Machado de Assis: 26 Stories

by Machado de Assis, Michael Wood (Foreword), Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)

This “watershed collection” (Wall Street Journal) now appears in an essential selected paperback edition, with twenty-six of Machado’s finest stories.

Widely acclaimed as “the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America” (Susan Sontag), as well as “another Kafka” (Allen Ginsberg), Machado de Assis (1839–1908) was famous in his time for his psychologically probing tales of fin-de-siecle Rio de Janeiro—a world populated with dissolute plutocrats, grasping parvenus, and struggling spinsters. In this original paperback, Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, “the accomplished duo” (Wall Street Journal) behind the “landmark . . . heroically translated” volume (The New Yorker) of the Collected Stories of Machado de Assis, include twenty-six chronologically ordered stories from the seven story collections published during Machado’s life—featuring all-time favorites such as the celebrated novella “The Alienist”; the tragicomic “parable of bureaucracy, madness, and power” (Los Angeles Review of Books), “Midnight Mass”; “The Cane”; and “Father Against Mother.” Ultimately, Machado de Assis: 26 Stories affirms Machado’s status as a literary giant who must finally be fully integrated into the world literary canon.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Literature, Latin American, Brazil, Anthologies

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 14, 2019

About the author

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro—September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime.
Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. José Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him "the supreme black literary artist to date."

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

Wow, these were excellent. I've been on a small binge of Brazil's greatest author and am increasingly annoyed never to have heard of him before this year because this is cracking stuff. A lovely selection of stories, with a keen eye for human foibles and failings, ranging from wistful and sweet to funny pretty brutal. On which the 'Father against Mother' story is...oof. The tale of a man so poor that he's going to have to give up his longed-for newborn child for adoption unless he can make some money. Except his job is slave catcher and the runaway slave he sees is pregnant. This is the sort of story that sticks in your mind for a very long time.

Excellent collection.

[Gautam Bhatia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glimpses of Machado de Assis' characteristic combination of caustic humour and dark wit that made a novel like Epitaph of a Small Winner such a brilliant read, but this collection felt like a bit of a let down because of how uneven the curation of stories is. Some - like The Alienist are right on the level of Epitaph of a Small Winner, but far too many are ordinary and even underwhelming (especially the endings). It's understandable because Assis was undoubtedly learning his craft through many of these stories, and they undoubtedly remain important historical markers in his literary journey, but as parts of an anthology, they make the book feel somewhat ... flat.

[Curt Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd read longer novels, Philosopher or Dog, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas and Epitaph of a Small Winner years ago but didn't fully savor the wild imagination of this singularity of a writer, as these short stories make clear. A writer of postmodern fiction in the middle of the 19th century, Machado is indefinable, uncontainable. Some stories recall Lawrence Sterne, others Jonathan Swift, Voltaire, Beckett, Edith Wharton, Oscar Wilde, Kafka, Flann O'Brien, Gilbert Sorrentino. He was free-ranging, careless of whether his "style" could be recognized from one story to another, and that's what makes this collection so much imaginative fun. I should note that they are all easy to read, very unpretentious in language, however. I'm only in the middle and looking forward to whatever surprise the next story brings. If you like unclassifiable fiction, one-of-a-kind larks, this is to be highly recommended. I'm sure the complete edition of his short stories--by the same translators--is worthwhile, if heavier to tote around.

[Wendelle]

master tales of wry irony, suffused with alternating tenderness and mockery for its creatures of Brazilian high, mid, and low society, that unwrap the unspoken rules and structures of the society they live in.

[Aloke · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good companion to Borges.

[Michiel ...moved to StoryGraph! · Rating 5 out of 5]

Formerly unknown to me, Machado de Assis is completely underrated. Though more than a century old, his stories have humorous bite and bizarre plots to get you laughing out loud or ponder your life.

[zunggg · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s no lack of variety in this collection, culled from Machado’s 120-something catalogue of short stories by the translators with the aim of representing, even roughly, a writer who never seems to have settled on a preferred style or voice. Many of these tales are more or less parables, ludic thought experiments sometimes calling to mind Borges — the two outright parables, Life! and The Canon were the only two that did absolutely nothing for me. At the other end of the stylistic spectrum are gentle social satires like Augusta’s Secret that approach someone like, I dunno, Katherine Mansfield, but without her psychological penetration. And in between are short, anecdotal tales, sometimes with hints of the uncanny, that put me in mind of Ambrose Bierce. These include my favourite by far, Maria Cora, about the cruelties and delusions of love, and the moving but heavy-handed Father against Mother, in which a penurious slave-catcher saves his own child at the expense of another.

Overall, mostly enjoyable enough, but the comparisons to Sterne, Kafka, Beckett and god knows who else are OTT (though Machado does predate all of them except Sterne). Clearly a very interesting writer, and I’m looking forward to reading his novels.

[Davvybrookbook · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great collection of short stories from the nineteenth century. These are a great supplement to Machado de Assis’s novels Dom Casmurro, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, and Quincas Borba. Notable among the stories are “The Alienist” and “Maria Cora”. Other stories were thematically, stylistically and structurally consistent as 26 stories were selected and presented chronologically by the translators Margaret Jull-Costa and Robin Patterson. What is a surprise is to think Machado de Assis wrote 60 years before Borges and surely there is a legacy, even if just a flicker, linking the two — read “The Alienist” and find reason to disagree.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

A joy to read these stories which are mostly based in late 19th century Rio de Janeiro, and revolving around themes of the time. Rio was the capital of Brazil at the time, and this is often referenced, especially in the "Alienist" a 40 page tale of a psychiatrist getting too deep in diagnosis to the point he condemn 80% of the city to an asylum, only to revoke on his own reversal of opinion! The "Meeting with Alcibiades" and "How to be a Bigwig" read like freshly written funny episodes. This work is more rewarding with an open mind, especially for the more mind bending stories towards the end.

[Jake Palmer]

Anticipates both Kafka and Chekhov in the enigmatic fragments of bourgeois life in Brazil. What unites this collection is a sly humor and a darkness creeping underneath the tales of middle class pleasantries, a darkness flitting in and out of the drawing rooms and well-to-do town squares that are the main settings, like the slaves who appear, modestly but persistently, as if to unsettle the cozy pictures being drawn.

[Matt Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoughts on justice, sanity, and integrity give way to blistering questions and no less painful satire in an ultimately tragic comedy worthy of standing on the shelf between Bras Cubas and Dom Casmurro. And that’s just The Alienest. The rest of these stories are at least as inventive and compelling. An excellent collection from a writer who deserves more attention.

[Tim Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve never really read a shortly story collection like this before. The author has the amazing ability to tell compelling stories whether they be fantastical, futuristic, or the utterly mundane. They never run long and are very compelling psychologically.