John's Notebooks

A collection of thoughts, poems and notes by Aníbal Machado.

Aníbal Machado was a frontier writer. He wrote short stories, essays, and prose poems, translated Kafka, wrote film scripts, and was a visual arts critic. He never seemed satisfied. A summary of his guiding concerns can be found in these "Cadernos de João" (João's Notebooks) , a collection of notes, poems, and thoughts that paint a magnificent inner portrait of him.

He published Cadernos de João in 1957. The volume was composed of two works previously published in small print runs, aimed at bibliophiles: ABC das Catradas (ABC of Catastrophes) and Topografia da Insônia (Topography of Insomnia) (1951) and Poemas em Prosa (Poems in Prose) (1955). To be included in the new book, both were revised and expanded, which also meant the inclusion of a number of previously unpublished fragments. Excluding some of the previous texts, Cadernos de João is a book of reflections on a variety of topics, among which philosophy stands out, indicating Aníbal's extensive culture and his ability to think accurately and clearly about essential questions of the world and existence.