Machado, Antônio de 1901–1935

(Antônio Castilho de Alcântara Machado)

PERSONAL: Born March 25, 1901, in São Paulo, Brazil; died April 14, 1935, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Education: Graduated from São Paulo Law School, 1923.

CAREER: Writer and journalist. Theater critic; editor-in-chief of Jornal do Commercio. Federal deputy for Constitutionalist Party.

WRITINGS:

Pathé-Baby (travel), 1926, reprinted, Civilização Brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), 1983.

Brás, Bexiga e Barra Funda (stories), 1927, reprinted, Nova Alexandria (São Paulo, Brazil), 1995.

Laranja da China (stories), 1928, reprinted, Obras (São Paulo, Brazil), 1982.

Mana Maria, (stories and an unfinished novel), 1936, reprinted, Nova Alexandria (São Paulo, Brazil), 2001.

Cavaquinho, e Saxafone (solos) 1926–1935 (newspaper articles), J. Olympio (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), 1940.

Novelas paulistanas, University of São Paulo Press (São Paulo, Brazil), 1988.

Pressão afetiva & aquecimento intelectual: cartas de Antônio de Alcântara Machado a Prudente de Moraes (correspondence), introduction and notes by Cecília de Lara, Lemos (São Paulo, Brazil), 1997.

Intelectuais na encruzilhada: correspondência de Alceu Amoroso Lima e Antônio de Alcântara Machado, 1927–1933 (correspondence), Academia Brasileira de Letras (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), 2001.

Editor and writer for reviews, including Terra Roxa e Outras Terras and Revista de Antropofaqia.

SIDELIGHTS: Brazilian writer and journalist Antônio de Machado graduated from law school but did not pursue that vocation. His family's situation was such that he was able to travel extensively, and his first book, Pathé-Baby, documents his trips to Europe. His second book, Brás, Bexiga e Barra Funda, in which he employs slang and colloquial language, is a collection of stories about three poor neighborhoods in São Paulo. Maria Angélica Guimarães Lopes noted in the Dictionary of Brazilian Literature that this collection is "considered by some critics [to be] the most significant work of early modernist fiction." Machado himself called the book "a journal. Nothing more."

Machado's Laranja da China is a collection of stories, the style of which "is dry, clear and humorous," commented a writer in The Penguin Companion to American Literature. Machado died young, and a number of volumes have been published posthumously that contain his newspaper columns, stories, an unfinished novel, and correspondence.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Bradbury, Malcolm, Eric Mottram, and Jean Franco, editors, The Penguin Companion to American Literature, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1971, pp. 288-289.

Stern, Irwin, editor-in-chief, Dictionary of Brazilian Literature, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1988, pp. 188-189.