WALKING AWAY FROM THE HYPOCRISY OF MIDDLE-CLASS VALUES

Jorge Amado, The Double Death of Quincas Water-Bray, introduction by Rivka Galchen, translated from the Portuguese by Gregory Rabassa (New York: Penguin Books, 2008, 2012) ("It was the corpse of Quincas Water-Bray, drunkard, scoffer, and gambler, with no family or home, no flowers or prayers. It wasn't Joaquim Soares da Cunha, a proper civil servant at the State Bureau of Revenue, retired after twenty-five years of good and loyal service; a model husband whom everybody tipped his hat to and whose hand everybody shook. How could a man at the age of fifty abandon his family, his home, the habits of a lifetime, his circle of friends, to wander the streets, get drunk in cheap bars, frequent houses of prostitution, go about filthy and unshaven, live in a disgraceful hovel, sleep on a miserable cot? Vanda could find no valid explanation. [] It wasn't insanity, at least not insanity of the asylum kind--the doctors were unanimous in that. How could it be explained, then?" Id. at 14. From the backcover: "Here is the story of Joaquin Soares da Cunha, A Falstaff-like character who abandons his life of upstanding citizenship to assume the identity of Quincas Water-Bray, king of the Bagia lowlife and a 'champion  drunk.' After a decade of revelry among the bums, pimps, and prostitutes, he drops dead, and his prim family gathers for a proper burial. But when Quincas's unsavory friends show up with a bottle of rum, they whisk him along on a postmodern journey to enjoy one last party--his own wake.").