Cataloguing 40 of at least 60 masterpieces of world literature by Machado de Assis

More of a catalogue than real writing, that is what I will do today.

I mocked (gently, gently) the editor of the Oxford Anthology of the Brazilian Short Story for his amusingly precise insistence, borrowed from another critic, that “at least sixty [of Machado’s stories] are masterpieces  of world literature” (38).  What amuses me, aside from the vague pedantry, is wondering what the rest of the list would look like.  Chekhov wrote at least 100 masterpieces of world literature; Hemingway wrote at least 40 MoWL; Flannery O’Connor did not write many stories, but at least 20 are MoWL.  I am just guessing at the numbers.  An odd exercise.  Suddenly the world is overflowing with masterpieces.

Not that the general point is wrong.  I have now tracked down all of the short Machado that I can find in English, forty stories if I am counting correctly, almost all from the post-1880 Phase II of Machado’s career, written alongside his five great novels.  It seems like a shame and a mistake that, just to pick a prominent example, the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction does not have a Machado story.  Note to Norton: “Father versus Mother” is the one you want.

Machado’s stories have been translated and collected in three books:

The Psychiatrist and Other Stories, tr. William Grossman and others, University of California Press, 1963.

The Devil’s Church and Other Stories, tr. Jack Schmitt and Lorie Ishimatsu, University of Texas Press, 1977.

A Chapter of Hats and Other Stories, tr. John Gledson, Bloomsbury, 2008.

The Oxford Anthology of the Brazilian Short Story has three that do not appear in the above, and Words without Borders has two fine Clifford Landers translations online, one of which is the only English version.  I think.  Let me know if I am wrong about any of this.

The three collections are all strong.  The degree of overlap is high and irritating, yet all three books have a number of excellent stories found nowhere else.  The Devil’s Church is an unusually ugly book, with an odd font and pointless clip-art illustrations, but the stories are first-rate.  The title story of The Psychiatrist, more of a mini-novel than a short story, is enough to recommend that collection, but A Chapter of Hats has the most stories, also a recommendation.

I would not be surprised if all sixty MoWL would fit in a single 400 page book, but such a book does not exist.  During Machado’s lifetime these stories were published in five short collections.  A set of translations of those five books is a pleasant thing to imagine, and would be even more pleasant to own.

Machado’s short fiction is surprising in how much it is unlike the novels.  The author’s puzzle-solving and digressive how-fiction-works tomfoolery are reserved for the novels.  The short stories are focused and more directly purposeful.  While the novels are always about the Rio de Janeiro upper class, the stories explore every corner of the city.

I think I will spend the next couple of days looking at a few of them, not to worry about their status as MoWL, but just to enjoy what I found in them.