A Chapter of Hats and Other Stories

by Machado de Assis

Two gentlemen standing outside a church in Rio de Janeiro see a respectable lady emerge - one of them has an unexpected, and to him inexplicable story to tell about her past life as a prostitute; a popular composer of polkas burns the midnight oil in a desperate attempt to create great classical music; a teenager finds himself caught up by the sight of the bare arms of an older woman who lives with his employer; an impoverished, lazy young man turns to the lucrative trade of catching runaway slaves; dull, monotonous Mariana has a tiff with her husband about the hat he wears to town, and decides to sing "the Marseillaise of matrimony" by going off on a trip to town herself with her more daring, flirtatious friend Sophia.These are some of the situations developed in these stories, some of the most brilliant to have been written in the nineteenth century. They echo Poe and Gogol, they anticipate Joyce, they have been compared to contemporary works by Chekhov, Maupassant, and Henry James, yet they are not quite like any of these. Anyone who has read Epitaph of a Small Winner or Dom Casmurro, his most famous novels, will want to savour these stories - those who haven't, will find them a varied and enjoyable introduction to Machado's work.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Brazil, Classics, 19th Century, Classic Literature

288 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1871

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

[dilara 🍒 · Rating 3 out of 5]

7/10

Machado De Assis’in değerinin yeterince bilinmediğini düşünüyorum.

[Ugh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this because Charles Boyle mentioned Machado de Assis in a post in his Son of A Book blog, and I thought he sounded interesting. Apparently Machado de Assis remains Brazil's greatest ever writer. If so, I'm surprised Brazil never offered Borges the Copacabana all to himself if he'd renationalise...

The Daily Telegraph is quoted on the back of ACoH as saying 'John Gledson's zesty translation and introduction are great strengths of the collection...'. That is indeed true, but also rather revealing - the stories themselves aren't up to much. Most of them feel like chapters taken from novels, such is the slightness of their events and the suddenness with which many of them resolve. One of them ends at the bottom of a page; turning over, I blinked with suprise to find I had nothing more to read.

If you like stories in which people matter-of-factly fall in and out of love and do or don't end up together, and if you don't mind that they pretty much all start with an infodump of dates of birth, professions, and relational status, this is for you.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories are a mastery of beautiful writing within the intentional scarcity of plot that can only exist in the short story format. Everything here is both overstated and understated at the same time, the lush prose stopping always a few pages before you're ready. It's up to the reader to look underneath to see the pathos and judgement.

Some of these stories seem so slight, yet are so scathing in their critique of sexism and slavery and society as a whole. Oh, especially the last one, which just floored me, it's portrayal of how a man can be so desperate and emotional and yearning, yet also blind to how he is the perpetrator of exactly such wrongs to the others around him... but it's not a melodrama; the story is told with the same gentle, dry wit that pretends to be it's unaware of its own depth.

[Sally Rushbrook · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a brilliant collection of stories, it's the first book of his I have read and I immediately want to seek out more. I thought the translation was excellent though I have no basis of comparison. There was a great range shown in the writing but his style is coherent across it and I frequently stopped on passages that took my breath away. He also has a wicked sense of humour and a way with irony which allows him to subtly condemn things such as misogyny and slavery in a way which is all the more powerful for not being signposted.

[Lannie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Machado de Assis, and his reputation as one of Brazil's best writers is well earned. Bras Cubas is a top-tier book for me, and Dom Casmurro is the book I would write my literary doctoral thesis on if I were ever dumb enough to get a doctorate in literature.

These shorties have a pretty good range. All of them have what you might consider the sharp build a short story should have: intriguing setup that builds to a stinger, then ends. Assis has always had a wicked eye and a sense of irony, and it shows here as well.

In his novels, he tends to style his chapters almost like short stories... or maybe micro stories? A chapter might have just a funny insight or gag, lasting two pages. In contrast, his actual short stories are 10-20 pages. I have nothing to really say about that, but I found it interesting.

What makes this collection weaker than it could be has mostly to do with time, with era. Assis loves Rio of the later 1800s, and builds so much of his story in and order the society therein. However, it can get to be a little one-note for my tastes, like reading a collection about Victorian England.

