After a Century, a Literary Reputation Finally Blooms
By Larry Rohter. SEPT. 12, 2008
When the novelist Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis died 100 years ago this month, his passing went little noticed outside his native Brazil. But in recent years he has been transformed from a fringe figure in the English-speaking world into a literary favorite and trendsetter, promoted by much more acclaimed writers and by critics as an unjustly neglected genius.
Susan Sontag, an early and ardent admirer, once called him “the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America”, surpassing even Borges. In his 2002 book “Genius”, the critic Harold Bloom went even further, saying that Machado was “the supreme black literary artist to date”.
All of that makes for a change of fortune that Machado, with his exquisite sense of the improbable, would surely have appreciated. After all, his most celebrated novel, “The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas”, purports to be the autobiography of a decadent aristocrat reflecting on his life’s disappointments and failures from beyond the grave.
(Adapted from: http://www.nytimes.com)
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