Juan Carlos Onetti, Manuel Puig and Luisa Valenzuela: Marginality and Gender (Monografias A)

Mono219-Prelims.qxd

9/22/05

12:01 PM

Page i

Colección Támesis SERIE A: MONOGRAFÍAS, 219

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI, MANUEL PUIG AND LUISA VALENZUELA MARGINALITY AND GENDER Onetti, Puig and Valenzuela, although less internationally recognised than Borges, García Márquez or Vargas Llosa, are equally intellectually challenging, and their work adds much to the breadth and depth of twentieth-century Latin American literature. This book starts with Onetti’s first novella, the intricate, fragmented El pozo, and finishes with Valenzuela’s Cola de lagartija, a strange, quasibaroque work of dark humour and powerful political overtones. It has separate sections on each of the three writers, which balance close readings of selected passages with tightly woven theoretical analysis. The fact that this set of texts is from a specific time and place, the Cono Sur from 1939 to 1983, gives the work intellectual coherence; and it is methodologically consistent in its use of a set of co-ordinates from, amongst other sources, psychoanalytic and feminist theory, from Lacan, Irigaray and Kristeva, which are integrated into the vision of the novels as they are analysed. Onetti, Puig and Valenzuela are seldom viewed together, but Craig argues that their common geography and history are crucial, and that these particular writers share and explore in their work a post-colonial emptiness, a constant questioning of realism and a love of tango. LINDA CRAIG is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of East London.

Mono219-Prelims.qxd

9/22/05

12:01 PM

Page ii

Mono219-Prelims.qxd

9/22/05

12:01 PM

Page iii

LINDA CRAIG

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI, MANUEL PUIG AND LUISA VALENZUELA MARGINALITY AND GENDER

TAMESIS

Mono219-Prelims.qxd

9/22/05

12:01 PM

Page iv

© Linda Craig 2005 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Linda Craig to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2005 by Tamesis, Woodbridge ISBN 1 85566 119 5

Tamesis is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by Athenaeum Press Ltd, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear

Mono219-Prelims.qxd

9/22/05

12:01 PM

Page v

CONTENTS Introduction

1

Part I: Juan Carlos Onetti 1. El pozo 2. Juntacadáveres 3. El Astillero

7 27 46

Part II: Manuel Puig 4. La traición de Rita Hayworth 5. Boquitas pintadas

69 89

Part III: Luisa Valenzuela 6. Hay que sonreír 7. El gato eficaz 8. Cola de lagartija

109 130 147

Conclusion

166

Works Cited Index

176 183

Mono219-Prelims.qxd

9/22/05

12:01 PM

Page vi

In memory of my parents William Ewing and Ellen Craig

Mono219-Intro.qxd

9/22/05

9:05 AM

Page 1

INTRODUCTION Does it seem misguided to you to believe that if women had helped to think ‘thought’ over the last two thousand years, the life of thought would be different today? Virginia Woolf, Cassandra

The idea of borderlines, of existences lived on the margins, informs this work throughout and in many different ways. The borders might be geographical, imaginary, psychological or based on issues around gender, they take many forms, but they are crucial to the thinking involved; and I believe that the first of these ideas, geography, is implicated in all of them. The three writers whose work is analysed here are from the River Plate region in the southern cone of South America. Juan Carlos Onetti (1909–1994) is from Uruguay and Manuel Puig (1932–90) and Luisa Valenzuela (b. 1937) are from Argentina. Both of these countries have largely, though not wholly, European populations. People who are, and at the same time are not, European, and it is these populations that are central to the works of all of the writers. This idea of being and not being is in itself a kind of metaphorical marginality, and indeed writers from this region, by virtue of this position, enjoy a particularly privileged view of Western society, in which they act as both participants and outsiders. Borges captures this idea in an essay called ‘El escritor argentino y la tradición’1 [The Argentine writer and tradition], where he compares the situation of the Argentine writer with that of Jewish thinkers in Western culture who: ‘actúan dentro de esa cultura y al mismo tiempo no se sienten atados a ella por una devoción especial’ (p. 160) [act within that culture and at the same time do not feel tied to it with any particular devotion]. He goes on to say: ‘Creo que los argentinos, los sudamericanos en general, estamos en una situación análoga; podemos manejar todos los temas europeos, manejarlos sin superstición, con una irreverencia que puede tener, y ya tiene, consecuencias afortunadas’ (p. 161) [I believe that Argentines, in fact South Americans in general, are in an analogous position; we can use all of the European motifs, use them without superstition, with an irreverence which can have and indeed has had fortunate consequences]. While Borges expands this idea to include the entire subcontinent of South America, I believe that the particular history of Argentina and Uruguay, referred 1

This essay can be found in a collection of essays by Borges under the title of Discusión, 1964, 151–62.

Mono219-Intro.qxd

2

9/22/05

9:05 AM

Page 2

LINDA CRAIG

to above, which involved massive waves of immigration from Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, leaves these countries in a very specific situation vis-à-vis European and indeed Western culture in general. For while countries like Peru or Mexico have a rich pre-Colombian history and culture on which to draw, with alternative symbols and visions of the world, very little is known of the world around the River Plate region before the arrival of the Spaniards. It is in a sense, therefore, even more than other areas of the subcontinent, at one remove from any cohesive cultural traditions. For these reasons, a feeling of a lack of history, of rootlessness, and even of not really belonging, is almost endemic to the region. The resulting vision of the world is particularly fruitful in that much that is taken for granted and therefore virtually hidden in Western culture is actually being explored and questioned in this society. It is well known that the novel, a recent form per se, is even more recent in Latin America. For the novel was forbidden in the Spanish colonies by the Inquisition, considered to be dangerous both morally and politically. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a considerable time after independence from Spain, some important works of this genre began to appear, but these were largely centred on rural themes, and Onetti, following in the footsteps of one of the writers he most admired, the Argentine, Roberto Arlt, was to be one of the earliest writers from the region to explore a more urban environment and sensibility. Yet while it is true that the first of his novels to be looked at here, El pozo, might well be set in Buenos Aires or Montevideo, we are never told that Santa María, where the other two novels, Juntacadáveres and El astillero are depicted is in an imaginary, parochial town. This might well serve as a metaphor for these capitals,2 marginalised from the metropolis, but Santa María is also a place that brings into question previously held images of vast open spaces and narratives of heroism. Onetti is, without a doubt, one of the important novelists of the region and of the sub-continent; but he has never quite had the recognition abroad that his fluid, intricate writing deserves. There may be a number of reasons for this lack of recognition; certainly Onetti paints in shades of grey rather than in the exuberant colours that Europeans and North Americans often expect from Latin American writing, but another reason might be the blatant misogyny to be found in his work. My view is that Onetti is not really very different from other writers in that he is a product of a culture that, as with all of occidental culture, and indeed many other cultures, values the masculine at the expense of the feminine, and that his novels provide an interesting insight into these very values. The other issue explored here, alongside that of marginality, will be that of gender. This work gave me a welcome opportunity to look at language as gendered, and to attempt to decipher some of the codes that result from the observation made by Virginia Woolf, and quoted above, that up to more recent times, ‘thought’ has been the domain of the male of the species.

2

The full name of Buenos Aires is in fact Santa María de los Buenos Aires.

Mono219-Intro.qxd

9/22/05

9:05 AM

Page 3

INTRODUCTION

3

I shall therefore explore different perceptions of what could broadly be described as gender relations, and look at the role of language, to see who is speaking and from where, to untie traditional thought patterns, and to question what is presented as ‘common sense’. Much feminist critical theory that has appeared over the past twenty years, which I shall draw on, has provided tools for just such work. Another body of theory to which I shall have recourse is that of psychoanalysis, and more specifically within this broad field, the work of Jacques Lacan. His introduction of language into the Freudian narrative of human development, which aligns the rules of language with the Oedipal construct, so that the acceptance of the Name-of-the-Father becomes our entry into society and into what he describes as the Symbolic Order, is extremely useful. It creates a developmental narrative which speaks to both marginality – because it inevitably creates a notion of ‘other’, that which is not included within it – and to gender, given the masculine slant of Freud’s Oedipal narrative and Lacan’s Symbolic. The two issues, marginality and gender, sometimes seem far apart, sometimes touch, and sometimes overlap. The three writers referred to are not only authors whose work I admire and love, but are also three of the novelists from this region whose work, taken as a whole, illuminates what to me seems to be the broadest possible spectrum of perceptions of these two issues. The middle section of this work looks at Puig’s first two novels, La traición de Rita Hayworth and Boquitas pintadas. These are largely set in a parochial, small town environment very different in many ways from Santa María, but echoing it in the depiction of narrow, constrained lives. Puig, a perceptive and innovative writer who was later to be nominated for the Nobel prize for literature,3 is quite open about the autobiographical basis, particularly of the first of these. He was brought up in a small town in the pampas and he depicts these people with a sympathy and indeed empathy, which is far from Onetti’s colder, more distant approach. Without wishing to project essentialising notions on to the author, it is well known that he was homosexual, and the difficulties of being homosexual in a traditional small town at that time and in that place were clearly great; the depictions of gender within his work are always interesting. Perhaps (echoing Borges’s earlier observation), being outside of the heterosexual dynamic, while inevitably living within it, gave him a perspective on straight relationships that he would not otherwise have had. Moreover his later, even better-known work, El beso de la mujer araña (1976), has an overtly gay character and this is often deemed to be a continuation of his first novel. Certainly his depictions of women are very different from Onetti’s as are his diverse images of masculinity. Valenzuela is a writer who has specifically addressed concerns around gender in her work. The three novels included in this study are actually very different from each other. The first is an early work in which the central protagonist is

3

Levine (2001) talks about this nomination in her illuminating biography of Puig.

Mono219-Intro.qxd

4

9/22/05

9:05 AM

Page 4

LINDA CRAIG

a prostitute. In the course of this, Clara’s story, the narrator shows empathy towards the character and in a sense rewrites Onetti’s negative and dehumanising depiction of the image of the prostitute.4 The other two novels are much more avant-garde and even radical. In a delirious, complex, tour de force, El gato eficaz, Valenzuela deconstructs language, gender and myths, questioning everything and pushing against the constraints of coherence. Cola de lagartija, another novel which involves much play and a dark humour is more directly political. Set in a later time, coinciding with the horrific events of the 1970s in Argentina, the novel is an attempt at finding an alternative, female voice with which to construct a discourse that questions the strident, dominant language of the military dictatorship. The three writers, therefore, offer perspectives of very different worlds within one world, and my endeavour is to use various readings of the notions of marginality and gender in order to attempt to open up these worlds in their work, by looking for threads that bring them together, and using them as a means of learning more about the time and place that they inhabited, and in the case of Valenzuela, still inhabit. Returning to Borges, I hope that this will shed light on the ways in which these authors present us with different ways of seeing the general through the specific. This book is based on my doctoral thesis, which I completed in the 1990s. It is partially revised, incorporating contemporary studies and theories and an up-to-date bibliography. I hope that it will prove useful to scholars working on these three illuminating and enormously talented writers.

4 See my article on this theme entitled ‘ “The cadaver raised its head and tried to smile”: The prostitute in Onetti’s Juntacadáveres and Luisa Valenzuela’s Hay que sonreír’ in San Román (ed.) (1999: 121–32).

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 5

Part I: Juan Carlos Onetti

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 6

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 7

1

El pozo (1939) What is to be found at the historical beginning of things is not the inviolable identity of their origin: it is the dissension of other things. It is disparity.1 (Michel Foucault)

Opening The historical beginning of El pozo2 is actually the earliest incident recounted from the protagonist’s life. It takes the form of a strange scene at a New Year’s party, in which he, bored with the festivities, tricks Ana María, a girl towards whom he feels a mixture of hatred and attraction, into going to the gardener’s shed with him. Once he has got her there, he attacks her. As in the above quotation from Foucault, the concept of an origin is not arrived at by means of peeling back layers in order to reveal an original essence. Rather what is manifested is an image of flux, of dissension, perhaps of a constant dialectic. Certainly, the incident referred to above raises many questions. The exact nature of the attack is never really clear, as a close look at the passage shows: La agarré del cuello y la tumbé. Encima suyo, fui haciendo girar las piernas, cubriéndola, hasta que no pudo moverse. Solamente el pecho, los grandes senos, se le movían desesperados de rabia y de cansancio. Los tomé, uno en cada mano, retorciéndolos. Pudo zafar un brazo y me clavó las uñas en la cara. Busqué entonces la caricia más humillante, la mas odiosa. Tuvo un salto y se quedó quieta en seguida, llorando con el cuerpo flojo. Yo adivinaba que estaba llorando sin hacer gestos. No tuve nunca, en ningún momento, la intencion de violarla; no tenía ningún deseo por ella. (1982:15) [I grabbed her by the neck and I threw her down. I got on top of her and twisted my legs right round her till she couldn’t move. Only her bosom, her big breasts,

1

Donald Bouchard (1977: 142). Juan Carlos Onetti El pozo (1982). Translation by Peter Bush The Pit (1991). Throughout this book, where I have quoted from the English translations, I have cited the relevant page numbers. Any translations without page numbers are my own. 2

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

8

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 8

LINDA CRAIG

moved in desperation, angry and exhausted. I took one in each hand and twisted them. She managed to get an arm loose and sunk her nails into my face. Then I went for the most humiliating, most hateful caress. She gave a little jump and immediately went quiet, crying with her limp body. I guessed she was crying but keeping still. I had never at any moment intended to rape her; I didn’t desire her]. (1991: 7)

The reader is left in some doubt as to what actually happened. It is nevertheless clear, and it becomes more so as the text advances, that this gesture, this ‘caricia más humillante,’ [‘most hateful caress’] in some way defiled Ana María in the eyes of the protagonist, Eladio Linacero. It is the climax of the scene, and it leads implicitly to Ana María’s death six months later, setting off Linacero’s capacity for fantasising, his creative process. In Los procesos de construcción del relato [The processes of the construction of the story], which contains a particularly perceptive reading of Onetti’s later novel La vida breve [A Brief Life], Josefina Ludmer (1977: 14) talks of the destructive quality of the naming process. As she says: ‘si el signo es “el asesinato de la cosa,” las primeras preguntas deben referirse a lo que se mata (niega) para poder nominar’ [if the sign is the ‘killer of the thing’, the first questions must address themselves to what is being killed (denied) in order to name]. La vida breve begins on the day in which the protagonist’s wife has a mastectomy; her left breast is removed. As Ludmer observes, this points to a loss, in fact, the sign (the text), appears in the site of destruction. A space has been created, and it could be deduced that the narrator/protagonist’s right hand has lost its original or primary purpose. A gap has appeared in what had previously been a closed system, and the right hand has now been released to write, to create. There are definite similarities between these two openings, both of which propose a concept of creation resulting from destruction. But the similarities go deeper, for in both cases what is destroyed is essentially female. It would seem that the writer must destroy female sexuality in order to wrest for himself the ability to create. Indeed such is the power of female procreativity that in El pozo, the female breast, symbol of procreation, is endowed with an autonomous consciousness: ‘los grandes senos, se le movían desesperados de rabia y de cansancio’ (1982: 15) [‘her big breasts moved in desperation, angry and exhausted’] (1991: 7). The narrator admits too that had Ana María run away, had she remained ‘unsullied’: ‘Yo tendría que quererla toda la vida’ (1982: 15) [‘I would have had to love her all my life’] (1991: 7). A sense of completeness, presumably comparable to that of the couple in La vida breve previous to the mastectomy, would not have been ruptured, and the destruction/creation process would not have been sparked off, the text would not have been written. There is a discernible parallel between this process and some Lacanian theory. Here I quote Terry Eagleton who has written a succinct chapter on psychoanalysis

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 9

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

9

in his useful critical work, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1977: 185): ‘In Lacanian theory, it is an original lost object – the mother’s body – which drives forward the narrative of our lives, impelling us to pursue substitutes for this lost paradise in the endless metonymic movement of desire.’ The origin, if such it might be called, of these Onettian narratives would seem to act out a repetition of this loss of the mother and of a rather traumatic entry into the Lacanian ‘Symbolic Order,’ the world of language. Given the difficult nature of relationships between the sexes in Onetti’s work, as exemplified by the circumstances described above, the paradigm of repetition seems to be of considerable importance. The fact that the novel’s historical beginning should be so contentious and so pointedly fixed on this theme will become more significant when we study the treatment of women throughout the novella, later in this chapter.

The Narrator El pozo could be described as a novella or a short novel, the Spanish language edition referred to here comprises sixty-one pages. It is made up of eighteen sections which are untitled and which differ in length from the shortest, a paragraph of ten lines, to the longest, of three and a half pages. The sections have gaps of varying lengths between them, and these seem to correspond to jumps in space and time and also to moments of silence. Thus the reader’s attention is immediately drawn to a play between words and silence in the creation of the text. Given that this is one of Onetti’s earliest works and that it contains many themes and devices which are to appear in the later, longer novels, which will be looked at in subsequent chapters; it would seem relevant too, at this point, to analyse some of the devices employed. A useful starting point for this is to look at the role played by the narrator in the story. The novella is related in the first person, giving an overtly subjective perspective. The tone employed is always colloquial, and strangely confidential as can be seen from the opening lines: Hace un rato me estaba paseando por el cuarto y se me ocurrió de golpe que lo veía por primera vez. Hay dos catres, sillas despatarradas y sin asiento, diarios tostados de sol, viejos de meses, clavados en la ventana en el lugar de los vidrios. Me paseaba con medio cuerpo desnudo, aburrido de estar tirado, desde mediodía, soplando el maldito calor que junta el techo y que ahora, siempre, en las tardes, derrama adentro de la pieza. Caminaba con las manos atrás, oyendo golpear las zapatillas en las baldosas, oliéndome alternativamente cada una de las axilas. Movía la cabeza de un lado a otro, aspirando, y esto me hacía crecer, yo lo sentía, una mueca de asco en la cara. La barbilla, sin afeitar, me rozaba los hombros. (1982: 9)

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

10

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 10

LINDA CRAIG

[Earlier on I was walking round the room and it suddenly occurred to me I was seeing it for the first time. There are two beds, bandy-legged chairs with no seats, month-old newspapers browned by the sun and nailed to the window in place of the panes of glass. I walked up and down half-naked, bored from being holed up there since midday, suffocated by the wretched heat coming through the ceiling and now spreading into every corner as it always does in the afternoon. I paced around, my hands behind me, listening to my slippers thud on the floor tiles, smelling each armpit in turn. I swayed my head from side to side as I breathed out, feeling a look of disgust cloud my face. My unshaven chin grazed my shoulders]. (1991: 3)

Thus the text starts with this idea of seeing his room as though for the first time. This sudden vision points to a new perception of his predicament, but it also immediately situates the narrator at the same level as his reader, both of whom are setting out as though from the same point; there is no question of the narrator presenting himself as being on a superior plane, or endowed with greater knowledge than his reader, who is then guided through a construction of this vision. A certain distance between the narrator and the external world can already be discerned from his reference to ‘the’ rather than ‘my’ room, although what he is describing is the room he lives in. The picture is one of squalor, with more significance attached to what is missing, ‘sin asiento’, [‘without a seat’], ‘en lugar de vidrios’ [‘in place of the panes of glass’] than to what is actually there. The second paragraph introduces the narrator–protagonist’s physical presence into the text. This technique of calling attention to his physical being is one which is very common in Onetti’s fiction. The image of a half-naked man is one that occurs again and again in the previously mentioned novel La vida breve. Here, in El pozo, the main purpose of the image would seem to be to draw attention to a feeling of disgust which his bodily smells arouse in the narrator. The last line, where he describes the sensation when his unshaven beard rubs his shoulder, makes this physical presence even stronger, for now the image has a tactile element. Linacero is on the eve of his fortieth birthday, a point in time which, for him, given his obsession with youth and his hatred of aging alluded to again and again in the text, could well correspond to his death. He proposes to look back over his life and write his memories: ‘Porque un hombre debe escribir la historia de su vida al llegar a los cuarenta años, sobre todo si le sucedieron cosas interesantes. Lo leí no sé dónde’ (1982: 10) [‘Because a man should write the story of his life when he gets to forty, especially if interesting things have happened to him. I read it somewhere or other.’] (1991: 4). In order to do this he makes use of a pile of political pamphlets found under the bed of his room mate, Lázaro. An interesting aspect of this lies in the narrator’s invitation to the reader to bear witness to the actual material construction of the text. Peter Turton (1983–1984: 76) addresses this facet of Onetti’s work in an article entitled

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 11

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

11

‘Las permutaciones de la desgracia o Esberg, en la costa de Juan Carlos Onetti’, [The permutations of misfortune or Esberg en la costa by JCO] where he says: Al igual que muchas narraciones onetianas se trata, al parecer, de reconstruir un pasado de manera a proporcionarle un sentido, con datos cuyo carácter conjetural incluso la voz narradora no consigue ocultar. Onetti nos entrega su texto no como vehículo de la Verdad sino como proceso de construcción . . . [As with many of Onetti’s stories it attempts, it seems, to reconstruct the past in such a way that it makes sense, with facts whose conjectural nature even the narrative voice cannot conceal. Onetti presents us with his text not as a vehicle of truth but rather as a process of construction . . .]

Here, of course, in the phrase ‘proceso de construcción,’ [process of construction], he is referring to the title of Josefina Ludmer’s book, emphasising the importance of this concept. In El pozo, this process is revealed to such an extent, therefore, that the narrator/protagonist talks of the very materials he uses, that is, the political pamphlets, and also, as we have seen, his reasons for writing in the first place. El pozo contains many devices which are characteristic of Realist texts, and it is interesting to see what function these devices fulfill. Thus the use of a date, 31 December, and the reference to the fact that the hearing for his divorce took place a year previously, help to situate the novel in time, and the line which reads: ‘Según la radio del restaurante, Italia movilizó medio millón de hombres hacia la frontera con Yugoslavia; parece que habrá guerra’ (1982: 25) [‘According to the radio in the restaurant, Italy had mobilized half a million men in the direction of the frontier with Yugoslavia; it looks like war.’] (1991: 10), corresponds precisely to an observation made by Roland Barthes in his famous work on Realism, S/Z (1975: 101), where he discusses the use of passing references to historical events or characters in a text: ‘It is precisely this minor importance which gives the historical character its exact weight of reality . . .’. Another classical Realist device which is used is that of constant contrasts between fantasy and reality. Here there are echoes of the founder of the modern novel, Cervantes’ Don Quixote. For perhaps the most famous incident of all from that novel is the passage where Don Quixote, with his head in the clouds as usual, mistakes windmills for giants. Thus when their ‘true’ windmill form is revealed, the reader is tricked into believing what is, in fact, simply another level of fiction. In a similar way in El pozo, the protagonist shifts between different levels of fiction, some of which are overtly unreal or fantastic, and others, either situated in his room, or else apparently based on events which actually happened, which would seem to anchor the text in a concrete here and now. All of these allusions to an external reality, to the idea of referentiality, would seem to give the narrator some kind of claim to a concrete reality. An aspect of the text which might convey overtones of a certain realism with a small ‘r,’ is the down-to-earth language already referred to. While it never jars – indeed Onetti’s texts in general have a particularly flowing quality – the language used is markedly non-literary. This is noticeable, for example, in the passages

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

12

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 12

LINDA CRAIG

where the narrator addresses the reader directly as can be seen in these lines: ‘Hay dos cosas que quiero aclarar, de una vez por todas. Desgraciadamente, es necesario. Primero, que si bien la aventura de la cabaña es erótica, acaso demasiado, es entre mil, nada más’ (1982: 27) [‘There are two things that I want to make clear, once and for all. Unfortunately, it’s necessary. First, that if the adventure in the log cabin is erotic, perhaps too much so, it’s only one among many.’] (1991: 11). The passage has the ring of spoken, rather than literary, language. However, despite these numerous techniques borrowed from the world of Realism, it would be erroneous to describe El pozo as a Realist text. First, because, as has been demonstrated above, it would fly in the face of what Catherine Belsey (1980: 51) claims to be one of the basic tenets of Realism: ‘. . . the term is useful in distinguishing between those forms which tend to efface their own textuality [. . .] and those who specifically draw attention to it. Realism offers itself as transparent.’ This text, with its constant references to the process of construction, far from being transparent, is thus constantly drawing attention to its textuality. The novel might be described quite simply as having a certain coherent surface structure, but any claim to Realism would be extremely tenuous. In fact Onetti could well be drawing the reader’s attention to the falsity of the idea that Realism might have any stable relationship to reality. By employing these techniques in a non-Realist novel, he highlights their status as mere devices. Onetti’s compatriot, the writer and critic, Mario Benedetti (1973: 33), writes of the atmosphere to be found in Onetti’s works in terms which emphasise their non-reality: Pese a que sus personajes no rehuyen la vulgaridad cotidiana, ni tampoco las muletillas del coloquialismo vernacular, por lo general se mueven (a veces podría decirse que flotan) en un plano que tiene algo de irreal, de alucinado, y en el que los datos verosímiles son poco más que débiles hilvanes. [Although his characters do not shrink from everyday vulgarity, nor the clichés of vernacular speech, generally they move (sometimes you might say they float) at a level which is somehow unreal, hallucinatory, at which the realistic information is little more than a vague thread].

The result of this interweaving of ficional planes, overt fantasies and of visual and tactile detail is indeed, as Benedetti observes, the creation of a world which has a certain dreamlike, or hallucinatory texture. There is a passage in El pozo in which Linacero talks of the near impossibility of any true communication, or rather, comprehension, since it becomes clear that he perceives his problem to be not that he does not understand others, but that they do not understand him. When Linacero recounts his fantasies, first to Ester, the prostitute, and then to Cordés, the poet, they are met with negative reactions. This reaction actually echoes that of Freud on art and its relationship to dream or day-dream, for, quoting Eagleton (1983: 179–80) again: Unlike other fantasists, however, the artist knows how to work over, shape and soften his own day-dreams in ways which make them acceptable to

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 13

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

13

others – for, envious egoists that we are, we tend in Freud’s opinion to find others’ day-dreams repulsive.

Linacero’s explanation for this is: ‘Lo malo es que el ensueño no trasciende, no se ha inventado la forma de expresarlo, el surrealismo es retórica.’ (1982: 31) [‘It’s unfortunate but the vision can’t be transcended, the way to express it hasn’t been invented, surrealism is rhetoric.’] (1991: 14). Here again the narrator is revealing the process of construction, for he is virtually informing the reader of his intention, since the reader, after the prostitute and the poet, becomes the next person to whom he recounts his tale. What remains for him is to address his stories to a passive audience that cannot answer back, and cannot express its repulsion. The narrator of El pozo has different levels of consciousness. First, the one referred to above, consciously recounting his dreams/fantasies, keeps an everpresent, watchful eye on the proceedings. There is no question of his losing himself in his dreams. Ximena Moreno Aliste (1973: 31) captures this state when she says: Pero no se trata de la misteriosa trama que nuestro cerebro teje durante el descanso, en las horas semiciegas de la noche, ni tiene como maestro al inconsciente. Es la actividad del estado de vigilia, en que el hombre, vivo aún, reconstruye los acontecimientos . . . [emphasis hers] [But it’s not about the mysterious plot that our brain weaves during its rest, in the half-blind hours of the night, neither is it mastered by the unconscious. It is the activity of a state of watchfulness, in which man (sic), still aware, reconstructs events].

The reader is aware therefore of the constant vigilance of this narrator, who appears to maintain firm control on the text. And the autobiographical, firstperson nature of the novel makes this constant presence even more apparent. Presumably for this reason, the dreams referred to and described are always subject to the laws of coherence. There can be found, however, some traces of a second narrator, one who appears to address the reader at a level other than that of the first person. There are glimpses of this narrator in moments which reveal Linacero’s fallibility. Two examples of this should suffice to pinpoint its existence throughout the text. One can be found in a passage where Linacero talks about writing the story of the log cabin. He adresses the reader saying: ‘Otra advertencia: no sé si cabaña y choza son sinónimos; no tengo diccionario y mucho menos a quien preguntar. Como quiero evitar un estilo pobre, voy a emplear las dos palabras, alternándolas.’ (1982: 19) [‘Something else to ponder over: I’m not sure whether cabin and hut are synonymous; I haven’t got a dictionary and still less anyone to ask. Since I want to avoid an impoverished style, I shall use both words alternately.’] (1991: 8). But having taken this decision, the narrator does not follow it through, from this point onwards he ceases to use the word ‘choza [hut]’, while he uses

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

9/22/05

14

8:59 AM

Page 14

LINDA CRAIG

‘cabaña [cabin]’ on numerous occasions. His control over language, therefore, is not as great as he believes it to be. Another indication of this phenomenon appears in a later passage where Linacero refers to the failure of his attempts at communication: ‘Estoy cansado; pasé la noche escribiendo y ya debe ser muy tarde. Cordés, Ester y todo el mundo, mene frego’ (1982: 59) [‘I’m tired; I was writing all night and it must be morning now. Cordés, Esther and everybody, they can go to hell’] (1991: 27). In the first of these examples, the very unconciousness on Linacero’s part of his lack of control over words points to this idea that there is a level of conciousness within the text which communicates with the reader on a plane beyond the first person narrator’s reach. In the second, the falsity of the statement is palpable. Linacero has dedicated a large part of his memoirs to these events, and the reader has been led again and again to the impression that they are of enormous importance to him. What is more, the use of the Italian expression in the original, mene frego, of the foreign language, does seem to indicate that he might be hiding something or covering something up, it actually seems that he is on the brink of realising the gap between what he is saying here and the general impression that he is conveying in the rest of the text. Nevertheless, while he does not bridge the gap, the reader does. Again what has been established is a line of communication between the reader and the text which does not involve the speaking narrator. Quite how to describe this narrator is none too easy; while the label of omniscient absent narrator might seem apt, the different levels of uncertainty which are interwoven in the text would seem to belie the possibility of any such omniscience, especially in a voice about which so little is known. A psychoanalytical reading might suggest that it could might be seen as a manifestation of the ‘other’, a voice which could relate to Linacero’s subconcious, or to a subsumed acceptance of the rules and repressions of society. But no matter how it is defined, it is clear that in some parts of the text, the enunciation originates from a position which does not correspond to that of the overt first-person narrator. This narrator, apparently in control, but ultimately less powerful than he supposes, symbolises a feeling of marginality and of powerlessness that pervades the text.

Alienation Towards the beginning of the novel, the narrator confesses: ‘Me gustaría escribir la historia de un alma, de ella sola, sin los sucesos en que tuvo que mezclarse, queriendo o no’ (1982: 11) [‘I should like to write the story of a soul, all alone, without any of the events it had to get mixed up in whether it wanted to or not’] (1991: 4–5). This insistence on the idea that a person could live in a vacuum, completely cut off from fellow human beings, is indicative of a strong feeling of alienation which he nurses throughout the text. Comparisons have been drawn by many critics between El pozo and Sartre’s La Nausée and for good reason. Both Linacero and Sartre’s first-person

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 15

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

15

protagonist, Roquentin, take it upon themselves to introduce the reader to their marginalised perspectives of the world. Both live very solitary existences, and one as much as the other bears witness to the most basic tenet of existentialist thought: that existence precedes essence. They perceive the world as a series of forms with no rhyme or reason. Both are relatively old, Roquentin is only a year or two younger than Linacero, and their view of the world is tinted, not with the confusion of youth, but rather with a feeling of deception or disillusionment. Onetti’s narrator, particularly, refers to a moment in youth in which: ‘. . . la gente absurda y maravillosa no abunda; y las que lo son, es por poco tiempo, en la primera juventud. Después comienzan a aceptar y se pierden’ (1982: 36) [‘But wonderful, absurd people are not easy to find; and those who are, it doesn’t last for very long, just in their first youth. Later they start to accept things and they’re done for’] (1991: 16) He sees youth as a high point and life as a process of degradation from that point on; earlier in the same passage he describes himself and his ex-wife as: ‘Viejos, cansados, sabiendo menos de la vida cada día’ (1982: 35) [‘Old, tired, knowing less about life each day’] (1991: 16). In an article, ‘Onetti y Sartre: convergencias y divergencias’, Marilyn Frankenthaler (1980: 139) talks of Sartre’s conception of existence, with the idea of ‘en soi’, which refers to the inert world of external objects, and of ‘pour soi’ of which she says: ‘El para-sí (pour soi) sartreano es, entonces, el enfrentamiento entre la nada que cada individuo lleva dentro de sí y el mundo que lo rodea’. [Sartre’s ‘pour soi’ is therefore the confrontation between the nothingness that each individual carries within him or herself and the world which surrounds him]. The dilemma which the concept of the ‘pour-soi’ highlights, is that which disturbs both Linacero and Roquentin, for they are conscious of the emptiness of their lives, of the lack of God or of any essential meaning, and it could well be this very consciousness which converts them into observers of meaninglessness. Roquentin spends a large part of his time sitting in his room watching the world go by, and in his vision, objects and people achieve a similar degree of importance. Linacero is equally, if not more, passive. So towards the beginning of the text he considers himself to be a victim of the heat, an active agent which spills into his room: ‘. . . el maldito calor que junta el techo y que ahora, siempre, en las tardes, derrama adentro de la pieza’ (1982: 9) [‘the wretched heat coming from the ceiling and now spreading into every corner as it always does in the afternoon’] (1991: 3). Even his fantasies do not require any initiative on his part, so that they come to him seemingly of their own volition: ‘Pero ya no tengo necesidad de tenderle trampas estúpidas, es ella la que viene por la noche, sin que yo la llame, sin que sepa de donde sale’ (1982: 15) [‘I no longer had to set stupid traps for her. She is now the one who comes at night, without my calling for her, or knowing where she comes from’] (1991: 7). However, there are differences between these two, and possibly the greatest of these lies in their physical surroundings. For while Roquentin sits at his window and describes what he sees, Linacero has enclosed himself in a dark space where,

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

16

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 16

LINDA CRAIG

as he says, the windows have been replaced by newspapers. The external, visible world plays little part. There is, it is true, a reference to his looking out of his window watching his neighbours at one point, and a later reference to his going to eat in a restaurant. But these instances are very much the exception, generally he is closed in his dark, asphyxiating room, his ‘pozo’, recounting his thoughts. Roquentin therefore lives in a much more physical, material world, while Linacero’s is a more metaphorical one. Frankenthaler (1980: 144) quotes Félix Grande who distinguishes between the positions of Sartre and Onetti thus: ‘Si Sartre es en ese libro el teólogo y el entomólogo del asco, Onetti es su artista’ [If Sartre is in this book the theologist and entomologist of disgust, Onetti is its artist]. Indeed it does seem as though Sartre has constructed a novel around his philosophical theories, whereas Onetti’s story is clearly not a roman-à-thèse. David Butler (2002) points out that Onetti was deeply critical of followers of Sartre of the French existential school and their romans-à-thèse, though less so of Sartre himself. In fact Butler takes issue with critics who label Onetti an existentialist, although he does allow that there is in his work a dialogue with that school of thought. Certainly, there is much made of the notion of meaninglessness in Onetti’s work, and as I have pointed out there is a dialogue in Linacero’s head around the issues of authenticity and the inauthenticity that in Sartrean terms would be deemed to be mauvaise foi. These ideas appear throughout Onetti’s oeuvre, from El pozo onwards, as unresolved issues. In one last reference to the similarities between these two protagonists, I feel that it is important to bear in mind that they are both products of an urban environment. Their feelings of contingency are very much part and parcel of the lot of the ever-growing ranks of the twentieth-century urban dweller. Not only Linacero, but all of Onetti’s principal protagonists are often described as being rootless, and the state of mind which this rootlessness produces is clearly an important aspect of their make-up. In El pozo, Linacero emphasises his lack of ties with rural Uruguay, and also, with its history and culture. He reduces it to nothing, denying any possibility of its having any relevance to him: ‘¿Pero aquí? Detrás de nosotros no hay nada. Un gaucho, dos gauchos, treinta y tres gauchos’ (1982: 53) [‘And here? We’ve got nothing behind us. One gaucho, two gauchos, thirty-three gauchos’] (1991: 24). The lack of any history exacerbates the lack of meaning. There could well be some relation, too, between this lack of history and the narrator’s perspective of time. El pozo is a shining example of a novel which manifests multiple time and space in one moment. While some transitions take place within paragraphs where the narrator recounts a memory, others have no rational explanation but are usually indicated, as has been mentioned before, by spaces in the text. The act of writing takes the form of alternation of past and present in no apparent order. And the confused perception of time that this produces is an indication of Linacero’s state of alienation. It is quite possible that a strong sense of history is a prerequisite of a stable grounding in time.

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 17

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

17

Grande’s description of Onetti as the artist of repulsion echoes the reference to Linacero smelling his armpits and his resulting ‘. . . mueca de asco’ (1982: 9) (‘. . . look of disgust’) (1991: 3). So the strong sensation of repulsion that permeates the text, and which will become more apparent in the part of this chapter which looks at his perceptions of women, actually arises first in his view of himself. This image of a being who perceives himself as a fragmented construct of hands, feet, armpits, head and shoulders, an amputated self-image which echoes Lacan’s ‘Imaginary Order’, and who is repulsed by his own smell, is again one of a being imprisoned in the metaphorical pit of his own alienation. The idea of the second narrator, mentioned on p. 13, highlights again the protagonist’s inability to escape from his dilemma and to confront the world in any meaningful way. For this first-person narrator actually alludes to the impossibility of controlling that most basic of tools, language. But while it appears that he may be unaware of this terrifying prospect, there are signs that he is all too aware of other aspects of his helplessness. What he sees as the impossibility of communication has already been discussed here, and it clearly plays a major part in the protagonist’s perception of the world, but there is also the fact that he sees no possibility of a collective solution to the human dilemma either. In a passage in which Linacero talks about his relationship with his room-mate, Lázaro, who belongs to what would appear to be a left-wing underground group, there are numerous indications as to his feelings towards political beliefs and activities. In the first place he expresses his contempt for Lázaro: ‘Pobre hombre, lo desprecio hasta con las raíces del alma, es sucio y grosero, sin imaginación’ (1982: 47) [‘I have the deepest possible contempt for the poor fellow – he’s dirty, obscene and unimaginative’] (1991: 21), and then he goes on to show how easy it is to argue against his political beliefs. Indeed Linacero was persuaded once to accompany Lázaro to a meeting, and the conclusion he drew was that the majority of those present were motivated by ambition, resentment or envy. However the scorn which Linacero professes towards the left-wing of the political spectrum is as nothing when compared with that which he holds towards the right-wing. His view of the corruption of the Stalinist era in the Soviet Union pales beside his description of the United States, of which he says: ‘. . . no hay pueblo más imbécil que ese sobre la tierra; no puede haberlo porque también la capacidad de estupidez es limitada en la raza humana’ (1982: 48) [‘. . . they’re the most stupid people on earth; that’s quite possible because even the human race has a limited potential for idiocy’] (1991: 22), Linacero believes in nothing, and the fact that he has chosen to write his memoirs on the back of Lázaro’s political pamphlets underlines that he believes his nihilism to supersede the message on the other side. Interestingly, there is a moment where his cynicism is called into question. Here, following his profoundly negative observation concerning the participants in Lázaro’s meeting, he goes on to talk of the few sincere people: Pero la gente del pueblo, la que es pueblo de manera legítima, los pobres, hijos de pobres, nietos de pobres, tienen siempre algo esencial incontaminado, algo

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

18

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 18

LINDA CRAIG

hecho de pureza, infantil, candoroso, recio, leal, con lo que siempre es posible contar en las circunstancias graves de la vida (1982: 50) [‘But the real people, the legitimate people, the poor, children of the poor, grandchildren of the poor, always have something vital, unpolluted, something pure, childish, naive, sturdy, loyal, that you can always rely on in the most difficult of life’s circumstances’] (1991: 23).

This outburst which talks of the essential goodness of humanity, a fundamentally romantic idea, is strangely out of keeping with Linacero’s nihilism. It certainly clashes with his picture of the child playing in the patio outside his room: El chico andaba en cuatro patas, con las manos y el hocico embarrados. No tenía más que una camisa remangada y, mirándole el trasero, me dio por pensar en como había gente, toda en realidad, capaz de sentir ternura por eso (1982: 10) [The boy crawled around, his hands and snout covered in mud. He wore only a tucked-up shirt, and, as I looked at his backside, I started to think how could some people, how could everybody in fact, get tender-hearted about that kind of thing] (1991: 4).

It seems that his respect for ordinary people exists purely in his imagination. Again there is a gap between his different levels of consciousness, and this again points to Linacero’s profound alienation. Nevertheless, the will to believe in something is made manifest by this momentary observation, and a search for meaning reveals itself in a number of ways. Certainly there are references to hope, an overt one where he says: ‘. . . la esperanza vaga de enamorarme me da un poco de confianza en la vida’ (1982: 29) [‘. . . the vague hope I’ll fall in love gives me a little confidence in life’] (1991: 13), and what might be perceived as a more shaded one in the numerous references to his room mate, Lázaro. Although he criticises Lázaro’s belief in a collective solution to the world’s ills, he nevertheless mentions that he should have arrived or could arrive at any moment. There is a sense then in which Linacero is waiting for him. Perhaps Lázaro, who after all, shares a name with the man from the New Testament who rose from the dead, in some way symbolises Linacero’s vague hope for some kind of salvation. There are brief references to what he wants or would have wanted in the closing passages of the novel. One of these is in the lines: ‘Me hubiera gustado clavar la noche en el papel como a una gran mariposa nocturna’ (1982: 60) [‘I would have liked to have pinned the night to a piece of paper like a big moth’] (1991: 28). The rather beautiful image, described by Sabine Giersberg (1999: 167) as ‘one of the most expressive images he ever created’, manifests the narrator’s desire to control time, to become an active rather than a passive agent. Another, conjuring up a particularly poetic, almost sublime image, reads: ‘Estoy seguro de poder descubrir una arruga justamente en el sitio donde ha gritado una golondrina’ (1982: 60) [‘I’m sure I can see a crack just at the spot where a swallow

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 19

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

19

cried out’] (1991: 28). The underlying desire here again is to gain control over time.3 Here he is actually expressing a wish to stop time, to step out of the confusion that surrounds him and to stand on firm ground. Linacero is engaged in a constant search for some kind of essentialist certainty in a godless world.

Women The conflictual nature of the relationship between the protagonist and Ana María referred to in the opening section of this chapter is indicative of the difficulties that beset the male–female relationship throughout the novel, and indeed throughout Onetti’s work as a whole. The Lacanian concept of the transition from the Imaginary to the Symbolic Order, might help to shed some light on the further treatment of women in the text. Hélène Cixous, a perceptive critic of Lacan’s theories, points out that the concept of selfhood is arrived at through the transition into the ‘Symbolic Order’, but that access to this order is not granted equally to boys and girls. Ann Rosalind Jones (1980: 81), elucidating Cixous’ position, explains it in these terms: Lacan defines language, the symbolic order, as the world of public discourses, which the child enters only as a result of culturally enforced separation from her/his mother and his -but not her- identification with the Father, the male infamily representative of culture. Thus Lacanian theory reserves the ‘I’ position for men. Women, by gender lacking the phallus, the positive symbol of gender, self-possession and worldly authority around which language is organized, occupy a negative position in language.

The depiction of women in El pozo would seem to bear this idea out. For while it is true that Linacero is painfully aware of his lack of autonomy, of his inability to achieve any stable identity, there can be no doubt that the women to whom he tries to relate are even further from any authoritative stance, or indeed from any speaking position. Women are depicted first and foremost as physical objects. The first reference to a woman is strongly indicative of this perspective, she is described immediately as a prostitute, and the narrator goes on to say: ‘Era una mujer chica, con los dedos alargados en las puntas [. . .] No puedo acordarme de la cara; . . .’ (1982: 9) [‘She was a small woman, her fingers elongated at the tips [. . .] I don’t remember her face’] (1991: 3) and in a similar way images of faceless, nameless women, often prostitutes and often, as shall be seen,

3 It is here that Butler (2002) parts company from those who deem Onetti to be an existentialist writer. His argument is that time is at the very basis of existentialism, whereas Onetti questions and is engaged with a problematic of time. His argument is rigorous and interesting, although I would go along with the critics including Frankenthaler (1980) who also emphasise Onetti’s engagement with existentialism. This hint at issues concerning time in El pozo is developed in Onetti’s subsequent work, especially within the context of his later construct, Santa María.

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

20

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 20

LINDA CRAIG

depicted in terms of highly detailed fragments of their bodies, make their appearances in the pages of the novel. The reference to the family on the patio outside Linacero’s room which talks of ‘. . . la mujer gorda lavando en la pileta’ [‘. . . the fat woman doing her washing’], and then says of the man ‘el hombre tomaba mate agachado, . . .’ (1982: 10) [‘the man crouched over his maté’] (1991: 4), is indicative of the classic syndrome of a narrator who constantly describes women according to their physical characteristics, this one being above all fat, and then goes on to define a man purely in terms of what he is doing. The scene with Ana María contains many observations which point to Linacero’s perceptions of women, some of which illustrate the observations mentioned above. His ambiguous feelings towards her are quite clear since it is obvious that he is fascinated by her while at the same time he professes to hate her. However, ambiguous as these feelings may be, it would be erroneous to underestimate Ana María’s importance to him. There is no doubt that the incident in the gardener’s shed, and its counterpart in Linacero’s fantasy in the log cabin play a vital role in the formation of his persona, in part because this seems to be the first manifestation of a sadistic tendency which permeates his later sexual relationships. But another aspect of it, which Mark Millington observes in his excellent and far-reaching study, Reading Onetti (1985: 33), lies in Ana María’s reaction to his attack, which is to spit in his face. This shapes his face in such a way that it ‘physically imposes Ana María’s contempt on him’. Millington goes on to suggest that the degradation suffered as a result of being spat on is compensated for in the idealised version of the scene, that of the log cabin. Here, in a particularly evocative passage, Linacero describes how his face is moulded by the fire. In a few lines which crystallise his vision of his own fragmentation, he captures his sensation: Por un momento quedo inmóvil, casi hipnotizado sin ver, mientras el fuego ondea delante de mis ojos, sube, desaparece, vuelve a alzarse bailando, iluminando mi cara inclinada, moldeándola con su luz roja hasta que puedo sentir la forma de mis pómulos, la frente, la nariz, casi tan claramente como si me viera en un espejo, pero de una manera más profunda (1982: 21–2) [I stay still a moment, almost hypnotized, unable to see, as the fire snakes before my eyes, rises up, disappears, dances back up, lighting up my bowed head, shaping it in its red light until I can feel the outline of my cheeks, forehead, nose almost as clearly as if I were seeing myself in a mirror, only more intensely] (1991: 9).