Here are the stand-outs, complete with spoilers:

The Fortune Teller

This follows a man who is having an affair with his best friend's wife, a well Machado de Assis dips from often. At the onset, the man is mocking the woman because she uses a fortune teller. It makes a point to note that the man "believes in nothing," and seems to find all religious and spiritual ideas laughable. The woman, cornered, says she uses the fortune teller for peace of mind, which has value. The story is then a tense ride. The man is meant to meet the woman at her house following a desperate note, and as he slowly makes his way there by cab, his mind gets more and more agitated as he wonders whether the affair has been found out. While being caught in traffic he decides to dip in to see his girl's fortune teller, and she relieves all of his worries by saying that the woman still loves him and her husband doesn't know. He then shows up and is promptly murdered by the husband.

I enjoy the ironic twist of this one, of course, but I also feel like it has something to say about religious faith. The man is finally lured into believing in the spiritual just because of the peace of mind it grants him, but the story is quick to demonstrate that peace of mind is not the same as cause and consequence.

Pílades e Orestes

This is a somewhat simple story, but it seems to me to be a proto Bert and Ernie.

We have two friends who are thick as thieves, their lives so intertwined that many joke they are married, and one even has a will set for the other. Then, one day, one of them falls in love with his beautiful young cousin and doesn't understand why his partner is so upset by it. It's never said outright, but one of them is likely gay, and is thus jealous that his best friend and partner is now going to leave him to get married to a woman. But the man in love is obliviously to anything so nuanced as this, he can only think that his partner is also in love with the young cousin, so he sets them up to be married. When you read through the text, the sadness is of it all is overwhelmingly, even though on its face it's just a funny little story.

The Famous Man

A polka master tries to play the classics. A sad story for artists who want to do something other than what they're known for.

A Singular Occurrence

This one is really special. It's just two men gossiping. The whole thing is in dialogues. They are talking about a woman who was the mistress of a friend of one of theirs. They talk about how the man was deeply in love with her, and she him, but for some reason she slept with some guy that was ugly and beneath her. What's special about this story is how much of it is wrapped up in implication and commentary on society.

The idea is that she was a prostitute, and the man who fell in love with her had a family in another city. When an important man had means and money, he might buy a house for his mistress in some other town and try to keep her as his own. So she loved him, perhaps truly, but that didn't mean she was meant to be a kept animal. Whether she needed money or she just needed to live her life the only way she knew how, she went and propositioned some guy she thought for sure would be socially distant from the guy she loves. This affair causes him to beat her. And even though he's ten years dead, and she's seen still mourning him, the two men gossip about her as if she is somehow the weird and evil one. It's a sharp commentary, for sure.

[Alec]

#4
'I'm not defending Andrade; it wasn't a nice thing to do. But in situations like that passion blinds the best of us. Andrade was a worthy, generous, sincere man, but it was such a terrible blow, and he loved her so much that he didn't flinch from that kind of revenge.'

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Esoteric vignettes of the turn of the century Brazilian life in short story format, an introduction to late 19th century literature from this side of the Atlantic. At times unsettling, abrupt, humourous and dark. Would benefit from a re-read. An acquired taste, like caju juice.

[Charlie Dickens · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so glad I read this author. The stories are not strictly plotted. They have a trance like effect to put you into the character's worlds and allow you to exit at a speed you choose. You may want to linger in this place before returning to your own.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly makes you think — more of a 3.5 rounding up here — but a grand collection of universally human dilemmas with the backdrop of mid-to-late 1800s urban Brazil.

[Mikael Kuoppala · Rating 3 out of 5]

Machado de Assis, the Brazilian author and intellectual who was known for his moderate opinions but radical literature that communicated the anguish of a norm-enslaved people.

In this collection the aforementioned theme is apparent in every piece, even to the point of repetitiveness. Each story works well enough on its own, but the collection is a bit too uniform.

[Glauber Ribeiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Machado nunca desaponta. Mesmo num conto de juventude sem muita ambição. A estória simples tem profundidades que ser revelam a pouco, com uma leitura cuidadosa.

[Asmaa Essakouti]

couldn't read it till the end, but i looooooved the short story entitled "the mirror"