Epitaph of a Small Winner by Machado de Assis (1881)

After his death, a wealthy Brazilian relates his life story.

Classics Review: Epitaph of a Small Winner embodies Socrates' statement, "the unexamined life is not worth living." The great Brazilian writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908) wrote at the time of Henry James and Emile Zola. Born in poverty, grandson of freed slaves, largely self-educated. Translated from the Portuguese the literal title of the novel is The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, but the English title makes perfect sense after completing the last page. It seems like the product of a Twentieth Century author who just happened to be writing in the bad days of the Nineteenth Century, and it's a "posthumous" novel in that it was written after the narrator has died. Constructed in 160 short, numbered chapters (my favorite is #31, "The Black Butterfly"), a wealthy and erudite dilettante who now has extensive time to ponder, recounts his life focusing on the romance of his loves, but also relating elements of philosophy and his learned observations about society, politics, and how to live. The story begins with his death: "In death, what a difference! what relief! what freedom!" Is the narrator a ghost? He doesn't have time to tell us although he engages in a constant dialog with the reader: "The great defect of this book is you, reader." Bras Cubas describes his book himself: the story and style meander "like a pair of drunks: they stagger to the right and to the left, they start and they stop, they mutter, they roar, they guffaw, they threaten the sky, they slip and fall ... ." He provides an accurate description. The narrator is humorous, cynical, pessimistic, but not hopeless. He recounts his small successes, illusions, and failures. For many who dwell on the brighter side of life Epitaph of a Small Winner will be too dark, though he notes the reader "would not have taken refuge in this book if he had not wished to escape the realistic and the commonplace." This is a novel for readers who are more skeptical, doubtful, sometimes disenchanted. One for those who think too much. As the narrator says, his reader may "have a profound and perspicacious mind (and I strongly suspect you will not deny this)." One chapter concludes with: "This is the great advantage in being dead, that if you have no mouth with which to laugh, neither have you eyes with which to cry." Even in such a short work there is so much on which to feast; upon finishing Epitaph of a Small Winner the book cries out to be read again. Preferably in a wholly different setting than you read it the first time.  [5★]