The spitting incident, which has had such a profound effect, also highlights the compensatory nature of Linacero’s fantasies, and if, as it seems, this fantasy incorporates his perception of an ideal moment, it is interesting to see his view of the male–female relationship and of women in such circumstances. The opening part of this section shows the protagonist in a bar in Alaska, where he has spent the evening in male company, playing cards, smoking and drinking.

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 21

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

21

On arriving home, he sets the fire, and this is where the above description takes place; the fire seeming to cleanse his face of its past degradation, thus rendering him pure and ready for his visit from Ana María. Here she comes to him of her own free will, and she runs in from the cold, hostile world outside into the warmth which he provides. She is naked, her face has an open expression, and she smiles at him. In keeping with the observation I made above, she does not talk, in fact here, neither of them does: ‘Nunca nos hablamos’ (1982: 22) [‘We never talk to each other’] (1991: 10). The scene closes with the image of Ana María lying passively on a bed of leaves with her legs slightly apart. Linacero is sitting on the edge of the bed staring at her naked body. There is no suggestion that they make love, or that they are going to; on the contrary, he is motionless: ‘A veces, siempre inmóvil, sin un gesto, creo ver la pequeña ranura del sexo, la débil y confusa sonrisa’ (1982: 23) [‘Sometimes, dead still, making no movement, I think I can see the small slot of her sex, the timid, confused smile’] (1991: 10). The episode suggests that communication through language, is seen as an ideal solely within the context of masculine relationships. What becomes clear too, is that while he wishes to be in a position of control over the woman concerned, his dream stops there. There are possible echoes here of Don Juan, ever interested in chasing women, but incapable of forming any kind of meaningful relationship with them. Of course, Linacero goes even further in that his interest does not even include the sexual act; the initial incident with Ana María points to this too, as do subsequent episodes with different women. Another salient point from this recounted fantasy is the age of Ana María. Her untimely death means that she remains forever young in Linacero’s mind, and therefore, as shall be seen, suitable material for his fantasies. The second episode with a woman which is recounted in any detail is the one which talks of Linacero’s most recent relationship, since he says that only yesterday he had spent some time with Hanka. Here again the idea of the chase comes up, for Linacero’s major problem with Hanka is that he is finding her boring. One of the striking aspects of this episode is that these two actually talk to each other. Linacero even seems to respect Hanka’s intelligence, for he says: ‘Hanka dijo cosas con sentido sobre la novela y la musicalización de la novela’ (1982: 29) [‘Hanka said some sensible things about the novel and novels being musicalized’] (1991: 12); and later, ‘También hablamos de la vida’ (1982: 29) [‘We also talked about life’] (1991: 13). But this is of no interest to Linacero who says: ‘Hanka me aburre’ (1982: 29) [‘Hanka bores me’] (1991: 13), and, significantly, ‘Lo absurdo no es estar aburriéndome con ella, sino haberla desvirginizado hace treinta días apenas’ (1982: 28) [‘The ridiculous thing is not that I’m bored with her, but the fact that I deflowered her hardly thirty days ago’] (1991: 12). Towards the end of this tale, he talks of his feelings towards women in general: ‘. . . cuando pienso en las mujeres . . . Aparte de la carne, que nunca es posible hacer de uno por completo, ¿Qué cosa de común tienen con nosotros?’ (1982: 29–30) [‘. . . when I think about women . . . Apart from the flesh, which you can never completely satisfy by yourself, what else have they got in common with us?’] (1991: 13). It is a clear depiction of women as ‘other’. While

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

22

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 22

LINDA CRAIG

Linacero sees himself as being marginalised from society, a being all too aware of the impossibility of achieving any essential role, ever caught up in an existential conundrum, his view of women situates them even further from any essential centre. Furthermore, if men’s relationship with language is difficult, that of women is even more so. Hanka achieves no power through language. Thus, as has been shown previously, and will be shown again, in this novel, women, to quote Cixous’ words again, ‘. . . occupy a negative position in language’. The reference earlier in this chapter to Linacero’s defilement of Ana María and his subsequent lack of interest in her is echoed in this section in the lines quoted above where he says that he took Hanka’s virginity only thirty days before. Clearly Hanka is of no interest to him as a person. She is, or was, of use only as a symbol, and since she no longer fulfills this function he has lost all interest in her. There is no desire left; as he says: ‘. . . era necesario acariciar a Hanka, recordando lo que hago cuando tengo deseo’ (1982: 28) (‘. . . I had to carress Hanka, remembering what I do when I feel desire’] (1991: 12). The tendency towards sadism, referred to above, appears again in this episode with Hanka in Linacero’s observation that: ‘Una mujer queda cerrada eternamente para uno, a pesar de todo, si uno no la poseyó con espíritu de forzador’ (1982: 28) [‘A woman will be closed to one, whatever happens, unless one possessed her with a rapist’s mind’] (1991: 12). Again Linacero’s ideal would seem to be to impose himself on the woman, to assure himself of a position of total control. The world of prostitution, one which will be dealt with at length in the following chapter on Juntacadáveres, is exemplified in El pozo by the next female protagonist, Ester. She is not, however, the only member of her profession to appear, and the description of the women working in the bar by the port manifests Linacero’s feelings towards them: Mujeres para marineros, gordas, de piel marrón, grasientas, que tienen que sentarse con las piernas separadas y se ríen de los hombres que no entienden el idioma, sacudiéndose, una mano de uñas negras desparramada en el pañuelo de colorinches que les rodea el pescuezo. Porque cuello tienen los niños y las doncellas (1982: 33) [Whores for sailors, fat, brown-skinned, greasy, having to sit with their legs apart and laugh at the men who don’t understand their language, shaking their sides, their black nails spread over their brightly coloured scarves around their scruffs. Only children and young women have necks] (1991: 14).

His contempt and disgust are palpable, and are aimed solely at the women, there is no hint of censure towards their clients. Indeed if Felix Grande’s description of Onetti as the artist of disgust were to be applied to El pozo, it would become clear that Linacero’s self-disgust is exceeded only by the total repulsion that these women arouse in him. Again there is a reference to fatness, fat women are clearly anathema to him, perhaps their very size poses a threat; and then there is the negative allusion to brown skin, one of a number of offensive, racist observations to be found in the text. Indeed it would seem that Ester’s saving grace

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 23

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

23

lies in the whiteness of her skin: ‘Pero parecía más joven y los brazos, gruesos y blancos, se dilataban lechosos en la luz del cafetín, sanos y graciosos, . . .’ (1982: 33) [‘But she seemed younger and her plump, white arms spread out all milky in the café light, healthy and attractive . . .’] (1991: 15). The lines that follow this first mention of Ester’s arms underline the narrator’s obsessive tendency to see women, even more than himself, in terms of fragmentation: ‘. . . como si al hundirse en la vida hubiera alzado las manos en un gesto desesperado de auxilio, manoteando como los ahogados y los brazos hubieran quedado atrás, lejos en el tiempo, brazos de muchacha despegados del cuerpo largo, nervioso, que ya no existía’ (1982: 33–4) [‘. . . as if she was being drowned alive and had raised her hands in a desperate call for help, thrashing like someone drowning, and her arms had been left behind, distant across time, a girl’s arms separated from the long, twitchy body that no longer existed’] (1991: 15). Her arms clearly represent her only claim to desirability, and apart from their whiteness, their main attraction lies in their appearance of youth. Yet despite Linacero’s contempt for Ester who ‘. . . costaba dos pesos . . .’ (1982: 33) [‘. . . cost two pesos . . .’] (1991: 14) – not charged, but cost – as though she were a mere commodity, she is capable of wielding a certain power over him. He sees her as someone with whom he might be able to achieve some kind of communication. Hence his recounting of one of his fantasies to her, and he is clearly quite hurt when she expresses repulsion at his confessions. Moreover, Linacero subsequently dreams up a situation where he meets her again, and she usurps control of language: ‘Ella me cuenta entonces lo que sueña o imagina y son siempre cosas de una extraordinaria pureza, sencillas como una historieta para niños’ (1982: 45) [‘Then she tells me what she’s dreaming of or imagining and they are always things which are amazingly pure and simple like children’s stories’] (1991: 21). There is, therefore, a certain ambivalence to be found in Linacero’s attitude to Ester, his disgust is tempered by his recognition of her power. This is quite at odds with his feelings towards the fourth, and last, woman to appear on the pages of the novel, his ex-wife, Cecilia; for as far as he is concerned, she has now been rendered powerless. Cecilia represents Linacero’s great love. His quasi-sentimental description of the nature of their relationship takes on highly romantic hues: ‘Como un hijo, el amor había salido de nosotros. Lo alimentábamos, pero él tenía su vida aparte. Era mejor que ella, mucho mejor que yo’ (1982: 36) [‘Like a child, love had come out of us. We nourished it but it led a separate life. It was better than her, much better than me’] (1991: 16). But the use of the past tense is emblematic, for this great love has died. Cecilia has ceased to be an adolescent and Linacero can no longer capture the magic which he felt. He explains this in these terms: El amor es maravilloso y absurdo e, incomprensiblemente, visita a cualquier clase de almas. Pero la gente absurda y maravillosa no abunda; y las que lo son, es por poco tiempo, en la primera juventud. Después comienzan a aceptar y se pierden (1982: 36)

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

24

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 24

LINDA CRAIG

[Love is wonderful and absurd and visits all kinds of souls. But wonderful, absurd people are not easy to find; and those who are, it doesn’t last very long, just their first youth. Later they start to accept things and they’re done for] (1991: 16).

In fact this reference to ‘la primera juventud’ [‘first youth’], seems to concern adolescence rather than actual childhood, as the only reference to young children is the one quoted above where Linacero expresses his disgust at the sight of the child crawling outside his room. What can be found, however, are numerous allusions to girls in their adolescent years, and these reveal a very different reaction. Early in the novella in a remark which typifies his perception of these girls, he says: ‘Debe haber alguna obsesión ya bien estudiada que tenga como objeto la nuca de las muchachas, las nucas un poco hundidas, infantiles, con el vello que nunca se logra peinar’ (1982: 14) [‘By now there must be some well-researched analysis of that obsession whose object is the nape of young girls’ necks, slightly hollowed childish napes, with that fluff they never manage to brush flat’] (1991: 6). This is in total opposition to the ‘pescuezos’ [‘scruffs’], or animal-like necks of the prostitutes he describes later. There is a scene depicted from the relationship between Linacero and Cecilia which recounts how he woke her up one night, told her to wear something white, and with no explanation whatsoever, took her to a certain street and asked her to walk down the street towards him, indeed, he asked her to go away and repeat the moment of walking towards him several times. This strange scene is described in a legal document for their divorce proceedings, where Linacero’s behaviour is said to be abnormal. His own explanation for the scene, however, accords perfectly with his perception of the world. For Linacero, in a similar way to the woman in another of Onetti’s works, Un sueño realizado,4 is trying to recapture a particular moment from the past. In fact the moment in Un sueño realizado, as the title suggests, is from a dream, while that of El pozo, is from the historical–fictional past, but the difference is minimal since Linacero’s perspective is ever presented as a fusion of possible realities. This idea of recapturing a moment, however, is unsurprising in Linacero, given the emphasis he places on things past, and considering, too, this obsession with girls. His purpose was, as he says: ‘Había una esperanza, una posibilidad de tender redes y atrapar el pasado y la Ceci de entonces’ (1982: 42) [‘There was a hope, a possibility to set a net and catch the past with Ceci as she was.’] (1991: 18). Ceci, the adolescent, attracted him; Cecilia, the woman, had ceased to be of interest. In a passage outstanding even in the context of the misogyny which abounds in this novel, so apparent, for example, in the description of the prostitutes referred to previously, Linacero attempts to explain his extreme attitude: He leído que la inteligencia de las mujeres termina de crecer a los veinte o veintecinco años. No sé nada de la inteligencia de las mujeres y tampoco me 4

This short story can be found in a collection of Onetti’s work entitled Tan triste como ella y otros cuentos, 1976, 41–58.

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 25

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

25

interesa. Pero el espíritu de las muchachas muere a esa edad, más o menos. Pero muere siempre; terminan siendo todas iguales, con un sentido práctico hediondo, con sus necesidades materiales y un deseo ciego y oscuro de parir un hijo (1982: 36) [I’ve read that female intelligence stops growing at twenty or twenty-five. I know nothing about the intelligence of women nor am I interested in finding out. But the spirit of young girls dies more or less at that age. It always dies; they end up being all the same, with a loathesome practicality, their material needs and a deep, dark desire to give birth] (1991: 17).

And he continues in the same vein in the last section of the same paragraph, this time attempting to justify the unjustifiable: Y si uno se casa con una muchacha y un día se despierta al lado de una mujer, es posible que comprenda, sin asco, el alma de los violadores de niñas y el cariño baboso de los viejos que esperan con chocolatines en las esquinas de los liceos (1982: 37) [And if you marry a girl and one day wake up next to a woman, it’s possible you’ll understand, without being disgusted, the hearts of men who rape girls and the slobbering affections of old men hovering on street-corners outside school, chocolates in hand] (1991: 17).

The key word in this global view of women is ‘acceptance’. For it seems that a young girl, still a virgin, is deemed to perceive the world from a position of purity, or lucidity. She has not begun to make compromises, to accept, and is therefore untouched by the corrupted environment which surrounds her. She would seem to symbolise an animal-like freedom which is beyond the grasp of ordinary mortals, or that sense of completeness referred to towards the beginning of this chapter, which, like the mother, is ever lost. This view of women is captured in a few lines which Linacero writes following the disillusionment he feels as a result of his episode with Hanka. Here he says: Sólo podría ser amigo de Electra. Siempre me acuerdo de una noche en que estaba borracho y me puse a charlar con ella mirando una fotografía. Tiene la cara como la inteligencia, un poco desdeñosa, fría, oculta y, sin embargo, libre de complicaciones. A veces me parece que es un ser perfecto y me intimida; sólo las cosas sentimentales mías viven cuando estoy al lado de ella (1982: 30) [I could only be friends with Electra. I always remember a night when I was drunk and started to chat to her while looking at a photograph. She has an intelligent-looking face, rather haughty, cold, secretive and yet entirely free of complications. I sometimes think that she is a perfect being and she intimidates me; my sentimental side only comes alive when I’m with her] (1991:13).

The entire concept of non-acceptance is, of course, personified by Electra, who in Sophocles’ play is the only one of three sisters who will never forgive her

Mono219-CH-01.qxd

26

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 26

LINDA CRAIG

mother for living with the murderer of her father. The fact that Linacero talks of being her friend, not her lover, would appear to put agape beyond eros in his scale of values – hardly surprising given his mixed attitude to sex. Another significant feature of this passage lies in the fact that he is talking to a photograph, therefore to an image, rather than to any woman in flesh and blood. In fact, Linacero’s women never transcend the role of images or symbols. He needs to keep them at a certain distance, hidden and shadowy. They are never true human beings with faults and weaknesses, or indeed with any access to the Symbolic Order, but rather blank pages on which he draws his sentimentalised images of perfection, in an effort to compensate for his failure.5

5 In her book-sized study of the role of the feminine in the construction of male subjectivity in Onetti’s work, Judy Maloof (1995) makes a number of pertinent observations which blend in well with many of the ideas discussed here. The initial part of the title, Over Her Dead Body, refers in the chapter on El pozo to the death of Ana María. The critic employs Jessica Benjamin’s rethinking of psychoanalytic theory which constructs a theoretical framework linking gender and social domination and the fear of female engulfment, using these ideas fruitfully to explore Linacero’s fear of the feminine and his inability to relate to women as subjects.

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 27

2

Juntacadáveres (1964) Santa María Juntacadáveres1 was published, three years after El astillero (1961), the novel I shall be looking at in the following chapter. My reason for choosing to work on what is apparently the later novel first is this: like many of Onetti’s works, these two share virtually the same setting and some of the same protagonists, but in terms of plot, El astillero actually follows on from Juntacadáveres. In an interview with Emir Rodríguez Monegal (1973), Onetti talked of this apparent anomaly, saying: ‘Yo estaba escribiendo Juntacadáveres y la llevaba más que mediada cuando de pronto, por una de ésas (uno puede tener cosas detestables), hice una visita a un astillero que existía en Buenos Aires . . .’ [‘I was writing Juntacadáveres and was more than half way through when suddenly, in one of those moments (we all have those terrible moments), I visited a shipyard which was in Buenos Aires . . .’]. The image of the shipyard caught his imagination to such an extent that he left off writing Juntacadáveres and only returned to it after having completed the other novel. While El pozo is a reflexive, inward-looking work set in an ill-defined urban context, which could almost be any large city in the Western world, Juntacadáveres is situated in a much more clearly defined space. This is Santa María, product of Onetti’s imagination, a small, provincial town which first appeared in another of Onetti’s novels, La vida breve (1950). At this point, in Juntacadáveres, it has just achieved the status of a city. There are many links that join Onetti’s different works. These occur not only in the repetition of the setting, Santa María, but also in the recurrence of a number of protagonists, perhaps most noticeably the eponymous hero, or anti-hero, of Juntacadáveres, Larsen, who has already appeared briefly in Tierra de nadie (1941) and in La vida breve, and is to reappear in El astillero. Two of the other important protagonists from Juntacadáveres, Jorge Malabia and the doctor, Díaz Grey also recur in Onetti’s works. This practice creates a kind of self-referentiality, and brings to mind the use of this same device by nineteenth-century writers, particularly Galdós, and the French Naturalist, Zola. In the case of these two, this would appear to be a means of lending credence to their personages, an important consideration given that 1

Juan Carlos Onetti Juntacadáveres (1983). Translation by Alfred MacAdam Body Snatcher (1991).

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

28

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 28

LINDA CRAIG

they were attempting to create the verisimilitude necessary for a Realist work. Onetti’s use of this same device is curious. Certainly it is not used with the same end in mind. On the contrary, it may be seen as a way of undermining the rounded sense of character which the Realists strove to achieve. In terms of space, Santa María, which has its origins in La vida breve, starting as a fantasy, a figment of the imagination of a fictional entity, is a construct which highlights the oneiric and non-referential nature of the texts in which it figures. The town also makes an important statement in terms of the literature of the River Plate region. If the broad division can be made between gauchesco and urban literature, as exemplified by the publication in 1926 of both Güiraldes’ Don Segundo Sombra, with its mythifying vision of the gaucho past, and Arlt’s El juguete rabioso, a degraded vision of lower middle-class city dwellers, Onetti’s fiction clearly has closer connections with that of Arlt, whom he admired greatly.2 Santa María, nevertheless, is far from being a giant urban conurbation; in fact it is almost a frontier town, a part of the mythical symbolism of the new world. It could be that one of its functions is that of demythifying the perception of vast, almost endless space, previously attributed to the Argentine or Uruguayan interiors. The totalising vision of unfenced horizons is replaced here, albeit at a slightly later date, by the depiction of a stiflingly enclosed space in which all human behaviour is restrained by the straightjacket of convention. It is an image of a restrictive, provincial environment which has echoes in later Argentine fiction in the works of Manuel Puig, whose work will be looked at in later chapters.

Marginality and Conformity: Men in ‘Juntacadáveres’ For the male protagonists of Juntacadáveres, there would appear to be an element of choice: that is to say, marginality is not thrust upon them, but rather is the result of a more or less conscious decision. Although whether or not an actual centre from which they marginalise themselves can be deemed to exist is a moot point, particularly given the geographical setting of this mythical town. What they can be said to be marginalising themselves from, however, is from traditional values and hierarchies which might best be represented by the Lacanian image of the ‘law of the father’, the Symbolic Order. Despite the title of this novel, which refers to a rather cruel nickname given to Larsen because of his role as a brothel-keeper, it has no one central protagonist. Rather it focuses on a number of people whose links, at their most tenuous, lie in the fact that they are merely occupying the same time and space, and who are, to a greater or lesser extent, depicted according to their relationship to the brothel. 2 Onetti expressed his enormous admiration for Arlt in a prologue that he wrote for the Italian version of Arlt’s work. A copy of this prologue can be found in Onetti: Requiem por Faulkner y otros artículos (1975: 125–37).

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 29

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

29

However, in fact, there is another factor which links them. The Mexican critic, Carlos Monsiváis (1980), has written an authoritative article on Onetti’s work, in which he points out that the novelist breaks new ground in Latin American literature by substituting the grandeur of images such as civilisation, barbarity and moral courage, with those of tedium, ageing and provincialism. He suggests: ‘Nada tan pueblerino como un ámbito donde “a ninguno le queda tiempo para vivir a fuerza de estar mirando cómo viven los demás” ’ (1980: 16) [There is nothing as parochial as an atmosphere where no-one has time to live because they are too busy watching what others are doing]. He considers this to be an important aspect of the spaces Onetti choses to situate his works in. In Juntacadáveres, this suffocating atmosphere is never far from view. Monsiváis goes on to quote the dedication which Onetti has given to Para esta noche (1943: 17), in which he talks of ‘un cínico intento de liberación’ [a cynical attempt at liberation]. In fact, Monsiváis has perceived, quite rightly, to my mind, this other factor which many of the main protagonists share. It is that within this stultifying environment, they are all engaged, one way or another, in an attempt to find some kind of freedom from the conventional, unquestioning lives that surround them. These people are, in other words, somehow marginalised from the mainstream. Jorge Ruffinelli (1974: 103) divides Onetti’s protagonists into two camps in the following terms: Si se hiciera la tipología de los personajes de Onetti podría admitirse una primaría separación de dos grupos (como en su maestro Faulkner): quienes ‘aceptan’ y viven sin cuestionamientos su propia vida mediocre, y quienes se rebelan ante su realidad precisamente por poseer una lucidez trágica. En ambos casos son seres alienados en un orbe absurdo, pero la positividad de la figura del ‘héroe’ se encuentra claramente en los segundos, en los rebeldes anárquicos. [If we were to make a typology of Onetti’s characters we might permit ourselves a primary separation into two groups (as with his master Faulkner): those who ‘accept’, and live their mediocre lives unquestioningly, and those who rebel against their reality precisely because they possess a tragic clarity. In both cases these are alienated beings in an absurd world, but the positive figure of the ‘hero’ is clearly to be found in the second group, in the anarchic rebels].

The cynicism referred to by the author in his dedication and Ruffinelli’s reference to ‘una lucidez trágica’ [‘a tragic clarity’], highlight the impossibility of the protagonists’ task. The very existence of true freedom or indeed of any other essential truth is undermined in a world of masks and contradiction. Nevertheless, these brave struggles against the inevitable are a major theme in much of Onetti’s work, and Juntacadáveres is a particularly interesting novel in this context precisely because of its plurality of protagonists and of their different actions and reactions in the face of a similar problem. Clearly the most marginalised, and therefore in a sense the most successful of the protagonists is Larsen. His importance is underlined not only by the title of

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

30

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 30

LINDA CRAIG

the novel, but also by the fact that the novel opens with his arrival in Santa María with the prostitutes, signalling his attempt to bring a new order to the town, to broaden its horizons by opening a brothel; and it closes with his leaving the town, again with the prostitutes, his mission having failed. The novel is therefore constructed around Larsen’s attempt at creating a space in which his dreams can be fulfilled. Much of the novel is situated within the timespan bounded by this, Larsen’s summer. So that many of the protagonists are depicted in a world circumscribed by their varying reactions to the setting up of the brothel. The major exception to this pattern is, however, Larsen himself. For, of all the protagonists, he is the one whose life is most graphically mapped out in terms of a past which is somehow shown to lead to his current situation. Larsen’s history begins, however, not with some background concerning his childhood or his family life; there is no possibility here of a traditional Freudian reading of his life, relating any facets of his early life to his subsequent behaviour. Rather the earliest description shows him already past his teens: ‘Al principio había sido aquella grosera cosa, aquel oficinista de veinte años que trataba de satisfacer un orgullo, también grosero, instintivo, con todo lo que pudiera obtener de las mujeres’ (1983: 110) [‘At the beginning, he’d been that coarse thing, that twenty-year-old office worker who tried to satisfy an equally coarse, instinctive pride by getting everything he could from women’] (1991: 137). So even from this early date Larsen is shown as having two sides to his personality, one the conventional office worker, and the other an alternative conciousness which attracts him to the idea of living off women. His awareness of this division is immediately apparent in his feeling of ‘angustia de saberse distinto a los demás, la extraña vergüenza de mentir, de imitar opiniones y frases para ser tolerado, sin la convicción necesaria para aceptar la soledad’ (1983: 110) [‘anguish of knowing himself to be different from the others, the strange shame of lying, of imitating opinions and slogans in order to be tolerated but without the conviction necessary to accept solitude’] (1991: 137–8). The depiction of Larsen is unchanging; there is no vision of a character who undergoes some development in the course of the novel. The Larsen who appears all those years later in Santa María is still a victim of the same ambivalence. Indeed the possibility of development or of any form of progress is constantly undermined in this novel. This is conveyed not only in the static nature of Larsen and the other protagonists, but also in the failure of almost any venture they undertake and even more clearly in the strangely disjointed use of time. In the very first lines of the novel, Larsen is walking unsteadily along the corridor of a train: ‘Resoplando y lustroso, perniabierto sobre los saltos del vagón en el ramal de Enduro, Junta caminó por el pasillo[. . .]’ (1983: 9) [‘Panting, sweating, his legs splayed to straddle the bounces of the Enduro spur line car, Snatcher walked along the train aisle’] (1991: 3). This unsteady, tentative gait is indicative of his relationship with the world that surrounds him. The image of starting, stopping and stumbling is also reminiscent of the depiction of time within the novel. So that although in a sense there is a certain linear strand,

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 31

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

31

rather like the image of the train, any advance along that strand is constantly interrupted and fragmented. Mark Millington (1985: 275) examines the temporal nature of the novel itself in some detail, and he notes that: The heterogeneity of the novel is [. . .] emphasized by the lack of a global, linear narrative. Very few chapters are consecutive – XVII and XVIII, and XXXII and XXXIII are rare examples where there is clear continuity of action. Further, in the first fifteen chapters, the novel switches frequently between events in a roughly shared present in Santa María after the establishment of the brothel, and analepses which relate the past events leading up to that act of establishment or which describe the salient details of Larsen’s past life.

He subsequently observes that: ‘The discourse order is obviously comprehensively different from the story order’ (1985: 276). This eclectic perception of time coupled with the lack of development in the protagonists produces an effect of enforced stagnation. Larsen is presented in the novel from different perspectives. First of all, he is described by an anonymous narrator who talks of him in the third person. This narrator is striking, not so much for his omniscience, but rather for his visual, almost cinematographic, perception; or indeed for the rather strange juxtapositions of these two perspectives, internal and external, apparent, for example, in the cold, cruel, and yet strangely sympathetic description: ‘Envejecido, con la conciencia de la camisa sucia, del vello en las orejas, de los tacos torcidos, de la soledad y del rechazo, tocaba con la lengua la copita de cazalla e iba formando al Junta cruel y joven’ (1983: 110) [‘Grown old, aware of his dirty shirt, the hairs sprouting on his ears, the twisted heels of his shoes, his own solitude and rejection, he touched his shot of grappa with the tip of his tongue and imagined the cruel, young Snatcher’] (1991: 137). This line of narrative is interrupted at times by passages in inverted commas which contain snatches of interior monologue. There are other moments when it is interrupted by dialogues; and then again, there are other narrative points of view. So Jorge Malabia, the only protagonist to use the first person singular pronoun, describes Larsen as he sees him, as too does Díaz Grey although as he is also shown in the third person, the perspective is slightly more complex. A scene from the novel in which Díaz Grey visits Larsen in order to discuss the setting-up of the brothel indicates the means by which Díaz Grey’s thoughts are recounted. Here he finds Larsen, looking sad and ridiculous, sitting with his hat on and his trousers rolled up, soaking his feet in a basin of steaming water and eucaliptus. The text reads: ‘Miró con calma el ridículo e intuyó el otro, adherido al visible; del confuso, voluntarioso, inevitable persistir que Junta hubiera reconocido como su alma’ (1983: 40) [‘He looked calmly at the ridiculous sight and intuited the other man, clinging to the visible, from the sight of the confused, wilful, inevitable persistence that Snatcher would have recognized with his soul’] (1991: 45). The third person narration in no way lends objectivity to his thoughts.

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

32

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 32

LINDA CRAIG

The reader is invited not only to see what the doctor sees but also to witness his interpretation of the scene. In this same passage Larsen is actually soaking his feet to the strain of a tango. And the identification of Larsen with the tango lifts him out of the realms of individuality to posit him in a more general context. Omar Prego (1986: 15), a Uruguayan critic, talks of an occasion on which Onetti referred to the importance of tango in the following terms: ‘y [Onetti] le dijo a la chica que si quería entender algo de lo que él escribía y del hombre rioplatense en general, tenía que escuchar a Gardel. Pero no sólo durante esa noche, sino, quizá, durante años’ [‘and Onetti told the girl that if she wanted to understand anything about what he wrote and about men from the River Plate in general, she had to listen to Gardel, not just that night, but rather, perhaps, for years’]. Indeed a certain atmosphere of the tango can be found in Onetti’s work, though certainly not its nostalgia-fused sentimentality. Rather what is there is a kind of melancholy and a pervading sense of disillusionment. There might even be an echo of Gardel’s strangely disrupted timing in the disjointed time in Juntacadáveres. Certainly the low-life atmosphere which surrounds Larsen, his rather stylised posturing and his tastes, bring to mind the world of the tango. Ultimately what sets Larsen apart from the majority of people is his striving for truth or perfection, his earnest attempt to fulfil his dreams, within a degraded world. Monsiváis (1980: 17) shows his admiration for both the novel Juntacadáveres and for the personage of the same name when he says: ¿Qué relato más épico finalmente que la empresa de Larsen al querer instalar un burdel en una ciudad del sometimiento? ¿Qué personaje más heroico y antiheroico que Larsen, ‘lo antiburgués en dos patas’, que odió al hombre común y anheló, por el orgullo de ser distinto, vivir de las mujeres? [What story could ultimately be more epic than the venture of Larsen who wants to set up a brothel in a city of subjection. What character more heroic and anti-heroic than Larsen ‘the walking anti-bourgeois’ who hated the common man and, just to be different, dreamed of living off women].

There is, it is true, a certain heroism in Larsen, a man who is attempting to live according to his own rules; but the greatness of epic is lacking. There is a measure of cynicism and contempt in this depiction of a being whose dreams are so murky and degraded. If this atmosphere creates small, narrow people, it also creates dreams which are similarly stunted. Jorge Malabia, son of the owner of the newspaper, El Liberal, and a mere sixteen years old, reveals from his position as a first-person narrator a perception of the world which is quite similar to Larsen’s. He is in many ways a younger version of the brothel keeper, an adolescent already aware of his distanced, and even alienated, view of the society he lives in. Unwilling to accept uncritically the meaningless conventions, contradictions and dishonesty which he perceives as being part and parcel of a traditional lifestyle, he rebels against his parents and their expectations and he endeavours to find a less false life for himself.

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 33

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

33

His connection with Larsen in the novel is alluded to first by his appearance at the railway station with a friend, the only people from the town who have come to see the arrival of Junta and the prostitutes. The connection is also apparent from his presence at the end of the novel in the episode where they remount the train, their mission having failed. In this sense there is an aspect of Jorge that remains unchanged, but, in fact, he and his sister-in-law, Julita, who have a close relationship, are the only protagonists to show any form of development, or evolution during the course of the novel. In Jorge’s case this development takes the form of a kind of growing up, a movement towards independence.3 So that near the beginning of the work he sees himself as a being capable only of reaction rather than action: ‘. . . sin más destino posible que ser un elemento en la existencia de otro, otros’ (1983: 37) [‘. . . with no other destiny than that of being an element in somone else’s existence’] (1991: 42). His ambition, however, is to overcome this weakness and, as was mentioned above, to live honestly: ‘No quiero aprender a vivir, sino descubrir la vida de una vez y para siempre’ (1983: 31) [‘I don’t want to learn how to live but to discover life in a flash once and for all’] (1991: 35). In that line lie the seeds of his marginality, for he has no wish to learn to play the game, to act out a role, like his parents and most other members of society. Rather he wants to get behind the lies and the falsity to grasp a more essential, more organic truth. As has already been observed, there are considerable leaps in time and space from chapter to chapter within this novel. However the chapters have no titles and there are moments, particularly at the beginning of Jorge’s chapters, when it can be difficult for the reader to identify the protagonist. In these cases the first clue often comes in the form of a reference either to his ever-present pipe or to his equally present beret. There is a certain irony in the idea that a protagonist who is so determined to live by means of truth rather than an act should depend so much on these somewhat dramatic props. By means of his relationship with Julita, the reader is shown Jorge’s development. For it is clear that at the outset, for Julita, Jorge is no more than a substitute for her dead husband, his brother Federico. So at first during his nocturnal visits to her room, she actually calls him Federico and speaks to him as though to her husband. But Jorge refers to this in the past, and by the time of the first visit recounted within the novel, she is calling him by his own name. He is, however no more than a useful toy for her. Julita uses Jorge as a confidante, but she

3

Emily Bergmann (1987:141) points out that the rites of passage novel, or bildungsroman, generally deals with the development of young male protagonists. She suggests that the ‘the male model of development is the conflictual formation of identity through separation’, and that this separation is primarily from the mother. In Jorge Malabia’s case this theory would seem to hold true although here the process of separation is twofold, so that he is attempting to form his identity not only through differentiation from his mother, but also from Julita who is considerably older than him and who plays a rather ambivalent mother–lover role in his life.

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

34

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 34

LINDA CRAIG

has no concept of him as a separate human being, rather he signifies a space in which she can play out her fantasies, such as that of being pregnant by Federico. Jorge is of the opinion that ‘Ella eligió estar loca para seguir viviendo y esta locura exige que yo no viva . . .’ (1983: 32) [‘She chose madness in order to go on living’] (1991: 35). However he does gradually claim a space for himself not only within Julia’s world but also within the space of Santa María. His autonomy is achieved ultimately by his sexual awakening. For while Jorge could actually at any point have visited the brothel, clearly a step that he was anxious to take, he himself deemed that he was not ready. It was only once he had made love to Julita and thus in his own eyes arrived at an equal footing with her as a person, no longer as a child or plaything, that he considered himself able to visit Larsen’s house by the river. Another indication of Jorge’s search for truth is to be found in his writing, for he, like so many of Onetti’s main protagonists from Eladio Linacero onwards is a writer of sorts, or, as Lanza puts it in the course of one of their conversations: ‘. . . usted está malditamente condenado a escribir’ (1983: 123) [‘. . . you, unfortunately for you, are condemned to write’] (1991: 156). In Jorge’s case, what he writes is poetry and this plays a very interesting role in the make up of his persona. In an earlier conversation with Jorge, Lanza describes his own youthful wish to write the definitive book: ‘. . . un libro que lo dejaría dicho todo. Muertas la literatura, la filosofía, la teología, psicología y tantas otras cosas’ (1983: 91) [‘. . . a book that would say all that needs to be said. So literature, philosophy, theology, psychology, and many other things would be dead]’ (1991: 115). He goes on to say that: Un libro de versos, [. . .] nunca puede ser definitivo en el sentido que nos interesa; es siempre un principio, un camino que se abre. [. . .] porque eso es interminable, porque no existe, porque la poesía está hecha, digamos así, con lo que nos falta, con lo que no tenemos (1983: 94) [A book of verses, now that I think of it – and we can argue the point – can never be definitive in the way that interests us; it is always a beginning. [. . .] because it is interminable, because it doesn’t exist, because poetry is made, let’s say, with what we lack, with what we don’t have] (1991: 118–19).

Toril Moi’s (1985: 101) discussion of lack in the context of the work of art, and particularly of Lacan’s theory on this matter, throws some light on Jorge’s dilemma: In one sense the unconscious is desire. Lacan’s famous statement ‘The unconscious is structured like language’ contains an important insight into the nature of desire: for Lacan, desire behaves in precisely the same way as language: it moves ceaselessly on from object to object from signifier to signifier, and will never find full and present satisfaction just as meaning can never be seized as full presence.

Lanza’s definitive book has never been written because it cannot be. It cannot be because the nature of language is such that it is ceaseless and interminable. The only possible definitive closure is death. The parallel between language and

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 35

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

35

desire is of interest here, because, as Lanza says, poetry is made with what we lack. Jorge’s search for ‘a full and present satisfaction’ through poetry echoes his constant, and equally fruitless, search for an essential truth. As with Lanza’s book, Jorge’s project is impossible. This search for completeness bears a striking resemblance to another Lacanian concept, that of the Imaginary Order. Millington (1985: 279) offers a Lacanian reading of Larsen’s situation when he suggests: The brothel and Santa María are ideologically incompatible. But the two entities are also incompatible in a more abstract sense: the symbolic order of Santa María excludes and overrides the imaginary order of the brothel – Larsen’s fantasy cannot be lived out in the real world, as his experience repeatedly shows.

The same holds true for Jorge Malabia, since his project, his search for truth, parallels Larsen’s doomed quest for perfection. The depiction of space in this novel is extremely important, and it would be difficult to talk of marginality as a concept in the text without making some reference to the way in which Santa María is mapped out. If we are to imagine, as would almost certainly be the case, that Santa María, like so many South American towns, is built on a grid system, that is, in squares rather like a chess board,4 then the conventional aspect of the town is strictly contained within the limits of this grid both in terms of area and of depth or height. Virtually all nonconformist behaviour can be found to take place outside of these limits. Examples of this idea are manifold. When Díaz Grey visits the pharmacist, Barthé, to discuss the setting up of the brothel, the meeting takes place in the basement of his shop, below the grid. His later visit, in which he puts forward Barthé’s proposal to Larsen, takes place in ‘los altos del Berna’, above it. But even more noticeably, the brothel is situated outside the town down by the river, as too, is another construct whose raison d’être is an attempt at breaking with the stifling subjection of Santa María, the phalanstery. If the river symbolises movement, life and death, the grid, on the contrary, conveys an image of enclosure and imprisonment, of non-life. The use of space in the novel, therefore, functions as a metaphor for the different mentalities which oppose each other within these spaces. The idea of marginality is enhanced by the setting of non-conformist behaviour outside in an apparently more organic and alive setting.

4 Peter Turton (1976: 129) refers to this idea when he says: ‘Por supuesto que la ciudad misma, su barrio de Enduro y Puerto Astillero, siguiendo el ejemplo de tantos lugares hispanoamericanos urbanizados a partir de los tiempos coloniales, están ordenados por cuadras.’ [Of course, the city itself, its area of Enduro and Puerto Astillero, following the example of so many Latin American places urbanised since colonial times, is laid out in blocks]. He goes on to cite a number of references to this fact from El astillero. The same could clearly be held to hold true for Juntacadáveres.

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

36

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 36

LINDA CRAIG

Díaz Grey, of course, lives by the river, for while he is able to participate in the life of the town, his distanced, asceptic view of the goings on sets him apart from his fellow citizens. Similarly to the aforementioned Lanza, Díaz Grey’s principal function in Juntacadáveres is that of an observer. With the exception of the initial section in which the doctor acts as a go-between between Barthé and Larsen facilitating the setting up of the brothel, both of these observers assume a somewhat God-like stance. The nature of this perspective, in the doctor’s case is referred to overtly when he reveals in the course of one of his many interior monologues: De modo que es necesario que me esfuerce y me apresure, que corra todos los riesgos de error para cumplir mi pacto con Dios, según el cual debo mirar y conocer a cada uno, y saber que lo estoy haciendo, aunque sólo sea una vez y esta dure un segundo; de modo que clavo los ojos en el variable agujerito central que tiene Euclides Barthé en la cara [. . .]. Debo ver qué cosa única hay dentro y aparte del mezclador de limonadas purgantes, del concejal, del mancebo de botica que llegó a dueño . . . (1983: 27) [‘Which is why I’ll have to work hard and diligently, run every risk of being misunderstood in order to carry out my pact with God, according to which I should look at and get to know each and every one of these people, and know that I’m doing it, even if it’s only just this once and that it will all only last an instant. Which is why I’m gluing my eyes to the fluctuating, central little hole that Euclides Barthé has in his face [. . .]. I ought to see what unique thing there is inside him, aside from the man who makes lemonade purges, aside from the town councilman, aside from the pharmacist’s assistant who got to be the owner . . .’] (1991: 27–8)

His self-proclaimed mission in life, like that of the writer, has a certain voyeuristic quality. He has given up any idea of real communication between people, and is profoundly mistrustful of the role of language: ‘Aunque uno esté más allá, por encima, separado de todo esto, sólo puedo actuar y decir como si estuviera en esto y ligado. La verdad sería el silencio, la quietud completa’ (1983: 83) [‘Even if we’re beyond or above all this, separated from it, it’s only possible to act and talk as if we’re in it and tied to it. Truth would be silence, complete quietude’] (1991: 103). And indeed he does achieve a state of total quiet, an almost Buddhist-like state of non-being, beyond desire, by means of drugs: ‘Volver a casa, ponerme una inyección, escuchar música y pensar en Molly . . .’ (1983: 44) [‘I can go home, give myself a shot, listen to music, and think about Molly . . .’] (1991: 51). The ideas of distance and non-participation also apply to Lanza, the old man who, fittingly, works as a proofreader for El Liberal and whose friendship with Jorge Malabia has already been referred to. Lanza is something of an outsider per se, due to the fact that he is foreign, Spanish, and also due to his advanced age. His attempted conversations with Jorge late at night in a bar are characterised by a definite lack of communication. So the reader, who sees Lanza through Jorge’s eyes, is constantly aware of Jorge’s interior monologue which is frequently

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 37

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

37

very distanced from what he and Lanza are actually saying to each other. Indeed he describes their relationship as ‘. . . la comedia nocturna con el viejo Lanza’ (1983: 52) [‘. . . my nocturnal comedy with old Lanza.’] (1991: 61). Lanza it is who recounts to Jorge the story of the phalanstery, the failed attempt by Jorge’s brother-in-law, Marcos, to form a utopian community as an alternative to the rigidity of Santa María. Hugo Verani (1980: 168) writes of Lanza’s role in an excellent article on Juntacadáveres in the following terms: Lanza contrapone su razonamiento a lo que puedan decir del falansterio el príncipe Orloff o Marcos, como si partieran de dos posiciones dispares. Orloff, en su versión, ‘busca la belleza, la viñeta literaria, lo que ahora llaman escapismo, el invento. Es una posición de artista’. Esta es una actitud artistica, anticientífica. En cambio Lanza define su actitud frente al falansterio, diciendo: ‘Yo soy un pobre viejo que busca la verdad’, hermosa frase de otro testigo implicado, como Díaz Grey, otro lúcido alter ego de Onetti. [Lanza counterposes his reasoning with what prince Orloff or Marcos could say about the phalanstery, as though they set out from two different positions. Orloff, in his version, ‘is searching for beauty, the literary vignette, what would now be called escapism, invention. It is the position of an artist’. This is the artistic, anti-scientific attitude. On the other hand Lanza defines his position with respect to the phalanstery, saying: ‘I am a poor old man in search of the truth’ the beautiful phrase of another witness implicated, like Díaz Grey, another of Onetti’s lucid alter egos].

So Lanza takes his place among the marginalised of Santa María as a result of his distanced perspective, but also, and more importantly as a result of his insistence, which has already been referred to in terms of his writing, on searching for the truth. The above-mentioned Marcos Bergner, brother of Julita, is a strangely contradictory, unpredictable personage, and while in most of the novel he is to be found in direct opposition to Larsen and to the fulfilment of his dream of perfection, he is nevertheless as far from the mainstream of Santa María’s society as any of these other outsiders. Marcos is initially and notably set apart from the confines of Santa María by his leading role in the setting up of the above-mentioned phalanstery: ‘. . . una comunidad cristiana y primitiva basada en el altruísmo, la tolerancia, el mutuo entendimiento’ (1983: 127) [‘. . . a primitive Christian community based on altruism, tolerance, and mutual understanding’] 1991: 161). The idea harks back to the nineteenth century, a time when a number of Europeans attempted to build utopian societies in Latin America. And this attempt, like so many of its predecessors, was doomed to failure. The story of the phalanstery is actually situated in a time posterior to the fictional present of Larsen’s summer, and it has already failed a considerable time before Lanza recounts its story to Jorge. Marcos is therefore depicted at a point in his life when his dreams have come to nothing. It is perhaps due to this very feeling of disillusionment, that Marcos sides with the good burghers of Santa María, strenuously opposing the setting up of the brothel.

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

38

Page 38

LINDA CRAIG

It is hardly surprising, given his history, that Marcos is a rather larger than life personage. His view of his behaviour is that he is less corrupted than his peers, or, as he tells Díaz Grey: Todos se van de las cosas, ¿sabe? Entiéndame. Todos los muchachos eran como yo, crecimos iguales, hacíamos y pensábamos lo mismo. Ahora sólo yo soy como era antes. ¿Y por qué? No porque sea mejor que ellos; lo que pasa es que no tengo miedo ni novedad. Nunca tuve (1983: 86) [They’re all leaving things, see? Try to understand me. All the guys were like me, we grew up the same, we did and thought the same. Now only I’m the way I was before. And why? Not because I’m better than they are; what’s happening is that I’m not afraid, and I’m not looking for new things. Neither one] (1991: 108).

