Epitaph of a Small Winner: A Novel [Paperback]

Machado De Assis (Author), William L. Grossman (Translator), Susan Sontag (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1990

“I am a deceased writer not in the sense of one who has written and is now deceased, but in the sense of one who had died and is now writing.” So begins the posthumous memoir of Braz Cubas, a wealthy nineteenth-century Brazilian. Though the grave has given Cubas the distance to examine his rather undistinguished life, it has not dampened his sense of humor. In the tradition of Laurence Stern’s Tristram Shamdy, Epitaph of a Small Winner is one of the wittiest self-portraits in literary history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Epitaph of a Small Winner is probably one of those thrillingly original, radically skeptical books that will always impress readers with the force of private discovery."--From the foreword by Susan Sontag

"Machado de Assis was a literary force, transcending nationality and language, comparable certainly to Flaubert, Hardy, or James...Epitaph of a Small Winner is clearly one of those books which we call definitive. It is there, complete, done: a study of ironic disillusionment couched in the most delicate suavity of despair..."--The New York Times Book Review

"No satirist, not even Swift, is less merciful in his exposure of the pretentiousness and the hypocrisy that lurk in the average good man and woman. Machado, in his deceptively amiable way, is terrifying."--The New Republic

"A masterpiece of Epicurean irony."--The New York Times

About the Author

Machado de Assis was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1839 and died in 1908. The author of numerous novels, including Dom Casmurro and Philosopher or Dog?, he is one of Latin America's greatest writers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 236 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (August 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374521921
• ISBN-13: 978-0374521929
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #994,367 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great book! But make sure you avoid this edition., April 26, 2000

By 

Greg (Midwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Epitaph of a Small Winner: A Novel (Paperback)

"Epitaph of a Small Winner" is NOT the title of this book. The original title, "Memorias Posthumas de Bras Cubas," can only be accurately translated as "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas." Why did they give this edition of the book such a weird title? I don't know--probably for the same reason that they didn't translate it well! I read this translation of the book, because the foreward by Susan Sontag led me to believe it would be the best. But though it wasn't awful, it was sufficiently awkward that I had to force my way through it. Granted, I enjoyed the book, because Machado de Assis is a superb master of comic narrative, inverting into parody just about every literary convention of his nineteenth century. But think how much MORE I would have enjoyed it if I had known that there was another translation of the book, which, far from awkward, was masterful and elegant, by the acclaimed translator Gregory Rabassa (of One Hundred Years of Solitude fame). Also to its credit, that other translation correctly renders the title as "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas." So don't make the mistake I made: don't waste your time with any other editions, like the lame-ass one on this page. (I make due apologies to Susan Sontag.) Move your buns over to the page for "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas." And relax! Machado de Assis was an ingenious author, prefiguring such diverse talents as Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Franz Kafka, John Barth, and even Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. If you like them, you're going to like him.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Lifelong Wastrel Kicks a Goal at Last", December 30, 2000

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Epitaph of a Small Winner: A Novel (Paperback)

Brazil has produced a number of wonderful novels. I can name "Rebellion in the Backlands" by Euclides da Cunha, "The Devil to Pay in the Backlands" by João Guimaraes Rosa, "The Tent of Miracles" and "Gabriela; Clove and Cinnamon" by Jorge Amado, and "The Three Marias" by Rachel de Queiroz, but these are only a few. You have to add to this list at least a couple novels by J. M. Machado de Assis, Brazil's greatest writer of the 19th century, (he died in 1908) and one of the greatest writing anywhere at that time. EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER would be on that list for sure. I can hear you say, "Can you really compare this fellow to writers like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Balzac, Zola, Melville, Austen, or Eliot ?" My answer would be "yes" and "no". That's because I like definite answers. Sorry, just kidding. I would say "no" because Machado de Assis doesn't write like any of the others. His style is unique and his choice of perspective also. He is the opposite of a realist. He never hits you over the head with any serious descriptive narrative. His characters speak throughout. So, how could you compare him effectively with the others ? But, I would say "yes" because he is a master of subtle story telling, of wit, satire, and irony. This novel, like his others, does not resemble any other work. He is certainly among the greats.

Braz Cubas, the narrator of the novel, is already dead when we meet him. So he has plenty of time to tell about his life. As he notes, "death does not age one"; he can afford to ramble a bit. What we receive, through his life story, is a satirized view of the indolence and lack of intellectual rigor of the Brazilian upper class of the time. We read the life of a man who did nothing at all in 64 years. Or almost nothing. He didn't study, he didn't work, he didn't marry, and he didn't have any direction. He became a parliamentary deputy through connections and did absolutely nothing while there. He enjoyed the physical pleasures of life, he envied others, he had ambitions that he did next to nothing to fulfill. He failed at nearly everything, then at last he croaked. The reason why he feels (from beyond the grave) that he wasn't such a loser after all is the author's final bit of irony. Machado de Assis employs his usual style---160 short chapters in 223 pages---with the title of each chapter used to spice up the progress of the novel, which in turn is full of irony, with, whimsy, and very clever writing, full of ingenious metaphors. You cannot say that this is a "page turner" in any conventional sense. It is rather philosophical, but as the author says, "a philosophy wanting in uniformity, now austere, now playful...." To quote from chapter 124, which is all of 9 lines long---"To hop from a character study to an epitaph may be realistic and even commonplace, but the reader probably would not have taken refuge in this book if he had not wished to escape the realistic and the commonplace." That is my recommendation to you. Escape both the realistic and the commonplace and read this book. You won't regret it.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb evocation of cosmic comedy, December 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Epitaph of a Small Winner: A Novel (Paperback)

Machado de Assis has written a book for cynics everywhere--the narrator comically and gleefully smashes virtually every sacred cow you can think of, even mocking his own incipent death. The effect is not one of tragedy, however, but liberation through comedy--one of the funniest books I've ever read, universal in its appeal.