The visible hand of invisible publisher: the editing paradigm in Machado de Assis' short fiction

Author(s)

Guilherme de Souza Lopes

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
• Defense date: 2023-03-27

Examining board members

Lucia Granja; Hélio de Seixas Guimarães; Eduardo Sterzi

• Advisor: Lucia Granja

Abstract

Historiographic studies carried out by the Machadian critical tradition describe Machado de Assis's proximity to the editorial processes concerning the various stages of book production. This interest, present throughout his career, takes on new contours from the investigations of Granja (2020), who highlights the symbolic status transformations achieved by Machado during his professional relationship with Baptiste-Louis Garnier, officially known as the editor of his productions, while the author progressively gained control over his own work, allowing him to make consequential editorial decisions to consolidate his literary project. This background story, invisible behind the apparent clarity of official contracts between editor and author, can be thought of in conjunction with Machado's other formative experiences as a man of letters formed by the newspapers of the 19th century and as a public servant, since the world of newspapers and ministerial documents are printed products that, despite their distinct production contexts, sometimes contain violent editing devices that produce fictions of legibility and naturalization about reality. Starting from this broad set of experiences that form Machado's unique perspective as an author attentive to the invisible interdictions behind the apparent stability of edited paper, and taking into account the incidental presence of the materiality of the book as a support requested within his narrative (Baptista, 2003), we investigate how the fictionalized editorial instance can be present in Machado's short stories, figured in the image of the editor or transformed into a compositional procedure on his narrative. From these investigations, we recognize the dialectical tension corresponding to the image of the editor, or, more broadly, of the editing instance as a symbolic position that historically combines, on the one hand, the capacity for control and conditioning over the printed material, as well as, on the other hand, the productive potential of assembly and recreation, enabling the textual product to open up renewed readings and versions of itself. Thus, the short stories chosen for analysis articulate, in the image of the book, in its material and metaphorical sense - as closure and order sustained by the artifices of editing - and, more broadly, in the very image of edited paper, either the mechanisms of control and coercion exposed behind its production, or the compositional possibility of versioning and assembly, which contributes to thinking about renewed possibilities of reading Machado's work that take into account the sometimes phantasmagorical figuration of technique as a presence that imaginatively constitutes his fiction and to which his fiction also responds (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 21/00642-9 - The visible hand of the invisible publisher: fictionalization of the book edition by Machado de Assis' narrative
• Grantee: Guilherme de Souza Lopes
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master