About halfway through the Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by the Brazilian writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, the eponymous narrator complains, “the main problem with this book is you, the reader.” His style of narration, he suspects, has exasperated even those who have made it this far:
You’re in a hurry to get old, and the book progresses slowly; you love direct, sustained narrative, a regular, fluid style, whereas this book and my style are like a pair of drunkards: they stagger left and right, start and stop, mumble, yell, roar with laughter, shake their fists at the heavens, then stumble and fall…
Brás himself is in no hurry; he’s composing the book from beyond the grave—“not so much a writer who has died, as a dead man who has decided to write.”
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