He then explains further: Son de mi escuela, se hicieron conmigo. Pero no quieren complicaciones, cambiaron, van a tolerar cualquier cosa si el asunto no es con ellos. Si no es personal quiero decir (1983: 87) [They’re my kind, they grew up with me. But they don’t want trouble, they changed; they’ll put up with anything as long as it doesn’t interfere with them. As long as it isn’t personal, I mean] (1991: 108).

This attitude situates Marcos firmly in the camp of the other marginalised protagonists sketched above. His, too, is a search for truth. His position however, is ambivalent, for Marcos oscillates between what Díaz Grey describes as his: ‘. . . guerra santa contra el prostíbulo . . .’ (1983: 82) [‘. . . the holy war against the brothel . . .’] (1991: 102), and his later apparently contradictory stance when he goes with Jorge to the brothel and, after an initial scene in which he threatens Larsen with a pistol, dances a tango with one of the prostitutes. Quite what Marcos hopes to achieve by going to the brothel is never really clear. What is clear is that he has no difficulty in relating to his new companions, or, as he puts it: ‘Como un Bergner, padre. Fui, vi y vencí’ (1983: 211) [‘As we Bergners always do, father. I went, I saw, I conquered’] (1991: 274). But despite this, his loyalty still lies with the other camp, his opposition remains unchanged. Lanza’s analysis of the situation is probably right when he tells Jorge: ‘Considerando el asunto desde el punto de vista psicológico, puede tratarse de la tan común rivalidad vocacional que ha caracterizado siempre a los artistas.’ (1983: 129–30) [‘Considering the matter from the psychologcal point of view, it may be the common vocational rivalry which has always characterized artists.’] (1991: 164). Marcos, having failed in his attempt to shape a different world, is determined that Larsen, too, will fail. What all of these men share, therefore, and what sets them apart from their fellow beings, is an awareness of the limitations of their existences, and certainly in the cases of Larsen and Jorge, a will to transcend these limitations. That such transcendence is not possible is their tragedy.

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 39

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

39

Saints and Corpses: Women in ‘Juntacadáveres’ Probably the most important and influential woman in this novel is actually no more than symbolic; she is the woman after whom the town is named, the Virgin Mary, Santa María. The town, as I have pointed out earlier, is actually no more than an imaginary construct, dreamed up by a fictional entity, Brausen, who invented it in the course of La vida breve. Nevertheless its very name bears witness to the fact that this new beginning, echoing perhaps the idea of America (the new world), is not new at all, rather it trails with it a whole baggage of beliefs and prejudices which form part of the Christian, and more specifically Roman Catholic, tradition. The symbols and myths surrounding the Virgin Mary, are manifold, and their influence on Western thought is almost impossible to overestimate. They are the object of an extremely interesting and perceptive work by Marina Warner (1976) in which she highlights some of the various ways in which the scant reference made to Mary in the New Testament was moulded and given particular emphases according to the inclinations of different interpreters. One example of this kind of manipulation is explained by her thus: That the mother of God should be a virgin was a matter of such importance to the men of the early Church that it overrode all other considerations, including the evidence of revelation itself. Classical metaphysics contributed to the development of the belief, but the root of it was the Father’s definition of evil. Sexuality represented to them the gravest danger and the fatal flaw; they viewed virginity as its opposite and its conqueror, sadly failing to appreciate that renunciation does not banish or overcome desire. It is almost impossible to overestimate the effect that the characteristic Christian association of sex and sin and death has had on the attitudes of our civilization. Since the learned Saints Jerome and Augustine (d.430) tackled the problem of man’s tendency to evil, the three separate concepts have been bound together tightly in a web that traps every Christian (1976: 50–51).

The role of woman in this perception of evil is clarified in another passage from Warner’s work where she throws some light on Saint Thomas Aquinas’s thought: Aquinas undertook to interpret the whole of paristic theology in the light of Aristotelian philosophy, previously regarded as a grave threat to Christianity. The Angelic Doctor also accepted Aristotelian biology, with far-reaching consequences on the attitude to women’s role in European society. He saw man as the vital source of life, and woman solely as the incubator, the bloodtransfusion unit (1976: 41).

Man is therefore seen as the spiritual, life-giving, force whereas woman is relegated to the realms of matter. But matter, of course, decays, and so woman is closely juxtaposed with this combination of sex, sin and death. The Virgin Mary,

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

40

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 40

LINDA CRAIG

on the other hand, is the ideal woman, set aside from the rest of her sex by the miracle of the virgin birth. She is the impossible ideal. In Juntacadáveres, the church is generally depicted as an instrument of social repression, a force which uses its domination of the Symbolic Order in order to contain the population within the grid of the town. For it is a prime example of the institutions of rule and of official language which the Symbolic Order represents. It is, for this reason, one of the major forces against which the marginalised protagonists are battling. It might even be said that they are in opposition to everything that Santa María, including its interpretation as the Virgin Mary, represents. Yet, despite this, the depiction of women bears definite Christian overtones. There is a hierarchy in the perception of women – always through men’s eyes – in which, if none rises very high, there is no doubt that the ‘fallen women’, the prostitutes, form the bottom line. Indeed the association of woman with sex, sin and death is patent in the parallels drawn between prostitutes and corpses, in the very fact of calling a pimp a corpsegatherer (a more literary translation of Juntacadáveres). In keeping with this view of women, if none of the female protagonists is particularly idealised, the same cannot be said of the Virgin Mary. For indeed, what the officials of the town and of the church are striving to protect in their battle against the setting-up of the brothel, is not their menfolk, who visit it and come away relatively unsullied, but rather their women. For virgins and faithful women, as exemplified by the Saint, accepting their subordinate role, are essential to patriarchy. Women, therefore, either idealised or degraded, are seen as essential symbols around which men assert their power and mould their lives. The male protagonists of the novel make choices and have some mobility, for these men specifically choose whether or not to marginalise themselves, and even the most disreputable of them, Larsen, could have remained, ‘siempre abotonado’ (1983: 12) [‘always kept his jacket buttoned’] (1991: 9), working in the offices of El Liberal; but the women are much more static. This idea is not particular to Juntacadáveres. On the contrary, as Julia Kristeva (1986: 190) says: ‘. . . when evoking the name and destiny of women, one thinks more of the space generating and forming the human species than of time, becoming or history’ [emphasis hers]. Alejo Carpentier’s Los pasos perdidos, is another classic example within the realms of Latin American fiction of this idea in which the male protagonist(s) incorporate the plot, or anecdote, of the novel while the female protagonists represent the different spaces through which the male of the species move. This essentialising vision of women is captured in Jorge Malabia’s view of the prostitutes, when he says: ‘No parecían llegar de la capital, sino de mucho más lejos, de años de recordación imprecisa’ (1983: 13) [‘They did not seem to be arriving from the capital but from much further away, from years only imprecisely recalled.’] (1991: 11). They are eternal symbols who call to mind a place, never an individual or an active history.

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 41

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

41

The female protagonists who remain within the limits of Santa María, like their fellow men, are beings who constantly strive to uphold the rule of the Symbolic Order. Their status within this order is, however, much less secure than is that of the men. It is a construct of patriarchy, and therefore their position is rather more complex. The only one of these women to be developed individually is Jorge Malabia’s mother, who, although she plays but a very minor role, is described by her son in an interesting way: ‘Sabe, desde hace mucho tiempo, que es esposa y madre; yo siempre la he conocido con la cara correspondiente, la mirada dulce e impersonal, la boca bondadosa y amargada, variando las proporciones según los días’ (1983: 171) [‘For a long, long time she has known that she’s a wife and mother; I’ve always known her with either one face or the other: the sweet, impersonal eyes, the kindly and embittered mouth, the varying proportions according to the day’] (1991: 220). The oxymoronic ‘bondadosa’/ ‘amargada’ [‘kindly’/‘embittered’] is a device which Onetti uses to great effect, the image is one of a total lack of spontaneity and authenticity. The woman is merely acting a part. Also within the confines of Santa María is to be found the group of schoolgirls who write anonymous letters to the other women and girls of the town, denouncing their husbands and boyfriends, by giving details of the times of their visits to the brothel. These girls form one of the most vociferous groups in the fight against the pale blue house by the river, and their position requires some explanation. According to Julita, whose room they used to write their poison pen letters, these girls are virgins. Moreover they have strong links with the church; their demonstration, under a banner which declares ‘Queremos novios castos y maridos sanos’ (1983: 226) [‘We want chaste boyfriends and healthy husbands’] (1991: 292), starts out from under the shade, or protection, of the church. They would appear, therefore, to see themselves within the context of the Christian virgin–mother idealised symbolism. They are women who see and judge themselves through men’s eyes. While their wish to have healthy partners is understandable, the divide between themselves and the women by the river is total. These girls are nursing a desire to become part of the Symbolic Order with the power that this implies, but it is an impossible dream. The only futures that they can attain through this channel are those of motherhood, a state that has already been shown to be inauthentic, or, worse still, that of remaining unmarried, a dry unwanted virgin, exemplified in the imaginary elderly woman in the lace blouse who is dreamed up by the townsfolk, thought to be the writer of the letters. Quite separate from the other women in Santa María, and by far the most individualised of the female protagonists in Juntacadáveres, is the aforementioned Julita. She is a protagonist who is quite distanced from the central argument [if such it can be called] of the novel, and also distanced physically from the world around her. Julita lives in her room which forms part of the Malabia household, and except in death, she is never seen in any other setting. Significantly, the room is upstairs on the first floor, therefore outside the grid of Santa María. The only

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

42

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 42

LINDA CRAIG

person with whom she communicates is Jorge, so she is only ever seen through his eyes. However, this does not entirely prevent her from attaining a consciousness which transcends the trap of the other female protagonists. I would agree with Mark Millington (1987: 374) when he points out that Julita actually has a certain independent history, and goes on to say that ‘. . . there is clear evidence here of the character of Julita being constituted by an individual problem so that she is more than just a function of a male situation.’ Indeed, he even goes so far as to suggest that ‘. . . this consciousness is almost unique in a woman character in Onetti.’ Following the death of her husband, Julita has gone mad, or, to repeat Jorge’s observation: ‘Ella eligió estar loca para seguir viviendo . . .’ (1983: 32) [‘She chose madness in order to go on living’] (1991: 35). It is interesting that in Onetti’s works madness is not really seen as negative, but rather almost as a state of innocence, of non-contamination, and in a reflection of society at large, madness is often associated with women.5 Looking at conventional binary oppositions, the basic contrast of active/passive, male/female would seem to manifest itself in Onetti’s work. This being the case, it is hardly surprising that what can be found are male protagonists actively seeking authenticity, while one of the few options for the females is that of choosing, or of slipping passively into, insanity. In the case of Julita, this would seem to be the consequence of a state of awareness which the other female protagonists do not share. Indeed, few do, for as Julita says: ‘. . . me basta con este cuarto y estar sola para vivir lo que ellos no van a poder aunque se mueran de cien años.’ (1983: 180) [‘All I need is this room and to be alone to live what they can’t live even if they live to be a hundred.’] (1991: 232). Julita’s madness came about as a direct result of the death of her husband. Indeed it first manifests itself at his funeral. Her existential dilemma, therefore, is quite different from that of the marginalised male protagonists; for they, with the exception of Marcos, who is married to a woman who means nothing to him, are all single, and there is never any suggestion that their search is in any way related to the idea of finding the ideal partner. Julita’s awareness, on the other hand, emerged from the fact that she has experienced some kind of ideal situation, which apparently provided her with a role within the Symbolic Order. Possibly due to the short duration of the situation, or to the fact that she did not find herself having to play out the role of motherhood, she has not become disillusioned. She is now a virtual outcast from society. She has lost her place within the Christian hierarchy, and also her illusion of access to the Symbolic Order. She escapes, therefore, into the world of her imagination, and unwilling or 5 Certainly in England and Wales it can be said in grosso modo that men who deviate from society’s norms are classified as criminals and are incarcerated, whereas women who display similar tendencies are deemed to display pathological conditions. According to the DHSS, in 1978, 57% of the resident population of psychiatric hospitals was female. This statistic is to be found in Bridget Hutter and Gillian Williams (eds) (1981: 131–2).

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 43

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

43

unable to take any active measures to change this situation, ultimately takes the most reactive step of all, by killing herself.6 It is interesting to note that towards the end of the novel, as she sinks deeper and deeper into her imagination, Julita is described wearing a long, pale blue dress. For pale blue, with its ethereal overtones, is also the colour of the brothel. This would appear to lend a certain celestial quality to the realms of the imaginary, emphasising their unreality. Given the strongly negative attitude that the male protagonists described above hold towards the Symbolic Order, and their desire to flee from it, there would seem to exist a possibility that the prostitutes in the novel, so marginalised and so firmly placed within the Imaginary Order, might enjoy some kind of privileged position. In fact nothing could be further from the case. Perhaps, as manifestations, if such a thing can exist, of the Imaginary, they symbolise fragmentation, the impossibility of unity or completeness outside of the Symbolic Order; or perhaps in this situation the Christian dichotomy of saints and fallen women takes over. Certainly they are depicted as the most degraded of all the figures in Juntacadáveres. The second of these possibilities, the Christian view of women, might be echoed in the name of the madame, María Bonita. For in this case, the image of Santa María, the idealised version of womanhood, is replaced by another María, and this time the saintliness has gone. María is now deemed to merit no more than the rather trivialising epithet, ‘bonita’ [‘pretty’]. These women are indeed constantly trivialised. Looking again at the names they are given, in fact, María Bonita is the only one to have any kind of surname at all. In contrast with the male personages, who, with the exception of the younger Jorge and Marcos, are generally referred to simply by their surnames, indicative of their position within the patriarchal discourse; the women in the brothel by the river are seldom called by their names at all, and when they are, they are given no more than first names. Their status as members of the human race is no more than tenuous and descriptions of them constantly imply that they are no more than surface, they are beings without substance. These lines in the opening page are indicative of vocabulary used throughout the novel in describing the prostitutes: ‘. . . (Larsen) sonrió a las otras dos, a la cara infantil, redonda, de Irene y a las cejas amarillas de Nelly, muy altas, rectas, dibujadas cada mañana para coincidir con el desinterés, la imbecilidad, la nada que podían dar sus ojos’ (1983: 9). [‘. . . (Larsen) grinned at the other two, at Irene’s childlike, round face and Nelly’s high, straight, yellow eyebrows, which she drew each morning to complement the disinterest, the imbecility, and the nothingness expressed by her eyes’] (1991: 4). In Chapter XIV, in a passage in which some of the details of Larsen’s past appear, he can be seen starting out on his chosen career as a pimp. The initial 6 Swanson (1999) points out that Julia kills herself shortly after Jorge’s sexual initiation with her. This follows the pattern of El pozo and La vida breve as discussed in the previous chapter.

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

44

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 44

LINDA CRAIG

stages show him living off a school teacher whom the narrator describes as: ‘. . . una mujer mayor que él, una mujer que estaba engordando. Se llamaba Blanca, por tener un nombre’ (1983: 112) [‘. . . a woman older than he, a woman who was getting fat. Her name, to give her a name, was Blanca’] (1991: 140). Subsequently, in a decisive moment in which he makes up his mind to leave his job in order to dedicate himself entirely to this new career, the passage reads thus: ‘Después llegó la crisis, la hora previsible en que toda alma fuerte busca la soledad y su destino. Junta dejó el empleo y se separó de Blanca o de la mujer que sustituía a Blanca’ (1983: 113) [‘Later the crisis came, the foreseeable moment in which every strong soul seeks solitude and destiny. Snatcher quit his job and separated from Blanca or the woman who had taken Blanca’s place’] (1991: 142). The woman, or women, have no identity whatsoever, they are no more than interchangeable. This lack of identity reaches even greater extremes in another section, in the description of Larsen’s visit to a brothel run by a woman called Tora, a brothel which he is nursing a burning ambition to buy, although he knows that it is way beyond his means. Here, viewing the place with a critical eye, comparing it with the ideal brothel in his imagination, he makes a mental note of the imperfections he finds. The first of these concerns a light, the second, the installation of a bar and the third, with no change of tone, refers to the women working there. Of these he says to himself: ‘Demasiado polvo, demasiada pintura, las tres tienen el mismo peinado’ (1983: 64) [‘Too much powder, too much makeup, all three of them have the same hairdo’] (1991: 78). The women are viewed in exactly the same way as the furnishings, and the resulting image is one of reification. It calls to mind an aspect of Rosario Castellano’s (1971) short story, ‘Lección de cocina’ (‘Culinary Lesson’), in which a newly-married woman reflects on her new life and comes to the conclusion that she is now no more than a part of her house, just another piece of furniture, an object. In the same passage from Juntacadáveres, Larsen wakes up at midday with one of the prostitutes by his side and here the woman, in keeping with the idea of reification is actually described as ‘la cosa’ [‘the thing’] and also as a corpse. Not only is she dehumanised but she is also a symbol of death. In a line that is nothing short of grotesque, she is seen thus: ‘El cadáver alzó la cabeza y trató de sonreír’ (1983: 68) [‘The cadaver raised its head and tried to smile.’] (1991: 84). Larsen, this ‘– filatelista de putas pobres –’ (1983: 125) [‘philatelist of poor whores’] (1991: 158), is not only a collector of women as objects as Lanza’s description suggests, but worse, as the title and his nickname state, a gatherer of corpses. This juxtaposition of woman and death, is central here. While this could well be put down to the connection, derived from classical antiquity, between women, matter and decay, it can also be seen to come about as a result of the categorising of thought into binary oppositions. In this way the basic contrasts of active/passive, life/death already lead to one possible basis for the parallel. The opposition, culture/nature, provides another, since woman, and more particularly the mother, by giving birth, is deemed to be somehow closer to nature than is

Mono219-CH-02.qxd

9/22/05

8:59 AM

Page 45

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

45

man. As Simone de Beauvoir (1988: 205) in The Second Sex puts it: ‘. . . even death itself, under the maternal eye, is domesticated, in correspondence with birth, indissolubly linked with all life of the flesh.’ It is a parallel which has a long history in Western thought. What is striking about Juntacadáveres in this sense, therefore, is not actually so much the values it espouses, for these are commonly-held values, a part of the Western tradition, but rather the fact that it is a novel which lays bare these issues, which sets them out clearly and painstakingly. It is almost as though Onetti, the arch-misogynist, were, in spite of himself, revealing the process of construction of women’s roles in our societies. This issue is, after all, addressed at great length in the novel, and deemed to be of sufficient importance to be referred to directly in its very title. Toril Moi (1985: 167) suggests, paraphrasing the work of Kristeva: Women seen as the limit of the symbolic order will [. . .] share in the disconcerting properties of all frontiers: they will be neither inside nor outside, neither known nor unknown. It is this position that has enabled male culture to sometimes vilify women as representing darkness and chaos, to view them as Lilith or the Whore of Babylon, and sometimes to elevate them as the representatives of a higher and purer nature, to venerate them as Virgins and Mothers of God. [emphasis hers]

Juntacadáveres is a novel which carries these two possible images of women to their logical extremes. From the idealised image of Santa María, a fantasy of patriarchal discourse, to the degraded one of dehumanised corpses, the ultimate symbols of chaos and death, the marginality of women is complete. So that while the male protagonists struggle at an existential level in a vain search for authenticity, the female characters are too distanced from the very possibility of discourse or power to even entertain such dreams.

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 46

3

El astillero (1961) Illusions In a work entitled The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, JeanFrançois Lyotard (1986: 80), notes a certain dichotomy within the realms of the avant-garde of which he says: What I have in mind will become clear if we dispose very schematically a few names on the chessboard of the history of avant-gardes: on the side of melancholia, the German Expressionists, and on the side of novatio, Braque and Picasso, on the former Malevitch and on the latter Lissitsky, on the one Chirico and on the other Duchamp. The nuance which distinguishes these two modes may be infinitesimal; they often coexist in the same piece, are almost indistinguishable; and yet they testify to a difference (un différend) on which the fate of thought depends and will depend for a long time, between regret and assay.

If, as I believe to be the case, Onetti’s work can be deemed to belong to that rather vague category, the avant-garde, then there is little doubt that his work, and particularly El astillero1 (1961) belongs to the first part of these oppositions, that is to that of melancholia and regret. El astillero is first and foremost a novel of nostalgia, of regret for an age of certainty which, if it ever existed, no longer does. So that this work, which, like Juntacadáveres, begins and ends with the arrival and departure of Larsen, takes the form of an odyssey, a search through a world of symbols for some kind of transcendence or of a god, a search which is ultimately fruitless. The novel is divided into different sections each of which has a heading, SANTA MARÍA-1; EL ASTILLERO-1; and later on, for example, one which bears the heading LA GLORIETA-111; LA CASILLA 11; and each of these settings, of which there are five, the above-mentioned and LA CASA, refers to the space in which most of the action within that section takes place. This device draws the reader’s attention to an almost Brechtian theatricality, giving a heightened sense of a backdrop rather than of any Realist depiction of a ‘natural’ landscape. Indeed at one point the narrator actually says: ‘. . . pensó que la casilla formaba parte del juego, que

1

Juan Carlos Onetti El astillero (1983). Translation by Nick Caistor The Shipyard (1992).

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 47

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

47

la había construido y habilitado con el solo propósito de albergar escenas que no podían ser representadas en el astillero’ (1983: 123) [‘. . . he was thinking that the cabin was part of the whole game, that it had been built and lived in solely to put on scenes that could not be staged in the shipyard.’] (1992: 70). Within these spaces the various protagonists act out their roles. But the only one to appear in all five of the settings is Larsen, chief protagonist and hero/antihero or even tragic hero of the piece. This last description could correspond to Larsen, given that he fits well into Aristotle’s definition of the tragic hero as: “the intermediate kind of personage, a man not pre-eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice and depravity but by some error of judgement’.2 Clearly Larsen’s ‘error of judgement’ lies in his choosing to take the post of General Manager of Petrus’ shipyard, in his desire to reach ‘un refugio’ (1983: 78) [‘a last refuge’] (1992: 23). However, even the shipyard is not enough. Larsen’s desire is ultimately symbolised by Petrus’ house: ‘la casa de cemento, blanca y gris, sucia, cúbica, numerosa de ventanas, alzada sin gracia por los pilares, excesivamente, sobre el nivel de las probables crecidas del río’ (1983: 70) [‘the dirty white and grey concrete villa, built like a cube, with windows on all sides, and clumsily raised on its pillars far above the level of any possible flooding from the river’] (1992: 13), which he sees in terms of a refuge from time, denoted by the flowing river, and from meaninglessness: ‘la forma vacía de un cielo ambicionado, prometido; como las puertas de una ciudad que deseaba entrar, definitivamente . . .’ (1983: 71) [‘the empty shape of a heaven he coveted and had been promised; as the gates of a city he longed to enter once and for all . . .’] (1992: 14). The religious implications of this ‘cielo prometido’ [‘heaven he had been promised’] are apparent, the symbolic house even belongs to Jeremías Petrus whose name contains both Jewish and Christian elements, and which echoes that of Saint Peter, the guardian of the gates of heaven. The glorieta [the summerhouse] and Petrus’ house are the settings for the most overtly religious symbolism, most specifically in the form of the candlestick with seven branches in the glorieta and in the name of Petrus’ daughter, Angélica Inés, an angel who lives in the longed-for house and who is at times depicted in long white dresses. And the attraction of symbols for Larsen is noted by the narrator when he says in another context: ‘Si Larsen hubiera atendido su propia hambre aquel mediodía, si no ayunar entre símbolos [. . .] tal vez hubiera logrado salvarse o, por lo menos, continuar perdiéndose sin tener que aceptarlo, sin que su perdición se hiciera inocultable, pública, gozosa’ (1983: 78) [‘If Larsen had paid heed to his hunger that midday, if he had not preferred to fast among symbols [. . .] he might perhaps have saved himself, or at least have continued to destroy himself without having to admit it, without his failure becoming so evident, public, so gloated over’] (1992: 22). Such is Larsen’s desperation to achieve entry into this 2

I have quoted here from A Dictionary of Literary Terms, by J. A. Cuddon, (1982: 704).

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

48

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 48

LINDA CRAIG

world of supposed safety that he plans to marry the above-mentioned Angélica Inés despite the fact that she is quite mad. The search for meaning, for some kind of certainty, also manifests itself in other ways. Thus, the shipyard itself, less of a religious construct, would seem to represent a different belief system: that of capitalism with its central pillars of positivism and hierarchy. Here too, Petrus is master. But, of course, the shipyard is a construct which harks back to better days, to an almost mythical past in which it was a hive of activity, a successful business. Larsen imagines it: veinte o treinta hombres se inclinaban entre los escritorios, una muchacha metía y sacaba sin errores las fichas del conmutador (“Petrus, Sociedad Anónima, buenos días”) [. . .]. Allá en el fondo, invisible, creído a medias, tan viejo como hoy, seguro y chiquito, el viejo. Treinta millones (1983: 78) [twenty or thirty men had sat bent over their desks while a girl unerringlly handled the switchboard (“Petrus Limited, good morning”) [. . .]. In the background, invisible, half believed in, as old as he was now, just as shrunken and self-assured, Petrus. Thirty million] (1991: 22).

It belongs to an age of certainty, of belief in the power of industry and in the possibility of progress. Those days are no longer. The shipyard is now all but bankrupt, no more than a ghost of its former self, and the skeleton staff which remains: Larsen, one of a long line of General Managers; and Kunz and Gálvez, in charge of the administrative and of the technical sides respectively, play out their roles against a deserted backdrop of rust and decay. The allegorical overtones are inescapable, the novel presents us with the two most powerful belief systems of Western civilisation, the Judeo–Christian religion and from much more recent times, capitalism. It posits the rather farcical Petrus as chief representative of these systems, and plots Larsen’s doomed attempt to make some sense of his life within their boundaries. The hierarchies implicit within both of these systems are reflected in the novel. Primarily, of course, they are represented by Petrus whose claim to power lies in his total unquestioning belief in his faith, which remains unshaken to the end. For Petrus has convinced himself that the shipyard can be saved despite the evidence of the rust and disuse around him. He spends much of his time in Buenos Aires between lawyers and government ministries attempting to save the shipyard, believing that the possibility exists. He is constantly optimistic: ‘Estamos al borde del triunfo, cuestión de días. En esta época, es triste, hay que llamar triunfo a un acto de justicia. Tengo la palabra de un ministro’ (1983: 143) [‘Our triumph is at hand, it’s only a matter of days. So sad that in times like these a simple act of justice should be called a triumph. A government minister has given me his word’] (1992: 92). As General Manager, Larsen assumes the position of second-in-command. His entry into the system is, however, far from straightforward and a certain ambivalence in his attitude is apparent from lines in which the omniscient

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 49

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

49

narrator (however, see p. 54), deems him to be: ‘. . . aceptando a disgusto el regreso de la fe, rebelándose tibiamente contra la sensación de amparo . . .’ (1983: 77) [‘reluctant to accept any renewal of faith, halfheartedly rebelling against the protective feeling . . .’] (1992: 21–2), and later: Varias veces [. . .] había presentido el hueco voraz de una trampa indefinible. Ahora estaba en la trampa y era incapaz de nombrarla, incapaz de conocer que había viajado, había hecho planes, sonrisas, actos de astucia y paciencia sólo para meterse en ella, para aquietarse en un refugio final desesperanzado y absurdo (1983: 78) [On several occasions [. . .] he had felt with foreboding the greedy jaws of some obscure trap. Now he was caught, but he could not name it, could not admit he had travelled, made plans, used up smiles, acts of cunning and patience only to fall into it, to settle into a last refuge that was this desperate and absurd] (1992: 23).

Larsen is incapable of total belief in the system, he is constantly attacked by doubts that undermine its validity, rendering it absurd and meaningless, no more than a charade. Nevertheless, he plays on in desperation: ‘. . . necesitando entregarse sin reservas a todo aquello con el único propósito de darle un sentido y atribuir este sentido a los años que le quedaban por vivir y, en consecuencia, a la totalidad de su vida’ (1983: 85) [‘. . . needing to surrender himself wholeheartedly to it all with the sole aim of endowing it with meaning, and to bestow that meaning on the years he had left to live, and through them on the whole of his life’] (1992: 29–30). The two other protagonists playing out their roles against the backdrop of the crumbling shipyard, Kunz and Gálvez, are even less capable of abandoning themselves to a total belief in the system, first and foremost because the system cannot put food in their mouths or give them shelter. The same fact, of course, holds true for Larsen, but as the quotation above points out, Larsen preferred to: ‘ayunar entre símbolos’ (1983: 78) [‘fast among symbols’] (1992: 22). And while Kunz and Gálvez go some way towards solving this problem by subverting the system, selling off the goods in the shipyard piece by piece behind Petrus’ back, Larsen, while allowing himself a share in the takings, refuses to be more than a silent witness to these acts. Kunz and Gálvez’s belief in Petrus is therefore little more than a superficial gesture, a minimal pretence which allows the play to continue. Thus the hierarchy in terms of position within the shipyard parallels another hierarchy which relates to how well or convincingly these different protagonists play the game. The idea of play is fundamental to El astillero, and numerous critics including Mark Millington (1985) and Hugo Verani (1981) have written at some length about it. Millington even used the title ‘Playing the Game’ for his chapter on the novel. Verani makes reference to Johann Huizinga’s (1970) classic text on play, Homo Ludens, and it is indeed pertinent to the concept as it is portrayed in Onetti’s novel. Huizinga deems the characteristics proper to play to be the

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

9/22/05

50

9:00 AM

Page 50

LINDA CRAIG

following: ‘It is an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted, and outside of the sphere of necessity or material utility’ (1970: 154). The definition fits the ritualistic nature of the game in El astillero well, the only questionable element might be the reference to the idea that play takes place outside of the sphere of necessity. For while it is true that play in El astillero brings no material benefits, it does seem to be a necessity in a more abstract sense. It is an existential necessity. The narrator makes references to different perceptions of play on numerous occasions, for example when he describes Larsen saying of Petrus: Pero él juega distinto y no sólo por el tamaño y el montón de las fichas. Con menos desesperación que yo [. . .] me lleva la otra ventaja de que, sinceramente, lo único que le importa es el juego y no lo que pueda ganar (1983: 145) [But he plays differently, and not just because of the size and number of the chips he has. To start with, he’s not as desperate as me [. . .]. Then again, he has the added advantage that, in all sincerity, what matters to him is the game and not what he stands to gain] (1992: 93–4).

Or when he is shown to be: ‘. . . sospechando confusamente que el juego deliberado de continuar siendo Larsen era incontables veces más infantil que el que jugaba ahora’ (1983: 111). [‘. . . somehow suspecting that the deliberate game of going on being Larsen was infinitely more childish than the one he was now playing’] (1992: 58). The essential nature of play is emphasised thus: ‘. . . trepan cada día la escalera de hierro y vienen a jugar a las siete horas de trabajo y sienten que el juego es más verdadero que las arañas, las goteras, las ratas . . .’ (1983: 101) [‘. . . they climb the iron staircase every day, they come to play at seven hours’ work and feel that the game is somehow more real than the spiders, the leaky pipes, the rats . . .’] (1992: 47), and again in the lines: ‘. . . pero si ellos, otros, me acompañan, el juego es lo serio, se transforma en lo real’ (1983: 101) [‘. . . whereas if they, others, join in, it’s the game that counts, it becomes the real thing’] (1992: 48). It seems that to play the game is to uphold the concepts of order and certainty central to the belief systems outlined in El astillero. Indeed it is the only possible way of ensuring that these constructs remain in place.

Shattered Dreams Nietzsche’s famous statement that God is dead could be said to be the foundation upon which this novel is written. It certainly has existential overtones, and as Peter Turton (1974–5: 283) observes in an article on El astillero: hay que hacer hincapié [. . .] en el hecho de que los esquemas mentales de Onetti – como sucede en el caso de todos los escritores existencialistas –, son fundamentalmente ético-religiosos. La angustia que les es común a todos éstos proviene precisamente del ansia de una perdida fe metafísica.

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 51

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

51

[we must emphasise [. . .] the fact that Onetti’s mental constructs – as with all existentialist writers – are fundamentally ethical and religious. The anguish that is common to all of these writers comes specifically from the anxiety arising from a lost metaphysical faith].

Other articles such as that of Marilyn Frankenthaler (1980) referred to at some length in the first chapter, also emphasise this aspect of Onetti’s work. What is to be found in El astillero, is what might be described as a dual consciousness. There is a level of consciousness at which the entire game, the search for certainty, is being played out; and another at which the game is being constantly unmasked and subverted. Of course the whole idea of playing the game points to the futility of the project. For the symbols of certainty, Petrus’ house and the shipyard have no Platonic function, they are not representations of an ideal. Rather they are depicted within the realms of phenomenology. For these images have no transcendence, they are simply indicative of themselves. In an article entitled ‘Lo rectilíneo y lo circular en El astillero’3 [The linear and the circular in El astillero], the aforementioned Turton (1976) states what is indubitably the case, that the heavy, square geometric forms to be found in the text, including the two buildings referred to above, both of which are described as cubic, are indicative of human force and rationalism. Larsen is trapped by what Nietzsche called: ‘the illusion of worlds-behind-the-scene’ in the sense that here there is no interiority or exteriority, they are equal. There is no hidden reality which might encompass a true being. Julia Kristeva (1981) talks of how humour is often a double-edged tool. For it can assert and subvert simultaneously. If the notion of playing the game in El astillero can be deemed to be a kind of humour, and indeed there is always a level of dry, perhaps sardonic humour in Onetti’s work leavening its pessimism; it is clear that this, for the same reasons, is a double-edged tool; it is assertive in that it is the only real form of action within the text, since it is movement in what is an otherwise static landscape;4 but at the same time it is subversive, for it draws attention to its own futility; it is but a game.

3 Another reference to the linear and the circular in Onetti’s work is made by Sabine Giersberg (1999) where she suggests that Onetti is constantly trying to break away from linear narration by means of the circular in the forms of multiple versions and recurrent characters. 4 Giersberg (1999: 166) in her lucid chapter points out that in Onetti’s work ‘death is almost omnipresent and it indicates a reflection upon the nature of time’. In talking about the constant weaving of time, death and movement, she cites a short story of Onetti’s, La muerte y la niña: ‘Que el tiempo no existe por sí mismo es demostrable; es hijo del movimiento y si éste dejara de moverse no tendríamos ni desgaste ni principios ni finales. En literatura tiempo se escribe siempre con mayúscula’ (CC 369) [‘The fact that time in itself does not exist is demonstrable; it is the child of movement, and should the latter cease, we would have neither erosion, nor beginnings nor ends. In literature, time is always written with a capital ‘T’]. This notion of movement as essential reflects its depiction here.

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

52

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 52

LINDA CRAIG

However the only alternative to playing the game within this existentialist world is death. As Huizinga notes: ‘Indeed, as soon as the rules are transgressed, the whole world collapses. The game is over’ (1970: 30). In El astillero, Gálvez, no more than a marginalised player at the best of times, as has been noted above, brings the game to an end by appealing to a true bastion of temporal power. He hands over a fake bond signed by Petrus to the police. The entire house of cards collapses, and Gálvez, no longer acting, reveals his true self, or as Larsen puts it: ‘Lo que siempre dije: ahora está sin sonrisa, él tuvo siempre esta cara debajo de la otra, [. . .] Ahora sí que tiene una seriedad de hombre verdadero, una dureza, un resplandor . . .’ (1983: 221) [“It’s as I always said: now he has lost that smile of his, he always had this face underneath the other one [. . .]. Now at last he is showing the serious face of a real man, a harshness, a glow’] (1992: 173–74). But Gálvez is dead, he has killed himself, and Larsen is looking at his corpse. And Larsen, too, is to die. The game is truly one of life or death. What is disconcerting in El astillero is the fact that the two levels, the assertive and the subversive, coexist overtly while they are actually contradictory. Thus there are moments which bring to mind for example Eugène Ionesco’s The Bald Prima Donna (1958), a work belonging to the Theatre of the Absurd in which the gap between language and reality is stretched to such an extent that the words are rendered totally futile and meaningless. A similar device can be found in El astillero in the absurd formality with which the protagonists address each other in the setting of the shipyard: El señor Administrador pide al señor Gerente General una entrevista. La gracia de una entrevista. El señor Administrador se considera en condiciones de documentar, esa es la palabra justa, la verdad de ciertas afirmaciones verbales (1983: 108) [The Administrative Manager requests an appointment with the General Manager. The favour of an appointment. The Administrative Manager considers himself in a position to document, in every sense of the word, the truth of certain verbal allegations] (1992: 55).

The enormous gap between this pedantic language and the sad fact of their situation is such that logos, is undermined. It has lost authority and power and shows itself to be not a tool of certainty but rather no more than another element in a world of chaos or absurdity. Logos is undermined also by the above-mentioned contradiction between the different discursive levels in the text. For here language facilitates the presentation of a contradiction without ever achieving any kind of conciliation between the opposing fields, and without ever confronting the problem implicit in the contradiction. What is to be found, therefore, is a kind of freeplay of language which brings to mind Derrida’s (1977: 280) words: This was the moment when language invaded the universal problematic, the moment when, in the absence of a centre or origin, everything became

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 53

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

53

discourse – provided we can agree on this word– that is to say, a system in which the central signified, the original transcendental signified, is never absolutely outside a system of differences. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and the play of signification infinitely.

In other words El astillero presents a deconstruction of the logos. Through questioning the validity of accepted structures of power, the text has led to the questioning of the language which holds these structures together. Certainly what can be found in El astillero, is an obliteration of distinctions. There is an all-pervading damp greyness in the text, it is played out over the winter months,5 which emphasises this sameness, and the protagonists are engaged in a constant struggle against stagnation or reification, while the elements, in all of their different manifestations often achieve a greater capacity for action. Examples of this syndrome are manifold. There seems to be, for example, a constant threat that the weeds, ‘yuyos’ might just gain control and wipe out all attempts to tame or achieve order over nature. They are referred to constantly: ‘. . . la tierra húmeda paralela a los anchos tablones grises y verdosos, unidos por yuyos . . .’ (1983: 63) [‘the damp earth beside the broad green-stained planks overgrown with weeds . . .’] (1992: 6); ‘El pasto había crecido a su capricho durante todo el año [. . .] entre los yuyos – había un estanque . . .’ (1983: 70); [‘The grass had been left to grow as it pleased for at least a year, [. . .] through the weeds there was a round pond . . .’] (1992: 13). ‘Más allá de los losanges de la glorieta, lejana y presente, amputada por los yuyos, Josefina discutía con un perro . . .’ (1983: 72) [‘Beyond the diamonds of the summerhouse, distant but present, her figure sliced in two by the weeds, Josefina was scolding the dog . . .’] (1992: 15), and in a moment of total blurring: ‘Larsen se mezcló, sordo y ciego, con los reiterados vaticinios del frío, de los roces filosos de los yuyos, de la luz afligida, de los ladridos distantes’ (1983: 73) [‘Larsen lost himself among the repeated prophecies of the cold, the jagged tug of the weeds, the mournful light, the distant barking’] (1992: 16). At times the rain becomes more capable of communication than are the protagonists: ‘. . . la lluvia, muy suave, golpeaba en el techo y en la calle, compañera, interlocutora, perspicaz’ (1983: 66) [‘a gentle rain had begun to fall on roof and street, accompanying him, sharing his secret, knowing’] (1992: 8); and later: ‘. . . el rumor de la lluvia hablaba de revanchas y de méritos reconocidos, proclamaba la necesidad de que un hecho final diera sentido a los años muertos’ (1983: 66–7) [‘. . . The patter of the rain spoke of vengeance and of worth being recognised, proclaimed the necessity of a final deed to make sense of all the lost years’] (1992: 9). This is clearly no romantic glorification of an overwhelming nature. Rather what is presented is a world in which there is a blurring of the limits between people and nature, the two converge, distinctions are obliterated.

5 Maloof (1995) suggests that spring in La vida breve and summer in Juntacadáveres symbolise hope of renewal, whereas the winter setting of El astillero is indicative of Larsen’s lost illusions and death.

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

54

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 54

LINDA CRAIG

The same haziness and lack of definition is to be found in many of the depictions of the protagonists. For example, their facial expressions lack any systematic wholeness, they tend towards the random. Incapable of true smiles, they are constantly descibed as showing their teeth. At one point it is said of Petrus that he: ‘. . . hizo ver veloz los dientes amarillos y se rascó el ala del sombrero’ (1983: 75) [‘. . . he flashed his yellow teeth, scratched the brim of his hat’] (1992: 19), showing his teeth in a semblance of a smile, and scratching his hat as though unaware of the boundary between self and object. Larsen is said to be: ‘Friolento, incapaz de indignación y de verdadero asombro . . .’ (1983: 76) [‘Shivering with cold, unable to rouse himself to indignation or astonishment . . .’] (1992: 20), and later: ‘. . . impotente y absurdamente móvil, como un insecto oscuro que agitara patas y antenas en el aire de leyenda . . .’ (1983: 84) [‘. . . powerless but absurdly mobile, like a black insect waving its legs and antennae in an air redolent of legend. . . .’] (1992: 28). The result of these observations is that the protagonists suffer a degree of reification while nature is viewed in somewhat anthropomorphic terms. The concept of the autonomous individual, the subject, is subverted, leading to what Deredita, in an article on El astillero6 calls ‘El yo desmoronado’7 [The Crumbling ‘I’]. A similar idea can be found in other facets of the text, particularly in the construct of the narrator. This narrator oscillates rather disconcertingly between omniscience and uncertainty while speaking from a third person viewpoint; and at other times, assumes the position of the first person plural as though perhaps talking from the point of view of the generality of the people of Santa María. This latter manifestation is apparent in the opening section of the novel in a line which reads: ‘. . . todos lo vimos en la vereda de la iglesia . . .’ (1983: 62) [‘. . . we all saw Larsen outside the church . . .’] (1992: 3), although any certainty or agreement between these voices is dispelled by a passage which shows differing perceptions: Son muchos los que aseguran haberlo visto en aquel mediodía de fines de otoño. Algunos insisten en su actitud de resucitado, en los modos con que, exageradamente, casi en caricatura, intentó reproducir la pereza [. . .]. Otros, al revés, siguen viéndolo apático y procaz . . . (1983: 60) [Many people swear they saw him that lunchtime in the dying days of autumn. Some claim he looked like his old self resurrected in the exaggerated way, 6

Deredita (1973: 220–37) compares El astillero with Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night, Burrough’s The Naked Lunch, and with Beckett’s The Unnameable, claiming that each of these works displays a tendency towards entropy, a notion which suggests that ‘la evolución no va hacia el orden sino progresivamente hacia el caos’ [evolution does not lead towards order but rather progressively towards chaos]. This seems to me to shed an interesting light on the blurring of boundaries or to use his word, the ‘homogenisation’ in Onetti’s novel. 7 This adjective, desmoronado, meaning crumbling or delapidated is key to the general atmosphere of El astillero. Acevedo (2004) also uses it to describe what he calls the decadent world of the novel.

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 55

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

55

almost caricatured, that he was trying to recapture the indolence [. . .]. Others on the contrary remember him as indifferent, hostile . . .]. (p. 2)

This narrator reports from a purely visual perspective, enjoying no privileged status in terms of focus or insight, and the observations of Hagen and the barman, who believe that they have sighted Larsen on a later visit to Santa María, follow a similar pattern. The bulk of the novel, however, is narrated by an unidentified third person who generally focuses on Larsen, seeing the world through his eyes, and who conveys Larsen’s impressions and ideas. His omniscience is apparent at different points throughout the text, as, for example, in passages like this one: Juntó las manos en la espalda y volvió a escupir, no contra algo concreto, sino hacia todo, contra lo que estaba visible o representado, lo que podía recordarse sin necesidad de palabras o imágenes; contra el miedo, las diversas ignorancias, la miseria, el estrago y la muerte. (p. 84) [He clasped his hands behind his back and spat a second time, at nothing in particular, but at everything, all that was visible or represented, all that came to mind without need of words or images; at fear, ignorance of every kind, at misery, devastation and death]. (pp. 28–29)

It reveals a privileged analysis of Larsen’s action and of his state of mind. At other times this narrator quotes Larsen’s thoughts: ‘. . . pensó: “Voy a instalar mi despacho en la pieza donde está el conmutador, ya que el viejo se reservó el más grande, la que tiene o le quedan mamparas de vidrio” ’ (pp. 84–5) [‘. . . [he] said to himself: “I’m going to set myself up in the room with the switchboard, seeing that old man Petrus has kept the biggest room for himself, the one which has, still has, glass partitions.” ’] (p. 29). But this authoritative viewpoint is disrupted by another which reveals the uncertainty referred to above. Thus there are moments such as Larsen’s first visit to Gálvez’s house, ‘la casilla’ [the cabin] , where both time and the notion of truth are undermined: ‘El escándalo debe haberse producido más adelante. Pero tal vez convenga aludir a él sin demora para no olvidarlo. [. . .] El escándalo siempre puede ser postergado y hasta es posible suprimirlo’ (p. 91) [‘The scandal must have happened sometime later. But perhaps it would be convenient to bring it up now so that it can be kept in mind [. . .]. The scandal can be put off indefinitely; it may even be possible to suppress it.’] (p. 37). Any claim to authority is brought into question again later in the novel where the narrator says: Esta parte de la historia se escribe por lealtad a un fantasma. No hay pruebas de que sea cierta y todo lo que podemos pensar indica que es improbable. Pero Kunz aseguró haber visto y oído. La sirvienta sólo admitió, muchos meses después, que “la señorita estaba un poco desarreglada”. (p. 169) [This part of the story is written out of a sense of loyalty to a ghost. There is no proof that it is true; and everything points to its being improbable. But Kunz

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

9/22/05

56

9:00 AM

Page 56

LINDA CRAIG

swore he saw and heard it. Months later, all the maid would admit was that “her mistress’s dress was a bit untidy”] (1992: 120).

Thus we see that this is a truly postmodernist, twentieth-century text, containing as it does a deconstruction of the subject, of time, of empirical truth, and of space too, since the spatial symbols mentioned at the beginning of this chapter prove to be meaningless.

