![]() ![]() ![]() We were living in Tijuca, where part of Brás Cubas takes place, and around the city it was still possible to encounter vestiges and remnants of the world in which Machado de Assis lived: buildings, figures of speech, certain Rio types one would meet on the street, landscapes, social customs. ![]() When we moved to Rio in 1977, I had another go. I was fascinated, even if I did not fully understand everything I was reading. But a hilariously mordant throwaway sentence like “Marcela loved me for fifteen months and eleven thousand milreis” didn’t need contextualization, and there were many, many moments like that as I plunged my way deeper into the book. To be honest, many of the specific cultural and historical references went over my head. ![]() Initially I was shocked by the narrator’s blasé attitude about death, but soon began to relish the book’s irreverent, picaresque tone. I already spoke Spanish and she had begun teaching me Portuguese, so when I saw the reference to “posthumous memoirs” in one of the titles on her shelf, I was naturally bewildered and intrigued, and I pulled out the book and began to read. I had begun dating the woman who would marry me three years later, a linguistics student from Rio de Janeiro, and when I visited her dorm room I would of course leaf through her record collection and library. I first stumbled upon The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas early in 1970, during my junior year in college. ![]()
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