Peel me a Book
Let's Peel
The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
Not quite a memoir. Not quite a confession.
Perfect if you want to laugh at human nature — and then realise you are laughing at yourself.
Synopsis
“I died of pneumonia; but if I tell you that it was less the pneumonia than a grand and useful idea that caused my death, you may not believe me. And yet it is true. I shall set out the case for you briefly. Judge for yourself.”
Brás Cubas is dead, and therefore wonderfully free of the usual obligations of autobiography: modesty, reputation, consequence, even the need to be likeable.
From beyond the grave, he looks back on his life with exquisite self-importance, confessing to vanity while somehow continuing to admire himself for confessing it. He interrupts himself, addresses the reader, skips over events, invents philosophies and turns his own failures into entertainment.
The result is funny in the way the best satire is funny: the joke keeps moving until it lands somewhere uncomfortably close to the truth.
Mood:
sardonic · irreverent · absurd · philosophical
Tone:
elegant · mischievous · deadpan · merciless
It Feels Like
Body:
A raised eyebrow. A suppressed laugh.
Tempo:
Restless and unpredictable.
Texture:
Silky, ironic and slightly rotten underneath — like velvet draped over something already decomposing.
A Little Taste
“The fact is that one morning, while I was walking in the country house, an idea hung itself from the trapeze I had in my brain. Once suspended there, it began waving its arms, kicking its legs, performing the most daring acrobatics imaginable. I stood there contemplating it. Suddenly, it made a great leap, stretched out its arms and legs, and took the shape of an X: decipher me or I devour you.
This idea was nothing less than the invention of a sublime medicine, an anti-hypochondriacal plaster, intended to relieve our melancholy humanity.”
The Aftertaste
You laugh at the vanity of the living, then catch yourself in the mirror.
The book leaves a bitter little smile behind — elegant, absurd, and impossible to quite swallow.
Peel With a Drink
To be read with a very dry Negroni. Bitter, elegant and faintly hostile.
It gives the reading exactly the right sensation: sophistication with a sting underneath.
Sip it slowly while Brás Cubas explains his noble intentions, and let the bitterness arrive just after the laugh.
Peel With a Reel
Brazil (dir. Terry Gilliam, 1985) — Surreal, anarchic and cheerfully hostile to the machinery of respectable society.
The Death of Stalin (dir. Armando Iannucci, 2017) — A vicious political farce where power, fear and human vanity become almost unbearably funny.
Peel with a Beat
Peel me a Book
Or Try:
Percival Everett
If Brás Cubas makes you laugh at the vanity of being human, Everett asks what happens when the joke becomes a weapon.
Let's Peel
The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
Not quite a memoir. Not quite a confession.
Perfect if you want to laugh at human nature — and then realise you are laughing at yourself.
Synopsis
“I died of pneumonia; but if I tell you that it was less the pneumonia than a grand and useful idea that caused my death, you may not believe me. And yet it is true. I shall set out the case for you briefly. Judge for yourself.”
Brás Cubas is dead, and therefore wonderfully free of the usual obligations of autobiography: modesty, reputation, consequence, even the need to be likeable.
From beyond the grave, he looks back on his life with exquisite self-importance, confessing to vanity while somehow continuing to admire himself for confessing it. He interrupts himself, addresses the reader, skips over events, invents philosophies and turns his own failures into entertainment.
The result is funny in the way the best satire is funny: the joke keeps moving until it lands somewhere uncomfortably close to the truth.
Mood:
sardonic · irreverent · absurd · philosophical
Tone:
elegant · mischievous · deadpan · merciless
It Feels Like
Body:
A raised eyebrow. A suppressed laugh.
Tempo:
Restless and unpredictable.
Texture:
Silky, ironic and slightly rotten underneath — like velvet draped over something already decomposing.
A Little Taste
“The fact is that one morning, while I was walking in the country house, an idea hung itself from the trapeze I had in my brain. Once suspended there, it began waving its arms, kicking its legs, performing the most daring acrobatics imaginable. I stood there contemplating it. Suddenly, it made a great leap, stretched out its arms and legs, and took the shape of an X: decipher me or I devour you.
This idea was nothing less than the invention of a sublime medicine, an anti-hypochondriacal plaster, intended to relieve our melancholy humanity.”
The Aftertaste
You laugh at the vanity of the living, then catch yourself in the mirror.
The book leaves a bitter little smile behind — elegant, absurd, and impossible to quite swallow.
Peel With a Drink
To be read with a very dry Negroni. Bitter, elegant and faintly hostile.
It gives the reading exactly the right sensation: sophistication with a sting underneath.
Sip it slowly while Brás Cubas explains his noble intentions, and let the bitterness arrive just after the laugh.
Peel With a Reel
Brazil (dir. Terry Gilliam, 1985) — Surreal, anarchic and cheerfully hostile to the machinery of respectable society.
The Death of Stalin (dir. Armando Iannucci, 2017) — A vicious political farce where power, fear and human vanity become almost unbearably funny.