Marginality An inevitable consequence of this lack of meaning would seem to be an all-pervading sense of powerlessness. All action within the novel is futile, and every gesture is empty. Here I would argue that, although I have compared Onetti’s novel in some of its aspects with works of European literature, the idea that I mentioned in the introduction that much that is taken for granted and therefore virtually hidden in Western culture is actually being explored and questioned in this society, is relevant. Although clearly the existential conundrum and the effects of the capitalist system have raised questions throughout Western culture, it seems to me that there is a certain distancing from these problems in this novel which highlights the marginal nature of its setting. At this point I shall make some reference to an article on El astillero by Jean Franco (1980), which displays a similar perception. According to Franco, what becomes apparent is ‘la diferencia entre una metrópolis y los países marginales’ (1980: 41) [the difference between a metropolis and the countries on the margins]; she then goes on to say that: Mientras en Europa, el progreso de la sociedad puede verse como un proceso continuo que comienza por el dominio de la naturaleza y se institucionaliza después en formas sociales, creando las ideologías necesarias, Puerto Astillero no obedece a esta ley de evolución histórica. Desaparece el gaucho, fracasa el capitalismo, pero sin dar lugar a un nuevo sistema. [While in Europe, society’s progress can be seen as a continuous process which begins with the domination of nature and then goes on to institutionalise itself within social structures, creating the necessary ideologies, Puerto Astillero does not obey this law of evolutionary history. The gauchos disappear and capitalism fails but without giving way to a new system].

While in Europe the strong nineteenth-century idea of progress, and the resulting images of capitalism have formed part of a process which has been institutionalised and therefore to some extent hidden, depicted as having an organic inevitability, this is not the case in Onetti’s world. Here Franco’s “necessary ideologies” have not been created; capitalism is perceived to be a system which is grafted on to this society unsuccessfully and subsequently rejected.

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 57

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

57

Franco emphasises the idea that capitalism is inappropriate to this society, for as she says: A diferencia de Europa en donde se originó la industria capitalista y la novela moderna, Puerto Astillero representa lo ya dado; aquí Larsen entra sin la convicción del inventor del sistema. Ni controla el origen ni el destino; vive de la venta de los materiales degenerados que otros habían producido (1980: 46) [In contrast with Europe where industrial capital and the modern novel have their origins, Puerto Astillero represents the already given; here Larsen enters without the conviction of the inventor of the system. He controls neither its origin nor its destiny; he lives from the sale of degenerated goods produced by others].

In this sense El astillero encapsulates an image of marginality. Franco has, to my mind, pinpointed a particularly interesting aspect of the novel. However, I would like to develop this argument, for the novel can be read in a less specific and more universal way. It is my contention that this image of the structures of capitalism as inappropriate, ‘foreign’ to this setting, can lead further to a reading of El astillero as shedding light on the weaknesses of capitalism in general. For this novel highlights the artificial, non-organic nature of the capitalist project per se. Rather than take up Franco’s image of origins and of a system of values ‘vigentes para otros’ (1980: 46) [valid for others], ‘otros’ being Europeans, it seems to me that El astillero, coming as it does from the margins, serves to undermine the entire myth of the necessity of capitalism, for if it does not provide answers to the basic questions of the human condition in Argentina or Uruguay, nor can it do so elsewhere. This is a novel whose principal theme, in a post-industrialist, Godless world is that of shattered dreams. The possibilities of making a mark, or of exerting power in any way, indeed of claiming authenticity of any kind, have gone along with the belief systems which upheld such hopes. It depicts a world in which marginality from power and from belief is an inescapable fact of the human condition, something that can merely be seen more clearly from areas of the world distanced in terms of geography and culture from the discursive centres.

The Three Women The three main female protagonists in this novel, Angélica Inés, Josefina and Gálvez’s nameless wife, occupy more or less the same spaces as women do in Onetti’s work as a whole. Millington (1987: 354) observes: It is a narrative founded on male characters’ heterogeneity, incompleteness and difficulties. In a crucial sense, women characters barely exist – their containment within the categories of a male discourse is what constitutes them as well as what denies them. They have no independence of the male problematic, so that even the privileged, marginal women are to be understood as marginal to the male centre.

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

58

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 58

LINDA CRAIG

Thus, unlike the male protagonists, so often preoccupied by the search for transcendence, these women can never be depicted as entities engaged in a conscious struggle. Rather, as has been shown in the previous chapter on Juntacadáveres, they represent spaces or places through which the male protagonists move. In El astillero, the female protagonists are depicted almost exclusively in terms of the varying functions that they fulfil for Larsen. This becomes particularly clear in the last few pages of the novel which recount the circumstances of Larsen’s death, beginning in a scene at his hotel, the ‘Berna’, where he considers himself to be already dead: buscando la luna pero no encontró más que la plata tímida del resplandor. Fue entonces que aceptó sin reparos la convicción de estar muerto. Estuvo con el vientre apoyado en la pileta, terminando de secarse los dedos y la nuca, curioso pero en paz, despreocupado de fechas, adivinando las cosas que haría para ocupar el tiempo hasta el final, hasta el día remoto en que su muerte dejara de ser un suceso privado (1983: 223) [He looked for the moon but could see nothing more than its wan silvery glow. It was then he truly accepted he was dead. Pressed against the basin, he finished drying his fingers and the back of his neck, curious but at peace, with no concern for dates, guessing at what he might do to fill in the time until the end, until the distant day when his death would no longer be a merely private event] (1992: 176).

What is left for him to do now would seem to be rather like the idea of seeing one’s life pass in front of one’s eyes before dying. And the three women, Angélica Inés, Josefina, and Gálvez’s wife represent the spaces in which his life is acted out. Larsen sets out from the ‘Berna’, therefore, on his last journey, and on this he visits, or attempts to visit, first Angélica Inés, followed by Josefina and lastly Gálvez’s wife. Despite this order, I shall deal with Josefina first since I feel that in a chronological view of Larsen’s life, she represents his early years. Josefina is, for Larsen, the most easily categorised of the three women. She is the servant of Angélica Inés, a representative of the working classes, and thus the type of woman to whom Larsen is most accustomed. He sees her as: Esta, la sirvienta [. . .] sin más expresión que la risa enfriada, desprovista adrede de motivos –, no servía como problema al aburrimiento de Larsen: pertenecía a un tipo sabido de memoria, clasificable, repetido sin variantes de importancia, como hecho a máquina, como si fuera un animal, fácil o compleja, perro o gato, ya se vería (1983: 65) [This one, the maid [. . .] expressionless but for a frozen smile, deliberately void of meaning, could not stir him from his lassitude: he knew her type by heart, they were easily classified, reproduced without any real differences, dog or cat, time would tell] (1992: 8).

Motiveless, and like an animal lacking in consciousness, Josefina’s status in Larsen’s eyes is virtually sub-human. Her purpose is purely and overtly functional. Within the novel this function is actually two-fold. Firstly she serves as

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 59

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

59

a facilitator for Larsen in his attempt to become involved with Angélica Inés. And secondly, towards the end of the novel, in the last scenes mentioned above, she takes on the role of an emissary of death, and represents the hopelessness of Larsen’s existential search. Here, on this last journey, Larsen is yet again unable to ascend even in the concrete sense of going upstairs to Petrus’ house. He finds himself doomed to staying on the ground and spends his last night with Josefina in her bedroom which: ‘. . . estaba allí mismo, al nivel del jardin.’ (1983: 229) [‘Josefina’s bedroom was level with the garden’] (1992: 182). In Josefina’s bedroom, he recognises that: “Estaba otra vez en la primera juventud, en una habitación que podía ser suya o de su madre, con una mujer que era su igual’ (1983: 230) [‘He was young again, in a room which might have been his mother’s, with a woman who was his equal’] (1992: 183). No longer protected even by a vestige of hope, he finds himself in ‘. . . un eterno clima de hielo. [. . .] olisqueando el aire de la tierra natal antes de morir’ (1983: 230) [‘. . . its icy chill [. . .] sniffing the air of his homeland before he dies’] (1992: 183). Larsen, smelling the place of his birth, has found himself again in the atmosphere of his childhood. It is one of poverty and hopelessness and one from which he has spent much of his life trying to escape. He leaves Josefina, therefore, concluding that: ‘Estar con la mujer había sido una visita al pasado, una entrevista lograda en una sesión de espiritismo . . .’ (1983: 231) [‘The night with the woman had been a trip to the past, someone called up in a spiritualist session’] (1992: 184), and he continues on his odyssey, this time visiting a woman who symbolises a later period of his life, Gálvez’s wife. The fact that this woman has no name already serves as a pointer to her purely symbolic function. Also she is pregnant. In fact what she represents is immanence, a state of being which the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines as: ‘Indwelling, inherent; [. . .] remaining within.’ Simone de Beauvoir (1988: 29) talks about this state with regard to the position of women in society. She talks of the stagnant quality of traditional feminine roles such as housekeeping or belonging to the harem, a category which would have no difficulty in including pregnancy, a merely passive function, amounting to no more than a means of reproducing the species. De Beauvoir opposes this state with that of transcendence, saying: Every time transcendence falls back into immanence, stagnation, there is a degradation of existence into the en-soi – the brutish life of subjection to given conditions – and of liberty into constraint and contingence. [. . .] Now what peculiarly signalizes the situation of woman is that she – a free and autonomous being like all human creatures – nevertheless finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other. They propose to stabilize her as object and to doom her to immanence.

Yet while this state of immanence is so closely linked with womanhood, there is certainly nothing intrinsically female about it, rather it is a condition of nontranscendence which can apply equally to the male of the species.

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

60

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 60

LINDA CRAIG

There are clues to be found in the depiction of Gálvez’s wife which bear witness to this idea. For example, although pregnant, she dresses like a man: “La mujer tenía un sobretodo y zapatos de hombre . . .’ (1983: 94) [‘The woman was wearing a man’s overcoat and shoes . . .’] (1992: 40). Moreover a certain communication builds up between Larsen and herself, one which would seem to exist outside of the limits of the game, and indeed, Larsen identifies with her in some way: ‘Larsen fue incapaz de encontrar una frase que explicara a la mujer cuánto la quería, de qué manera extraña y perseguida habían estado siendo hermanos durante años de separación y desconocimiento’ (1983: 122) [‘Larsen was unable to find the right words to explain to the woman how much he cared for her, how in some strange, harassed way the two of them had been brother and sister even during the long years of separation from and ignorance of each other’] (1991: 70). Thus this woman strikes a chord in some part of Larsen. For, of course, what they share is a common humanity. However, as far as he is concerned, she represents for him an unthinking solidarity, an animal-like en-soi, which he experiences as a threat from which he feels compelled to escape. He counters this threat with a sensation of repulsion: ‘Miraba la barriga de la mujer para asegurarse de que el asco lo protegería de toda forma de entrega y debilidad’ (1983: 173) [‘He stared at the woman’s belly to reassure himself that disgust would keep him from any surrender or weakness’] (1991: 125). This rejection of humanity reaches its extreme in the course of Larsen’s last journey, when he visits the casilla. Here, in a scene that would seem to represent the next step in life, that of adulthood and having children, he reaches the casilla to find that Gálvez’s wife is actually in labour. Larsen watches the scene with disgust and makes no attempt to help: Vio a la mujer en la cama, semidesnuda, sangrante, forcejeando, con los dedos clavados en la cabeza que movía con furia y a compás. [. . .] Sólo al rato comprendió y pudo imaginar la trampa. Temblando de miedo y asco se apartó de la ventana y se puso en marcha hacia la costa (1983: 232) [‘He could see the woman half-naked on the bed, bleeding, pushing with all her might, fingers clawing at her furiously, rhythmically shaking head. [. . .] It took him some time to understand and then he recognised the trap. Trembling with fear and disgust he moved away from the window and started to walk towards the river’] (1992: 185).

This phase of life, like childhood, as we saw before, is seen and then rejected. Larsen, who has already come to the conclusion that any form of solidarity is worthless: ‘Sospechó, de golpe, lo que todos llegan a comprender, más tarde o más temprano: que era el único hombre vivo en un mundo de fantasmas, que la comunicación era imposible y ni siquiera deseable’ (1983: 145) [‘He suddenly suspected what everyone comes to understand sooner or later, that he was the only person alive in a world peopled by phantoms, that communication was impossible and not even desirable’] (1992: 94). He turns his back on this pathetic scene, with all that it symbolises in terms of a new life and hope, and proceeds

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 61

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

61

on his journey towards death. Maloof (1995: 144), points out that these women in El astillero portray feminine archetypes, the servant, the wife and the madwoman. Of these she deems Galvez’s wife to be the most threatening to Larsen. Perhaps her power is counterbalanced by the fact that she is given no name, she is never more than Galvez’s wife. His flight from the terrifying sight of this woman giving birth, according to Maloof, might: ‘suggest his envy of a woman’s capacity to reproduce’ (1995: 163) something which reminds us of the attitude of Linacero in El pozo. Maloof here, as in her chapter on El pozo puts this down to a fear of engulfment by the ‘phallic mother’ (1995: 164). According to this reading, it would be this fear of the power of women that leads directly to Larsen’s death. Unable to deal with women as equal human beings, Larsen chooses death as ‘a return to the womb’ (1995: 163). While these two women, Josefina and Galvez’s wife represent concrete aspects of life, the other woman, Angélica Inés, the first to be visited, represents the entire existential struggle that is central to the novel. Larsen sets out on this last journey having received a note from Angélica Inés telling him that he can at last visit her in her father’s house. He has received the letter too late however, the time is out of joint. The words in the note, as in other situations which have already been mentioned, are incapable of transmitting anything of intrinsic value. Here, rather as in the case of the false bond, writing contains a hint of betrayal, for the note lends Larsen a moment of hope which is again unfulfilled, and undermined. On reaching the house, Larsen is told by Josefina that Angélica Inés is unwell and unable to receive him. That she should be the first of the women to be visited is significant, for while the other women personify spaces which Larsen perceives to be traps, spaces which he has struggled to leave behind; Angélica Inés symbolises that space which he considers to hold the only possibility of salvation. There is a passage in the text in which Díaz Grey recounts two incidents from Angélica Inés’s childhood which might well hold the key to her particular brand of madness. Díaz Grey tells how when she was five years old, she was brought to see him having suffered an accident in which a fish hook stuck in her leg. Later, at the age of fifteen, she fainted on discovering a worm in a pear. Peter Turton (1974–5: 275) analyses these two scenes, and points out their sexual connotations, observing: ‘El anzuelo es un símbolo sexual claro, como lo es el gusano, que además representa la muerte.’ [The hook is a clear sexual symbol, as too is the worm, which also represents death]. He goes on to say: ‘De modo que ante los dos hechos fundamentales de la vida humana Angélica Inés siente una revulsión tal que se refugia en la semi-locura’ [So that in the face of these two fundamental facts of life Angélica Inés feels such revulsion that she takes refuge in half madness]. Sex and death, so closely related to womanhood in our society, and so much more so in Onetti’s fiction, are rejected by this woman who thus remains uncorrupted. Following these two incidents Angélica Inés has a certain quality of child-like innocence about her. When Larsen first sees her he immediately observes this quality in her, so that his conclusion that: ‘. . . tenía a veces treinta años y otras cuarenta’ [‘She was

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

62

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 62

LINDA CRAIG

[. . .] sometimes thirty years old, and sometimes forty’], is followed by: ‘Le quedaban restos de infancia’ [‘Her clear eyes retained something of her childhood’]. He also remarks on her ‘. . . trasero de muchacho’ (1983: 65) [‘. . . her trim boyish buttocks’] (1992: 8). These aspects of her are further emphasised by her virginity. Larsen notes that: ‘Se ve [. . .] que nunca tuvo un hombre’ (1983: 89) [‘All I know is [. . .] she’s never had a man’] (1992: 34), and by the remark from Díaz Grey that: ‘. . . ella había ignorado, y para siempre, la muerte’ (1983: 161) [‘. . . she had dismissed death once and for all’] (1992: 110). Angélica Inés represents an unmarked space. In contrast with the other female protagonists, the facts of her virginity and of her ignorance of death signify that she is uncontaminated both by nature and by time. Even that treacherous tool, language, is largely beyond her grasp, and in her meetings in the glorieta with Larsen, she is generally depicted emitting a series of grunts: ‘. . . sólo podía dar en respuesta un sonido ronco y la boca entreabierta . . .’ (1983: 186) [‘. . . she could only respond with a snort and her half-open mouth’] (1992: 139). In her madness, therefore, she has a certain ethereal quality and a certain purity which set her apart from other women and which allow Larsen to see her as a symbol of transcendence. But this lack of contamination can also allow Larsen to think of her as a nonbeing: ‘Y como ella era nadie, . . .’ (1983: 186) [‘And since she was no-one . . .’] (1992: 139). Angélica Inés’s role is actually no more than functional. First, she is seen as a means by which Larsen can achieve his dream of taking Petrus’ place as owner of the shipyard, and secondly she symbolises the possibility of the realisation of his religious dreams. Through her, he can reach his ‘cielo ambicionado’ already mentioned, and thus escape from his existential dilemma, ‘. . . para usar el tiempo restante en el ejercicio de venganza sin trascendencia, de sensualidades sin vigor, de un dominio narcisista y desatento’ (1983: 71) [‘. . . . he could spend the rest of his days enjoying revenge without suffering, sensuality without effort, an unheeded narcissistic power’] (1992: 14). Her primary role within the novel, therefore, is that of a means to an end. These three women can thus be said to represent the different stages in Larsen’s life: childhood, adulthood and lastly the stage which is fundamental to El astillero, this period in Larsen’s life in which he is engaged in his abortive search for transcendence. It would seem that he visits Angélica Inés first because he deems her to be the most important of the three. The fact that he does not get to see her simply underlines the idea, so central to the novel, that Larsen’s search is fruitless, there is no refuge, no God. The only other women mentioned in El astillero, are the prostitutes who work in a particularly run-down bar/brothel called the Chamamé, which, situated at five or six blocks from the shipyard, in a sea of mud, ‘. . . abandonado, sin un solo agujero de pezuña en el barro’ (1983: 180) [‘deserted [. . .] without a single hoofmark on it’] (1992: 133), is described as an ‘antro’, a den of iniquity. Its situation and state point to its total degradation and hopelessness, and indeed for Larsen, trying to escape from his past as a brothel-keeper, it encapsulates his own personal vision of hell: ‘Y acaso pensó que un Chamamé [. . .] era el infierno

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 63

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

63

que le tenía destinado desde el principio del tiempo’ (1983: 183) [‘Perhaps it even crossed his mind that a Chamamé [. . .] was the hell that had been set aside for him from the beginning of time’] (1992: 134). The women who work here are described as: ‘un hembraje indiferenciado’ (1983: 182) [‘an ill-defined female group’] (1992: 134), or, at another point: ‘Las mujeres eran pocas, raídas, chillonas y baratas’ (1983: 150) [‘The few women were stiff, gaudy, cheap’] (1992: 100). Their total lack of any possible autonomy or even humanity is underlined by the following horrendous description of one of their number: La mujer tenía el pelo grasiento peinado sobre los ojos y la mueca repetida de la negativa era ya una segunda cara, una máscara móvil y permanente de la que sólo se despojaba, tal vez, en el sueño (1983: 151) The woman’s greasy hair hung over her eyes, and her repeated scowl of refusal was like a second face, a mobile but permanent mask which she only cast off perhaps, when she slept (1992: 100).

These women exist only to be used by men. Looking at the female protagonists as a whole, it is clear that, as Millington (1987: 358) says: ‘They have no independence from the male problematic’. This could well be deemed to reflect, particularly at that time, the situation of women in Latin American society, in which the cult of machismo is particularly strong, and women are generally expected to live within the framework of their traditional roles. So that in El astillero, while the male protagonists are each engaged in their own existential quest, the females merely signify different aspects of Larsen’s dilemma. This view of women as facilitators for men is one that has formed part of Western thought from its beginnings. Certainly women played a subordinate role in Greek thought, and despite the many centuries that separate them, there are many parallels between the depiction of the female protagonists in Onetti’s fiction and the role allotted to women in Aristotelean thought. Aristotle’s philosophy is based on observation rather than on any radical criticism of the world around him. Its basic premise would seem to be summed up in his views on scientific knowledge when he says: ‘We all suppose that what we know is not even capable of being otherwise . . . Therefore the object of scientific knowledge is of necessity. Therefore it is eternal.’8 His ethical and political writings reveal a similar approach, thus, as Susan Moller Okin (1980: 74) puts it: he does not argue, in dealing with ethics any more than with biology, that the world should be different from the way it is, but starts from a basic belief that 8 Aristotle, Nichomachaen Ethics, VI, 1139b. Aristotle’s views on the functionality of women are well known. As I pointed out in the previous chapter on Juntacadáveres, these views were incorporated into the Christian ethic by St. Thomas Aquinas. For a broad perspective of this aspect of Aristotle’s thought, I have referred here to a chapter entitled ‘Women in a Functionalist World’ from Women in Western Political Thought, by Susan Moller Okin (1980: 73–96).

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

64

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 64

LINDA CRAIG

the status quo in both the natural and social realm is the best way for things to be.

Given that the Greek world was particularly hierarchical with women and slaves ever subordinate to free men, what Aristotle sets out to do is to justify this state of affairs. He then proceeds, by a philosophical sleight-of-hand, to equate essence with function; again, according to Moller Okin (1980: 75): In order to postulate that living beings, in a manner parallel to artefacts and organs, have functions, they must be viewed in relationship to each other and to the world as a whole, in a particular kind of way. Aristotle provides such a world view.

Women and slaves are thus deemed to exist purely in terms of the functions which they fulfil within society. So that while the free men, and particularly the wealthy ones at the very top of the hierarchy, are in a position to pursue happiness and to immerse themselves in lives of contemplation; the women and slaves, not fit to engage in such activities, exist simply in order to allow their masters the freedom in which to enjoy their privileged lives. These Aristotelean ideas are all-pervasive in El astillero, where, as has already been pointed out, the female protagonists are defined purely in terms of the functions that they fulfil for the male of the species; be that symbolic, as in the case of Angélica Inés; reproductive, as in that of Gálvez’s wife; or as a provider of sexual solace, a passive space in which the men act out their lives, as in the cases of Josefina and the prostitutes. There is a constant divide between the women and the men, who, clearly in a higher state of consciousness, are engaged in a more contemplative life, where questions of a more existential nature are their major preoccupations. Yet while in this respect the novel reflects aspects of Greek thought apparently unquestioningly, there are other areas in which a more critical view can be found. Returning to the first paragraph of this chapter in which I suggested that El astillero was a novel of regret and nostalgia, it seems to me that this nostalgia is one for a time of certainty, based on Greek metaphysics, which can no longer hold true. I have already referred to Turton’s (1974–5: 283) idea that Onetti, like all other Existentialist writers, is troubled by ‘una perdida fe metafísica’. [a lost metaphysical faith]. If God, and the certainty underlying Greek metaphysics, are no more, if there is no such thing as absolute truth, then what remains? In what might be described as a domino effect, everything is suddenly open to question. In the section of this chapter under the subtitle ‘Shattered Illusions’, I have attempted to show how in the course of El astillero, Onetti has mapped out the effects of this perception of the human dilemma. Thus if the illusion of absolute truth is shattered, then along with it must fall, inevitably, as Onetti recounts, the concepts of the autonomous individual, the subject; that of objective time; and that of any possible transcendence of language. All is relative.

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 65

JUAN CARLOS ONETTI

65

The novel takes the form of a deconstruction of Platonic thought. Its limitations, however, lie in its propensity to view this deconstruction through a prism of nostalgia. This longing for a lost certainty, for a totality, is Larsen’s downfall; he can see no further. All that is left is to play the game and to live in a negative world of absurdity. This rigidity is apparent too, in the misogynous depiction of the female personages. This postmodern perception of a world in chaos, however, is also one which, having deconstructed traditional, phallologocentric values, has created a space for new, different discourses. It allows for a more pluralist view of the world. In Lyotard’s division between melancholia and novatio, regret and assay, lies a vision of this collapse of traditional values making way for greater multiplicity or diversity. He sees the side of novatio as being positive and, indeed, necessary. As he states in the concluding paragraph of his work (1986: 82): The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given us as much terror as we can take. We have paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and the one, for the reconciliation of the concept and the sensible, of the transparent and communicable experience. [. . .] Let us wage war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable; let us activate the differences and save the honour of the name.

Rather than looking back with regret towards the unachieveable, there is much to be said for viewing this vision of plurality and differences more kindly.9

9

Swanson (1999) argues that Onetti, whose concern is with the disorientation of the individual, is a modernist; as opposed to Donoso, whose project is much more to do with the nature of identity itself, and whom he considers to be a postmodernist. I think that there is much to be said for his argument, but ultimately I would have to disagree, because Onetti’s broken individual is no more than a dream. His personages may be striving for individual consciousness, but they never achieve it.

Mono219-CH-03.qxd

9/22/05

9:00 AM

Page 66

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 67

Part II: Manuel Puig

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 68

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 69

4

La traición de Rita Hayworth (1968) Manuel Puig was born, as he loved to say, ‘in a little town in the pampas’. This was true, but he was born again in a moviehouse where the little town disappeared, engulfed in a pampas of dreams. Those public dreams he made private. He spent more time dreaming in a movie than living the life of the town. Guillermo Cabrera Infante1

New Horizons If many of Onetti’s novels and stories are set in the fictional hinterland of Santa María, imagined, and more important as a symbolic structure than as an actual place, Puig’s first novel, La traición de Rita Hayworth2 is set in a much more concrete reality. This is Coronel Vallejos, clearly based on the town in the Province of Buenos Aires where Puig was brought up, General Villegas. And if Onetti was to effect a radical shift in literature from this region, then Puig was to do the same though in a very different way. To quote one of the foremost Argentine contemporary writers and critics, Ricardo Piglia (2004): ‘Puig fue más allá de la vanguardia; demostró que la renovación técnica y la experimentación no son contradictorias con las formas populares’ [Puig went further than the vanguard; he showed that technical transformation and experimentation are not contradictory to popular forms]. Puig was to conjure up a very different mood. Returning to Piglia:3 ‘El gran tema de Puig es el bovarismo. El modo en que la cultura de masas educa los sentimientos’ [Puig’s great theme is bovarism. The way in which mass culture teaches feelings]. The parallel with Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, which depicts the world of a small town petit bourgeois wife who colours her drab, boring life with the images from romantic novels, is well drawn, and if Flaubert famously declared ‘Madame, Bovary, c’est moi’, although this is clearly contentious, Puig can more honestly say that the characters in this novel are himself and others

1

This quotation is from an obituary for Puig in the Guardian, July 25, 1990. Manuel Puig La traición de Rita Hayworth (1981). Translation by Suzanne Jill Levine Betrayed by Rita Hayworth (1981). 3 Interestingly, although Puig’s El beso de la mujer araña [Kiss of the Spider Woman] (1976), which has been adapted into a famous film, a play and a musical, is the best known and most successful of Puig’s works, Piglia (2004: 2) considers TRH to be his obra máxima [masterpiece], and he considers it to be ‘una de las grandes novelas de la literatura argentina’ [one of the great novels of Argentine literature]. 2

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

70

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 70

LINDA CRAIG

from his early years. Staying with the French master, this is L’education sentimentale of these people, now no longer constrained by the limits of the novel, but much more influenced by cinema, and radio and newspaper serials. In his obituary on Puig, Alfred MacAdam (1990: 66) maintains that the most important innovation that Puig brought to the Latin American novel is his frequent use of the unseen narrator.4 While I would agree that this is an extremely fruitful and innovative literary technique, I believe that other aspects of his work, such as this perceptive use of popular culture and his opening up of questions of gender are equally important. These two issues are brought together by David Foster (2003: 253–4) where he talks of the idea of deconstructing heteronormativity, for he says: ‘By its very nature, popular culture, because it is majoritarian, egalitarian, democratic, and, quite simply, all-pervasive, offers itself as an important arena for this deconstructive effort’. He goes on to say that: ‘. . . the rules of the patriarchy work from the top down, and down toward the bottom flatland of popular culture, the reins of the patriarchy are slack . . .’. It is interesting in the light of these observations that Puig, who, as has already been mentioned, was a homosexual, should have been so instrumental in bringing gender and popular culture together in such an innovative way in his work. In this chapter on his first novel, La traición de Rita Hayworth (which I shall henceforth refer to as TRH), I shall begin by examining the structure of the novel in terms of the unseen narrator, or, as Sharon Magnarelli calls it, the ‘hidden creator’;5 concentrating mainly, though not entirely, on the first chapter of the novel. The notions of gender and popular culture will be constantly referred to in the course of this study. While looking at the role of the narrator, I shall address the idea of marginality, and will make particular use of issues raised by Foucault in his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France in 1970, which is published in English under the title ‘The Order of Discourse’ (1981). The second part of this chapter will focus mainly on Toto, the principal protagonist of the novel, and on his problematic relationship to issues of gender. In this section I shall be referring to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and subsequently to an article by Judith Butler (1990) which addresses what might be described as a post-psychoanalytic perception of gender.

4

In her biography of Puig, Levine (2001: 166) tells us that Puig’s express intention was to ‘force the reader to take a more active role without a narrator’s guidance’, something that Levine considers ‘gave the book a decidedly avant-garde makeshift look’. It certainly seems to have led to his having considerable difficulty in getting the book published. Various publishers described it as ‘confused’ and even ‘unbearable’. 5 Sharon Magnarelli (1985: 117) uses the term ‘hidden creator’ in a chapter entitled ‘Manuel Puig’s TRH: Betrayed by the Cross-Stitch’, where she says: ‘Cross-stitch. Embroidery. Voices, often anonymous. Hidden creator [. . .] they are (also) the crux of the entire text.’ While I would agree with many of these ideas, I feel that she over-reads the notion of the cross-stitch.

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 71

MANUEL PUIG

71

TRH actually explodes many myths which, certainly within the canonical works of literature of the River Plate in the works of writers such as Onetti, Borges or Cortázar, have not been seriously touched upon. Onetti’s mythical sixteen-year-old virgin girls, Borges’ virtually uncritical acceptance of patriarchy, and Cortázar’s natural, instinctual Maga in Rayuela (1979) all lose some of their viability in the wake of the explosion of sexual politics and gender roles which is effected in a subtle and low-key way in TRH. Low-key because there is no stridency or even didactic charge. In this most unpretentious novel, Puig has succeeded in opening up space to discourses which disrupt and subvert previously apparently stable areas of meaning.

Speaking From the Margins The novel is made up of two sections each with eight chapters, numbers which echo the line in the second paragraph which reads: ‘Me dio más trabajo este mantel que el juego de carpetas que son ocho pares’ (1981: 9) [‘This tablecloth alone gave me more trouble than the whole set of doilies, a full eight pairs’] (1981: 7). The only explicit narratorial intervention is to be found in the headings of these chapters, all of which situate the chapter in time, so that what is indicated is that the events cover the period between 1933 and 1948, though with no particular regularity. While there is a chronological progression in the first fifteen chapters, this is broken by the last chapter which goes back to 1933. The first two chapters which take the form of disembodied voices, are specifically situated in space: ‘En la casa de los padres de Mita, La Plata 1933’ [‘Mita’s Parents’ Place, La Plata, 1933’] and ‘En casa de Berto, Vallejos 1933’ [‘At Berto’s, Vallejos, 1933’], and subsequent chapters are announced by the name of the speaker and perhaps the season of the year or some minimal information as to the nature of the passage to follow, such as the information that it is a dialogue and who is speaking, or that it is an extract from a diary, a letter, or as is the case in Chapter XIII, a literary composition. Yet although these snippets of information are short and strictly to the point, they already tell us a great deal more about the nature of the novel than pure spatial and temporal settings. The predominant use of nicknames, Mita, Berto, Toto and others, is a case in point. Clearly all of these protagonists have ‘official’ Christian names and surnames which, at least in the three cases above, can be found in the text. However, the ‘official’ names are seldom, if ever, used, and the nicknames, extra or supplementary names, are used virtually all of the time. Indeed with the name Toto, the idea of supplementarity6 is

6 I am using the word ‘supplementarity’ in the sense in which Derrida (1978: 289) uses it when he says: ‘the sign which replaces the center, which supplements it, taking the center’s place in its absence – this sign is added, occurs as a surplus, as a supplement.’

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

72

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 72

LINDA CRAIG

underlined by its repetitious nature. TRH, as these names indicate, is a novel of supplementarity. A similar effect arises from the temporal settings in the headings. For the apparent progression to be found in the first fifteen chapters is completely undermined by the fact that the last chapter is set in 1933 – at the beginning again. There is no progress, only more of the same. Moreover the expectations that the last chapter might fill in some of the gaps left, offer solutions to questions raised, or effect some closure on the novel are not fulfilled. TRH begins and ends in media res. A look at the first chapter of the novel will help to explore the implications of these factors. And here again from the heading, something can be gleaned, for ‘En la casa de los padres de Mita, La Plata 1933’ already tells us that we are not in Mita’s house, but rather in that of her parents; thus we are displaced from some possible centre. Moreover, this house is not in Buenos Aires, which would of course denote centrality – at least in Argentina – even if it, too, is far from the image of Hollywood conjured up by the title, but it is in La Plata, a town which is in reality little more than an outer suburb of the capital. The novel begins in a strange, unsettling and even quite mystifying manner, for this chapter consists of thirteen pages of what seem like ‘disembodied voices’. It begins, and continues, thus: –El punto cruz hecho con hilo marrón sobre la tela de lino color crudo, por eso te quedó tan lindo el mantel. –Me dio más trabajo este mantel que el juego de carpetas, que son ocho pares . . . si pagaran mejor las labores me convendría tomar una sirvienta con cama y dedicar más tiempo a mis labores, una vez hecha la clientela ¿no te parece? (1981: 9) [–A brown cross-stitch over beige linen, that’s why your tablecloth turned out so well. –This tablecloth alone gave me more trouble than the whole set of doilies, a full eight pairs . . . if they paid more for needlework, I could hire a sleepin-maid and spend more time in embroidery, once I get my customers, don’t you think?] (1981: 7).

With time it becomes clear that there are four or five different voices, and that with the exception of the grandfather, who says very little, these are women’s voices. They drift from what would probably be described as gossip to different areas of housework, and some of the information that can be discerned includes the idea that they are members of what could loosely be described as the lower middle classes. Two of them work long hours typing in uncomfortable circumstances in offices, the grandfather keeps and sells chickens, and the father of another is a cobbler. Mita’s parents have managed to buy a larger house, but it is clear that there is not a lot of money to spare. There is also mention of relatives in Italy, farmworkers, so that it would seem that this family belongs to that group

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 73

MANUEL PUIG

73

of first- or second-generation Argentines, children of members of the vast waves of immigrants who went to Argentina from Southern Europe at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.7 Again within this opening chapter the idea of supplementarity arises. For example, although much is made of the tortoiseshell frames of Adela’s new glasses, their function seems almost immaterial; appearances or adornment overrun their possible functionality. Things seem other than they are; Mita’s husband’s most striking feature is that he looks like Carlos Palau, a fictional Argentine film star; and the man who appears to be taking a serious interest in Violeta (‘se me declaró’) (1981: 12), is already married. Even the food is prepared in such a way as to trick the eater, croquettes made with boiled meat are made to look as if they are fried, and herbs and chillies are added to disguise what would otherwise be unpalatable. The result of this is that the reader finds him/herself in a world of layers of fiction, of appearances beneath which, or in the centre of which, there is a yawning gap. Another feature of this passage is its immanence.8 The references to housework, the archetypal unending task, point to this idea, particularly waxing the floor: ‘Queda muy lindo el mosaico del piso encerado’ (1981: 17) [‘The tile floor looks so beautiful with the new wax’] (1981: 13); but here again we are in the world of appearances; the trick is only accomplished by means of constant work. Progress is impossible, since the ultimate achievement is to keep things as they are. A similar image can be found in the references to the town where Mita lives, Coronel Vallejos, where everything seems small, or even short: ‘parece todo muy chato’ (1981: 10) [everything looks very small] [my translation], and where the few trees that are to be found can barely grow. In subsequent chapters similar adjectives are applied to Toto, who does not grow either. The work of Foucault (1981: 52) sheds light on some of the aspects of the chapter mentioned above. I shall start with a quotation: In every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality.

Foucault goes on in this article to enumerate procedures of exclusion from discourse, and while he does not specifically address the issue of gender in this 7 An analysis of the extent of this immigration and of some of the effects that it had on Argentine life can be found in David Rock (1975). 8 I have borrowed this use of the word ‘immanence’ from de Beauvoir’s (1988: 29) The Second Sex where she says: ‘Every time transcendence falls back into immanence, stagnation, there is a degradation of existence’, and later: ‘The domestic labours that fell to her (woman’s) lot because they were reconcilable with the cares of maternity imprisoned her in repetition and immanence; they were repeated from day to day in an identical form, which was perpetuated almost without change from century to century; they produced nothing new.’ (1988: 95).

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

74

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 74

LINDA CRAIG

context, it would not be too invasive to effect a gender-based reading of some of his points. So, for example, when he talks of the opposition between reason and madness, a theme which is central to much of his work, he suggests that: the madman has been the one whose discourse cannot have the same currency as others. His word may be considered null and void, having neither truth nor importance, worthless as evidence in law, inadmissable in the authentification of deeds or contracts, incapable even of bringing about the trans-substantiation of bread into body at Mass. (1981: 53)

In different times and spaces, some, or all of these restrictions have applied to women, and indeed, the last of them is still almost universally true. In the stark opposition between reason and madness, therefore, women would appear to fall into the latter category, and thus be marginalised from discourse.9 Another factor that Foucault examines is that of access to discourses, as he says: ‘There is rarefaction, this time, of the speaking subjects; none shall enter the order of discourse if he (sic) does not satisfy certain requirements or if he is not, from the outset, qualified to do so’ (1981: 61–2). He refers here to a certain institutionalisation of discourses which is such that the positioning of a discourse, where it is spoken from, is of overriding importance: What, after all, is an education system, other than a ritualisation of speech, a qualification and a fixing of roles for speaking subjects, the constitution of a doctrinal group, however diffuse, a distribution and an appropriation of discourse with its powers and knowledges? (1981: 64)

Looking at the first chapter of TRH, it is possible to see how this text disrupts some of these procedures of exclusion. In the first place, the very materiality of the text subverts them. For if, as I have maintained above, this is a text of supplementarity, then it is also a text of materiality. Rather than laying claim to the ideas of transparence, or of referentiality, this chapter is characterised by selfreflexivity; that is, it refers to nothing but itself, its words. These nameless voices do not even make a claim to the concept of communication, for they seldom even answer each other. Secondly, the fact that these are women, and therefore marginal to discourse, is compounded by the third point, that of the possibility of access to discourse. For these women, gossiping and talking about domestic chores, are engaged in what might be described disparagingly as ‘women’s talk’, a noise ‘having neither truth nor importance’ (1981: 53; see above), to borrow from Foucault again, which is seldom considered worthy of inclusion within the canon of ‘literature’. Moreover the lack of fixed identity which results from the nebulous disembodied

9

Shoshana Felman (1985) uses Foucault to show women as being marginalised from discourse.

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 75

MANUEL PUIG

75

voices, undermines the very possibility of the speaking subject, not to mention the fixing of roles, so that these voices are per se marginalised from the ‘appropriation of discourse with its powers and knowledges’. Foucault goes on to what he considers to be another system of exclusion, this time in the opposition between true and false. He talks of the ‘will to truth’, of which he says: ‘It was just as if, starting from the great Platonic division, the will to truth had its own history’ (1981: 55). He goes on to state that ‘it is as if, for us, the will to truth and its vicissitudes were masked by truth itself in its necessary unfolding’ (1981: 56). But Puig’s text reveals no such necessity. The layers of supplementarity cannot be peeled back to reveal an essential truth. Such a possibility does not exist. In fact, as Alan Pauls (1986) states in a different context, though still referring to TRH: ‘Puig es anti-platónico’10 [Puig is anti-platonic]. This idea is confirmed again in the inconclusive ending, Chapter XVI, which I have already referred to. TRH, therefore, as I hope I have managed to clarify with this reading of its first chapter, is a novel which erodes the boundaries of discourse. It allows space for voices which are on many levels, geographically, socially, in terms of gender and even philosophically, marginalised from dominant discourses. While this is perhaps most clearly discerned from the first chapter, it holds equally true for the rest of the novel. The following section of this chapter will employ a more psychoanalytic approach to a different area of the novel, but will still be couched within these same parameters.

Toto and the Cinema The novel is, as has been described above, polyphonic, giving a voice to a variety of people who range from Cobito, whose interior monologue reads like a gangster movie, to Herminia, a disillusioned, frustrated thirty-five year-old virgin. However, there is a thread that links these stories in the person of Toto. It becomes clear during the course of the novel that he is the central protagonist; he is the only one to have two chapter headings devoted to him, so that two chapters, one in 1939 and the other in 1942 consist of Toto’s interior monologue; and a further chapter, ‘Concurso anual de composiciones literarias Tema Libre: ‘La película que más me gustó’, por José L. Casals, 2º año nacional, Div. B’, [‘ANNUAL LITERARY ESSAY COMPETITION FREE SUBJECT: ‘The Movie I Liked Best’ by José L. Casals, SOPHOMORE, SECTION B], takes the form of a composition written by him. Moreover the novel opens when he is a baby, and he is the only one of the protagonists to be mentioned in every chapter, so that to a greater or lesser degree, TRH is a novel about Toto from babyhood to the age of fifteen.

10 Pauls (1986: 43) discusses this idea in what is, to my mind, one of the most interesting books on TRH: Manuel Puig: La traición de Rita Hayworth.

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

76

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 76

LINDA CRAIG

The theme of betrayal to be found in the title can be read in many ways, one of which could be fairly general, so that the protagonists of the novel would symbolise all those who live humdrum, probably provincial lives, and who become caught up in, and somehow convinced by, all that Rita Hayworth stands for in terms of glamour and excitement. Rita Hayworth, in this reading, would be a paradigm for Hollywood, the dream factory, and the betrayal would take the form of a general cultural imposition. In this way, Hollywood would signify dreams and hopes, at some level verging on the believable, to which the audience would have some aspirations but absolutely no possibility of access. The period referred to in the novel, the late thirties and early forties, forms part of what is often referred to as the Golden Age of Hollywood. It is a time, following the depression in the late twenties, in which many films were lavish, decorative and stylised. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced their way through sets of overwhelming richness, and beautiful women married handsome men and lived happily ever after. There were in fact other genres of films being made in the same period which conveyed different messages; there were ‘Westerns’ which celebrated heroism, ‘machismo’ and which created new myths about the American frontier; and there were also gangster movies which had a more subversive quality to them, showing as they did the underside of American society; but the films referred to in TRH belong to the first category, one which is loosely termed ‘women’s films’.11 The beautiful, sympathetic men and the glamorous women portrayed in these films inhabit a world in which problems often take the form of misunderstandings which are eventually resolved, or if financial problems or even poverty are touched on, they are shown to be merely a temporary state, overcome with varying degrees of difficulty; as in the story of the poor girl who marries the rich man, for example. But the American dream is invariably upheld; the good win through and a happy ending is achieved. If these myths misrepresent, as they so patently do, the realities of society in the United States, how much more do they misrepresent those of a group of people living a marginal existence in the Argentine pampa? By conjuring up images of impossible ease and happiness, they betray the reality that these people are living. Yet the betrayal in this novel can also be read at other levels and in different ways, and it is here that the importance of Toto becomes more apparent. For Toto is betrayed both by Hollywood in general and by Rita Hayworth in particular, and these betrayals can best be explored by means of a psychoanalytic reading. I shall begin this reading by looking at Toto’s life from a Freudian perspective.

11 The subject of ‘women’s films’ has received considerable critical attention from feminist critics. Among some of the interesting books and articles on the topic are: E. Ann Kaplan (1987) ‘Mothering, Feminism and Representation: The Maternal in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film 1910–40’; Tanya Modleski Loving with a Vengeance (1982); and an earlier book by Molly Haskell (1973), From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies.

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 77

MANUEL PUIG

77

After the first two chapters of TRH, which are situated in 1933, there is a jump in time so that the subsequent chapter, Toto’s first, takes place in 1939. He is six years old. There is a gap, therefore, which covers what in psychoanalytic terms would be regarded as the most important of Toto’s formative years. His travesy through the Oedipal phase has already presumably been completed, and the reader can only glean information about that period from subsequent stories and events. According to Freud: In boys the situation of the Oedipus complex is the first stage that can be recognised with certainty. It is easy to understand because at that stage a child retains the same object which he previously cathected with his libido – not as yet a genital one – during the preceding period while he was being suckled and nursed. The fact, too, that in this situation he regards his father as a disturbing rival and would like to get rid of him and take his place is a straightforward consequence of the actual state of affairs.12

Ideally the Oedipus complex will be repressed and will become part of the id, the unconscious, and the state of rivalry between father and son will be overcome. Going back further, however, Freud (1977a: 334) makes the following observation: The pre-history of the Oedipus complex, even in boys, raises all of these questions for sifting and explanation; and there is the further problem of whether we are to suppose that the process invariably follows the same course, or whether a great variety of different preliminary stages may not converge upon the same terminal situation.

In Toto’s case, although at some level the formation of the id, the ego and the super-ego have taken place, there would seem to have been an unsatisfactory or incomplete emergence from the Oedipal phase. Freud talks of a process which is more than a repression, which, if it is ideally carried out, leads to ‘a destruction and an abolition of the complex’. But he goes on to say: ‘If the ego has in fact not achieved much more than a repression of the complex, the latter persists in an unconscious state in the id and will later manifest its pathogenic effect’.13 A clue to the problematic nature of Toto’s development in this sense can be found in his propensity to mix fantasy, the world of films, and reality. For if the id manifests itself through dreams and slips of the tongue, then Toto’s daydreaming and his constant slippages between fantasy and fact suggest that, in his case, there has been a less than total rejection of the complex. Certainly it is clear that he still enjoys an extremely close relationship with his mother, and a difficult one with his father.

