Original text - English - Realism from Brazil

However attempts to adapt the European Realist novel to Latin America were,at best, marginally succesful. Balzacian tales of young men struggling to rise in society made little sense in hierarchical Latin America. Machado was one of the few writers who could have told such a tale ; but to do so would have been to refute the tenets of positivism by unmasking his racial and class origin.

A CHAPTER OF HATS AND OTHER STORIES