and ahead of its time, the novel has been compared to the work of everyone from Cervantes to Sterne to Joyce to Nabokov to Calvino, and has influenced generations of writers around the world.
Click the links to find the library’s KZbin Channel and Facebook Page.
Thoughts to share? Book ideas to suggest?
Leave a comment below or contact Joseph at [e-mail]

[@jdsilva4795]

Aqui no Brasil somos introduzidos a leitura de Machado de Assis na escola secundária( Ensino médio). Particularmente este é o meu livro , embora já tinha lido outros livros deste autor.

[@josephcote3939]

Olá. Depois de estudar as obras de Machado de Assis está lá outro de seus livros que você achou ser o seu melhor???

[@jdsilva4795]

@@josephcote3939 Eu indicaria o livro : O alienista de 1882 .Nesta obra temos o médico Simão que resolve construir um hospital psiquiatrico na vila onde mora, posteriormente começa internar pacientes sem nenhum rigor ético e ao longo do livro a gente começa a duvidar da sanidade mental do nosso protagonista médico, inclusive o próprio protagonista do livro.Deve ter uma versão traduzida para seu idioma inglês desta obra.

[@LopezzT]

Read Dom Casmurro, my friend. Also by Machado de Assis. I’m sure you will like it.