12 Sigmund Freud (1977a: 333), ‘Some Psychological Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes’ in his On Sexuality. 13 Sigmund Freud (1977b: 319), ‘The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex’, in his On Sexuality.

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

78

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 78

LINDA CRAIG

The problems that arise for Toto as a result of his relationships with his parents have been viewed in different ways by different critics. In The Necessary Dream, an impressive and thorough study of Puig’s work, Pamela Bacarisse (1988) classifies Toto with the female rather than with the male protagonists of the novel. This is somewhere where I part company from Bacarisse since this idea, to my mind, defuses and skates over the complexities. René Alberto Campos (1985: 148), on the other hand, addresses this issue by means of a thorough psychoanalytic reading which uses both Freudian and Lacanian thought. According to Campos: Lo que está al principio y al final, ya lo sabemos, es el rechazo del padre. Esta no-presencia, como lugar vacío, es la cifra de la novela ya que ella engendra la tensión básica del protagonista: el deseo del padre. [What is at the beginning and the end, we already know, is the rejection of the father. That non-presence, like a blank space, is the clue to the novel since it generates the protagonist’s basic tension: the desire for the father].

If Toto is rejected by Berto, his father, the same is certainly not true for his relationship with his mother, particularly towards the beginning of the novel. Some light could be shed on this relationship by the following perception from another source. In her seminal article on feminist film theory, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’,14 Laura Mulvey (1976: 804) defines woman’s role in the psychoanalytic drama in these terms: Woman’s desire is subjected to her image as bearer of the bleeding wound, she can exist only in relation to castration and cannot transcend it. She turns her child into the signifier of her own desire to possess a penis (the condition, she imagines, of entry into the symbolic). Either she must gracefully give way to the word, the Name of the Father and the Law, or else struggle to keep her child down with her in the half-light of the imaginary.

Campos’s reading reaches a similar conclusion, for he too explores the image of castration, though more from the point of view of the symbolic castration of the child, and he also equates the mother with the Imaginary. Indeed in TRH, Mita and Toto coincide in the realms of an Imaginary whose objective correlative is film. Campos argues that film fulfils an almost fetishistic role for Toto since, when his desire for the mother is denied him by the intervention of the father, he supplements Mita’s absence by drawing and imagining the maternal figures to be found in the ‘women’s films’ that he loves so much. By supplementing Mita’s

14 This article has been published widely. I have used Mast and Cohen Film Theory and Criticism (1976: 803–16).

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 79

MANUEL PUIG

79

absence rather than being forced to face up to it by le non/nom du père, he remains in the Imaginary and is therefore denied access to the Symbolic. There is no doubt that the relationship with his parents and the Oedipal phase have proved to be something of a minefield for Toto, and Campos’s reading of this aspect of the novel is extremely perceptive. However there is a point at which I would diverge from his reading, for in this chapter Campos (1985: 148) proposes: En el doble plano de los espacios que estructuran la novela, hemos visto de qué forma Toto, en la realidad, muy unido a la madre, termina por identificarse con ella y, por lo mismo, ganarse el rechazo del padre. Su identificación con lo feminino se hace, con posterioridad, signo homosexual. [At the two levels of spaces that structure the novel, we have seen how Toto, in reality very close to his mother, ends up identifying with her and, for this very reason, becomes rejected by his father. His identification with the feminine later becomes a sign of his homosexuality].

In my opinion, this statement, which identifies Toto as homosexual, effects a closure which does not exist in the novel. The reasons for coming to the conclusion that Toto is, or will become, homosexual are not difficult to find. TRH has definite overtones of the bildungsroman genre, and Puig himself, as we have seen, was gay. Moreover, as Campos points out, in numerous interviews Puig described Toto as his fictional double.15 And yet while all this is true, it is also true that it is never stated in TRH that Toto is homosexual. It is clear, however, that he has a very problematic relationship to issues of gender, but rather than effecting some kind of foreclosure which might be deemed to be something of an over-reading, I prefer at this point to explore the issues as they are presented in the novel. I shall begin this exploration by looking at Toto’s first monologue, where he keeps returning to an incident that occurred on that most rare of occasions, an outing with Berto. Toto’s interior monologue comprises not only the aforementioned jumps between fantasy and reality but also constant changes in time and in subject matter, so that at times it borders on the incoherent. However its repetitious nature is such that he returns again and again to various themes, and one of these is that of a school concert which he attended with Berto because Mita was at work. The major problem that arises for Toto at this concert is that at some point he finds that he wants to go to the toilet: Papi: ¡ganas de hacer pis! ‘podés irte solo’, ¡no alcanzo a la luz! pero mami, en el cine en el intervalo se prenden las luces y con vos ‘vamos a aprovechar a hacer pis ahora’ al baño de las mujeres porque al de los varones las mujeres no entran . . . (1981: 33) 15 René Campos refers to a number of interviews given by Puig in which he talked of the autobiographical nature of Toto in TRH. He includes: Saúl Sosnowsky (1973), ‘Manuel Puig: Entrevista’, Hispamérica, 3: 69–80; Elizabeth Pérez Luna (1978), ‘Con Manuel Puig en Nueva York’, Hombre del mundo, 8: 69–106.

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

80

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 80

LINDA CRAIG

[Daddy, have to go for a wee wee! ‘You can go by yourself’, I can’t reach the light! But Mommy at the movies at intermission all the lights go on ‘Let’s take advantage and go wee wee now’ to the ladies room ‘because women can’t go to the men . . .’] (1981: 25).

Toto is encountering this difficulty at a school, a site of officialdom, and with his father; this is doubly marked as the scene of the Symbolic. The difficulty that he is experiencing is overtly linked to the issue of gender. In order to enter the Symbolic, Toto should go to the men’s toilet alone, but Toto is too small, he cannot reach the light, for, in fact, he is still in the ‘half-light’. The same problem does not, of course, arise when he goes to the cinema with Mita, for there there is no threat to the Imaginary order, and he can either use the patio like the other children or go to the women’s under the protection of his mother. Another possibility comes into play at the school concert, and this is to have repercussions in subsequent sections of the novel. Berto asks a bigger girl at the next table if she can take Toto to the women’s toilet: ‘Una nena grande. Con el vestido de tul almidonado duro que pincha, pincha con el vestido, la bruja de Blancanieves pincha con la nariz de pico’ (1981: 33) [A big girl. With a hard starched dress that scratches, she scratches with her dress, the Witch of Snow White scratches with her beak nose] (1981: 25). Toto, terrified, goes, but his only thought is of escape to his mother, and he returns to his father, guilt-ridden: ‘. . . y si le digo a papi la verdad que me volví del baño sin hacer pis me lleva a casa’ (1981: 34) [. . . and if I tell Daddy the truth that I came back from the bathroom without going wee he’ll take me home’] (1981: 26). Toto’s fear of his father and the lack of communication between father and son are obvious from these few lines. It is clear that the child feels threatened and vulnerable around his father, and is therefore, so to speak, unable to gain access to the Symbolic, whereas he feels safe and reassured in the Imaginary, the world that he shares with his mother. The same pattern repeats itself in the lines that follow the toilet incident, where Toto wants to hide from the girl: ‘¡escondo la cabeza entre los pantalones de papi! pero mucho mejor para esconderse son tus polleras porque escondo la cabeza y si papá abre las piernas me ven’ (1981: 34). [I hide my head in Daddy’s trousers! But Mommy, your skirt is much better because I can hide my head and if Daddy opens his legs I can be seen] [my translation]. What is more the jump from the third person for the father to the direct address of the second person for the mother emphasises even further the point about his closeness to his mother. However, the issue does not rest solely on the question of Toto’s relationship to his parents, since there are other aspects to this story. First, it is clear that Toto is quite confused about which toilet to go to. He has now reached an age at which there should apparently be no doubt in his mind since one is either a woman or a man, there is no space for doubt. This is not, however, Toto’s experience.16

16

Lacan looks at this same issue in Alan Sheridan (trans.) 1977. Écrits: A Selection.

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 81

MANUEL PUIG

81

There is a number of factors that point to Toto’s ambivalence vis-à-vis his gender. Certainly he does not fit the role of the stereotypical little boy; he does not want to play football (1981: 162), nor does he want to learn to swim (1981: 140). There are also constant references to a bicycle which Berto got for him and which he cannot ride: ‘ “a golpes se hacen los hombres” dice papá que me quiere comprar la bicicleta grande que me caigo’ (1981: 78) [‘ “It takes hard work to make a man” says Dad since he wants to buy me the big bicycle that I’m sure to fall off’] (1981: 60). Toto’s dream is different: ‘La bicicleta que me gusta a mí es la más chica con las rueditas a los costados para no caerse, a papá no le gusta, a mí, sí’ (1981: 71) [‘The bicycle I like is the smallest one, with little wheels on the side so I won’t fall’] (1981: 54). This failure to ‘measure up’ to what is seen, particularly by his father, as ‘normal’ masculine behaviour brings him problems; his cousin Teté recounts: ‘Berto le dijo que no iba a jugar más a la tienda y a pintar vestidos y caras . . . porque si no . . . le ponía polleritas y lo mandaba lejos de la madre pupilo a mi colegio de monjas’ (1981: 112) [‘Berto told him he wasn’t going to play store any more and color in dresses and faces . . . because otherwise . . . he would put little skirts on him and send him far away from his mother to go to nun’s school’] (1981: 86). The implications here are overtly tied to notions of gender within which Toto simply does not fit, and about which he feels guilty, so that, returning to his outing with Berto, we find him imagining: ‘. . . y de penitencia me pone una pollerita por haberme metido en el baño de las mujeres’ (1981: 46) [‘. . . and for punishment she puts a little skirt on me for going into the ladies’ room . . .] (1981: 35). Moreover, the ambivalence can be found in Toto’s image of himself. When playing with an older girl, Pocha, he is to be found saying: ‘Pocha, entonces podemos jugar a que yo soy la chica y vos sos el muchacho’ (1981: 42) [‘Pocha, then we can play that I’m the girl and you’re the boy’] (1981: 32). In a later passage, in a fantasy about his neighbour, Raúl García, he casts himself in what is clearly the traditional passive feminine role, when he says: ‘Qué lindo irnos a vivir a una cabaña, porque con la fuerza que tiene puede matar a los osos y si yo me quedo en el trineo desmayado en la nieve viene y me salva’ (1981: 85–6) [‘. . . how nice it would be to live in a cabin, because with all his strength he can kill the bears and if I faint on the sled in the snow he can come and save me’] (1981: 66). The image is carried even further in another fantasy: y yo miro al tío de Alicita que ahora tiene la cara lisita afeitada como siempre [. . .] y en brazos me tiene contra el pecho y me tiene bien fuerte para que nadie me arranque de un tirón y mejor todavía sería que nos quedáramos pegados [. . .] entonces voy a estar pegado al pecho de él, y por ahí sin que se dé cuenta me paso para adentro del pecho del tío de Alicita (1981: 95–6) [And I look at Alicita’s uncle whose face is as smooth and shaven as always and shinier than ever [. . .] and he holds me in his arms against his chest and holds me real firm so nobody can pull me away with a yank, and it would be even better if we were stuck together [. . .] I’ll be stuck to his chest then, and without him knowing I’ll slip inside the chest of Alicita’s uncle . . .] (1981: 73–4).

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

9/22/05

82

9:01 AM

Page 82

LINDA CRAIG

This time the sexual overtones are clear. And yet Alicita’s uncle with his ‘cara lisita’ is, as Campos has pointed out (1985: 61), like Toto’s other heroes, Tyrone Power, and Fred Astaire, in that he is gentle. Toto finds the acceptance that he cannot find in his father, the macho, phallic man, in these apparently non-phallic, non-threatening fantasies. However it is not only Toto who brings into question issues of gender roles which had previously been largely unquestioned. Women’s virginity is also undermined, particularly by the image of Delia, who has had stitches to disguise the fact that she has already had intercourse. And Mita, the capable woman who is actually the main breadwinner in the household, has married the somewhat useless Berto because of his good looks, and is clearly dissatisfied with their sexual relations. This is evident from the fact the afternoon siesta is all but sacred for Berto; it is the time when Toto draws cartoon strips of the films he has seen, and his parents have sex. But at one point Toto remarks: ‘Mamá me prometió que hoy no dormía y papá no la dejó’ (1981: 87) [‘Mom promised she wouldn’t sleep today and Dad didn’t let her’] (1981: 67), it would seem from this that Mita is an unwilling partner. In these ways a whole world of silence, the discourses of women and children are rendered accessible. As far as the men within the novel are concerned, we hear the misogynist overtones of patriarchal discourse. But where misogyny was so stark but apparently unproblematised in Onetti, here there is a level of awareness which had remained largely unquestioned previous to TRH. This is at its most overt in the interior monologue of Toto’s cousin and counterpart, Héctor. Héctor is very good-looking and extremely popular with girls, who are won over by a certain sad look in his eyes, possibly due to the early death of his mother (1981: 148), although this idea is never explored. Because his attractiveness fits so well into the stereotype of the male, he nurses a lack of respect for these girls that verges on hatred. Describing himself seducing a girl he recounts: y ni bien se fue (la tía) nos volvimos a apretar que la primera vez bailando el bolero ‘Nosotros’ y haciéndome el boludo le canté un poco y eso fue, dos macanas que se las tragó en seguida, cualquier cosa y ya se tara. (1981: 157) [and no sooner was she gone we pressed against each other again like the first time dancing the bolero ‘You and I’, and me laying it on thick all I did was sing to her a little and presto! a little bullshit and she fell for it . . .] (1981: 118).

Indeed he judges the success of his holidays in Coronel Vallejos by the number of virgins he has managed to seduce, and in typical machista fashion, he loses interest in them as soon as he has ‘had’ them. Like Berto, in his relationship to Toto, Héctor fulfils a kind of stereotypical masculinity.

Gender Trouble Thus sexual politics and issues of gender and identity are brought into play, and raise questions which might be explored most usefully by looking at some of the

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 83

MANUEL PUIG

83

ideas examined by Judith Butler (1990) in the aforementioned article (p. 70), ‘Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory and Psychoanalytic Discourse’. Butler begins by addressing the issue of the possibility of a feminine subject, and she shows how post-Lacanian theorists such as Luce Irigaray have effected re-readings of Lacan, given that, as Butler puts it ‘the paternal law which Lacanian psychoanalysis takes to be the ground of all kinship and all cultural relations not only sanctions male subjects but institutes their very possibility through the denial of the feminine’. Hence Irigaray’s now famous remark that ‘the subject is always already masculine’, and her argument that the very idea of autonomy is founded on ‘a repression of its (the subject’s) early and true helplessness, need, sexual desire for the mother, even identification with the maternal body’. From which she concludes that ‘the subject thus becomes a fantasy of autogenesis, the refusal of maternal foundations, and, in generalised form, a repudiation of the feminine’ (1990: 326). When addressing the issue of sexual difference, Butler argues that an historical perspective must be employed in order to disrupt the apparent immutability of psychoanalytic, and in this case specifically Lacanian, thought. As she says: The rules constituting and regulating sexual difference within Lacanian terms evince an immutability which seriously challenges their usefulness for any theory of social and cultural transformation. The failure to historicize the account of the rules governing sexual difference inevitably institutes that difference as the reified foundation of all intelligible culture, with the result that the paternal law becomes the invariant condition of intelligibility (1990: 329).

That is to say that what is actually culturally specific has been read as being universal and timeless, and what is true for Lacanian thought in this sense is certainly true for Freudian knowledge as well. It becomes clear from this argument that traditional views of sexual difference are ultimately based on a myth of origin which is, in fact, untenable. Butler then takes this argument one step further by disrupting the view that some identifications are primary to others, that there is some kind of narrative thread, so that primary identifications would establish gender and further identifications would be deemed to be merely attributes. This disruption would presumably lead to the idea of ‘an interplay of attributes without an abiding or unifying substance’ (1990: 331). Toto, the most perceptive of the protagonists of TRH, could well be described within these parameters. Certainly, in terms of Irigaray’s idea of the fiction of autonomy, it is clear that Toto has not been totally won over by the Lacanian non/nom du père, he does not repudiate the feminine. Moreover, the Freudian view of his situation, outlined above, which, in the light of subsequent thought, now sounds more prescriptive than descriptive, yields what would now appear to be an unnecessarily negative view, leading as it does to a ‘pathogenic effect’. Indeed Toto would appear to be almost a text-book example of Butler’s postulation of ‘an interplay of attributes’. He echoes too what Butler takes to be

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

84

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 84

LINDA CRAIG

virtually the supreme undermining of ‘the notion of a true gender identity’, namely, drag. She quotes from Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America, written by an anthropologist, Esther Newton, saying: At its most complex, [drag] is a double inversion that says, ‘appearance is an illusion’. Drag says, my ‘outside’ appearance is feminine, but my ‘essence’ inside is masculine. At the same time it symbolizes the opposite inversion: ‘my appearance ‘outside’ is masculine but my essence ‘inside’ is feminine’ (1990: 337).

Toto, it is true, does not dress up as a girl; however his non-masculine behaviour and his identification with female film stars point to a similar mindset. The reader would be hard put to reach a conclusion as to whether Toto could be described as ‘essentially’ male or ‘essentially’ female. At this point the theory and the novel diverge. Butler is pointing out the importance of resisting the myth of internal origins as a way forward for feminist theory. Toto, on the other hand, is a protagonist who exists in the risky margins of a conformist, unquestioning, heterosexual society. He escapes from the threats which surround him, and particularly from his difficult relationship with his father, by going to the cinema. Toto’s love of the cinema, as has already been established, is one that he shares with his mother, Mita (whose name brings to mind a feminised version of the word mito – myth, and who in many ways embodies, for Toto, the mythical, ideal, mother). Generally they go to the cinema together, they love the same films, and one of their favourite ways of spending time together is for Toto to recount different films to her. The cinema, therefore, becomes a privileged space for the mother–son relationship within the novel. Returning to the article by Laura Mulvey (p. 78), I shall address some of the points in her arguments concerning ‘visual pleasure’, in order to attempt to shed light on some of the functions of film in TRH. Mulvey states that her aim is to use psychoanalytic theory as a political weapon ‘demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form’ (1976: 803), and she goes on to analyse different ways in which the role of the spectator in film parallels the role of the subject in psychoanalytic theory. She addresses the idea of scopophilia, the pleasure to be derived from looking, described by Freud as being ‘one of the component instincts of sexuality’ (1976: 806). One particular aspect of scopophilia which she stresses, which would be particularly relevant to the novel under discussion, is that of scopophilic narcissism. Mulvey also draws parallels between the experience of watching a film and the Lacanian mirror stage, reminding us that the image which the child perceives of itself in the mirror stage offers an illusory sense of self-identity. Mentioning in passing the similarities between the screen and the mirror, Mulvey then goes on to the idea that ‘the cinema has structures of fascination strong enough to allow temporary loss of ego while simultaneously reinforcing the ego’, an

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 85

MANUEL PUIG

85

attribute which ‘is nostalgically reminiscent of that pre-subjective moment of image recognition’ (1976: 807). She ends this parallel by referring to the tremendous screen presence of the stars as they ‘act out a complex process of likeness and difference (the glamorous impersonates the ordinary)’ (1976: 807–8). Cinema, in this sense, would be a constant re-enactment of the mirror stage, a source of narcissistic pleasure. Toto in the half-light of the cinema, with his mother by his side, is acting out this narcissistic fantasy. The threatening nature of life in Coronel Vallejos is offset by a world in which he constantly rediscovers himself in a new, more complete form. The difficulties that he confronts in his everyday life are counterbalanced by his ability to ‘lose himself/ find himself’ in the cinema and also by daydreams and fantasies, in which, as has already been shown, cinematic and everyday realities intermingle. What is more, the difficulties that he encounters in the realms of sexual difference or gender identity can be minimised when he is in front of a screen, free to identify with either or both male and female characters. It has already been established that he prefers non-threatening, rather feminised men; and it becomes clear that the same is true of women. Shirley Temple and Norma Shearer are mentioned; he says of the latter: ‘Norma Shearer es una artista que nunca es mala’ (1981: 37). [‘Norma Shearer is an actress who is never naughty’] (1981: 28). As the English translation shows, the judgement is a moral one, since Toto clearly has no critical distance from the films he watches. Some films that he loves, such as The Great Waltz, Camille and Intermezzo revolve around the theme of forbidden love, a theme which, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s in Hollywood, deals with the dichotomy between the ‘good’ woman, mother or virgin, and the ‘bad’ woman, seductress, lover. In these films, the safe world that Toto so desires is under threat; but in each of them, as Campos points out, the apparently ‘bad’ woman stands back, sacrifices her love, and the status quo is regained.17 The possible threat to the status quo, bringing to mind Toto’s own problematic relationship to the patriarchal order, might well afford him certain vicarious pleasure, but only on the understanding that here too order will be regained. Another aspect of ‘visual pleasure’ that Mulvey explores is that of fetishism. She points out that, in psychoanalytic terms, the female figure is problematic in that her lack of a penis implies ‘a threat of castration and hence unpleasure’ (1976: 811). She suggests that the resulting ‘castration anxiety’ can be avoided or disavowed by means of a fetish object. According to this process, the woman, instead of representing lack, would be perceived as being complete and perfect.

17 Campos (1985) carries out an interesting psychoanalytic reading of Toto’s version of The Great Waltz. In the light of this work, another psychoanalytic study has appeared, this time by Evelyne Minard (1988), who argues that Toto has never arrived at the Oedipal stage but rather has remained in a pre-Oedipal, oral state of fusion with his mother.

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

86

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 86

LINDA CRAIG

Thus parts, or even the whole of the female body would be endowed with a value that compensates for the lack elsewhere. In another context, Molly Haskell lists certain attributes of women film stars which can clearly be seen as fetishistic: ‘Hayworth’s lips, Grable’s legs, Jane Russell’s and Marilyn Monroe’s breasts’.18 The two directors that Mulvey specifically cites for their use of fetishistic scopophilia are Sternberg and Hitchcock, and significantly these two names appear in an interview given by Puig to Jorgelina Corbatta (1983) ‘Encuentros con Manuel Puig’, where he talks of different influences on his work. Puig suggests that he has been little influenced by literary figures, but rather: ‘Yo creo que si alguien se tomara el trabajo, va a encontrar influencias de Lubitsch en ciertas estructuras mías, de Von Sternberg en ese afán de ciertas atmósferas, Hitchcock mucho.’ [‘I think that if anyone went to the effort, they would find influences of Lubitsch in certain structures of mine, of Von Sternberg in that preference for certain atmospheres, of Hitchcock a lot’].

Betrayal Continuing with the theme of film, there is one specific film which, although not made by either of these directors, is actually central to the novel. This is Rouben Mamoulian’s Blood and Sand (1941). There is an aspect of this film which echoes Mulvey’s premise; for it, like the films of Sternberg and Hitchcock, depends greatly on images of fetishistic scopophilia. What is more, this aspect of the film is centred on the woman, already mentioned above in a similar context, Rita Hayworth. Based on a novel by the Spanish writer Blasco Ibañez, Blood and Sand recounts the tale of a bullfighter, played in the film by that favourite of Toto’s, Tyrone Power. According to the story, the bullfighter, named Juan, from a poor family, achieves great success and some wealth and then marries his childhood sweetheart. This harmonious state of affairs, however, is brought to an abrupt halt with the arrival on the scene of Rita Hayworth: ‘la voluptuosa viuda Doña Sol de Muire, una Rita Hayworth vestida en todos los tonos del rojo pasional’ [‘The voluptuous widow, Doña Sol de Muire, a Rita Hayworth dressed in every tone of passionate red’], the description is from Campos (1985: 63), who goes on ‘Como es de esperar (o desesperar), la mujer seduce a Juan y lo arrastra, inexorablemente, a la infidelidad, la ruina y la muerte’ [‘As is to be expected (or dreaded), the woman seduces Juan and drags him inexorably into infidelity, ruin and death’]. This is the Rita Hayworth who betrays Toto. She betrays him on many levels. Going back to Mulvey’s description of film as a re-enactment of the mirror stage, it is possible to see Rita Hayworth as a symbol of all the beauty and glamour of

18 This list appears in Haskell (1973:105). It is a valuable book, which focuses mainly on the differing images of women in film in the different decades from the twenties to the sixties.

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 87

MANUEL PUIG

87

Hollywood, and thus Toto, won over to a much greater extent than anyone else in the novel, is completely caught up in the narcissistic satisfaction it yields. The apparent stability and facile solutions offered on the screen have become an essential part of his psyche, compensating for his ‘gender trouble’. He has been taken in, and therefore betrayed, by Hollywood, personified in this case by Rita Hayworth. Yet while her importance as a symbol of Hollywood in this sense is undeniable, it is the Rita Hayworth of Blood and Sand who is truly treacherous. In the above dichotomy of ‘good’ woman, ‘bad’ woman, there is no doubt that her character in this film belongs to the ranks of the bad. However, as has already been ascertained, in the films that Toto loves, any woman who might be classed in this category has ultimately sacrificed her desire in the interest of order or the status quo. Rita Hayworth’s character breaks this mould. She does not sacrifice herself, she is not punished and nor does she suffer the fate of so many of her ‘bad’ sisters in other films; that is, she does not die. On the contrary, the person who dies is the gentle victim, Tyrone Power. Rita Hayworth triumphs. The security that Toto finds in his beloved films has gone. No longer do the good win and the bad lose; his entire scheme of things, swallowed whole from Hollywood, has been shattered by Rita Hayworth. The possibilities are not yet exhausted, however, for Rita Hayworth has a still more potent charge. In her role in Blood and Sand, her power, her ultimate triumph, and her fetishistic appeal, designate her as what in psychoanalytic terms would be classed the ‘phallic woman’. In this sense she echoes the earlier passage in the novel, already mentioned (p. 80), in which the bigger girl is asked by Berto to take Toto to the toilet. I quote the passage again: ‘Una nena grande. Con el vestido de tul almidonado duro que pincha, pincha con el vestido, la Bruja de Blancanieves pincha con la nariz de pico’ (1981: 33) [A big girl. With a hard starched dress that scratches, she scratches with her dress, the Witch of Snow White scratches with her beak nose . . .’] (1981: 25). The phallic overtones of words like pincha and pico [‘scratch’ and ‘beak’] are obvious, as is the fear that they arouse in Toto. In the case of Rita Hayworth, however the fear is even greater, for she intrudes, breaking the spell where it is at its strongest, at the very heart of Toto’s celluloid fantasies. Moreover, this is the only film in the novel which Berto agrees to go to see with Mita and Toto. The idea of his joining them in the Imaginary, and the possibility of some communication being established between father and son arises. The gap at the centre of the novel might at last be banished. But at this level too there is betrayal: y papá decía que le gustaba Rita Hayworth más que ninguna artista, y a mí me empieza a gustar más que ninguna también, a papá le gusta cuando le hacía ‘toro, toro’ a Tyrone Power, él arrodillado como un bobo y ella de ropa transparente que se veía el corpiño, y se le acercaba para jugar al toro, pero se reía de él, que al final lo deja. Y a veces pone cara de mala, es una artista linda pero que hace traiciones (1981: 82)

Mono219-CH-04.qxd

88

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 88

LINDA CRAIG

[and Dad said he liked Rita Hayworth better than any other actress, and I’m starting to like her better than any other too, Dad likes when she did ‘toro, toro’ to Tyrone Power, him kneeling like an idiot and her with a transparent dress that you could see her bra through and she was laughing at him, and in the end she leaves him. And sometimes she looks wicked, she’s a pretty actress but she’s always betraying somebody’] (1981: 63).

Try as he may, Toto cannot like Rita Hayworth and so enter the world of his father. And to add insult to injury, the hope that she arouses in Toto, that Berto who likes her so much will now go to the cinema with them as he promises: ‘ahora voy a venir siempre con ustedes al cine’ (p. 82), is also shattered. Berto does not go, even Rita Hayworth is not powerful enough. Toto is betrayed yet again. At a very different level, there is another kind of betrayal played out here. Cabrera Infante (1990) tells us that Puig loved to give the names of what he deemed to be appropriate Hollywood stars to other Latin American writers. Eloy Martínez (1997) says that he gave himself two names, Julie, after Julie Christie, and Rita, after Hayworth. In Levine’s biography (2001: 164) she talks of: ‘a vicious cycle of betrayals: Jaime betrays Berto who betrays Toto. Coco (Puig) betrayed father, mother and even himself’. The writing of this semi-autobiographical novel means that Puig (Rita) is performing a kind of betrayal of what would otherwise be private, family business.19 Returning here to what can be found in the depiction of Toto, and indeed throughout the novel, there is a kind of distortion which disrupts some of the commonly held views or indeed myths of patriarchal society. The myths disseminated by the great ‘dream machine’, Hollywood, are also brought into question, and revealed in all their falsity, as too are clearcut perceptions of gender and of women’s roles. So, a view of the major issues addressed in this chapter, those of marginality from a centre symbolised principally by Hollywood, and of gender, reveals the novel to be an extremely acute reading of its subject matter.

19 The theme of betrayal goes further. Annette Kuhn and Susannah Radstone (1990) point out that Hayworth herself, or indeed Margarita Carmen Cansino, her real name, was a victim of the star system, trapped by the sex deity created in her name. And rather more obscurely, but in an image that might be relevant, in de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, the main protagonist has his bicycle stolen just as he is putting up a poster of Rita Hayworth. Puig studied film in Rome, and although he preferred Hollywood films, he was well aware of Italian neo-realism.

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 89

5

Boquitas pintadas (1969) Tango and ‘Folletín’ Boquitas pintadas1 has some elements in common with La traición de Rita Hayworth; it is set in the same environment, Coronel Vallejos in the late 1930s, and the stifling parochialism of the first novel is still very much apparent. Moreover both novels are written in the form of different voices often recounting the same situations from different points of view. But there is a number of notable differences. The approach is, if anything, more experimental; the images of Hollywood are replaced by national cultural models, for example in the form of the tango, and by the folletín; and the concept of a central protagonist, embodied by Toto in the first novel, gives way to a number of protagonists, none of whom could really lay claim to a central position and none of whom invites the kind of psychoanalytic reading which seems to me so appropriate to the figure of Toto in La traición de Rita Hayworth. All of these features of Boquitas pintadas (which I shall henceforth refer to as Boquitas), can be seen as pointing to different facets of postmodernity, and the first section of this chapter will mainly be concerned with looking at the novel in the light of the postmodern project as examined and defined by Fredric Jameson (1991) in his famous ‘Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’,2 and subsequently, although to a lesser extent, by Jean François-Lyotard. In the later section my intention is to explore aspects of the depiction of gender in Boquitas with reference to Paul Julian Smith’s (1989) study of the issues of genre and gender in The Body Hispanic: Gender and Sexuality in Spanish and Spanish American Literature, and to William Rowe and Vivian Schelling’s (1991) Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America.

Postmodernity and ‘Boquitas Pintadas’ Jameson enumerates different features which he considers to be common to what he describes as all the postmodernisms; and this section will consist of an outline 1 Manuel Puig Boquitas pintadas (1986). Translation by Suzanne Jill Levine Heartbreak Tango (1973). 2 There are, of course, other definitions of the postmodern, most notably those of French theorists such as Lyotard, to whom I shall refer later in this chapter, Baudrillard and Bataille. But Jameson’s article is, I think, particularly appropriate to this chapter.

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

90

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 90

LINDA CRAIG

of some of these features with an analysis of the different ways in which they might apply to Boquitas. The first of these fits so well with Puig’s work that it justifies a substantial quotation from Jameson’s chapter. He refers to: the effacement in them [the postmodernisms] of the older (essentially highmodernist) frontier between high culture and so-called mass or commercial culture, and the emergence of new kinds of texts infused with the forms, categories and contents of that very culture industry so passionately denounced by all the ideologues of the modern [. . .]. The postmodernisms have in fact been fascinated precisely by this whole ‘degraded’ landscape of schlock and kitsch, of T.V. series and the Reader’s Digest culture [. . .] materials they no longer simply ‘quote’ as a Joyce or a Mahler might have done, but incorporate into their very substance. (1991: 2–3)

Puig’s use of what is generally referred to as popular culture is probably the most noted aspect of his work.3 In the case of Boquitas, as has been mentioned above, the most direct references are to the folletín and the tango. In fact the original Argentine version of the novel bears the subtitle ‘folletín’,4 an important point which has, for some inexplicable reason, been omitted from the later Spanish version. This word, which comes from the French feuilleton, was first used in the nineteenth century to describe the phenomenon of novels which were published in regular instalments by the popular press. It is a genre which is often treated with some contempt, but in England, writers such as Dickens reached a wide audience by means of this method of publishing.5 Boquitas echoes the mind-set of the folletín: first, it is divided, not into chapters, but rather into instalments, entregas. Secondly, the protagonists experience their lives through the vocabulary of the folletín, displaying, as they do, extremely stereotypical behaviour and dreams. It is the only level of reality available to them and the possibility of the existence of any other level or levels is constantly negated. This idea is explored in a significant article by Alicia Andreu (1983), ‘El folletín: de Galdós a Manuel Puig’, where she shows how Galdós’s novel, Tormento, works on two levels, that of realism and that of the folletín, and she

3 One example of this can be found in the fact that Alan Pauls (1986) talks at some length about the use of what he describes as the vulgar in Puig’s work in the first section of his booklength study of Puig’s work. 4 Boquitas Pintadas. Folletín (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana; Colección ‘El Espejo’, 1969). 5 Feuilleton is the word which the French now use for soap operas. In Spanish they are referred to as radionovelas, or in more recent times, telenovelas. It would seem that feuilleton has become the generic term for works of this nature, and Puig’s use of its Spanish equivalent encompasses this same connotation. Boquitas has elements of the different types of folletín, although not, of course, given the period in which it is set, of the telenovela; and these elements, recalling the words of Jameson, have been incorporated into the very substance of the novel.

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 91

MANUEL PUIG

91

talks of the interplay between the two genres thus: ‘Ambos discursos participan del juego ‘interlocutivo’ que constituye toda la dinámica de la novela’ (1983: 541–2) (They both join in an ‘interlocutive’ game that forms the dynamic of the novel). Moreover this interplay introduces another possibility into the text, that of parody: ‘La relación dialógica entre el texto folletinesco y el realista está definida por la parodia’ (1983: 542) [The dialogic relationship between the folletín and realist texts is defined by parody]. Andreu also points out certain similarities between Galdós’s novel and Boquitas, most notably the use of instalments, but she then goes on to say that: La ambigüedad, creada en la novela de Galdós como resultado del estado dialogical de dos textos, no existe en Boquitas [. . .]. El referente realista ha desaparecido. En su lugar nos encontramos con una copia, cuyo modelo no existe o que, simplemente se ha perdido en la distancia lograda como consecuencia de la repetición (1983: 544) [The ambiguity, produced in Galdos’s novel by the dialogical nature of the two texts, does not exist in Boquitas [. . .]. The realist referent has disappeared. In its place we find a copy, whose model does not exist or which, simply has got lost in the distance created by repetition].

Or, as she puts it in her concluding paragraph, ‘Boquitas pintadas niega la presencia del texto realista’ (1983: 546) [Boquitas pintadas denies the presence of the realist text]. What she is pointing out, therefore, and it is an idea with which I totally agree, is that Boquitas is a text that does away with the concept of an authoritative eye watching the proceedings and somehow organising them, of a controlling voice which attempts to win over the reader; Boquitas works on only one level, and the reader is forced to work with the text. The other form of popular culture to be found in Boquitas is the tango. Each instalment begins with a few lines from a tango, often, although not always, from the work of one the genre’s most famous writers, Alfredo Le Pera. Moreover the title of the novel is taken from a song sung by the greatest tango singer of all, Carlos Gardel; the song itself is not actually a tango, but it comes from that same world, and it was sung by Gardel in a film called The Tango in Broadway.6 This use of tango could be considered somewhat external to the world depicted in Boquitas, perhaps recalling a more modernist approach, given that they are marginal to the text and written in a different typeface. However, a closer look at the sentiments and values most frequently appealed to in the words of the tango reveals much closer links. In his book on Carlos Gardel and tango, Simon Collier (1988) discusses not only the life and times of the great singer, but also the major themes of tango in general. The first, and probably most common, theme that he refers to is that of

6 This information and a short discussion on this subject can be found in a book on the work of Puig, Lucille Kerr, Suspended Fictions (1987: 123n3).

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

92

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 92

LINDA CRAIG

the vicissitudes of love (1988: 142). Clearly this is a theme which can be found in literature from every age, but it is given exaggerated importance in tango. Something similar can be found in Boquitas, where, in equally exaggerated fashion, the stories of the ups and downs of the romantic relationships of its protagonists are central to the novel. This could also, of course, be said of the folletín, but the parallels between the tango and the novel are more extensive. Collier also refers to the theme of las muertes por venganza (1988: 142) [revenge killings]. In the world of tango, a world recounted almost exclusively from a masculine point of view, these murders would probably be carried out by men, and this is not the case in Boquitas. Here it is a woman, Raba, who takes revenge on the man who has spurned her. Nevertheless, the theme of vengeance in the novel echoes that of the tango. He furthermore discusses the feeling of nostalgia which infuses the tango, and here again the parallels are clear. Pamela Bacarisse (1988: 36) points out, of Boquitas, that: ‘Since the [. . .] novel opens with the death notice of a young man [. . .], it is straight away apparent that the narrative will look in a backwards direction’.7 Indeed the temporal structure of the novel, particularly in the first two instalments following this death notice, in which Nené is writing to Juan Carlos’s mother about events that occurred some ten years before, is one that almost inevitably tends towards nostalgia. Alicia Borinsky (1975: 39), in a psychoanalytic reading of Puig’s first three novels, entitled ‘Castración y lujos: la escritura de Manuel Puig’ [Castration and Luxuries: The Writing of Manuel Puig], talks of: el espacio de separación por el cual Nené es constántemente otra, distinta de una joven que vivió un idilio narrado nostalgicamente en Boquitas pintadas. La nostalgia, la conciencia de la distancia por esa época y esa figura acabada son similares a la relación con las películas. En La traición . . . el cine está tan cerca o tan lejos como el pasado en Boquitas pintadas. [the space of the separation which means that Nené is ever other, different from the young girl who experienced an idyll nostagically narrated in Boquitas pintadas. The nostalgia, the awareness of the distance of that time and that person are similar to the relationship with the films in Betrayed . . . film is as near or as far as the past in Boquitas pintadas].

In the closing passage of her article, Borinsky quotes some lines from Boquitas which epitomise the feeling of nostalgia, which she equates with the concept of lack, or with the impossibility of capturing something which is outside discourse.

7 Bacarisse underlines the lack of a moralising dimension in the novel. Her argument is based on the idea that Puig merely depicts his protagonists in their limited world, but with no ironic or parodic intent. The theme of remembering she shows to be a tool which further highlights the limited nature of their worlds.

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 93

MANUEL PUIG

93

As she puts it ‘Contar el tango es perderlo’ (1975: 41) [To recount the tango is to lose it]. The passage from the novel reads thus: El tango narra la desventura de un hombre que bajo la lluvia invernal recuerda la noche calurosa de luna en que conoció a su amada y la subsiguiente noche de lluvia en que la perdió, expresando su miedo de que al día siguiente salga el sol y ni siquiera así vuelva ella a su lado, posible indicio de su muerte. Finalmente pide que si el regreso no se produce, tampoco vuelvan a florecer los malvones del patio si esos pétalos deberán marchitarse poco después (1986: 15) [Tango speaks of the misfortune of a man who on a rainy winter night recalls the warm moonlit night on which he met his lover and the following rainy night when he lost her, telling of his fear that the next day the sun might come out and even so she won’t come back to him, so he might possibly die. Finally he hopes that she won’t come back, and that the geraniums in his patio won’t flower again if all those petals will do is just fade away] (1973: 14).

The lines reinforce Borinsky’s idea that the central image is one of lack. The recounting, within the text, of the story of this tango points to the heightened mood of nostalgia within both the tango and the novel. The parallels do not stop here. Collier also talks of el inevitable paso del tiempo (1988: 144) [the inevitable passage of time], an idea explored in Boquitas, which begins in 1947, returns to 1937–38, and then ends in 1968. Related to this motif, Juan Carlos’s death from tuberculosis, with its Romantic overtones, reads as though it were straight from a tango. Indeed Collier gives a quotation from a tango which exemplifies this perfectly: Adios muchachos, ya me voy y me resigno, contra el destino nadie la talla, se terminaron para mí todas las farras, mi cuerpo enfermo no resiste más. (‘Adiós muchachos’, by Julio Sanders and César Vedani). [Goodbye boys, I’m going and I’m resigned, Nobody can resist their destiny, The parties are all over for me My sick body can resist no more].

The Romantic associations of tuberculosis are also explored in Puig’s novel. As Beatriz Sarlo (1988) demonstrates,8 tuberculosis was used as a metaphor for artistic alienation. She refers to a book by Nicolás Olivari (1982) entitled La musa de

8 Sarlo offers an extremely interesting study of the world of the folletín, its plots, its values and its audience in El imperio de los sentimientos (1988).

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

94

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 94

LINDA CRAIG

la mala pata [The Lame Muse], in which tuberculosis plays an important role, saying: La tuberculosis funciona efectivamente, para usar palabras de Susan Sontag, como ‘la enfermedad-metáfora’, que puede condensar el curso de los destinos literarios, también porque a ella se atribuye un poder sobre los destinos reales. Se trata, casi sin variaciones, de ‘la amada enferma por la ciudad’, a quien el poeta oye ‘toser en la noche como un llamado’ [. . .] La tuberculosis es [. . .] una de las formas o quizás la forma privilegiada del destino de la marginalidad y la pobreza. Es parte del tópico tardorromántico de la vida triste (1988: 185) [Tuberculosis functions effectively, to use the words of Susan Sontag, as ‘the illness metaphor’, which can encapsulate the course of literary destinies also because we can attribute to it a power over actual destinies. It deals with, almost without variation, ‘The ailing lover in the city’ whom the poet can hear ‘coughing in the night like a call’ [. . .]. Tuberculosis is [. . .] one of the forms, or perhaps the privileged form of destiny for the marginalised and the poor. It is partly the late romantic theme of the sad life].

The image of Mimi in La Bohème springs to mind. It is interesting to see how, in Puig’s novel, the stereotypical images of gender are again reversed, so that not only, as has been mentioned above, is it a woman who commits the murder, but also, contrary to the tradition that Sarlo describes, it is a male protagonist who dies of tuberculosis. Clearly, therefore, from the examples cited above, the tango is not merely a form of popular culture on the margins of Boquitas, but rather, intrinsic to the novel. The self-aware, even ‘camp’ style in which Boquitas is written owes a great debt to the tango. Borinsky talks of: la artificiosidad de las letras de Le Pera que no podemos evitar sentir cantadas por la voz de Carlos Gardel. Y ese tango es opuesto al realismo y al ‘sentimiento’; sus juegos verbales, su cursilería, marcan la conciencia de su propia exageración. La voz irónica de Gardel con su relación siempre oblicua con respecto a lo cantado agrega un nivel en el cual el tango se contempla a sí mismo, complementando, así, la artificiosidad de las letras de Le Pera (1975: 38) [the artificiality of the lyrics of Le Pera which we can’t help but hear sung by the voice of Carlos Gardel. And this tango is the opposite of realism and of sentiments; its word-games, its vulgarity, underline the awareness of its own exaggeration. The ironic voice of Gardel with its ever oblique relation to what it is singing adds a level at which tango contemplates itself contemplating, therefore, the artificiality of the words of Le Pera].

The pervading artificiality reflects even the title of the novel, or more obviously yet, the subtitle of the first section of the novel which reads: ‘Boquitas pintadas de rojo carmesí’ [Little lips painted crimson red]. Jameson’s ‘degraded landscape of schlock and kitschí could hardly be more apparent. Clearly, in many respects, Boquitas fits Jameson’s description of a work which is infused with the forms of the ‘culture industry’, and so in this sense, too, it can be read as a postmodernist novel.

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 95

MANUEL PUIG

95

This is not, however, the only aspect of the novel which lies within these parameters, and a further examination of Jameson’s article brings to light other, interesting perspectives of Puig’s novel. In a discussion of the differences to be found between modernism and postmodernism, Jameson compares a painting by Van Gogh with one by Andy Warhol. He juxtaposes the impression of depth aroused by Van Gogh’s work with what he sees in Warhol’s painting as ‘the emergence of a new kind of flatness or depthlessness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal sense’, he goes on to describe this as ‘perhaps the supreme formal feature of all the postmodernisms’ (1991: 9). Jameson then discusses Edvard Munch’s famous expressionist painting, The Scream, noting that: The very concept of expression presupposes indeed some separation within the subject, and along with that a whole metaphysics of the inside and the outside, of the wordless pain within the monad and the moment in which, often cathartically, that ‘emotion’ is then projected out and externalised, as a gesture or cry, as desperate communication and the outward dramatization of inward feeling. (1991: 11–12)

This idea of the inside and the outside, as Jameson has pointed out is most clearly exemplified in such images of existential alienation; this conveys a perception of the human being as almost lost in time and space. In the realm of literature, perhaps Larsen in El astillero, desperately seeking symbols which will somehow correspond to, and express, some essential part of his being and thus give some meaning to his life, would be one of the archetypal embodiments of this idea. In Jameson’s view, this has now been overtaken by an image of depthlessness. His postmodernist view is of a protagonist without essence, rather like a tabula rasa on which different discourses inscribe themselves. Such are the protagonists of Boquitas.9 What Jameson calls depthlessness as a formal feature corresponds well with what might be called the ontology of Boquitas, and some examination of the boundaries within which it works will serve to clarify this idea. As noted above, Boquitas is more experimental in structural terms than La traición de Rita Hayworth. In her chapter on Boquitas in Suspended Fictions,10 Lucille Kerr (1987: 83) describes the novel’s heterogeneity thus: Included in Boquitas pintadas are letters, diary entries, magazine and newspaper articles, official (legal, medical, police, and government) documents.

