Dom Casmurro 1.32 · 1.32

The chapter ends on a perfect Machadian aphorism, dry as a bone: 'Ha livros que apenas terão isso dos seus autores; alguns nem tanto' — there are books that will owe their authors only that much (a title), and some not even that. It is a joke about literature that widens, in its last three words, into a small abyss. First the barb: many a book contributes to its author no more than a title's worth of real invention — a mordant swipe at empty, derivative writing. Then the twist, 'alguns nem tanto', some not even that — books so thin that their authors gave them less than a title, less than nothing. Coming from Machado de Assis, one of the most original minds the language ever produced, the self-deprecation is pure performance; he is the last writer alive who owes his books merely a title. And that is the final note the chapter chooses: the great ironist bowing, mock-humble, pretending his masterpiece might be one of these near-empty volumes — daring us, from the first page, to underestimate a narrator and an author who are both far, far more in control than they let on. The trifling anecdote of a nickname has, without seeming to try, taught us how to read everything that follows: lightly on the surface, and never, ever at face value.

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