One of the greatest Brazilian novels, today little read: Dom Casmurro

The novel Dom Casmurro, by the Brazilian writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (aka Machado) was at one time among the greatest novels of the 20th century - It was published in the year 1900! - but is now largely unknown outside of Brazil. Machado arose in the news recently as some literary historians looking into his background have determined that he was in part of African descent, making him one of the great African-American writers, a century or so after his death. I picked up a copy of Dom Casmurro (the title is the moniker of the narrator, a Brazilian writer living outside of Rio, and it means something like "Lazybones") and in the first going it seems to be a witty and formally inventive novel that obviously deserved and deserves a wider readership. The novel of about 200 pp is told in brief segments - about 150 of them - each of a page or so in length; the segments advance the narrative in the manner of traditional or conventional narration - introduction of the narrator, his family background, a key event in childhood, each told in a separate mini-chapter (maybe little like the novels Mr. and Mrs. Bridge) - but the mood is distinctly "Mediterranean," reminding me a lot of The Leopard and Confessions of Zeno, which is great company and which I hope the narration can sustain. The key dramatic element in the first sections is that narrator (who is now a recognized writer in late middle age) looks back on a turning point in his youth; his mother raised him with a pledge to God that he would become a priest; all seems OK except that his childhood friendship w/ the "girl next door" seems to be developing into a romance. Their play is youthful and innocent, but neighbors and others have begun talking - is this any way for a priest-to-be to behave. The mother gets word of this gossip and tells son - who's about 15 years old - that he's destined for the priesthood; this leads him to declare his love for the girl-next-door, and we'll see about the consequences. Thus far, though, Machado does a fine job in introducing the eccentric characters in this Rio family and setting up some dramatic tension.