9 A parallel between Puig and Warhol is drawn overtly by Graciela Speranza (2000). She refers to Warhol’s Turquoise Marilyn saying ‘No hay ironía ni insidia paródica. Más bien, un sentimiento tierno, piadoso, intenso sin gravedad’ [There is no irony or parodic trick. Rather, a feeling of tenderness, kindness, intense without gravity]. Speranza draws many parallels between pop art and Puig’s work, in her exploration of Boquitas as a copy. 10 In this chapter, entitled ‘A Succession of Popular Designs: Boquitas pintadas’, Kerr examines the heterogeneity of the novel and then bases her reading largely on the nature of the interplay between the reader and the text.

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

96

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 96

LINDA CRAIG

In addition, there are interior monologues, dreams and stream-of-consciousness segments, hidden dialogues, immediate direct dialogues, and a variety of texts in which an undramatized omniscient narrator reports on the characters actions and thoughts, or describes objects and places of significance within the fiction.

She concludes that ‘In Boquitas pintadas, then, it never becomes clear who or what is in or out of control. It is not possible to know whose “voice” is finally heard’ (1983: 122).11 And while other aspects of her reading are less relevant to this chapter, the idea that there is no final controlling voice to anchor the text, an idea already alluded to above in the context of the folletín, is of particular interest since it is one of the aspects which give the novel its impression of superficiality. The concept of inside and outside gives way to a constant juxtaposition of different surfaces. This, as Kerr points out, is even true of the official documents within the novel. Any claim to a transcendent ‘reality’ is irrelevant, these are merely discourses which are inscribed on the protagonists. These ideas can be found in a slightly different form in another article on Boquitas written by the Cuban poet and critic, Severo Sarduy (1969: 72). Noting the levelling of discourse, he says: El escritor [. . .] va a trabajar al revés, dando a leer en lo blanco la figura, en la figura el fondo que en el anverso la sustenta, en las letras lo vacío, en la página lo acuñado por la tinta [. . .] muestra los bocetos, el andamiaje, los trucos; aquí se trata del arte de narrar. [The writer [. . .] goes to work in reverse, showing on the blank page the figure, on the figure the background which sustains it, in the words, emptiness, on the page that which is coined by the ink [. . .], it shows the outline, the framework, the tricks; it is about the art of narration].

Nothing is hidden and, in fact, everything is of equal value. A certain cinematic quality can be found in some passages of the novel which again accentuates its flatness, film is, after all, two dimensional. In the early sections, following on from the letters, there is a short description of the protagonist who has just stopped writing. Any one of these descriptions reads in much the same way as the others, and the effect is visual, as though the protagonist were being watched by a camera: Dobla carta y recorte en tres partes y los coloca en el sobre. Los saca con un movimiento brusco, despliega la carta y la relee. Toma el recorte y lo besa

11 So convincing are these voices, that Speranza (2000: 114–5) cites the following: ‘Cuando presenté Boquitas pintadas a un concurso de novelas en Buenos Aires, recuerda Puig, Juan Carlos Onetti no quiso darme el premio porque dijo que yo copiaba a tal punto que no se podía saber cómo era mi verdadera escritura’.

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 97

MANUEL PUIG

97

varias veces. Vuelve a plegar carta y recorte, los pone en un sobre, al que cierra y aprieta contra el pecho (1986: 23) [She folds the letter and clipping in thirds and puts them in the envelope. She takes them out abruptly, unfolds the letter, and rereads it. She takes the clipping and kisses it several times. She folds the letter and clipping again, puts them in the envelope, which she closes and presses against her breast] (1973: 20).

This rather cinematic type of narration in fact epitomises this depthlessness. The camera is merely a machine and therefore has no authority, no control, over the scenes described. There is no value judgement and no essence, no notion of depth; Boquitas corresponds notably with Jameson’s perception of flatness. There is still another important way in which Jameson’s article can be seen to shed light on Puig’s novel, and this is in a further section of this same article in which he examines the idea of pastiche. Many critics talk of the idea of parody in Puig’s work,12 but it is a reading which the Argentine writer strenuously denies;13 and without wishing to give too much weight to the issue of authorial intent, it does seem that Jameson’s description of pastiche, a trope which he specifically differentiates from parody, fits Boquitas more neatly. The postmodernist critic talks of a shift, or what he, in fact, calls a radical leap in which: the explosion of modern literature into a host of distinct private styles and mannerisms has been followed by a linguistic fragmentation of social life itself to the point where the norm itself is eclipsed: reduced to a neutral and reified media speech [. . .] which itself then becomes but one more ideolect among many. (1991: 16–17)

The norm is no longer capable of reasserting itself, the possibility of parody no longer exists: In this situation, parody finds itself without a vocation; it has lived, and that strange new thing pastiche slowly comes to take its place. Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar mask, speech in a dead language: but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody’s ulterior motives’ amputated from the satirical impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction

12

The article by Sarduy (1969) mentioned above is a case in point, as is Margery Safir’s (1975) ‘Mitología: Otro Nivel de Metalenguaje’ and the idea of parody appears again in Rodolfo Borello’s (1991) ‘Boquitas pintadas: narración y sentido’. 13 In an interview with Jorgelina Corbatta (1983: 597) Puig states: ‘Yo no tengo intención paródica [. . .] parodia significa burla, y yo no me burlo de mis personajes, comparto con ellos una cantidad de cuestiones, su lenguaje, sus gustos’ [I don’t have parodic intent [. . .] parody signifies mocking, and I don’t mock my protagonists, I share a number of issues with them, their language, their tastes].

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

98

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 98

LINDA CRAIG

that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality still exists. Pastiche is thus blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs . . . (p. 17)

Puig’s denial of parody points precisely in this direction, and the above conclusion that Boquitas works only on one level accords perfectly with Jameson’s image of ‘blank’ parody. Boquitas does indeed display a proliferation of different discourses, but there is no outside, no controlling voice. Puig, in what has become a famous quotation, has said of Kafka’s work: creo que él es el que mejor ilustra toda esa cuestión que a mí me interesa tanto: la opresión del medio ambiente sobre el individuo, la cuestión inconsciente, el mundo de cárceles internas que llevamos sin saberlo. Esa red que tenemos cada uno de represiones construida adentro.14 [I believe that he is the one who best illustrates that whole issue that interests me: The oppression of the environment on the individual, the subconscious issue, the world of internal prisons which we carry about without realising. That network which each one of us has of internally constructed repressions].

The protagonists of Boquitas are unarguably trapped within their internal prisons, profoundly repressed; and what traps them is language, the discourses which surround them; the only discourses available to them. These overtly shallow, superficial protagonists mimic the values of the discourses which surround them, discourses which completely encompass most strikingly the basic issues of sexual politics and social mobility. Thus, for example, the male protagonists act out roles of supreme machismo; selfish, egotistical and blind to the needs of themselves or others, they ultimately become victims of their own illusions of power. In a fairly early passage from the novel, Juan Carlos can be found with his friend Pancho, pondering over his reactions to his tuberculosis: Juan Carlos le preguntó si por seguir viviendo se avendría a no tener más mujeres, a no tomar y a no fumar [. . .] le iba a decir algo más y se calló: que si tenía que renunciar a vivir como los sanos prefería morirse (1986: 65) [Juan Carlos asked him if in order to stay alive he would give up women, drinking, and smoking [. . .]. Juan Carlos was going to say something else but didn’t; if he had to give up living like healthy people he’d rather die] (1973: 55).

That is exactly what happens. Juan Carlos, against the advice of his doctors, and despite the fact that the women around him are making enormous sacrifices to enable him to have suitable treatment, continues to play his role of a small town Don Juan right up to the moment of his death.

14

Quoted in Corbatta (1983: 596).

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 99

MANUEL PUIG

99

His friend Pancho suffers what is in a sense a similar fate. The manner of his death is quite different, for he is murdered; but he too suffers an untimely death brought on as a direct result of his machista lifestyle. Pancho is murdered as he leaves the bedroom of Mabel with whom he is having a secret affair, by Raba, a woman he has lied to and left abandoned with his child. The female protagonists, on the contrary, act within a framework in which their virginity, or their apparent virginity, becomes their most prized commodity. The only possible future that these women see for themselves is within marriage; not to marry is to fail. The dichotomy of the good, and therefore marriageable, woman and the fallen woman to be found in the tango, and in the folletín and which is part of the cultural baggage of Christianity (and of other religions too), is a construct which the novel shows to rule their lives. There are exceptions, however, to this rigid framework. Raba, particularly, breaks these rules and survives, to lead probably the most fulfilling life of all of them, though still of course within marriage. However the main female protagonists, Nené and Mabel play out their manipulative and even ruthless roles, protecting the fiction of their virginity, in order to slot themselves into the only system of values they know. Within their realm of sexual mores, there is of course no other system of values offered. These protagonists, defining themselves within the terms of the discourses surrounding them, bring to mind Jameson’s words quoted above: ‘Pastiche is [. . . ] the imitation of a peculiar mask [. . . ]: but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry’ (1991: 17). These women merely mimic the only possible roles that the dominant discourse allows. Another discourse employed is, as has already been mentioned, that of social mobility. In this sense, Coronel Vallejos can be seen to be a microcosm in which issues of race, colour and class underline the aspirations of every one of the protagonists. Moreover this issue is constantly intertwined with the sexual politics described above, as a brief outline of some the perceptions and tensions to be found in the novel will convey. Near the bottom of the pile is Pancho, who, in keeping with his low social status, lives some distance from the centre of Coronel Vallejos, in an area where there are only dirt roads. Pancho would appear to be mestizo, that is, half Indian and half European, and yet he despises the Indian race. He is obsessed by Nené who, tall and blonde, represents an unattainable image of beauty; and following a passage in which his every comparison reveals a system of values under which all that is Indian is negative and all that is European, positive, he concludes: ‘Nené no era una india bruta’ (1986: 79) [‘Nené wasn’t a coarse Indian woman’] (1973: 66). The received values that he holds are stronger than his self-interest. At the other end of the spectrum is Mabel, representative of the aspiring middle classes. A letter which she has written to the problems page of a woman’s magazine reveals the tensions that surround her. Here, Mabel talks of the confusion she feels regarding two men in her life. The first of these is clearly Juan Carlos, ‘un muchacho bueno pero de incierto porvenir’ (1986: 44) [‘A nice boy, but of uncertain future’] (1973: 37), who works in an office, and to whom she is

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

100

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 100

LINDA CRAIG

strongly attracted. The second is a young landowner of English origin, to whom, as becomes clear as the novel goes on, she is not at all attracted. The agony aunt, inevitably, opts for the Englishman, advising her: ‘. . . estudia inglés y trata de aprender por último, nunca al principio, la palabra ‘yes’, que significa . . . ¡sí! Usando poco ese monosílabo conquistarás al mundo y, más importante aún, asegurarás tu felicidad y la de tus padres’ (1986: 45–6) [‘. . . study English, and in case you two have to make signs in order to communicate please don’t nod your head yes too often! By using that sign sparingly you will conquer the world and, even more important, you will secure your happiness and that of your parents’] (1973: 39). The message is clear, social ascent equals happiness. Moreover, woman’s only means of access to this much-desired social ascent, is through marriage to somebody of higher social status. This same message of social ascent could be found in the tangos of the time. Sarlo (1985: 18) discusses this syndrome when she describes the immigrants who went to Argentina around the turn of the century thus: ‘. . . sus hijos [. . .] comienzan el trabajoso camino de ascenso a través del capital y las inversiones simbólicas. Ingresan a las universidades o comienzan a disputar lugares en el campo de la cultura y en las profesiones liberales’ [. . . their children [. . .] start on the difficult pathway of ascent by means of economic and symbolic investment. They go to the universities and begin to contend for places in the world of culture and in the liberal professions]. For the possibility or even the dream of social ascent is one of the lynchpins of Western capitalist economies, and it was clearly one of the principal attractions of this new land of opportunity for these immigrants, many of whom came from European peasant stock. This motif occurs again within the novel in a passage in which Mabel and Nené meet after many years and choose to listen to a radionovela. Here the same issue is approached, but in a much more mythical sense; for the story is situated in Europe during the First World War, in another time and another place, but the values are the same: the heroine is married to a brutish man of her own class, but she is romantically involved with a beautiful aristocrat; and the plot circles around the issue of whether her dream will come true, whether she will, or will not, eventually marry this aristocrat, who is clearly so right for her. From these different examples from the novel, it is clear that the issue of social mobility is another element of the pastiche, or, to reiterate, there is no master narrative against which it is compared or parodied. However, at this point the parallels to be found between Jameson’s thesis and Puig’s novel cease; for while the coincidences between the two are many, Jameson’s description of postmodernism as ‘the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world’ (1991: 5), that is, as emanating from the (or a) centre, actually fails to address perspectives of postmodernism as they would apply to areas outside of the industrialised West. This allusion to the possibility of a centre or origin is in fact in contradiction to the image of total surface which his article elsewhere expounds, and Puig’s novel, speaking as it does from the geographical, social and cultural margins of Western society,

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 101

MANUEL PUIG

101

deconstructs this image of a possible centrality. In a separate article Jameson (1986: 67) states that: ‘all third-world texts are necessarily allegorical’. This statement must automatically disempower such texts and also situate them within the realms of the ‘other’. Furthermore, it would place any so-called third-world text outside of the possibility of a postmodernist reading, given that the concept of allegory necessarily implies the presence of a sub- or even master text; an idea that this chapter has so far, hopefully, refuted and which it will continue to challenge. Jameson is not, of course, alone when he writes of postmodernity; it is a field which has attracted considerable attention; and another major theorist is JeanFrançois Lyotard, mentioned already in this chapter and in the section on Onetti. His work is referred to by Paul J. Smith (1989), in the sixth chapter of his book:15 ‘Fuentes, Puig, Lyotard’. This chapter is principally concerned with Puig’s later novel El beso de la mujer araña, but some of Smith’s references to Lyotard’s work in that context are also relevant to Boquitas. I refer specifically to the passage in which Smith talks of a somewhat lesser known work of Lyotard’s entitled Économie Libidinale, where the French thinker proposes an imagery that leaves no space for centrality, or indeed for ‘otherness’. Lyotard describes an image of the body as a continuous surface, a pellicule, what Smith calls a ‘great ephemeral skin [. . .] which permits neither absence nor alterity’ (1989: 180). Smith goes on to say that this image: is not an ‘option’ he offers us, nor is it good. Rather it serves as a model of the body (and hence of culture) which rejects both the negativity of psychoanalysis and semiotics and the pure presence of liberalism; that is, it is based neither on alienating difference, nor therapeutic unity. For if the band is single it is by no means unified, and varies constantly in intensity [. . .]. He proposes that we attempt to conceive both linguistics and economic functions in terms of this intensity. And just as the band cannot be reduced to a reassuring unity, so Lyotard’s pagans and barbarians cannot be made to signify a lost origin or an exotic other. (1989: 181)

Jameson’s view of allegorical third-world texts is brought into question as a result of this view. What it proposes is a view of the margins not as other, but rather as more of the same. The intensity may vary, but the pellicule remains. This comprises an imagery which Puig’s novel, coming as it does from the margins of Western society, a small town on the Pampa, verifies. The pellicule echoes Jameson’s image of flatness, but the major difference would seem to lie in Jameson’s to my mind mistaken assumption that the United States represents the central paradigm of a post-capitalist society. In fact it is no more paradigmatic than anywhere else. Postmodernity, like psychoanalysis

15

Smith’s book presents challenging readings of Hispanic literature from the Golden Age to the present time in the light of what he describes as modern theories of sexuality.

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

102

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 102

LINDA CRAIG

before it, involves a particular way of reading the world which is as relevant to what are perceived as the margins as it is to the so-called centre. The idea of marginality which can be gleaned from Boquitas, therefore, is one that can be said to deconstruct the very possibility of marginality. Puig’s novel can be seen to be a postmodern novel par excellence.

Gender Another issue that arises from Boquitas is that of gender, and an exploration of this issue sheds quite a different light on the novel than does the postmodern project. Here, the idea of a referent, so foreign to postmodernity, would appear to be necessary, and the referent here would take the form of traditional sexual mores, conventions against which the novel takes a stand. Here again Paul Smith (1989: 48) provides a key to a reading of the novel. He points out that the words genre and gender, differentiated in English, are actually the same word in Spanish: género, a fact that holds true for French and Italian as well, and he also says that: I would suggest that genre needs no justification, for its very name reveals an essential and often repressed condition of writing: that language is always already gendered, that sex is never absent from discourse or value.

This interlinking of the concepts of gender and genre is an idea that Smith explores further, and during this process, he cites some lines from Quintilian, which are particularly relevant to Boquitas. The passage reads: ‘But let this ornament be manly (‘virilis’) and strong and holy, and not seek effeminate smoothness and the lying colour of cosmetics, but shine with blood and strength.’ (1989: 49). The subtitle to the first section of Boquitas, as has been mentioned above, reads: ‘Boquitas pintadas de rojo carmesí’, echoing Quintilian’s ‘lying colour of cosmetics’, and this would situate the novel squarely within what Quintilian clearly deems to be the more negative, feminine mode. Moreover the word ‘genre’, as it is used in English, refers not to what might be called ‘high’ literature, but rather to forms of popular literature, foremost among which is the ‘woman’s novel’. Genre and gender might be deemed to coincide. Analysing genre in Boquitas can be fruitful, because in fact it is quite difficult to situate in such terms. A look at the dichotomy ‘popular culture’ versus ‘high culture’ is relevant in this respect. William Rowe and Vivian Schelling (1991: 193) suggest that this use of binary opposition ‘tends to bring in its wake others like vulgar versus polite; impure versus pure, and so on. As a result, the whole cultural field becomes polarized by these apparently symmetrical oppositions’. They go on to suggest that this framework leads to rigidity, ‘eliminating whatever is transitional, hybrid, multiple, or ambiguous’, and point out that what they describe as the most ‘seductive’ way of dealing with the problem is to turn the hierarchy on its head, leading to a celebration of the lower over the higher, the

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 103

MANUEL PUIG

103

body over the head as in a Bakhtinian reading of the carnivalesque. They reject this reading, however, on the grounds that in spite of the re-evaluation implied, the structure remains the same, the classification in terms of hierarchy continues, one set of limitations has merely been replaced by another. Boquitas is of interest in this sense since it is clearly a novel which problematises the idea of rigid notions of ‘popular culture’ and ‘high culture’, written as it is in a space which celebrates the very notions that this rigidity refuses, particularly in terms of transition and ambiguity. But it, too, refuses the seduction of the carnival. Far from being a hymn to sensuality and the body, or a re-evaluation of the senses over the intellect, it is an extremely cerebral novel. The cold impersonality of the visual, camera-like narrator, or of the newspaper reports is repeated in the protagonists, in whom self-interest and the possibility of social ascent almost always outweigh any feelings of spontaneity. The only protagonists who transcend these terrible limitations in any way, are women like Raba, who has had a child out of wedlock, and the widow, Elsa di Carlo, who breaks with all the conventions by going to live with Juan Carlos in the province of Córdoba to be with him and to look after him until his death. What these women have in common, of course, is that they are no longer part of that world of virginity or presumed virginity, of hope and deceit; they are no longer seen as being ‘marriageable’. These women have broken the rules and transcended the script, for, as Sarlo (1985: 24) says of the folletín: ‘Relatan la historia sencilla que va desde el flechazo a la consumación del amor o a su frustración [. . .] las mujeres de las narraciones semanales ignoran otra vacilación que no sea la de entregarse o resistirse al amante’ [They recount the simple story that goes from love at first sight to its consummation or its failure [. . .] the women in these weekly stories know of no other dynamic than that of giving in to or resisting their lover]. Their fates vary, however. Raba is a player from the bottom of the pile, since she is both Indian and a woman; and despite, or perhaps because of, having murdered Pancho, and therefore having destroyed the myth of machista power, she is the protagonist who enjoys the most fruitful and fulfilling life, although this is depicted very much within the realms of the conventional, if extended, family. The widow, on the other hand, is left in a state of poverty by Juan Carlos, who has continued to live up to his old ways, drinking and gambling to the end. She is probably the only protagonist who behaves with spontaneity, but this is not shown to be a viable option, as a means of truly escaping from this closed system. The ‘fallen’ woman is, after all, a recognised figure within the realms of the folletín, and she often serves merely as a warning to the others, a spur to enjoin women readers to keep playing the game. Yet in terms of genre, Boquitas, while professing to be a folletín, and while, as has been shown, displaying some of the characteristics of that genre, is quite clearly not just another Mills and Boon, or novela rosa, type of novel. While it lends itself, to some extent, to being read in this way, it is also open to a much broader reading.

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

104

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 104

LINDA CRAIG

If we return to Jameson’s description of pastiche, we might see Boquitas simply as a depiction of life in a small town in the Pampa in the 1930s and 1940s, and the cultural fields which come into play. Reiterating Jameson’s idea: this is not a parody, there is no master narrative against which it is being played out. The historical situation is, as Rowe and Schelling (1991: 215) put it: The process of modernization took a very particular form in Argentina [. . . ]. In the aftermath of massive immigration from Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a large part of the population found itself without inherited models for social improvement. They found these in films and radio programmes.

The role played by film is obviously dealt with in La traición de Rita Hayworth, that of radio is briefly touched on in Boquitas, but the importance of the folletín, examined at length by Sarlo in El imperio de los sentimientos, is enormous. What sets Boquitas apart from other folletines can best be summed up in two of its characteristics. First, while the heyday of the folletín in Argentina roughly accords with the time in which most of the action in Boquitas is set, the novel was, of course, actually written in the 1960s. And while this fact is incorporated into the time sequence of the novel with the last entrega set in 1968, there is a sense in which it can be perceived to be not simply an historical novel, as exemplified by the radionovela described within its pages, but rather a socio-cultural analysis of the different forces at play in that small town at that time. The other break with the tradition lies at the level of awareness. As has already been pointed out, the narrator’s almost pitiless gaze is echoed in the calculated gazes of the protagonists. Sentimentality, so often a characteristic of the folletín, is notably absent. These protagonists are not innocent victims of discourses which repress them and clash with their true interests, for victims they may be, but they are certainly not innocent. Rowe and Schelling (1991: 107) catch the tone of the novel well when they say: Puig’s characters are addicted to the stereotyping of radio serials and films, but actively collude in being manipulated, and know very well how to negotiate the gaps between the ideal and the actual: the responsibility is not solely that of the media. Puig’s novels introduce desire into the equation.

They point this out in the context of a re-evaluation of the notion of cultural dependency and of the role of the consumer of popular culture. In this chapter, however, the perception is of interest in a rather different way. Certainly one of the results of this acute awareness lies in the depiction of the female protagonists. If, as has been pointed out so often, women within the realms of fiction are often reduced to the roles of saints or whores, nothing could be further from the case in Boquitas. This is not to say, of course, that the novel is one which attempts to approach some image of psychological depth; indeed virtually everything said in this chapter so far has aimed to show that the novel is not one which plays in the space of metaphorical depth. However, there is

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 105

MANUEL PUIG

105

a level at which the female protagonists can be seen to be more complex than their male counterparts. Within the constraints of the cultural discourses available to them, the role of the men, unquestioningly machista, is much more one-dimensional than that of the women. In this world, which deals almost exclusively with matters of the heart and sexual desire, the fact is that the men are given free rein to take what they can get. The women, on the other hand, have to find ways of negotiating a minefield in which their very desires are likely to betray them. Appearances are all, and these women must be seen to be virgins. Honesty and sincerity are worthless, therefore, in this desperate world in which deviousness and manipulation are the only means by which they have any possibility of closing the gap between their desires and the behaviour required of them. Mabel is clearly the most accomplished player of these games, Raba, the most naive. The part played by the games is of tremendous importance. Sarlo (1985: 12) says: ‘La cuestión femenina aparece en estas narraciones sólo como cuestión de los afectos. Sin embargo, el lugar de la mujer es narrativamente exaltado’ [The feminine question appears in these stories only as a question of emotions. However, the place of the woman has great narrative importance]. This holds true for Boquitas, too, the female protagonists occupy as much, if not more, space than the males; but women like Mabel and even Nené are like prisoners struggling to find a place of comfort within, or to conform themselves to, the limitations of their cells, and it is the nature of these struggles which is central to the novel. This view of the limitations that all of the protagonists perceive as being inevitable, is one that lends the novel a certain pathetic quality. With the passage of time, it becomes clear that the discourse has a deadening effect. Not only are Juan Carlos and Pancho dead, but Nené, who has followed the rules more closely than anyone, is bored and unhappy in what would appear to be her dream world, in a flat in Buenos Aires with a husband and two children. Mabel, too, is leading quite a difficult, dull life. The ‘Boquitas pintadas de rojo carmesí’ have become, as the novel tells, ‘Boquitas azules, violáceas, negras’ (Little blue lips, violet, black). The novel, which opened on a note of death, with Juan Carlos’s death notice, ends in the same way with Nené’s. By working very much within the constraints of the genre, generally favouring the women’s world view over that of the men, Boquitas brings into the open issues which are seldom explored in this way within the world of fiction. It surpasses the genre, as has been mentioned, in the sense that it eschews sentimentality, and it succeeds thus in showing the relevance of these issues to a world far beyond the confines of Coronel Vallejos, and also in highlighting the cruel limitations of the discourses it employs.

Mono219-CH-05.qxd

9/22/05

9:01 AM

Page 106

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 107

Part III: Luisa Valenzuela

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 108

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 109

6

Hay que sonreír (1966) A woman’s place is in the wrong. James Thurber1

Disaffection Although Hay que sonreír2 was published in 1966, it was actually written some years previously. As Valenzuela explains in an interview with Albalú Angel (1984: 3): ‘Me casé a los veinte años y me fui a vivir a Francia, y tuve una hija muy pronto. Y entonces las horas de la siesta de mi hija – tenía meses – yo escribía’ [I married at the age of twenty and went to live in France, and I had a daughter very early. And while she had her nap – she was only months old – I would write]. The novel was therefore written between 1959 and 1960. It was subsequently ‘polished up’ before publication.3 The reason for which I emphasise the date that the novel was written is that it seems to me important to point out that it was written well before the wave of feminism which gathered momentum in the latter part of the 1960s, and that for its time it shows a remarkably perceptive and disaffected view of the relationship between the sexes. The fact that the main protagonist of the novel is a woman is already a step away from the mores of Argentine literature at that time, and that she should be that most marginalised of creatures, a prostitute, seems an even more radical step. It is true that there are many prostitutes to be found in the work of the post-Romantics from Baudelaire onwards, and also in Latin American Modernism, but these women are generally depicted as the rejects of society, often as objects rather than subjects. Valenzuela’s approach is clearly quite different. First, because this prostitute is the central protagonist of the novel

1 This line is attributed to James Thurber. It is to be found in the Penguin Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, compiled by Fred Metcalf (1986: 270). 2 Luisa Valenzuela Hay que sonreír (1966). Translation by Hortense Carpentier and J. Jorge Castello (1976) in Clara: Thirteen Short Stories and a Novel. 3 See Evelyn Picon Garfield’s (1985: 148) interview with Valenzuela.

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

110

11:15 AM

Page 110

LINDA CRAIG

and secondly because there is a sense in which she takes on a certain archetypal value, she is a representative, albeit an extreme one, of woman under patriarchy. Magnarelli (1984) posits a broader reading, one which would go beyond the idea of gender to a more universal view of the dynamics between the oppressor and the oppressed. However, I feel that this is too general, and in the course of this chapter, I shall attempt to show that the contradictions and questions raised in the novel are too specific to gender relations to be read as symbolising more universal notions. The novel recounts the tale of a woman called Clara as she passes from man to man: from her father, who throws her out of the house, to don Mario who, paradoxically, sleeps with her, tells her that he is going to protect her like a father, and then introduces her to the ways of prostitution. From don Mario, she goes on to Carlos, with whom she falls in love, though she then leaves him, to Toño who leaves his job and starts living off her earnings, to Víctor for whom she ceases to work as a prostitute and starts to work as a housewife, and finally to Alejandro whom she marries. While this may, at first sight, give the appearance of some kind of traditional or wished for progression, nothing could be further from the case. Indeed Valenzuela’s is an ironic, demythifying view of the world which is far from the idea of living happily ever after. One of Clara’s most striking features lies in the split perception of her persona. The second sentence of the novel, which reads: ‘Con el pie izquierdo se rascó la pierna derecha en un gesto que quería decir resignación’ (1966: 11) [‘Her left foot scratched her right leg in a gesture of resignation’] (1976: 91), already shows a tendency to name and separate different parts of her body; and that her gesture should denote resignation is very much in keeping with her reactions throughout the novel. The lack of control or autonomy which is the consequence both of Clara’s passive resignation and of this fragmentation of the body is actually the major theme of the novel. This feeling of disjunction is also manifest in the structure of the novel by its division into three sections, which are entitled consecutively: EL CUERPO, TRANSICIÓN and LA CABEZA [THE BODY, TRANSITION, THE HEAD], and each of these sections deals with the reader’s and/or Clara’s different perceptions of her situation. Following Valenzuela’s structure, I shall divide the rest of this chapter in the same way.

El cuerpo The first four chapters of this section take the form of a series of flashbacks, recounted either by Clara in the first person or by a third-person omniscient narrator, who generally sees the world through Clara’s eyes. At other moments they take the form of dialogue. The situation is that Clara, finding herself as always, waiting for a man to turn up, uses the time remembering the series of events which have led to her current position.

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 111

LUISA VALENZUELA

111

The first of these memories deals with her coming to the capital from her hometown in the interior, ‘Tres Lomas’ (three is a number which is to appear again and again in the text; indeed it is already present in its basic structure, given this division into three sections). Her father, in the absence of his wife, a shadowy figure who has apparently left them, is having an affair with the butcher’s wife. Presumably in order to dedicate himself more to this affair, he tells Clara that she is big now and that she can go to the city to find herself a good job. In keeping with Clara’s usual passive acceptance, she agrees: ‘No le quedó más remedio que sacarse el delantal, ponerse el tapado e irse mansamente de la casa’ (1966: 14) [‘There was nothing else for her to do but take off her apron, put on her coat, and meekly leave the house.’] (1976: 94). On arriving in the city alone and virtually penniless, Clara allows herself to be picked up by a sailor who has no difficulty in relieving her of her virginity. And from this moment she finds herself under the protection of don Mario, whose pensión she is living in, and who takes it upon himself to initiate Clara into the dos and don’ts of the world of prostitution. In her unpublished dissertation, ‘Stories of Power’, Joanne Saltz (1988:8 refers to (Other Weapons), and makes use of Roland Barthes’ notion of degree zero writing:4 To Barthes, degree zero writing refers to the production of writers who voluntarily and consciously attempt to compose a neutral written discourse in order to purify their form. It is important to note that in contrast to the volitional act of Barthes’ writers, Valenzuela’s discourse presents a protagonist whose speech approximates the zero degree involuntarily and as a result of torture.

That the idea of a protagonist speaking from this quasi-neutral position should appear in Valenzuela’s later fiction is not really surprising, for it is not difficult to sustain the idea that Clara speaks from a similar position. While her circumstances are clearly very different from those of Laura, the protagonist of Cambio de armas, her condition is not dissimilar. While Laura has suffered torture and lost her memory as a result, becoming a blank page, a being capable only of reaction rather than action, a space on to which her male co-protagonist perpetrates his desire, Clara is presented as being in a similar situation simply as a result of her position in life. Clara, as her name suggests, gives all the impression of being clear or transparent. Indeed she first appears in the novel a virgin, without imprint, unwritten on. Her only ambitions are very vague ones which involve seeing the sea and using her head, and her major characteristics are silence and passivity. She embodies no more than a space on to which different men attempt to imprint their wills. It is a common topos, but here it is given a certain ironic twist by the

4

This concept comes from Barthes’ (1984) book of the same name.

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

112

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 112

LINDA CRAIG

highlighting of the contradictions implicit in various discourses which are imposed on her. Indeed the contradictory and often brutal nature of these discourses is striking. Small wonder that Clara is confused by don Mario who sleeps with her and then angrily remarks: ‘No comprendo cómo una chica tan fina como vos pueda andar haciendo estas cosas . . .’ (1966: 22) [‘I don’t understand how a fine girl like yourself can go around doing these things . . .’] (1976: 99), and Clara manifests her confusion after telling don Mario her age: ‘¿Quién, pero quién entiende a los hombres que primero dicen una cosa y después otra, que le dicen a una que más vale ser casi mayor de edad y después pretenden que una tenga diecisiete años?’ (1966: 23) [Who can understand men? First they say one thing and then they say another; first they say it’s better to be almost of age, and then they pretend you’re seventeen] (1976: 101). This confusion arises again in a later section where Clara is trying to make some sense of the meaning of the concept of behaving oneself: Cuando yo era chica portarse bien quería decir ayudarla a mamá a baldear el piso, a lavar los platos, y también ir todos los domingos a misa. Después portarse bien era no dejar que los muchachos me besaran en las calles oscuras y retarlos cuando me manoseaban. ¿Qué demonios querrá decir portarse bien ahora? (1966: 96) [When I was a kid, behaving yourself meant helping Mother scrub the floor and wash the dishes. Going to mass every Sunday. Later behaving meant not letting boys kiss me in the dark. What the devil does it mean now?] (1976: 158)

It becomes clear that different men have different ways of denying Clara access to the power of discourse, or indeed to any possible power, and a few examples will suffice to show how they go about this. Toño, denying Clara any space whatsoever, including the possibility of spending her own money, remarks: ‘Si te dejo hacer lo que se te antoja vos te comprás mil chucherías sin pensar en ahorrar. Y bueno, yo pienso por vos’ (1966: 47) [‘If I let you do whatever you want with your money, you’ll spend it all on junk, Well, I think for you . . .’] (1976: 121–2). Víctor, another who allows Clara no space even to have an opinion, remarks rhetorically: ‘Vos también las odiás, seguro’ [‘You hate them too, I’m sure’], and later, quite simply: ‘No hablés’ (1966: 30) [‘Don’t talk’] (1976: 107). In another scene in which Clara asks for a beer, the same Víctor replies: ‘Pero no, Clarita. Tomate una primavera sin alcohol que a vos te gusta tanto’ (1966: 63) [‘No, no, Clarita. Have a strawberry soda, the kind you like so much’] (1976: 135), thus not only denying her her choice, but actually presuming to know better than her what she herself wants. Although probably his most insulting line is one that reads: ‘¿Acaso te obligan a decir idioteces cada vez que abrís la boca?’ (1966: 58) [‘Why do you have to utter idiocies every time you open your mouth?’] (1976: 130). Clearly discourse is a weapon used by these men in order to confuse and denigrate Clara. And there is yet another facet to this domination through language which Sharon Magnarelli perceptively points out in the second of her chapters

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 113

LUISA VALENZUELA

113

on Hay que sonreír.5 She notes that the male protagonists have a tendency to use clichés which take the form of rules, as a further means of indoctrination. Thus lines such as the very title, Hay que sonreír, which brings to mind the idea that girls are taught from a young age that they must smile and look their prettiest in order to be attractive to men, couched in this grammatically impersonal way, take on a semblance of truth. The same construct can be found in Toño’s advice: ‘Nunca hay que ofender el pudor de las señoras’ (1966: 46) [‘You can’t offend the modesty of ladies’] (1976: 121). It is always much easier to question or argue with a statement which contains some admission of its status as an opinion than with an apparently impersonal, objective fact. What these various male protagonists reveal is that each and every one of them seems to assume effortlessly an unquestioning identification with the patriarchal role. While they may display certain idiosyncratic characteristics, they are almost indistinguishable in their assumption that they are morally and intellectually superior to this woman. What is most striking about Clara is that she, too, allows herself to be almost completely taken over by this powerful patriarchal discourse, when it is so patently not in her interest. As Z. Nelly Martínez (1979–80: 54) puts it: ‘Pasiva, masoquista y profundamente identificada con el verbo oficial, Clara no posee un discurso propio: la ideología patriarcal que la habita y que jamás cuestiona, fija su subjetividad y determina su discurso’ [Passive, masochistic and profoundly identified with official language, Clara lacks a discourse of her own: the patriarchal ideology in which she lives and which she never questions, fixes her subjectivity and determines her discourse]. Whether in the guise of the third person narrator or as the first person, Clara’s reaction to the ill-treatment meted out to her, is generally one of puzzled acceptance. In a version of the aphorism, quoted at the top of this chapter, ‘a woman’s place is in the wrong’, Clara observes: ‘con él jamás se tenía la razón’ (1966: 13) [‘with Victor no-one was ever right’] (1976: 93), or later: ‘Víctor tenía argumentos tan aplastantes que más valía darle la razón hasta en el pensamiento’ (1966: 32) [‘Victor did have crushing arguments, and it was better to agree with him, even in thought’] (1976: 108). Yet there are glimpses of another Clara, one who manages to preserve some consciousness of the falseness and injustice meted out to her. So, although ‘ella ya había perdido el uso de su voz’ (1966: 32) [‘By now she had lost the use of her voice’] (1976: 108), this idea is balanced with the qualification: ‘aunque manejaba con destreza su imaginación.’ [although she was still good at using her imagination]. She also observes that: ‘nadie le impediría continuar un diálogo interno silencioso pero vehemente’ (1966: 31) [‘she could still dream’] (1976: 108). While Clara can therefore see chinks of light through this pervasive patriarchal vision, there is another source of imprinting which might well be the most insidious of all. This comes in the guise of popular culture. One of her favourite pastimes is to go to the cinema, and to sit through the same film three times running: ‘la 5 Magnarelli (1988), ‘The Discourse of the Body in the Body of Discourse: Hay que sonreír’.

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

114

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 114

LINDA CRAIG

primera vez miraba las imágenes, la segunda leía los cartelitos y la tercera trataba de hacer todo a la vez y darse cuenta de qué trataba la historia’ (1966: 22) [‘The first time, she simply looked at the images; the second time, she read the subtitles; and the third time, she tried to do both at once and figure out what the story was about’] (1976: 100) (the sequence echoes in every way the three sections of the novel). These films are presumably from Hollywood given that they had subtitles and that Hollywood films had a huge market in Latin America, as we saw in the chapters on Puig. From them come visions of romantic love. Clara’s dreams appear to be an integral part of her being; they form the part of her imagination that she believes no-one can touch. However her belief that this space is somehow uncontaminated by external forces is false, for while it may be immune to the clumsy attentions of the men she meets, it is not so to the more subtle reach of this culture which surrounds her. Thus, despite the lessons of experience, she still nurses a romantic notion of marriage: Su diálogo mental favorito era el del matrimonio, lo había perfeccionado y no sólo estaba segura de su indiscutible realismo, sino que al final no había vencedores ni vencidos [. . .]. Los días en que no tenía nada que hacer lo estiraba hasta el infinito (1966: 31–2) [Her favourite fantasy was the one about marriage. She had perfected it all the way, to its very ending – no winners, no losers [. . .]. On days she had nothing to do, she would stretch the daydream to the infinite] (1976: 108).

When Clara believes herself to be in love with Carlos, she conjures up a scene of total bathos in which: ‘. . . juntos cantaban un interminable dúo de amor como en esa película en colores que había visto días atrás’ (1966: 68) [‘. . . together they would sing an endless love song, like the one in that Technicolor movie she had seen a few days before’] (1976: 138). This vision of the two of them singing together arises from the fact that when Clara finds Carlos for the second time, he is no longer a waiter; he has become a tango singer. And the imagery of Hollywood becomes mixed with that of the tango to form what were actually the major cultural influences available, particularly to lower-class Argentines, at that time. The gap between fantasy and reality, like the romantic fiction that Emma Bovary read, which was so different from her somewhat sordid existence, is a constant factor in Clara’s life. Her dreams are her only means of claiming a space for herself, but they are always undermined. For example, the narrator recounts how at one point [she]: ‘fue a abrir las persianas, y la luz que entró de golpe la trajo una vez más a la realidad, es decir, como siempre sucede, a la desilusión’ (1966: 21) [‘[she] opened the Venetian blinds like a good housekeeper. The light that suddenly entered the room brought her back to reality and, as always happened to disenchantment’] (1976: 99). The dreams, often symbolised by neon signs, are shattered by the return of daylight. At the point at which Clara’s memories converge with actual time, once they have led her up to the present moment in which she finds herself still waiting,

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 115

LUISA VALENZUELA

115

her inability to act rather than to react comes to the fore again. She is described thus: ‘Estaba en medio de un espacio en blanco’ (1966: 55) [‘ She was floundering in the middle of a blank space’] (1976: 127). Again like a blank page she is waiting for a man to come and inscribe himself on her. Her wait is rewarded, of course. Víctor turns up at last, and it is actually this relationship with him which brings about something of a change in Clara’s life, leading to the second section of the novel.

Transición The most obvious change to be found in Clara in this section is that she is no longer working as a prostitute. Having spent the first section of the novel, as its title suggests, using no more than her body, she has now awakened to find, as Magnarelli (1984: 6) puts it, ‘that her body can lure the man of her dreams’. In the course of this transition, she is to be found gradually moving out of the public sphere, where the prostitute plies her trade, and into the private sphere, which is more traditionally the place for women. As in the first section, Clara’s behaviour and changes are depicted solely through her relationships with men, and the first signs of these changes are to be found in the role which she plays in her relationship with Víctor. For now, no longer earning money, she stays at home in Víctor’s flat. And although they are not married, Clara is living the life of a fairly conventional wife, that is to say, a housewife. While the idea of a life like this fulfils at least some of her fantasies, the reality falls far short of satisfaction. First there is the fact that Víctor, who works as a travelling salesman, comes home to use Clara as a space in which to vent his frustration and anger with his work and with the world in general. He talks and simply expects Clara to listen. Secondly, although she often works hard in the house, he allows her absolutely no recognition for this fact. Housework, typically in the industrial world, is a form of drudgery, which, unpaid and uncreative, receives absolutely no recognition. In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir (1988) analyses some aspects of the life of the housewife which help to clarify some of the issues raised in my argument. She concludes that it displays Manichaeist tendencies: ‘The essence of Manichaeism is not solely to recognize two principles, the one good, the other evil; it is also to hold that the good is attained through the abolition of evil and not by positive action.’ Thus, while the man is often out in the world achieving at least some kind of recognition for his day’s work, some alternative to the immanence of the home, the woman: . . . is not called upon to build a better world: her domain is fixed and she has only to keep up the never ending struggle against the evil principles that creep into it; in her war against dust, stains, mud and dirt she is fighting sin, wrestling with Satan. (1988: 470–1)

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

116

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 116

LINDA CRAIG

Moreover, there was a time, as de Beauvoir argues, when men were much more attached to the home, and when the housewife, as its ruler, commanded great respect, but those days are over, particularly in Western culture. Great emphasis is put nowadays on the idea of freedom, and on the possibility of escaping from rigid traditions; and within this framework, the role of the housewife has become even more invidious. To quote de Beauvoir again: ‘the situation of the housewife is more ungrateful than formerly, because she still has the same duties but they no longer confer the same rights, privileges and honours’ (1988: 475). Clara’s predicament is essentially that delineated by de Beauvoir. It does not take her too long to begin to realise the disadvantages of a lifestyle which had seemed to embody the idea of a progression. The price that she has had to pay for this semblance of respectability: ‘Ahora todo es respetable, estable, y deleznable’ (1966: 71) [‘Now everything is stable, respectable, smooth’] (1976: 141), is that of virtual slavery. As she perceives: ‘No vale la pena trabajar para que a una la tomen por una esclava’ (1966: 70) [It isn’t worth it to work until they think you’re a slave’] (1976: 140). She is risking losing even the minimal autonomy she had enjoyed from her previously mentioned ‘diálogo interno silencioso’ [silent internal dialogue]. This possible loss manifests itself in another way, which is in Clara’s relationship with time. There are frequent references to time in the text, and Clara is obviously aware of certain difficulties that she confronts when dealing with it. One example of this can be found quite simply in the time that she spends waiting for people, watching the clock. As with men, time has the upper hand; she is under its control. As Julia Kristeva observes: ‘The symbolic order – the order of verbal communication, the paternal order of genealogy – is a temporal one. For the speaking animal, it is the clock of objective time’.6 Clara, in her role as a prostitute, is already to some extent subverting the patriarchal order; she attempts to subvert it again by her strivings to gain some kind of control over time. Thus, while keeping what could perhaps be described as an alternative version of time in her head, which can be found in the incongruous line: ‘A la una y catorce eran ya las nueve y media’ (1966: 52) [‘At one-fourteen it was really ninethirty’] (1976: 125), she attaches great importance to the purchase of a watch. What the watch means to her becomes clear when Toño decides to pawn it: Pero el reloj era algo tan suyo como sus pies o su boca. Era su condecoración que había ganado en un gesto de valentía que nunca más podría repetir y una de sus mayores placeres era mirar girar las rueditas mientras se decía que ella había logrado escaparse de una máquina tan endiablada como ésa, sin demasiados rasguños (1966: 3) [The watch, though, was as much hers as her feet or her mouth. It was her medal, won in a moment of courage she might never repeat. One of her greatest pleasures was to watch the tiny wheels spin around while she told herself

6

Toril Moi (ed.) The Kristeva Reader (1986: 152).

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 117

LUISA VALENZUELA

117

that she had managed to escape without too many scars from machinations as fiendish as those she was watching] (1976: 109).

Clearly it has enormous symbolic importance for her since she experiences it as an integral part of her being, and it is one of the few things in life which confers power on her. Thus she has these moments in which she experiences herself as having control over time and therefore, echoing Kristeva’s idea, as overpowering the patriarchal order. The reference to Clara’s lack of freedom as a housewife is related to the problem of time too. There is a realisation on her part that the condition she perceives as slavery involves the loss of any possibility of controlling time. Remembering her life as a prostitute, she observes: Con Toño no había problemas, eso sí, él me dejaba entrar y salir cuando me daba la gana. Siempre que le diese la plata, claro, taca-taca billetes frescos contante y sonante. Una manera como cualquier otra de comprar el tiempo y poder usarlo a gusto (1966: 51) [There were no problems about that with Toño; he used to let me come and go as I pleased – as long as I handed over the cash, of course, one by one. It was a way of buying time and of being able to use it any way I liked] (1976: 125).

So as a prostitute she actually had more autonomy in a sense, since she was in a position to choose how she spent her time. As a housewife she has lost this element of freedom. Clara’s acute awareness of the limitations of her situation has parallels with the writing of the Mexican, Rosario Castellanos. In ‘Lección de cocina’,7 Castellanos presents a young woman, recently back from her honeymoon, who is now contemplating her new life as a housewife. The story cleverly plays with the similarity between a piece of meat that she chooses to cook for dinner, and the woman’s perception of her situation. The meat begins the story raw and formless, but clearly with a lot of potential, and ends it as a much reduced, burnt lump. The woman, too, has obviously begun life with great potential, but she finds that there is only a very limited number of roles that she can adopt as a housewife and that none of these bears any resemblance to what she actually feels herself to be. Her potential remains unfulfilled, crushed, as useless and unwanted as the charred piece of meat. Clara, however, although less aware than Castellano’s housewife, has not given up her identity completely, she is not bound to Víctor in any way and, having begun to use her head, she has a certain consciousness of her power. So, in search of what she hopes will be a better life, she packs her bags and leaves him. Clara’s perception of her choices again involves men, and at this point in the novel, there are two possible substitutes for Víctor. These are Carlos, the tango singer she had met and fallen in love with previously, and the wizard, Alejandro. The short time that she spends with Carlos is interesting partly because of her 7

This story is in Album de familia (1971).

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

118

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 118

LINDA CRAIG

rejection of him for not being sufficiently dominating and therefore not living up to the macho masculine stereotype of popular culture; indeed she decides to leave him ultimately because ‘Clara no tenía ganas de ser necesitada sino de necesitar . . .’ (1966: 107) [‘But Clara yearned to feel a need rather than to feel needed . . .’] (1976: 165). It is also interesting for the depiction of the other prostitute, Monona. For here, in what is to become a feature of much of Valenzuela’s work, there is very little sign of any friendship or solidarity between women. The two women meet in the dance hall where Carlos is employed as singer. And while Clara is waiting for Carlos to appear on the stage, Monona, uninvited, sits with her and strikes up a conversation. Clearly the possibility of friendship between these two is remote, given that Monona has little to recommend her. She seems to represent the archetypal prostitute who has given up any claim to an identity and has become totally subsumed within the patriarchal order, accepting unthinkingly its clichés and beliefs. So speaking from what she considers to be her position of wisdom and greater experience she buffets Clara with unsolicited advice on the whys and wherefores of life. This advice contains gems like: ‘Cuando se nace puta se lo es hasta la tumba’ (1966: 81) [‘Once a whore, always a whore’] (1976: 148), which reveals an acceptance of her condition as a second-class citizen as naturally given. There is no political perspective or questioning of society’s values, since the dominant ideology is shown not to be an ideology at all, simply nature. Thus a woman can be born a whore (possibly an ironic allusion to de Beauvoir’s famous dictum that ‘One is never born a woman’). In another line which points to the rivalry and competitiveness she sees as basic to survival, she remarks: ‘hay que ser aguerrida, hijita, si no querés que los demás te aplasten’ (1966: 82) [‘You have to be aggressive, girl, if you don’t want to be stepped on’] (1976: 149). Monona has entrusted her identity to her pimp to the extent that, at his suggestion, she has changed her name to María Magdalena: ‘La historia es vieja, una de las putas más importantes del mundo’ (1966: 81) [‘. . . after the most important whore in the world’] (1976: 149), thereby becoming no more than the personification of ‘whore’. While she does not actually use that name, for as she puts it: ‘Yo me llamo María Magdalena. Monona para los íntimos y para las mujeres’ (1966: 76) [My name’s Mary Magdalene– Monona to intimates and women’] (1976: 144), this shortened name is not hers either: ‘Lo de Monona también me lo inventó Cacho’ (1966: 82) [‘Cacho also invented the name Monona’] (1976: 149). The idea of naming, of course, confers power, and Cacho has denied this woman any access to power by taking from her not only her ‘official’ name but also her inner, more intimate one. Monona’s inability to see herself as an individual and her total acceptance of machista myths leads to her regurgitating unquestioningly his ideas and values, with no thought as to her own interests: El Cacho, para que te enterés, no es nada impotente, más bien todo lo contrario. Ya te vas a dar cuenta un día si lo llegás a conocer porque él es así con todas. Dice que el hombre está obligado a consolar a la hembra que si no se te vuelve

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 119

LUISA VALENZUELA

119

histérica y nadie la aguanta, y que él que es bueno para el consuelo tiene que aprovechar y hacerse aprovechar (1966: 79) [Cacho, just so you know isn’t impotent at all, quite the contrary. You’ll see one day if you get to know him, because he is like that with all women. He says that men are obliged to console women, because otherwise they become hysterical and nobody can bear them, and he is good at consoling, you have to make the most of it and let him make the most of you] [my translation]

Her use of the word histérica [hysterical] here is interesting, and merits a closer look. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines hysteria as ‘a functional disturbance of the nervous system [. . .], usually attended with emotional disturbances or perversion of the moral and intellectual faculties.’ It goes on to say: ‘Women being more liable than men to this disorder, it was originally thought to be due to a disturbance of the uterus.’8 The idea of a hysterical disease dates back to Hippocrates,9 but was revived by Freudian psychoanalysis. Freud himself published the case history of one of his patients entitled ‘Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria’, and although he considered that both men and women could be victims of this complaint, it is indicative of the general view of women as hysterics that the subject of the case study is a woman, Dora. Freud, like many others of his time, saw hysteria as a ‘malady through representation’,10 and its central role in his work becomes clear from the view expressed by Laplanche and Pontalis (1985: 195), that: ‘It was [. . .] in the process of bringing the psychical aetiology of hysteria to light that psycho-analysis made its principal discoveries: the unconscious, phantasy, defensive conflict and repression, identification, transference etc.’ Broadly speaking, Freud’s view of Dora is that she has developed hysterical symptoms as a result of the repression of her sexual desire for a male friend of her father’s who has been making advances to her. A great deal of work by post-Freudians has been devoted to Freud’s reading of this case, and it has proved to be of particular interest to feminists. Many, though not all, of these have pointed out that the case should not be read simply as a study of Dora’s symptoms and repressions, but rather that the figure of Freud should be brought into the equation. For while the text’s nature as a case study might lend the impression that it has been written from some neutral, nonideological stance; such a stance, in a situation like this, is of course, an impossibility. Actually, this idea was to some extent apparent to Freud, who admits his personal involvement in the interest she inspires in him at many points in the text.

8 The Shorter Oxford Dictionary (London: Guild, 1983). The dictionary definition also points out that the prefix ‘hystero-’ means ‘of the womb’, again indicating the juxtaposition of women and hysteria. 9 J. Laplanche and J-B. Pontalis The Language of Psycho-Analysis (1985: 194–5). 10 The Language of Psycho-Analysis (p. 195).

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

120

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 120

LINDA CRAIG

Juliette Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose’s (1982) Feminine Sexuality, points to Freud’s role in this case when they note: Freud himself started with the analysis of the hysterical patient [. . .] It was then his failure to analyse one such patient – ‘Dora’ (Freud, vii, 1905) – in terms of a normative concept of what a woman should be, or want, that led him to recognise the fragmented and aberrant nature of sexuality itself. (1982: 28)

Her reference to a ‘normative concept’ underlines the ideologically charged nature of Freud’s early perspective. A number of post-Freudian thinkers, including Jacques Lacan, have suggested that Dora was actually repressing lesbian tendencies that Freud, blinkered by his prejudices, failed to see.11 Be that as it may, the fact is that Freud, like it or not, represents the patriarchal order. As Toril Moi puts it: ‘He is a male in patriarchal society, and moreover not just any male but an educated bourgeois male, incarnating malgré lui patriarchal values’.12 Moi also points out Freud’s dual role in this case: Now if the hysterical woman is gagged and chained, Freud posits himself as her liberator. And if the emancipatory project of psycho-analysis fails in the case of Dora, it is because Freud the liberator happens also to be, objectively, on the side of oppression. [. . .] His own emancipatory project profoundly conflicts with his political and social role as an oppressor of women. (1985: 192–3)

Returning to Hay que sonreír, it is striking to note how Freud’s contradictory position as liberator and oppressor is echoed in the role of Cacho. As Monona’s pimp, he exploits her and treats her very badly; he is thus the personification of oppression, but at the same time he is her liberator, for he apparently saves her from hysteria. In this case the problem goes even further, for the person who posits the view of Cacho as liberator or consoler is Monona, the object of his contradictory attentions. Monona, apparently wilfully blind to her own oppression, is in some masochistic way participating in her own annihilation. Having accepted Cacho’s extreme patriarchal values, she has chosen a world in which there is no space for herself. Not surprisingly, given that this is the case, she is engaged in a role of self-destruction. Constantly drunk, she is obliterating herself in alcoholism. Clara, on the other hand, is actually at this juncture in the novel enjoying some semblance of freedom. Having reached the point referred to previously, where, as Magnarelli says: ‘she finds that her body can lure the man of her dreams,’ she clearly feels that she is in a position to make some kind of autonomous choice,

11 Jacques Lacan, ‘Intervention on Transference’ in Charles Bernheimer and Clare Kahane (eds) In Dora’s Case (1985). 12 Toril Moi (1985), ‘Representation of Patriarchy: Sexuality and Epistemology in Freud’s Dora’ in In Dora’s Case.

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 121

LUISA VALENZUELA

121

and having concluded that Carlos does not live up to her dreams, she now decides: Necesitaba alguien que le hiciera olvidar todo lo demás, lo que había vivido hasta entonces. No prepotente como el Cacho, sino tranquilo y muy sabio, un hombre en el que se pueda tener mucha confianza. Impotente, eso sí, como el mar, y un poco misterioso (1966: 97) [She needed someone to make her forget the life that she had lived. Not someone dominating like Cacho, but someone calm and wise, a man you can trust. Impotent, like the sea, and a little mysterious] [my translation]

So despite Clara’s feeling of freedom, she still casts herself in a passive role, this time looking for a man who will make her forget. The idea brings to mind a previous passage in which she looked at herself approvingly in the mirror and said to herself: ‘no estaba nada mal. Podía servirle de modelo a un pintor. O de inspiración a un cantor de tangos’ (1966: 71) [Not bad. She could be a model for a painter or inspiration for a tango singer] [my translation]. Clearly she is incapable of seeing herself outside of the context of passivity. But the striking thing about this man of her dreams is that although, presumably from her judgement of Carlos, he must not allow himself to be dominated, Clara is actually specifying that he should be impotent. It is possible that, having been used sexually during her time as a prostitute, she sees sex largely as a means of exploitation, but there is no overt reference to such an idea in the text. Certainly, as Martínez (1995) observes, sex is depicted here as an instrument of patriarchal power, and there is no mention of Clara’s ever enjoying it. Another significant point is that she juxtaposes impotency and the sea. Now, Clara’s wish to see the sea, already mentioned above, is actually something that is referred to on numerous occasions in the novel. This, however, is the only time that her image of the sea is elaborated on. The sea signifies impotency for Clara, the ending of desire. It would seem that what she is nursing is actually a death wish.13 Again Laplanche and Pontalis are helpful in this context, they describe the death instincts as striving ‘towards the reduction of tensions to zero-point. In other words, their goal is to bring the living being back to the inorganic state’ (1985: 97). This idea proved to be highly problematical for Freud and the post-Freudians, some of whom would wish to pinpoint a division between the death instinct and what they describe as the Nirvana Principle. However, in Clara’s case, there is absolutely no indication of any wish for transcendence, and rather, it seems that her already passive disposition is drawing her towards its logical conclusion, total passivity, that is, death. Moreover, the strong attraction which she feels for

13 Martínez (1995) argues, on the contrary, that the sea symbolises potential freedom for Clara, and that she cannot achieve this state or reach the sea until she has exorcised the figure of Alejandro (patriarchy) from her life. However the juxtaposition I have pointed out with impotency seems at the very least to problematise this reading.

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

122

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 122

LINDA CRAIG

the next man in her life would seem to confirm this. Clara is attracted to Alejandro not for any life-enhancing characteristics that he might display, but rather for his capacity for stillness and silence. Clara’s first impression of Alejandro reads thus: Adivinó que ese hombre allí arriba, tan fuera de su alcance, estaba más solo aún que ella, como una roca en medio del mar azul del atardecer. Pero en lugar de sentirse solo como ella la soledad le era indiferente y no le daba hambre ni sed ni siquiera melancolía (1966: 104) [She guessed that the man up there, so out of her reach, was even lonelier than she. But unlike her, he was indifferent to loneliness. It didn’t make him hungry or thirsty, or melancholy] (1976: 163).

Apparently inert and unreachable, he is the personification of Clara’s death wish. What is more, he is quite different from the previous men in her life, since one of the first things he says to her is: ‘Pero hablemos de vos, contame tu vida . . .’ (1966: 110) [‘Now let’s talk about you. Tell me who you are . . .’] (1976: 168). None of the other men have ever allowed Clara space in which to talk, and what she does in reply to this invitation, is, like Monona, to hand over the power of naming to this man. The passage reads: Hasta hace poco me llamaba Clara, pero como me dijeron que no me quedaba bien voy a tener que cambiar de nombre. ¿A usted cuál le gusta? –Clara. –Pero es el mismo . . . –No, no es el mismo. Antes era Clara de cualquiera, ahora sos mi Clara desde el momento en que dije tu nombre (1966: 110) [My name’s Clara, but they say it doesn’t suit me and I’m going to change it. What name do you like? ‘Clara.’ ‘But that’s the same . . .’ ‘No, it isn’t. Before you were anybody’s Clara, but from the moment I said your name, you’ve been my Clara’] (1976: 168).

No longer simply a body, Clara is now being invited to use her head and to speak. But speech betrays her. Although the difference is subtle, this renaming of Clara serves to place her more firmly within the symbolic, patriarchal order. Alejandro, by confirming her name, and by claiming possession of it/her, confirms her position within the realms of patriarchy. The same idea arises again in a slightly later passage, when Clara is asked her name. This time, for the first time in the novel, the reader actually learns her surname. She presents herself as Clara Hernández. By using her surname, that is her father’s name, Clara is now positioning herself within patriarchy. She is conscious of the change, too, since she considers that: ‘Al menos eso le confería una cierta dignidad’ (1966: 124) [‘At least that gave her a certain dignity’] (1976: 178). It is on Clara’s meeting with Alejandro that the number 3 begins to crop up again. To go back to his house they take the bus number 303; he lives on the third floor, and the first three days that she spends with him, almost in silence, are

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 123

LUISA VALENZUELA

123

probably the happiest time of her life. Thus the three sections of the novel, and the appearance of the number so insistently at this juncture would seem to point to the idea of completion. Three is, of course a very important number in the Christian world, bringing to mind the idea of the Holy Trinity. God, the threein-one, is a complete entity. So the concept of three as being all-encompassing and at the same time finite would seem to have symbolic importance in the novel. The highly negative overtones for Clara of the relationship with Alejandro are apparent from another number too, given the reference made to the thirteen stairs that she has to go down in order to enter the conventillo [‘tenement’] where he lives. Any element of choice which Clara might have enjoyed is taken from her at the very beginning of this relationship by Alejandro who says: Lo pensé mucho, y ahora estoy decidido. Te vas a venir conmigo para siempre. Ya es demasiado tarde para decir que no. Cuando una mujer pasa toda la noche en vela con un hombre sin decir una sola palabra, después no tiene derecho a dejarlo plantado (1966: 117) [I’ve thought about it a lot. You’re going to stay with me forever. When a woman spends all night with a man, hardly sleeping and not talking, then she has no right to walk out on him] (1976: 173).

The decision is his and her opinion is of no interest. What is more, when she, fascinated by this mysterious, silent and beautiful being, packs her bags to leave Victor, she leaves behind her the pawn ticket for her watch. She knows that with Alejandro she will never have the money with which to reclaim the watch, but she is also, albeit unconsciously, renouncing the glimmer of a possibility that she had had before of taking control of time and therefore of her life. When Clara returns again to the minimal space that she enjoyed as her own when she was working as a prostitute, the space in which she carefully guarded her silent internal dialogue, it becomes clear that this possibility is fast disappearing with Alejandro. He usurps all power and every space. His domination of silence far outweighs Clara’s. Indeed, as has been mentioned before, possibly in the wake of her previous experiences, Clara finds this to be one of his more attractive characteristics: ‘Alejandro era hosco, y parco de palabra, cosa que no dejaba de tener su atractivo y hasta se podría decir que formaba el noventa por ciento de su encanto . . .’ (1966: 128) [‘Alejandro was sullen and sparing with words, a characteristic that accounted for a large part of his charm . . .’] (1976: 180). But with time this attraction begins to pale: ‘Alejandro se había vuelto más taciturno que nunca y le hablaba lo menos posible’ (1966: 131) [‘Alejandro had become more taciturn than ever and talked to her as little as possible’] (1976: 182). Stuck in his attic room with no money, Clara is totally isolated and undermined. Alejandro refuses to let her accompany him to his work, although she would love to go. Leaving her at home completely alone, he forbids her from having any communication with the neighbours. Her only company is his huge black cat, Asmodeo: ‘El compañero indispensable del perfecto mago’ (1966: 115)

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

124

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 124

LINDA CRAIG

[‘The indispensable companion of the perfect magician’] (1976: 171), but with him as with everything else in Alejandro’s room, Clara feels singularly ill at ease, and a certain rivalry builds up between the woman and the cat, competing as they do for physical space and for Alejandro’s attention. The depiction of Alejandro is extremely negative. Apart from his beauty, he has almost nothing to recommend him. The product of a middle-class background, a student of architecture who has been thrown out of the university for hitting a lecturer, and subsequently deserted by his girlfriend, he is overwhelmingly embittered. Having failed in his chosen career, he has taken the path of total rebellion, leaving behind him all middle-class values and moving to this tatty room in a working-class area of the city, earning a meagre living working in a funfair as a magician. Feeling no solidarity whatsoever with the poorer people around him, or, in fact with anybody, Alejandro has enclosed himself in a world of total narcissism, from which he reveals nothing but contempt for his fellow human beings. He spends his time reading books on magic. Mention is made of Folcanelli and Gurdieff (1966: 154), and he is clearly seeking some kind of esoteric insight which would transcend good and evil. Thinking over his new-found situation he is described in these terms: Las cosas le habían salido mal, poco a poco, y si el fracaso era su destino estaba dispuesto a fracasar hasta el final, a fracasar como corresponde sin andar con medias tintas. Pensó en el marqués de Sade, en Giles de Rais y en la posibilidad de torturar físicamente a los demás para encontrarse a sí mismo (1966: 125) [One by one things had gone wrong for him. If failure was his fate, he was determined to fail mightily, not halfway. He thought of the Marquis de Sade, of Giles de Rais, and of the possibility of torturing people physically in order to find himself] (1976: 179).

Clara becomes merely a part of his experiment, and his perception of their relationship, so far from hers, is cold and calculating: ‘Se sentía tocando fondo en ese conventillo de la Boca, conviviendo con una prostituta’ (1966: 125) [‘He felt he had touched rock bottom in that tenement, living with a prostitute’] (1976: 179). When he decides to propose marriage to her, his motives are clear: ‘Después de todo necesitaba a alguien para torturar, sutilmente, y Clara era materia dispuesta’ (1966: 147) [‘After all, he needed someone to torture, subtly, and Clara was ready material’] (1976: 195). Clara’s reasons for agreeing to marry Alejandro are obviously quite different. When the idea is first put to her, she is unsure: –Pero yo no sé si quiero casarme . . . –objetó. –Claro que querés, ¿Qué otra cosa podés pretender, vos? –Pretender, no pretendo nada. Antes sí, quería casarme, pero ahora . . . ya no sé. (1966: 148) [‘But I don’t know if I want to get married,’ she objected. ‘Of course you do. What else would you want?’

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 125

LUISA VALENZUELA

125

‘Want? I don’t want anything. It’s true that in the past I did want to get married, but now I don’t know’]. (1976: 195)

Somewhat disillusioned by the gradual realisation that life has not lived up to the romantic dreams of her fantasies, Clara doubts that marriage will be all that it has been made out to be. She only makes up her mind to agree to Alejandro’s proposal when she finds herself being pestered by don Anselmo, a policeman who lives in the conventillo. Clara’s decision to marry, therefore, is made mainly in order to obey convention, in the sense that she is marrying one man in order to be protected from the others. The transition is over. Clara, by signing the fateful marriage certificate has now fully entered the patriarchal order. From this point on her life will be different, since she has been told that: ‘la esposa debe serle fiel al marido, y seguirlo a donde vaya, y debe obedecerle’ (1966: 151) [‘the wife must obey her husband, be faithful to him, and follow him wherever he goes’] (1976: 198).

La Cabeza It does not take long for Clara to become aware of the loss of identity implicit in her new marital role. She soon sees herself as alienated from the rest of the world: ‘Ahora [. . .] ajena a todos, la esposa del mago, una cualquiera. Casi una extranjera’ (1966: 156) [‘Now I’m a stranger to everyone. The magician’s wife. A nobody’] (1976: 201). This idea that she is no longer a person but merely a wife, an appendage, is not a fantasy of Clara’s. She is simply becoming aware of her new status and indeed in the eyes of the law, she is no longer a person. Following a close study of the US Constitution, Susan Moller Okin (1980: 249) concludes: ‘The state and federal constitutions, we must recognize, were written with the understanding that in many important respects, women were not, legally, persons, but subordinate members of the patriarchal household.’ She goes on to discuss the concept of coverture and quotes Blackstone’s Commentaries of the Laws of England thus: By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs everything . . . [emphasis his].

If this is the case in England and in the United States of America, it is unlikely to be very different in other parts of the Western world including Argentina. Clara, whose body is no longer common currency, has apparently evolved from being purely body into a being with a head. At least her head has entered the world of discourse. In signing her marriage certificate, she has become a being worthy of recognition, she has signed herself into existence. But, of course, this, her official entry into the patriarchal order is not made without difficulty.

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

126

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 126

LINDA CRAIG

She is a woman and can never be accepted as a full member of the world of patriarchy. In one flourish of the pen therefore, she has in fact managed to sign herself both into and out of existence. From this new perspective, Clara begins to see her previous life with different eyes. There even comes a point at which she remembers: ‘[el] tiempo en que tenía a todos los hombres del mundo para ella sola’ (1966: 158) [‘the time when she had all the men in the world to herself’] (1976: 201). This rather rosy view of what had actually been rather a difficult time nevertheless points to the tremendous contradictions also implicit in the role of the prostitute. As de Beauvoir (1988: 569) puts it: The great difference between them (the wife and the prostitute) is that the legal wife, oppressed as a married woman, is respected as a human being; the respect is beginning definitely to check the oppression. So long as the prostitute is denied the rights of a person, she sums up all the forms of feminine slavery at once.

However, there is, of course, a different sense in which the prostitute is her own person, a woman who, instead of being trapped within the private sphere, actually lives her life in areas of the public sphere which are denied to her more ‘respectable’ sisters. It is clear that Clara, having enjoyed a certain measure of independence, experiences the state of marriage as humiliating and suffocating: ‘Ella, que había vivido tan bien antes, tener que arrastrarse así por el piso porque un día de enero juró serle fiel a un marido’ (1966: 160) [‘She had dragged herself down because one day in August she had sworn to be true to a husband’] (1976: 203). It is at this point in the novel that Alejandro suggests to her that she work in the funfair as an Aztec flower. This work entails sitting under a specially designed table with only her head visible above its surface and her body concealed below it. By means of mirrors, placed in strategic ways under the table, the apparatus gives the public the impression that they are seeing a disembodied head. Clara is delighted that she is at last able to fufil her ambition to use her head: ‘. . . por fin podré trabajar con mi cabeza, sola, sin este cuerpo que se me metió por medio para hacerme problemas’ (1966: 169) [. . . at last I can work with my head alone and not with this body that always gets me into trouble’] (1976: 210). The possibility of progression which has already been noted seems to be implied by the movement within the novel from body to head. This echoes the Greek idea which posits the body as matter, and therefore base, and opposes it with the head which represents the spiritual or rational, and therefore superior, aspect of humankind. This progression within the novel, much like the apparent progression from prostitution to marriage, is undermined by means of a strongly ironic twist. Not only is marriage a farce, a greater trap than prostitution, but Clara’s opportunity to use her head at last, is presented to her only under the condition that her head

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 127

LUISA VALENZUELA

127

becomes a material commodity. In order to fulfil any function, her head must pass through a process of reification which renders it as much a virtually dehumanised object as her body has been. Clara has now totally accepted her lack of autonomy. She is no longer making any effort to question the contradictory discourses which surround her, no longer putting up any fight for a space in which she can even imagine any possibility of unity.14 She has become a fragmented entity, now, like Monona, totally subsumed within patriarchal discourse.15 This acceptance of her surrender and of her lack of unity is apparent in the passage where Alejandro tells her that she must not become pregnant, when she says to herself: ‘Tanto que había querido usar la cabeza, ahora no podía pretender además usar el vientre, era natural’ (1966: 187) [‘She had wanted to use her head so much, but she hadn’t realized it meant forgetting the rest of her body’] (1976: 225). The distortion forced upon her by her new role is agonising: ‘. . . con un cuerpo miserable que ya no quería mostrar todo encorvado dentro de un cajón, con las piernas separadas por un ángulo de espejos’ (1966: 189) [. . . with a miserable body she no longer wished to show all hunched up inside a box, with her legs parted by mirrors set at an angle’] (1976: 227). Clara’s perception of her predicament is one of imprisonment: ‘. . . mi destino va a ser siempre encerrada en un hotel, y dentro del hotel la carpa, y dentro de la carpa la caja, y yo metida ahí adentro de todo eso, acorralada por cajas y carpas y hoteles, porque firmé’ (1966: 193) [‘. . . my destiny will be to live forever inside the hotel, and inside the tent, and inside the box, and inside all these things. Me, shut in by boxes and tents and hotels. Because I signed’] (1976: 230). Now, totally dominated by her husband’s ironic, pitiless orders: ‘Sonreí, sonreí, infeliz’ (1966: 187) [‘Smile, smile, you ingrate’] (1976: 225); and ‘Hay que sonreír, pedazo de imbécil’ (1966: 190) [‘Smile, stupid, keep smiling’] (1976: 228), she has become no more than an empty shell. Magnarelli (1988: 26) observes that at this juncture, Clara becomes no more than a reflection of Alejandro: Like the mirrors and the box in which she is hidden, she becomes a mere reflection and repetition of what is exterior. It cannot be fortuitous that towards the end of the book Clara’s mental states come to reflect Alejandro’s. When she feels a surge of hatred for him on the train, it may well be because at the same moment he is hating her.

14 As Gwendolyn Díaz (2002: 10) puts it: ‘En Hay que sonreír, la mujer victimizada sonríe en la cara de su propia explotación, no sabe ni puede escapar’ (In Hay que sonreír, the victimised woman smiles in the face of her own exploitation, she doesn’t know how to and she can’t escape). 15 Magnarelli (1984: 11) points out that: ‘Clara never becomes a tragic figure, nor does she elicit great pathos’. Ultimately it becomes the role of the reader to recognise Clara’s problem, not as some inevitable tragedy but as being the result of her trying to live within the realms of stark social expectations.

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

128

11:15 AM

Page 128

LINDA CRAIG

She goes on to say: In this sense she does not differ a great deal from Echo, the mythological character who lost her ability to articulate her own thoughts: finally becoming pure reflection, echo, but at that a reflection of a reflection, she was able only to repeat the words of Narcissus.

This image would seem to be confirmed by the narcissistic streak in Alejandro mentioned above. These quotations from Magnarelli reflect what is actually the major theme of her chapter, since they highlight an image of Clara as a mirror. As the title of her chapter, ‘The Discourse of the Body in the Body of the Discourse’ suggests, Magnarelli (1988: 27) has concentrated on the twin ideas of the body and language as shown in the novel, and she concludes with the idea that: Valenzuela has unmasked the metonymy implicit when we understand the discourse of the body as biologically determined. She has shown us that this discourse does not ‘originate’ in the body itself, that is in the biological, but rather in society, in the discourse imposed from outside.

What her chapter reveals, therefore, is the way in which language itself traps Clara; or indeed how patriarchal discourse ‘inverts and betrays the discourse of the body’ (1988: 28). In this final part of the novel, Clara’s dream of seeing the sea comes up again. Having arrived at a seaside town on a rainy winter’s night, she sets out in a state of total exhaustion, hoping at last to fulfil her only remaining dream, that of seeing the sea. The elements defeat her, and she finds herself forced to return to the hotel. The juxtaposition of the sea and death, however, returns. For it is at this point that Clara makes the decision to kill Alejandro. In keeping with Magnarelli’s idea of the reflection, Clara’s decision, which could, of course, initially have been Alejandro’s, leads not to his death, but to hers. She creeps into bed beside Alejandro’s motionless body, hides the razor under the pillow waiting for him to be sleeping deeply, and as Magnarelli (1988: 18) puts it, ‘her body betrays her’. Clara falls asleep. On finding the razor under the pillow in the morning, Alejandro takes what in a sense is the next logical step; he renders the metaphorical separation of head from body a reality.16

16 Martínez senses a certain mute rebellion in Clara which leads to her salvation, since she concludes that Alejandro cannot bring himself to kill her. While there may be some slight ambiguity, my understanding of the ending is that Alejandro kills her, although this is suggested rather than bluntly stated. The translators of the English version, Hortense Carpentier and J. Jorge Castello would seem to agree with my reading since the English version is even less ambiguous than the Spanish. Donald Shaw (1998: 96) states that the magician murders her, and like me disagrees with Martínez’s interpretation, since he believes that what Martínez describes as subversive potential in Clara is ‘no more than unattainable dreams’.

Mono219-CH-06.qxd

9/22/05

11:15 AM

Page 129

LUISA VALENZUELA

129

Clara’s case is, of course, extreme. To show a woman who is victimised to that extent by the different manifestations of the patriarchal order is to paint a particularly bleak picture. What is more, apart from Alejandro’s failure to succeed within the constraints of the bourgeois ideology of his family, and of society, the position of the male protagonists is not questioned or problematised in any way. Neither is the possibility of language as expressing anything other than patriarchal discourse. This is a cogent text, which vividly projects the interrelated stages of women’s existence under the sign of patriarchy. It is particularly remarkable given its early date.

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 130

7

El gato eficaz (1972) Censorship Valenzuela says of this, her second novel: Para mí la obra más divertida y más extraña de mi zoológico, es El gato eficaz. Porque fue el momento de la ruptura con lo que podía llamarse cierta ‘literatura tradicional’. Es cuando encuentro mi propia voz que estaba buscando.1 [For me the funniest and strangest book in my zoology is El gato eficaz, because it was the moment of the break with what might be called traditional literature. It’s when I find my own voice, what I was looking for].

In a sense it might be seen as Valenzuela’s version of Rimbaud’s Le Bateau Ivre, because in this, by far her most revolutionary work, she metaphorically cuts herself off from her moorings and sets off on an uncharted journey. Certainly this novel is very different from Hay que sonreír, and the most striking difference between the two novels lies in their totally different approaches to language. Referring to this change Valenzuela (1984: 13) has said: La primera novela la veía como quien ve una película: yo creo que la gente que empieza a escribir hace eso. Y después ya empecé a oír palabras, como Juana de Arco . . . Yo escribo con el idioma. Es decir el lenguaje es lo que me lleva a cambiar. Es el lenguaje el que me lleva al argumento: no el argumento el que se impone sobre el lenguaje. Creo que mi principal protagonista es el lenguaje siempre. I saw my first novel like a film: I believe that people who are starting to write do that. And later I began to hear words, like Joan of Arc . . . I write with language I mean language is what makes me change. It is language that leads me to the storyline: not the storyline that imposes itself on the language. I think that language is always my principal protagonist.

It would seem that the principal motivation behind this change of perspective is, above all, the search for a language beyond censorship in all of its forms.

1

Albalú Angel, De vuelta del silencio (1984: 12).

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 131

LUISA VALENZUELA

131

The idea of censorship is one which clearly looms large in Valenzuela’s thought. Indeed Sharon Magnarelli’s (1988) Reflections/ Refractions: Reading Luisa Valenzuela, includes an interview with the writer, which, as its title ‘Censorship and the Female Writer – An Interview/Dialogue with Luisa Valenzuela’, suggests, deals almost exclusively with this theme. Much of her later work, such as, Cambio de armas (Other Weapons) and Cola de lagartija (Lizard’s Tail), which were written around the time of and subsequent to the terrible political violence of the latter part of the 1970s in Argentina, is, in fact, much more referential and carries a strong political charge, but she never suffered overt censorship imposed on her by the authorities. What she is actually more preoccupied with is censorship in a broader sense, as she says: ‘when I think of censorship, I always think of its multiplicity of faces; it is like a hydra with its many heads’ (1988: 204). And clearly one of its aspects which bothers her greatly is the idea of self-censorship. As she puts it to Albalú Angel: Yo creo que las cosas hay que decirlas. Que lo que se tiene que evitar son las barreras de la autocensura, o peor que la autocensura, las barreras de esa censura interna que te impide decir ciertas verdades, y que te impide decir, así, lo que en el fondo uno está queriendo decir, sin saberlo. (1984: 6) [I believe that you have to say things. That what you have to avoid are the barriers of self-censorship, or worse than self-censorship, the barriers of that internal censorship which prevents you from saying what deep down you want to say, without knowing it].

Again in the interview with Magnarelli, Valenzuela posits the idea that women are more likely to suffer from self-censorship than men. While there is clearly an element of truth in this, it is probably even more the case for Latin American women than for their European or North American sisters. As she puts it: You cannot see things because you do not allow yourself to see them; you are blindfolded. Like horses, we have been put into blinkers so that we cannot see much of reality and deal with language. When women could not say what were called, at least in Spanish, bad words – they could not deal with words that were a little too strong – it was a terrible form of censorship. (1988: 206)

El gato eficaz2 was written in the United States, and it may be that the geographical distance from her homeland was one of the factors that played a part in Valenzuela’s new-found ability to produce a work which goes well beyond any conventional limitations. This is a novel which pushes towards, and sometimes beyond, the bounds of coherence. The possibility of any communication between text and reader is constantly on a knife edge in this heterogeneous, unstable work. A look at how the

2

Luisa Valenzuela El gato eficaz (1972). The translations of quotations are mine.

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

9/22/05

132

9:02 AM

Page 132

LINDA CRAIG

novel takes shape, at the many forms its narrator takes, and at some of the possible implications of this instability, might serve as the best means of beginning a study of El gato eficaz.

Narrator In this section, I intend to employ the work of Julia Kristeva, the Bulgarian critic and psychoanalyst, to elucidate the role of the narrator in Valenzuela’s fiction. In her work Desire in Language Kristeva (1981: 161) discusses at some length some of the difficulties that she deems to arise around different possible perceptions of the pronoun ‘I’. Certainly her perspective has a political edge, as she talks of: ‘little protectionist ‘I’s’ – the convenient narcissisms of backward bourgeois ‘subjects’, very much protected, indeed; but such a protection, generally speaking and allowing for a few exceptions, shields them from innovation, analysis and history’ (p. 161). She clearly sees the use of this pronoun as limiting in the extreme, as a means of living with the old and avoiding confrontation with the new. In a later section of the same chapter, still contending with similar issues, she goes on to talk of the would-be autonomous ‘I’, and at this point she adds a further dimension to the discussion by describing it as the ‘phallic presence’. She talks of the need to ‘control (the) resurgence of phallic presence’, which she likens to fascism, ‘to abolish it at first, to pierce through the paternal wall of the superego and afterwards to re-emerge still uneasy, split apart, asymmetrical, overwhelmed with the desire to know’ (1981: 164–5); she goes on to say that: If a solution exists to what we call today the feminine problematic, in my opinion, it [. . .] passes over this ground. I believe two conditions are necessary if this course is to be followed. The first is historical; it was satisfied much more rapidly in socialist countries and is already reaching the Christian, bourgeois West. It involves throwing women into all of society’s contradictions with no hypocrisy or fake protection. The second condition is sexual [. . .] it involves coming to grips with one’s language and body as others, as heterogeneous elements. (1981: 165)

It could be argued that El gato eficaz is a novel which, in the course of its struggle with the limitations of censorship, contends with and fulfils both of these conditions. A look at the outline of the novel and subsequently at the role played by the pronoun ‘I’ within it, should serve to pinpoint the way in which it deals with these issues. This is a strange, fragmented, often surrealist novel which defies any attempt at synopsis, given that it has virtually no plot and few, if any, stabilising elements. Indeed, possibly the only coherence to be found in the text exists at a level of play. For, as the narrator says: ‘todo lo vivible puede ser jugable’ (1972: 67) [everything that can be lived can be played]. But this is not innocent play, it is a form of play which shuns neither eroticism, violence nor death.

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 133

LUISA VALENZUELA

133

The initial setting is in Greenwich Village, New York, at dawn. In true Lacanian fashion, the novel would seem to come into being as the result of a lack. For, as the second paragraph begins: ‘El le dijo mañana nos veremos y ella de inocente le creyó’ (1972: 7). [He said I’ll see you tomorrow and she being naïve believed him]. But he has gone, for as she says later: ‘El le dijo nos veremos mañana y hasta él lo creía. ¿Por qué entonces entró en el improbable baño de los túneles y dejó que otro hombre le sorbiera la vida?’ (1972: 7) [He said I’ll see you tomorrow and even he believed it. Why then did he go into the improbable bathroom in the tunnels and let another man suck up his life?]. The allusion to a rather sordid underworld and the ambiguous reference either to homosexuality or to death at this early stage in the novel, are indicative of the direction which the novel is to take. Certainly, whether he has chosen homosexuality or has died, he is lost to her. In this dangerous, half-lit world, the main protagonists are the black ‘gatos de la muerte’ [cats of death], the white ‘perros de la vida’ [dogs of life], and the constantly mutating first person narrator. This narrator at one point describes herself as ‘cómplice de un gato de la muerte’ (1972: 9) [accomplice of a cat of death], and there would seem to be no doubt that, despite her multiplicity, she generally identifies more with the cats than with the dogs. The novel is divided into eighteen sections, each with a heading. Some of these play with images of cats and dogs, such as: ‘Primera visión felina’ [‘First feline vision’] and ‘Esta perra vida’ [This dog’s life’], others with particularly strange choices of words, such as: ‘Abrid paso, señores, que ya llegan las quejas’ [‘Allow us to pass, ladies and gentlemen, the complaints are arriving’] or ‘Paréntesis para 3 variaciones lúdicas’ [‘Parenthesis for 3 playful versions’]. Yet, almost in spite of their strange forms, these headings are relevant to the sections that follow them, and they help to open up the reader to what would otherwise be a well-nigh inaccessible text. For within these sections, the narrator presents a world which strains at the very edges of human experience. This is a world of voyeurs, of lesbians, of wolf-men having sex with passive women and of many other sexual fantasies; of grotesque and dismembered bodies, and of murder. The narrator reveals a near obsession with bodily secretions and with the sexual act. It is a no-holds-barred view of the human condition. If Valenzuela was trying, as quoted above, to push back the boundaries of selfcensorship, there can be no doubt that this novel is an important step in that direction. While the monsters and demonic creatures have a certain baroque flair, the novel has a tautness and control that defy any hint of gratuitousness. It would seem that the writer has been engaged in the very task of throwing back the veils of fake protection and hypocrisy to which Kristeva referred in the passage quoted above, as the historical condition by means of which the feminine problematic can be addressed. The other most striking feature of this novel is the mutating narrator, who can be found at times under the guise of the third person, but who generally uses the pronoun ‘I’, and who often addresses the reader directly, writing in an almost confessional form. By means of her constant mutation, she highlights the idea

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

134

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 134

LINDA CRAIG

that she has gone beyond the concept of the strong, autonomous ‘I’ so reviled by Kristeva, towards a view which, like Kristeva’s, posits the heterogeneity of one’s language and body.3 This narrator is, for the most part, female, although there is a moment in which she becomes male, when she says: ‘me voy a cambiar de sexo. Soy un joven atleta y apolíneo, bastante pornográfico [. . .] me tiro a la piscina desde el trampolín más alto, las niñas me contemplan [. . .] Ay dios cómo me aburro’ (1972: 9) [I’m going to change sex. I am a young, apollinian athlete, quite pornographic [. . .] I dive into the pool from the highest board, the girls watch me [. . .] Oh god, how boring]. The construct brings to mind Rimbaud’s famous phrase: ‘Je est un autre’, which posits the impossibility of the existence of a totally unified subject, but here this idea is taken even further so that ‘I’ becomes not one other, but a multiplicity of others. In the course of the text, this slippery, evanescent ‘I’ is to be found assuming the forms of a cat, a tarantula, and a bat. Leaving the realms of the animal kingdom, she also becomes an eye, music, a tree with sap and even a rough, cold hotel wall. Any possibility of a fixed identity is constantly undermined. Indeed she talks of ‘nosotros los que somos amorfos’ (1972: 94) [we the amorphous]. And this mutating process applies equally to others, so that at one point the narrator says: En Chicuito vi a una vieja convertirse en piedra, a una piedra en vieja, a una vieja en piedra, y así como en cadena hasta que todas las ruinas fueron seres humanos y los seres humanos, ruinas. (1972: 28) [In Chicuito I saw an old woman turn herself into stone, and a stone into an old woman, and so on in sequence until all of the ruins were human beings and the human beings, ruins].

While most of the novel is recounted from the point of view of this first person, there are, as has been mentioned, moments in which a voice adopting the thirdperson pronoun intrudes. Evelyn Picon Garfield (1985: 153) asked Valenzuela about this, describing the voice as a ‘perspective from beyond’, and she was told: Every now and then I feel somewhat vain narrating in the first person, saying ‘I think this is the truth.’ The truth is neither here nor there, it is here and there. Possibly that perspective of a narrator behind another narrator is my way of setting things straight, but above all of putting things in their place which is no place at all. Nothing is certain, nothing is a lie; everything is and is not, is outside and inside, and is positive and negative. [her emphasis]

3 In ‘Women, Cats, and Discourse in El gato eficaz’, Magnarelli (1988) suggests that the fluid use of the first-person pronoun in the novel leads to Derrida’s idea of pure free-play. My idea is that the concept of free-play is relevant to the text, but that the use of ‘I’ can be read in a more specific way, and this is what I have endeavoured to show.

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 135

LUISA VALENZUELA

135

Clearly, from what she says here, Valenzuela is involved in the task of creating a text that defies closure. It is a world in which any strong dividing line between people, animals and objects becomes blurred, as does the opposition between life and death, since the ‘[gatos de] la muerte mueren de allá para acá, del otro mundo a éste’ (1972: 12) (‘cats of death’ ‘die from there to here’, ‘from that world to this one’). The opposition is also blurred between male and female, as can be seen in a subsection called ‘Juguemos al fornicón’ [Let’s play at fornicating’], where the narrator suggests: ‘Se juega mejor por parejas y resulta más fácil si los componentes de cada pareja pertenecen a sexos lo suficientemente diferenciados’ (1972: 68) [It is best to play in pairs and it is easier if the components of each pair belong to sexes sufficiently differentiated]. Rational values of opposition are, in this way, constantly brought into question. The idea of play can be found again in moments when the narrator plays with the different possibilities implicit in her multiple personae. Thus she can become both watcher and watched: ‘tengo [. . .] sed de estar muy sola y observar mi propia imagen por el ojo de una cerradura periscópica’ (1972: 10) [I [. . .] am thirsty to be alone and to look at my own image through the eye of a periscopic lock], and again: ‘. . . desde aquí me observo jugar a ser mirada con mi propia mirada que me guarda cariño’ (1972: 106) [. . . from here I watch myself playing at being watched with my own caring look]. The game becomes one of chess bringing to mind the dichotomy within the novel between the black cats and the white dogs, in a passage which reads: Muevo una pieza, es jaque mate y el muerto soy yo qué bueno: he sido también rey y omnipotente. ¿Perder en el instante en que todo se gana? Poco importa: el gane es anterior, cuentan las milésimas de segundos que preceden la muerte cuando se ha sido rey, peón, torre, alfil, íntegra maraña. (1972: 67) [I move a piece and it’s checkmate and I’m the dead one great: I have also been king and omnipotent. To lose in the instant in which everything is to be won? It doesn’t matter: the winning was before, the milliseconds go by before my death when I have been king, pawn, castle, bishop, the whole mess].

But while all of these possibilities exist, the narrator in no way presents herself as being autonomous; she has no position of power from which to move, everything is in play and all identities are equally valid, or indeed, equally false. Her body enters the same economy, something that she bears witness to when she says: Ay, cómo quisiera ir a casa a sacarme la vieja dentadura, pero mis admiradores me exigen tantos besos que sin dientes se me gastan las encías. Ay, sacarme la peluca, estos pechos postizos si sólo mis amantes me dejaran. Pertenecer, para serles bien franca, nada ya me pertenece. (1972: 83) [Ah, how I would love to go home and take out my old teeth, but my admirers demand so many kisses that without teeth my gums will wear out, Ah, to take

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

136

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 136

LINDA CRAIG

off my wig, these false breasts, if only my lovers would let me. Belong, to be frank with you, nothing belongs to me any more].

And language is brought into play too. No more stable than anything else, there are passages in different type settings, lines written in bold print in capital letters and numerous other variations. As the narrator says: ‘Fuego, juego, así soy yo, me ocupo de una letra hasta el mismo dibujo’ (1972: 67) [Fire, play , that’s what I’m like, I take care of a letter even of how it’s drawn], and later, in a line which undermines any idea of referentiality: ‘El papel es trampa, yo soy trampa toda hecha de papel y mera letra impresa’ (1972: 110) [Paper is a trick, I am a trick all made of paper and printed words] . Returning again to the passage in which Kristeva posits these conditions for a solution to the feminine problematic, it is clear that El gato eficaz has engaged with the idea of coming to grips with one’s language and body as others, as heterogeneous elements. It has opened up all of these ideas, and while there is no question of its offering solutions, or any other closure, it has situated the feminine problematic fairly and squarely within the realms of modernity. If modern thought has reached a point at which the strong, autonomous ‘I’, what Kristeva calls the ‘phallic presence’ can no longer be sustained, then it has reached a point too, at which the general, or what is actually the masculine problematic coincides with similar ideas within the field of feminist thought. The deconstruction, described by Derrida,4 of the idea of centre, of logos and therefore inevitably of any truly omniscient viewpoint, or, as has been examined in this novel of any transcendental or even autonomous ‘I’, has created a situation in which all is necessarily peripheral or marginal, and in which, therefore, the masculine and the feminine are of equal value. This idea provides one of the keys to El gato eficaz. The roles and also the values attached to the masculine and the feminine in Western society are among the basic concepts addressed in the novel. And if the opening up of different facets of the pronoun ‘I’ is one means of approaching the issues at stake, there are also others to be found. A line in El gato eficaz reads: ‘Puedo fácilmente dividir en dos al mundo’ (1972: 17) [I can easily divide the world in two], and here it seems, the narrator is pointing out the facile nature of binary oppositions. Thus she is not only drawing the reader’s attention to the rigid nature of language which tends to freeze objects in time, creating a veneer of immutability, but also to our way of thinking which constantly creates hierarchies by means of binary oppositions. It is a commonplace of feminist thought that the concept of binary oppositions does not favour women in our society. As Hélène Cixous noted, and as it has been pointed out previously in this book, a list of oppositions which includes the basic categories of male/female; masculine/feminine; active/passive;

4

See Jacques Derrida’s chapter entitled ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’ (1977: 278–93), in Writing and Difference.

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 137

LUISA VALENZUELA

137

life/death, would equate femininity with passivity and death leaving no positive space for woman.5 El gato eficaz in its entirety brings into question the arbitrary and simplistic limitations of binary oppositions. By going beyond any static notions of identity, the novel problematizes any idea that given attributes might belong to given genders, and opens up the field of play to a multiplicity of possibilities. Another approach to this eclectic vision is to be found in inverted, and often subversive imagery in the novel. This, coupled with the constant play therein, brings to mind the world of the carnival. The next section of this chapter will examine some of the parallels between this novel and aspects of the carnivalesque in literature.

The Carnivalesque In his most famous work, Rabelais and His World (1984b), Mikhail Bakhtin sets out a detailed study of the meaning and different manifestations of carnival, particularly in the Middle Ages, and he shows the role these play in Rabelais’ work. Referring to medieval scholars, Bakhtin suggests that carnival in the Middle Ages was a time when: They were freed from the oppression of such gloomy categories as ‘eternal’, ‘immovable’, ‘absolute’, ‘unchangeable’ and instead were exposed to the gay and free laughing aspect of the world, with its unfinished and open character, with the joy of change and renewal. (1984b: 82).

In a further work, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1984a), Bakhtin delineates what he considers to be the characteristic features of carnival. What is of particular interest here is the number of parallels that can be drawn between these different aspects of carnival and El gato eficaz. Part of Bakhtin’s first claim is that: Carnival is not contemplated and, strictly speaking, not even performed; its participants live in it, they live by its laws as long as those laws are in effect; that is, they live a carnivalistic life. Because carnivalistic life is life drawn out of its usual rut, it is to some extent ‘life turned inside out’, ‘the reverse side of the world’. (1984a: 122)

Certainly the world depicted in El gato eficaz is a totalising vision. Both the firstand third-person narrators are involved in that world, and there is no question of any external point of view which might somehow compare this chaotic world

5 There is a brief outline of Cixous’ ideas in Toril Moi’s Sexual/ Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (1985: 102–21). And another very clear reading of her work which concentrates on the issue of écriture féminine, an issue which is central to Cixous’s approach, is to be found in Rosi Braidotti Patterns of Dissonance (1991).

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

138

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 138

LINDA CRAIG

with another more stable. Thus every participant in this novel lives in it and lives by its laws in the same way as participants in the carnivalistic life. Moreover, this totalising vision is clearly far from the usual rut, since it displays, as has already been mentioned, this world in which: ‘[los gatos] mueren de allá para acá, del otro mundo a éste’ (1972: 12) [[the cats] die from there to here, from the other world to this one], and also completely illogical concepts such as: ‘un informe perimido aún vigente’ (1972: 11) [a report that is out of date and still valid]. Bakhtin (1984a: 123) also refers to: ‘a new mode of interrelationship between individuals, counterposed to the all-powerful socio-hierarchical relationships of noncarnival life’. This is an idea that accords well with the narrator’s multi-faceted view of herself in El gato eficaz, which could be described as her interrelationship with herself or selves; but it appears again in the system of play between different individuals. At one point the narrator refers to: ‘una masa sangrante y suspirante que una vez fueron dos – o tal vez más de dos porque cada persona es ella y sus desdoblamientos’ (1972: 16) [a bleeding, sighing mass that was once two – or perhaps more than two because each person is themselves and their other split parts]. The reference is to a couple making love, but clearly the implications go further, blurring the boundaries between separate individuals. Bakhtin’s reference to ‘life turned inside out’ quoted above, and to this ‘new mode of interrelationship between individuals’, both point to the importance of the inversion of hierarchies in the realms of the carnivalesque. Again, this is an idea which is echoed throughout El gato eficaz and can be found at a textual level in the use of type settings and layouts which resemble those of newspapers, such as: ‘NO TEMO A LOS GATOS’ Dice paciente a quien injertaron piel de rata [‘I don’t fear cats’ says patient with a skin graft from a rat]

Here the authority implied by the layout is brought into question by the nonsensical wording. Apparently authoritative sources are, by this and other similar means, undermined and rendered just as incoherent and illogical as other sections of the text in a gesture which undermines the hierarchy of language. Another aspect of carnival is to be found in what Bakhtin (1984a: 123) describes as ‘carnivalistic mésalliances’, of which he says: A free and familiar attitude spreads over everything: over all values, thoughts, phenomena, and things. All things that were once self-enclosed, disunified, distanced from one another by a noncarnivalistic hierarchical worldview are drawn into carnivalistic contacts and combinations.

This, by referring to the levelling of hierarchies, reflects some of the factors present in the previous set of characteristics, and indeed all of these different aspects are closely interrelated. The vision of openness is another which applies well to El gato eficaz. For in this novel any possibility of closure in terms of

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 139

LUISA VALENZUELA

139

meaning, definition or coherence is avoided. Here, in fact, this is even more extreme than the work of Rabelais, for openness is fundamental, and it goes so far as to reveal the lack of boundaries discussed above, where persons, animals, insects and objects have no clear delineated space, but rather converge on and even become one another. The fourth and last part of Bakhtin’s short definition of the features of carnival deals with the ideas of profanation and blasphemy. In the Middle Ages, to a greater extent than nowadays, religion was central to the way that life was organised and led. Many of the feast days and periods in which the carnival spirit was unleashed, many of which dated back to pagan times, had been incorporated into the ecumenical calendar. So tightly bound were religion and carnival, therefore, that, as Bakhtin (1984b: 88) says: ‘Medieval laughter is directed at the same objects as medieval seriousness’. He goes on to say that: One might say that it builds its own world versus the official world, its own church versus the official church, its own state versus the official state. Laughter celebrates its masses, professes its faith, celebrates marriages and funerals, writes its epitaphs, elects kings and bishops.

El gato eficaz also, if to a lesser extent, highlights areas in which religion still plays an important role in everyday life. Certainly one area in which it is still predominant is in the rites and rituals surrounding death. In the novel the remaining sacred masks surrounding these rites are pulled away; the narrator makes mention of: ‘¿un horno crematorio en medio de Times Square?’ [a crematory oven in the middle of Times Square?] she draws parallels between these and ‘otros hornitos para pizza’ (1972: 55) [other little ovens for pizza]. But the lack of respect that she deems to be implied by the idea of a crematorium in Times Square turns out to be no more than a complaint that they should have chosen that site rather than situating it in Greenwich Village ‘donde tantos cadáveres se pudren en las calles’ (1972: 55) [where so many corpses rot in the streets]. Clearly death has lost any religious overtones; it is no longer sacred. The Christian dictum of ‘love thy neighbour’ is turned upside down too, in a passage where the narrator observes: ‘implica un gran esfuerzo solidario el querer hacer mal porque sí, gratuitamente’ (1972: 56) [it takes a great effort of solidarity to be bad for nothing, gratuitously]. However, this novel was written in the latter half of the twentieth century, when Christianity as an organised social ritual was in decline. What the novel would seem to set out to undermine is not so much religious practices as different ideologies, such as liberal humanism which have replaced them. Charity plays an important role within Christian ideology where it is virtually a synonym for love.6 It is mainly used in its other, narrower sense within liberal 6 I base this interpretation of the word charity as love on Saint Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 13. The King James’ Bible talks of ‘faith, hope and charity’, but it has been rendered ‘faith, hope and love’, in a more recent interpretation of the Bible, Good News Bible: Today’s English Version, Glasgow: Collins, (1989).

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

140

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 140

LINDA CRAIG

humanism, a sense which The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines as: ‘Benevolence, esp. to the poor; charitableness; alms-giving’. In El gato eficaz, this benevolence is brought into question when the narrator says: ‘La caridad tiene un solo derretero, molesta a los humildes, los humilla’ (1972: 55) [Charity has just one downside, it bothers the poor, it humiliates them]. The idea is taken further in a later passage which reads: Ahora se usa el bien, la buena gente, las intenciones sanas y el amor a algún prójimo distante. Queda bien suspirar por los que tienen hambre sin por eso permitirles hurgar en nuestras ollas. Queda bien recordarles que el arroz es más sano con la cáscara y dejarles la cáscara. (1972: 111) [Now we use goodness, good people, good intentions and love for some distant neighbour. It looks good to sigh for the hungry without just for that letting them poke about in our saucepans. It is good to remind them that rice is better in its skin and then leave them the skin].

In terms of the carnivalesque, there is something of a difference here. While Bakhtin is careful to point out that the blasphemous nature of the medieval carnival remained within the realms of play, and did not represent any form of protest against the dominant ideology,7 the lines from El gato eficaz can clearly be deemed to carry some political charge. But in spite of this discrepancy, and given the nature of the many examples above, it is clear that El gato eficaz is situated within the realms of carnivalesque literature. In the following section, I intend to supplement Bakhtin’s work with that of Kristeva (1981: 65) who argues the following: Carnivalesque discourse breaks through the laws of a language censored by grammar and semantics and, at the same time, is a social and political protest. There is no equivalence, but rather identity, between challenging official linguistic codes and challenging official law. (p. 65)

El gato eficaz, with its neologisms and its broken, disrupted language, is subversive both in terms of grammar and of semantics, and, as has been demonstrated above, it accords well with other aspects of the carnivalesque. In a structuralist view of the literary carnivalesque, Kristeva (1981) sets out a system which incorporates its workings. Starting from what she refers to as: ‘. . . the inability of any logical system based on a zero-one sequence (true–false; nothingness–notation) to account for the operation of poetic language’, she develops the idea that the epic and most Realist narratives confine themselves to a space within this zero-one sequence of logic. She suggests, however, that there exists a concept of poetic logic, which transgresses the zero-one sequence, not arbitrarily, but by obeying another law which she describes as zero-two poetic 7 This idea is emphasised in a chapter from Rabelais and His World (1984b: 59–145), entitled ‘Rabelais in the History of Laughter’.

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 141

LUISA VALENZUELA

141

logic. Of this she argues ‘the only discourse integrally to achieve the zero-two poetic logic is that of the carnival,’ and, later: ‘Carnivalesque structure is like the residue of a cosmogony that ignored substance, causality, or identity outside of its link to the whole, which exists only in or through relationship’ [emphasis hers] (1981: 70). While this definition of the carnivalesque may well not be complete in that it ignores the inversion of hierarchies, referred to above, which Bakhtin (1984b: 81) considered to be an ‘essential element’, it is nevertheless useful as a means of drawing out the nature of carnivalesque literature. Kristeva then goes on to conclude that the zero-two sequence implies a constant movement, a becoming, as opposed to the logic of being, which is presumably static. The parallels here between the carnivalesque and El gato eficaz are significant. As has already been noted, carnival in the Middle Ages did not encompass the idea of protest, but was rather a means of celebrating the lifeforce. As Bakhtin (1984b: 75) puts it: Laughter at the feast of fools was not, of course, an abstract and purely negative mockery of the Christian ritual and the Church’s hierarchy. The negative derisive element was deeply immersed in the triumphant theme of bodily regeneration and renewal. It was ‘man’s second nature’ that was laughing, the lower bodily stratum which could not express itself in official cult and ideology.

However, Kristeva, as we have seen, does draw a parallel between carnivalesque discourse and social and political protest. Her point is that zero-two logic, by breaking the constraints of more rigid thought-patterns, not, it should be noted, in terms of any kind of mystical transcendence, but rather in a more material, even concrete way, incorporates, almost inevitably, a form of protest against the dominant ideology. Valenzuela’s novel can be seen to be questioning the dominant ideology by these same means. That is, by breaking down traditional hierarchies, semantics, perspectives of individual identity and other categories, it offers alternative perspectives which undermine and oppose zero-one logic. One of the major areas of traditional thought to be brought into question within the novel, as has already been suggested, is that of the role of women in Western society. While some references to women within the text are overt, others are more oblique. Some consideration of the often-found juxtaposition of women and cats within Western mythology should help to shed some light on another possible reading of this novel as a commentary on the situation of women in our societies.

Cats Baudelaire’s famous sonnet, Le chat, is perhaps the most beautiful presentation of a theme, which comes up again and again in different areas of literature: the

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

142

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 142

LINDA CRAIG

fusion of the image of the cat with that of woman. Baudelaire describes his pleasure in stroking the cat and then turns the cat into a metaphor: Je vois ma femme en esprit. Son regard, Comme le tien, aimable bête, Profond et froid, coupe et fend comme un dard, Et, des pieds jusques à la tête, Un air subtil, un dangereux parfum Nagent autour de son corps brun.8

The cat has become the manifestation of the spirit of a woman, and is then variously described as cold, deep, subtle and dangerous. Of these four adjectives, the first two have an almost oxymoronic quality, since surely cold and hard, warm and deep, would be the more usual juxtapositions, instead of the strange, almost contradictory, cold and deep stated. The third, ‘subtle’, suggests that which is unknowable; and the last, ‘dangerous’, leading from the third, to an image of possible treachery. All four encompass what are often deemed to be the salient characteristics of womanhood within Western mythology and thought. The idea that the image of woman should contain within it contradictions is, of course, not new. Woman is power in that she is the giver of life and she is the mother on whom her children are dependent. But she is also, in different roles, particularly that of wife, a being largely bereft of rights, powerless and often depicted as passive. The images are almost irreconcilable and therefore carry an element of contradiction. The very fact that women are so seldom permitted to wield power within patriarchal society, as for example within the upper echelons of the church or in the world of politics, is probably the reason for the next image, the depiction of her as subtle. In a world which allows her little space in which to act overtly, she has found herself in a position in which she has been forced to seek power by alternative, more subtle, sometimes even subversive, means. The denial of access to legitimate power has meant that women have either had to seek fulfilment through the achievements of their husbands, or alternatively they have had to seek it for themselves by other means. This second option could explain why women have been so frequently depicted as having some connection with occult power, and it could go some way towards providing a reason for the image, particularly strong in the Middle Ages, of woman as witch.9 The figure of the witch leads back, of course, to Baudelaire’s metaphor, the cat. For another image etched deep within Western mythology and fairy tales is that of the witches’ cat. The image is one familiar to almost any child, and such is its strength that in his 8 The poem from which these verses are taken is to be found in Les fleurs du mal (1973: 51). 9 A fuller discussion of the phenomenon of woman as witch can be found in de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1988).

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 143

LUISA VALENZUELA

143

monumental study in magic and religion, The Golden Bough, J. G. Frazer (1922: 860) observes: ‘cats are precisely the animals into which, with the possible exception of hares, witches were most usually supposed to transform themselves’. Cats were sometimes perhaps burnt as witches. The images connecting women and cats are, in fact, miriad; and El gato eficaz is a novel which employs this metaphor to the full. The narrator, as has been noted before, aligns herself overtly with the cats. Therefore, in the constant opposition within the text of ‘los perros de la vida’ and ‘los gatos de la muerte’, woman is closely identified with the cats and therefore with death. Moreover, these cats, which are black as opposed to the white dogs, are depicted as being the more intelligent, for the dogs are unable to recognise the cats, whereas the cats have no difficulty in recognising the dogs. What is more, as the narrator recounts: ‘El peligro de estos bichos (los gatos de la muerte) no es la muerte como indica su nombre, sino algo más sutil y más dañino: la clarividencia’ (1972: 29) [The danger of these creatures (the cats of death) is not death as their name would imply, but rather something more subtle and damaging: clairvoyance]. Baudelaire’s last two adjectives, subtle and dangerous, clearly apply equally to the cats of this novel. The property of clairvoyance recalls the images of the witch and the above-mentioned witches’ cat. The image of the cat is not used in a simplistic manner, though, in Valenzuela’s novel. Magnarelli (1985: 172–3) points out: What is unique and innovative in Valenzuela’s novel is that the reader is now forced, for perhaps the first time, to question the basis for this metaphor and its implications; one is compelled not only to seek the points of contact between cats and women but inversely to consider the significance of the aggregate of the mythology which surrounds women as a result of the metaphor.

This view of the cat image so central to El gato eficaz is crucial in that it opens up the text to a feminist reading. Referring to the metaphorical alignment of cats and women, Magnarelli suggests that: From early mythology, then, the cat is no longer just a cat and woman is no longer just woman, but instead both have been enveloped in supplement and connotation that ultimately have very little relationship to ‘catness’ or ‘femaleness’. That is, from the earliest traceable moment one sees the sign moving away from its referent and already becoming pure supplement. (1985: 175)

Her point is that any intrinsic property of ‘catness’ or, more importantly, ‘femaleness’ has been clouded from view by connotation and metaphor. The lines quoted above are again relevant: Ay, cómo quisiera ir a casa a sacarme la vieja dentadura, pero mis admiradores me exigen tantos besos que sin dientes se me gastan las encías. Ay, sacarme la peluca, estos pechos postizos si sólo mis amantes me dejaran. Pertenecer, para serles bien franca, nada ya me pertenece. (1972: 83)

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

144

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 144

LINDA CRAIG

[Ah, how I would love to go home and take out my old teeth, but my admirers demand so many kisses that without teeth my gums will wear out, Ah, to take off my wig, these false breasts, if only my lovers would let me. Belong, to be frank with you, nothing belongs to me any more].

She has become, as Magnarelli observes, pure supplement. She recognises her ‘femaleness’ as being both possession and product of the realms of discourse, and herself as being no more than representation. She presents herself as being caught up in what Foucault would call ‘the imagination of resemblance’.10 Foucault’s notion of resemblance is directly relevant to El gato eficaz. What prompted the French thinker to follow this line of thought is something that he talks of in the Preface to The Order of Things in which he refers to ‘the laughter that shattered’ when he read a particular passage written by Borges: This passage quotes a “certain Chinese encyclopaedia” in which it is written that “animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies”. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.

Borges had opened Foucault’s eyes to the narrowness of our systems of thought. He has presented him, rather, with what Foucault (1970: xviii) describes as ‘heterotopias’ which ‘dessicate speech, stop words in their tracks, contest the very possibility of grammar at its source; they dissolve our myths and sterilize the lyricism of our sentences.’ It is worth noting at this point the closeness of Valenzuela to Borges. She worked with him for a time in the National Library in Buenos Aires.11 And she talked of his influence on her work in a letter to the author of this work in which she cited Borges and Cortázar as the writers who had most influenced her work.12 It could therefore be that Borges opened Valenzuela’s eyes rather as he did 10 In The Order of Things (1970) there is a subsection which bears the title ‘The Imagination of Resemblance’ in which Foucault discusses the difficulties surrounding the idea of similitude, which he describes both as ‘merely empiricism in its most unrefined form’ and as ‘still an indispensable border of knowledge’. 11 This information is included in a short biographical note on Valenzuela by Evelyn Picon Garfield (1985: 143). 12 In a letter to the author dated 15 March 1989, Valenzuela remarked that: ‘Las influencias son enormes y variadas. Los amores podrían llamarse ABC: Anna Lisa, mi hija que debe haberme influenciado mucho porque escribí mi primera novela con ella en la cuna, Borges y Cortázar.’ [The influences are many and very varied. The loves can be called ABC: Anna Lisa, my daughter who must have influenced me greatly because I wrote my first novel while she was in her cot, Borges and Cortázar].

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 145

LUISA VALENZUELA

145

Foucault’s. Certainly El gato eficaz challenges our systems of thought, could be held to stop words in their tracks, and sets out to dissolve our myths. This novel, like Foucault’s work, highlights the dubious nature of any possibility of representation and it achieves this primarily by means of its acute perception of the supplementarity of its image of woman. By dissolving our myths, that is by showing them to be just that, no more than myth, the narrator leads the reader through that most Borgesian of metaphors, a labyrinth, which reveals at every twist and turn that the image or representation of woman is no more than a fiction or myth.

Rebirth The principal effect of El gato eficaz, is demythification. The search for a language which goes beyond the barriers of censorship and of the rigid constraints of rationalism and grammar produces a probing text which peels back many of the layers of beliefs which are generally accepted in Western society. Z. Nelly Martínez (1979–80: 73) talks of the novel in the following terms: ‘En última instancia, el anhelo de liberación que actualiza la escritura de El gato eficaz señala la clausura de una civilización eminentemente masculina que exaltó lo apolíneo y, vanamente, se esforzó por subyugar el descentralizador impulso de Dionisio’ (In the end, the desire for freedom which becomes apparent from the writing of El gato eficaz signals the closure of a largely masculine civilisation which exalted the Apollonian and, in vain, attempted to subjugate the decentralising impulse of Dionysus]. She is suggesting that the search for freedom is one that goes beyond the static nature of Apollonian forms towards a decentralising constant movement. As the narrator of El gato eficaz puts it: ‘Fatuo todo aquel que pretende retenernos y nos detiene un tiempo. Lo que no cambia es fatuo con pretensión de eterno’ (1972: 119) [Anything that claims to stop us and detains us a while is fatuous. That which doesn’t change is fatuous with aspirations to the eternal]. This dismissal of the concept of immutability or stasis recalls the idea of the carnivalesque, for that too, as has already been noted, is a form which discards the ideas of eternity and of fixed values, substituting the idea of being with that of becoming. In this novel, logos is certainly constantly undermined. As a result of this constant undermining, it could be described as a novel which effects a deconstruction of the concept of centre, for it has already been noted that the constantly mutating narrator brings into question any intrinsic quality of a static identity or of a given centre. But the deconstruction is not complete, or it certainly has no nihilistic overtones. Something remains. Thus, while the task of highlighting the spurious nature of the images surrounding women is intricately carried out, largely by means of the cat metaphor; and while many of the icons of Western civilization, such as logos, rationalism and individualism are brought down, there remains within the novel a possibility of escape, of perceiving the world through different parameters.

Mono219-CH-07.qxd

146

9/22/05

9:02 AM

Page 146

LINDA CRAIG

This possibility lies within the realms of mutation, of constant change. The last paragraph of the novel indicates this idea in its own supple, eclectic way: y no yo que ya no soy yo misma me transformo en colores dentro de mi retina, gasifico mis formas y me sigo nombrando yo, mi, me, no por vieja costumbre que no tengo sino a falta de algo mejor y a la espera de un nuevo solidario como vos que descubra las claves de este juego y alínee las piezas – blancas perrovidas, negras gatomuertes – y retome los ciclos. Jaque mate otra vez, que me mate de lejos. Me mate, memite, me imite: sólo en un renacimiento reside mi esperanza. (1972: 119) [. . . and not me because I am no longer myself I change into colours inside my retina, my forms become gases and I still call myself I, mine, me, not because of old habits which I don’t have but rather due to the lack of anything better and in hope of a new ally like you who can discover the key to this game and set out the pieces – white dog lives, black cat deaths – and restart the cycles. Checkmate again, who kills me from a distance. Who kills me, who imitates me: my only hope lies in rebirth].

The ‘vos’ (you) might well be addressed to the reader. It would seem that what the narrator is attempting to do is to involve the reader in the game. The different forms of the first person pronoun point to her efforts to get beyond the limitations it imposes, and the suggestion is that a reading of the text would lead to the discovery of new keys within it, which would lead to a further reading and so on. Ultimately, as she says in the last line, her only hope lies in the possibility of rebirth.13 This would seem to refer to the idea that this first person narrator, or indeed woman, might be born anew, in a state which defies or transcends the many myths and metaphors which our culture imposes on her. The game remains a game. There is no question of the existence of a world outside of its realms. But it is a game which accommodates the concept of change, indeed one which must change. The word play and neologisms, the changing boundaries between words which can be found again in this last paragraph, are all elements which serve to emphasise this idea. The resulting image is that of woman, denuded of these myths and symbols of oppression, freed, ready to start life again, but this time on very different terms.

13 Magnarelli (1988: 72), noting the importance of these, the last lines of the novel, with this reference to the idea of rebirth, says: ‘El gato eficaz is constructive destruction’. It is an idea with which I agree and it is my opinion that this cat (read woman) is efficacious primarily in its ability to survive at all cost.

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 147

8

Cola de lagartija (1983) Fact and Fiction Cola de lagartija1 is quite different from the other novels studied here in the sense that, rather than being purely a work of fiction, it is a work whose central protagonists are based on true historical characters. The identity of these characters and the relationship or play between them and their fictional counterparts will be explored in different parts of this chapter. The novel, echoing Hay que sonreír, is divided into three sections, and as is the case with the earlier novel, these sections and their titles are crucial to an understanding of the work. I shall therefore outline what I consider to be the main thrust of each section; and follow that with a mainly psychoanalytical reading which, to my mind, proves to be the most fruitful way of approaching this text.

Roman-à-Clef The terrible violence that reigned in Argentina in the latter part of the 1970s is a theme to which Valenzuela returns constantly from the publication of Aquí pasan cosas raras (1975) [Strange Things Happen Here] onwards. It is a theme of which she said in an interview with Albalú Angel (1984: 5–6): He tenido una gran conciencia política, una especie de despertar político con mi trabajo: en el momento de la gran violencia en Argentina, cuando empezó la Triple A, y después pasamos a la dictadura militar; y ahí empecé a escribir cosas politizadas, como Aquí pasan cosas raras. Era tan fuerte tan fuerte, que la tenés que hablar . . . yo creo que las cosas hay que decirlas. [I developed a political conscience, a kind of political awakening with my work: at the time of great violence in Argentina, when the Triple A started, and later we went on to the military dictatorship; at that point my writing became political, like Aquí pasan cosas raras. It was so, so strong that you had to talk about it . . . I believe that you have to talk about things].

But while, for example, the theme is approached very much from the point of view of the victims of the violence in the collections of short stories Aquí pasan

1 Luisa Valenzuela Cola de lagartija (1983). Translation by Gregory Rabassa The Lizard’s Tail (1987).

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

148

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 148

LINDA CRAIG

cosas raras, in Cambio de armas (1982) (Other Weapons), and in the novel Como en la guerra (1977) (He who searches), Cola de lagartija approaches the subject from a different perspective. The victims still play their part, but so too, to a greater extent do the perpetrators. The novel can clearly be read on one level as an investigation into the nature of the perpetrators of violence, but also, as Shaw (1998) points out, into the irrationality of political events. Although, in fact, Cola de lagartija is never actually overtly situated in time or space, the parallels between its protagonists and those of Argentine political life in the 1970s are clear. It might be described as a roman-à-clef, and there is a multiplicity of clues which point to the idea that the chief protagonist of the novel, generally referred to as the Brujo, (the Sorcerer) corresponds to José López Rega, Minister of Welfare in the second Peronist government. Indeed the most overt connection of all in the novel is made by means of this position, for he is referred to in the following terms: ‘. . . se cree el ministro aquél de Bienestar Social ¿te acordás? hace mil años. Ese que era brujo’ (1983: 18) [‘. . . he thinks he’s that Minister of Well-being, so many years ago, remember? The Sorceror’] (1987: 10). Another clear reference to the protagonist’s true identity lies in his name, for the nickname el Brujo is certainly not of Valenzuela’s invention, but was common currency in Argentina at that time. Indeed his involvement in the cult of Umbanda, a type of black magic practised in Brazil is documented by Lester Sobel (1975: 150). As Gillespie (1982: 173) points out, such was his obsession with the occult that among his often self-financed books on the subject was one which he claimed to have written jointly with the Archangel Gabriel. His propensity for evil and manipulation led to parallels being drawn between himself and Rasputin. The primary importance of this strange protagonist, apparent throughout the novel, is emphasised further by the fact that Valenzuela told Sharon Magnarelli (1988: 142) that the original title was to be ‘El Brujo Hormiga Roja, Señor de Tacuru, amo de tambores, Ministro de Bienestar, serruchero mayor, alto sacerdote del dedo, patrón de los desamparados, dueño de la voz y su hermana Estrella’, [‘The Sorceror Red Ant, Master of Tacuru, lover of drums, Minister of Welfare, great sawer, high priest of the finger, patron of the defenceless, owner of the voice and his sister Star’], every part of which, apart from the very last, refers to the Brujo. But this title, not surprisingly, was considered to be too unwieldy and was thus replaced by the shorter and actually, as shall be seen, more cogent title of Cola de lagartija. Valenzuela describes how, while trying to find an alternative title for the novel, she came across, in a book written by a long-dead relative of hers, a reference to a particular whip which was used towards the end of the nineteenth century. Apparently this whip inflicted severe injuries, and Valenzuela chose it as a metaphor for the terrible violence being meted out in Argentina in the 1970s.2

2 Valenzuela talked of the different significations of the title of the novel in an interview with Montserrat Ordoñez (1985).

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 149

LUISA VALENZUELA

149

Other protagonists within the Brujo’s entourage who correspond to historical figures are: the Generalisísimo (Perón), La Muerta (Eva Perón), and the Intrusa (Intruder) (María Estela Martínez), known as Isabel, Perón’s third wife and successor. The importance of reading the novel as a roman-à-clef is stressed by the author in an interview with Magnarelli (1988: 151), where she said ‘This work is entirely based on reality. Any similarity with characters or situations from fiction is strictly coincidental’. While this line obviously has a certain ironic overtone, it nevertheless emphasises the non-fictional element within the novel. What is more, the cover of the original novel depicts sketches of the faces of these four protagonists with López Rega’s face in the central, most prominent, position. This said, it must also be emphasised that Cola de lagartija bears absolutely no similarity to the genre known as faction. There is a work of faction which deals with Perón and in which López Rega plays a considerable role, a novel which bears the title La novela de Perón, written by Tomás Eloy Martínez (1987), an Argentine journalist. This work is set in a slightly earlier period, prior to Perón’s return to Argentina from his years of exile in Madrid, but the principal players are the same. The two novels, however, could hardly be more different, for while Eloy Martínez aims for a semblance of verisimilitude, Valenzuela works entirely in the realms of metaphor. An examination of the structure of the novel affords an insight into the nature of this metaphor and serves as a means of revealing many of the forces at play within it. Given that, as was mentioned above, it is divided into three sections, ‘EL UNO’, ‘EL D*OS’ and ‘¿TRES?’ (THE ONE, TOo, and THREE?), I shall discuss each section separately.

El Uno The novel starts with a warning which takes the form of a dialogue, although who is doing the talking is not specified. The dialogue appears to be addressed directly at the reader, and it provides an insight into the nature of this novel. The dialogue starts: –Eso no puede escribirse –Se escribirá a pesar nuestro. El Brujo dijo alguna vez que él hablaba con el pensamiento. Habría que intentar darle la palabra, a ver si logramos entender algo de todo este horror. [‘You can’t write that’ ‘It will be written in spite of us. The Sorceror once said that he spoke with his thoughts. We will have to try to let him speak, to see if we can manage to understand something of all of this horror’] [translation mine, this is omitted from the English version].

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

150

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 150

LINDA CRAIG

Indeed the idea, expressed here, of giving the Brujo a voice in order to make some sense of the prevailing political climate, is the central theme of the novel. The following page contains a passage under the title ‘La profecía’, which reads: Correrá un (quién pudiera alcanzarlo) Correrá un río de sangre (seré yo quien abra las compuertas) río de sangre (fluir constante de mi permanencia en ésta) de sangre (¡eso sí me gusta!) (sangre, rojo color de lo suntuoso, acompañándome siempre, siempre para ador(n)arme) y ¡basta! la conjunción copulativa me da asco y Vendrán Veinte Años de Paz [A river will flow (I want to flow with it) A river of blood will flow (I shall open the sluice gates) river of blood (I am myself that river) of blood (just what I like) and enough! Conjunctions revolt me and Then Twenty Years of Peace Will Come]

The prophecy ‘Correrá un río de sangre’ [‘A river of blood will flow’] recurs throughout the novel, and some of its possible interpretations will be examined later in this chapter. This opening is followed by the first section, whose title ‘EL UNO’ clearly refers to the Brujo. He is far and away the most important protagonist in this section, and his monologue recounts the story of his life up to the fictional present in which the novel is set. Such is the Brujo’s conception of himself that this recounting takes the form of naming, as though for the first time. Releasing himself from the ties and mortality of the flesh, he describes how his mother died giving birth to him and how at an early age he witnessed the murder of his father. Deeming himself to be without origins, therefore, he sets out to construct an entity virtually without limits. Thus in passages entitled ‘El acordeón’ [‘The accordion’), ‘Los tambores’ (‘The drums’), ‘Las flautas’ (‘The flutes’) and ‘Los pájaros’ (‘The birds’), he identifies himself with a primordial state which is pre-linguistic, in which his closest companions and guides are lethal red ants.

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 151

LUISA VALENZUELA

151

The resulting creation is one of tremendous narcissism. He describes himself at one point: ¿Dije a lo largo, dije a lo ancho, dije mi vida? Qué estupidez. Uno acaba aplicando los lugares comunes de los otros como si uno fuera igual, como si pudiera tratarse de humanas dimensiones cuando a uno lo impregna lo infinito, eterno, aquello que lo abarca todo y es a la vez todo. Soy el Inmanente, soy la sal de la vida (1983: 10) [‘Did I say length, did I say breadth, did I say my life? How stupid. One ends up using other people’s clichés as if one were like them, as if one could deal in human dimensions when impregnated by the infinite, the eternal, the allencompassing. I am the Immanent, I am the salt of life’] (1987: 3).

He recalls Greek mythology when he describes his babyhood: ‘. . . mi cuna fue un cajón de frutas colgado de una rama’ (1983: 11) [‘. . . my cradle was a fruit crate hanging from a bough’] (1987: 4), which brings to mind the image of Zeus described by Graves (1955: 40) in a ‘golden cradle, which was hung upon a tree (so that Cronus might find him neither in heaven, nor on earth nor in the sea)’. But he would probably be closer to Dionysus than to Zeus, in the sense of his having a dark, diabolic side. In a passage in the same section, this time related by a third-person narrator, there is a description of the Brujo crossing the frontier, apparently into Brazil, and involving himself in black magic rituals. The omniscient narrator reveals: ‘Qué placer para él, el ser reconocido en su aspecto más oscuro, diabólico . . .’ (1983: 21) [‘What pleasure for him, being recognized in his darkest, most diabolic aspect . . .’] (1983: 13). However the Brujo’s mythical dimension does not relate only to figures from Greek mythology. Indeed these references pale when compared with his ironic allusion to Christian symbols. For example the Brujo claims to be endowed with three testicles, which he describes in a debased reference to the Holy Trinity as ‘Una trinidad en la entrepierna’ (1983: 157) [‘A trinity in the crotch’] (1987: 141). His messianic pretensions are apparent in a passage in which the ghost of la Muerta utters to him, in a parody of Christ’s incarnation ‘Bajá, carajo. Bajá y hacéte hombre’ (1983: 27) [‘Come down, damn it. Come down and be a man’] (1987: 18). According to the Brujo, the middle of his three testicles contains an embryonic form of Estrella, whom he calls his sister, the queen and ‘she’. He is thus complete, incorporating both the male and the female, and he is distanced from the rest of humanity by being beyond the stranglehold of desire: ‘Me salvé de caer en la temporalidad del amor o del deseo’ (1983: 11) [‘It saved me from falling into the temporality of love or desire’] (1987: 4). There are, however, breaks from the narcissistic diatribe which dominates this section of the novel. First, juxtaposed with the delirium of grandeur we find sections, recounted by the Brujo in the first person, which introduce other protagonists. Thus the Generalisísimo and the Intrusa appear as does Estrella, this time not as an embryo but as a corpse. All of these characters play their roles within the story recounted by the Brujo. There are other characters who appear as counterpoints to the Brujo in passages which are distanced in place and sometimes in

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

9/22/05

152

9:03 AM

Page 152

LINDA CRAIG

time from him. These protagonists appear in passages which are separated by sub-headings with the titles ‘Capital. Noche.’ (‘Capital. Night’) and ‘Capital. Día’ (‘Capital. Day’). The sub-headings are often followed by passages of dialogue without any initial indication as to who is speaking. There are, however, clues. The first of these, ‘Capital. Noche’ takes place between a man and a woman, who is referred to as ‘Rulitos’ (Curly) (not translated in the English version), and it is clear from the outset that they are involved in subversive activity designed to topple the Brujo from power. The sub-heading ‘Capital. Día’ introduces a group of people who include the President of the country, who is addressed as ‘mi general, señor Presidente’ (1983: 28) [General, Mr. President] (1987: 20). This is the military elite who have taken over the running of the country. It becomes apparent in these passages that there is a very strange relationship between these overt leaders and the covert, hidden Brujo who seems to have infiltrated their ranks in order to manipulate them for his own ends. This first section of the novel weaves together different strands of the text, counterposing governmental power with subversion. It is at the level of language that the lines are drawn. The Brujo, therefore, is seen attempting to control language when he observes that he is writing a novel: (¿dije que estoy escribiendo mi novela? Mentí. En realidad estoy componiendo un diario íntimo para que el hoy tenga lugar en todos los tiempos. Aunque estas etiquetas son despreciables; mi vida y por lo tanto mi diario constituyen una gran novela. La novela. La Biblia) (1983: 51) [Did I say I’m writing a novel? I lied. Actually, I’m putting together an intimate diary so that the present day will take place in all times. Even though these labels are unworthy. My life and therefore my diary combine to form a great novel. The novel. The Bible] (1987: 41).

At the same time, within the ranks of the subversives, there is another voice, another narrator. In subsequent sections of the novel this voice will become much more closely defined, but initially it is referred to as ‘. . . nuestra fiel Narradora, quien nos brindará palabras llenas de sabiduría’ (1983: 108) [. . . our faithful Narrator. She will offer us words of wisdom.’) (1987: 94). It is noticeable that, from the outset, this voice is a female one. The Brujo, ‘EL UNO’, is shown in the first section in his progression from childhood to powerful political manipulator; while concurrently, the military government are introduced, and more importantly, the subversives are shown to be drawing up their plans to rid the country of political evil.

El D*Os (TOo) The title of this second section is much more ambiguous. It can be read simply as referring to the second section. It can also, however, be interpreted as ‘Dios’

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 153

LUISA VALENZUELA

153

(God), given that the only letter which can replace the asterisk in order to form a word is ‘i’. In this case, the word presumably refers again, as in the first section, to the Brujo. Certainly, his growing belief in his omnipotence indicates that his fantasies have reached god-like proportions. However, the replacement of the ‘i’ with the asterisk could equally indicate that this is a false god, a degraded version of a deity. A third possible reading of this title is that it refers to the shape which the section is going to take. For while the Brujo so clearly dominated the first section, this is less the case in the second section. Rather, what unfolds is a fierce battle between the Brujo and the subversives. The ‘dos’ could refer to the two opposing sides in the struggle, and if this were the case, the asterisk could be deemed to signify some secret power in language itself which would be available to both sides. Certainly the novel has a playful quality. The Brujo’s outrageous persona has a humorous edge to it, and this becomes more apparent in this section. However, the first paragraph starts from a very different perspective and makes its mark by introducing a whole new level of play: Yo, Luisa Valenzuela, juro por la presente intentar hacer algo, meterme en lo posible, entrar de cabeza, consciente de lo poco que se puede hacer en todo esto pero con ganas de manejar al menos un hilito y asumir la responsabilidad de la historia (1983: 139) [I, Luisa Valenzuela, swear by these writings that I will try to do something about all this, become involved as much as possible, plunge in head-first, aware of how little can be done but with a desire to handle at least a small thread and assume responsibility for the story] (1987: 125).

The introduction of Luisa Valenzuela into the text comes as a shock, and creates a space within the text for this narrator to appeal to the sympathy of the reader by writing in a confessional form, in lines such as: [el Brujo] Ya va extendiendo sus límites y espera invadirnos a todos después de haberme invadido a mí en mi reino, el imaginario. Porque ahora sé que él también está escribiendo una novela que se superpone a ésta y es capaz de anularla (1983: 139) [he’s already expanding its borders and hopes to invade me in my kingdom, the imaginary one. I know now that he, too, is writing a novel that superimposes itself in this one and is capable of nullifying it] (1987: 125).

The metafictional device of introducing the author as a protagonist in the case of Cola de lagartija, would seem to relate to the problem of the power of language, but it also highlights how the narrator and the Argentine people are implicated in the unfolding story. There is no innocent place outside of the text from which to write, and as the above quotation shows, this Luisa Valenzuela considers herself invaded (this is clearer from the Spanish version). Donald Shaw (1998: 110) suggests that the object of the novel is to: ‘. . . bring to consciousness the

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

154

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 154

LINDA CRAIG

terrible national id that underlies the repressive national superego’. He points out that the Brujo came out of ‘the worst aspects of Peronism’, so in a sense, as a member of a popular movement with much support, he is more implicated in the national psyche than are the military. The issues are not as clear cut as they may have seemed. Bruce Gartner (1996: 80) addresses this issue of implication saying: ‘Mientras que el Brujo se inmiscuye en el espacio de la novela, la autora/ personaje se siente progresivamente desposeída de su control de la narración.’ [While the Brujo meddles in the space of the novel, the author/character feels that she is being ousted from her control of the narrative]. He quotes the lines from the novel that read: ‘Hay una afinidad de voz cuando lo narro, a veces podrían confundirse nuestras páginas’ (1983: 140). [There is an affinity between these voices when I write the words of the Brujo, at times these pages could be confused one for the other] (1987: 126).3 The fictional Luisa Valenzuela, referred to here by her full name in order to distinguish her from Valenzuela, the author, has already appeared in the first section of the novel in ‘Capital. Noche’, under the nickname Rulitos. In this second section, almost in a gesture of desperation at her powerlessness to extricate herself from the web she feels caught in, and also in order to hold back the torrent of words which form the Brujo, and which are fortified by his use of the first person pronoun, she appears, similarly empowered, in an attempt to fight fire with fire. In a similar way, fighting like with like, but also echoing their implication in the dynamic, the subversives are to be found in this section becoming more and more involved in the world of the occult. In terms of the narrative, while the first section concentrated largely on the exploits of the Brujo, there is a much greater balance in this second part. There are fewer sub-sections, and the different anecdotes are generally woven around each other with no more than gaps which indicate transpositions from one situation or time to another. Yet in spite of this renewed attack, the Brujo continues to advance. The new tactic would seem to have been in vain, for, as Luisa Valenzuela says: Cierto es que el brujo ha crecido, se ha agrandado en estos meses que llevo de escritura. Ha tejido su vastísima red y ahora está en todas partes pero no es obra mía, más bien este despliegue de fuerzas me complica tremendamente la biografía (1983: 179) [It’s true that the witchdoc has grown, has become larger during these months in which I’ve been writing. He’s woven a vast net and now he’s everywhere,

3 Certainly there has been a great deal of questioning of the attitude of the Argentine middle classes during the dirty war. Valenzuela’s Aquí pasan cosas raras (Strange Things Happen Here) seeks to draw her readers’ attention to the changes that she perceives in Buenos Aires, and in ‘Querido Juan’ she describes an ordinary member of the public being sucked into the system without much awareness. Gartner (1994: 206) quotes Emily Hicks saying: ‘. . . middle class Argentines were willing to sacrifice some of their population in order to preserve some of their class privileges and the order of their world.’ It is a harsh judgement, but Valenzuela’s work does not depict a simple dynamic of good vs. bad.

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 155

LUISA VALENZUELA

155

but it’s not my work; rather this unfolding of forces complicates the biography enormously for me] (1987: 162).

The Brujo is intent on extending his domains, and much of this section is taken up with his Machiavellian schemes to bring to heel the town of Capivarí, whose townsfolk have dared to burn his effigy. Part of his scheme consists of taking over the town’s newspaper, whose name he shortens from ‘La voz de Capivarí’ to the all-embracing, more heavily charged ‘La Voz’ [The Voice]. Again he is attempting to dominate language, although this time it proves too slippery and ambiguous even for him. The Brujo’s other plan at this point is the initiation of his long-term project, that of bearing a child. But this is to be no ordinary child, for the Brujo’s greatest fantasy is to produce a child himself, or in fact with his embryonic sister. As he puts it: ‘obtendremos el fruto de nuestro matrimonio y será un fruto tan pero tan perfecto que no habrá necesidad de otro ser en este mundo [. . .] seremos tres y a la vez uno, como corresponde’ (1983: 25). [. . . we’ll obtain the fruit of our marriage and it will be such a very, very perfect fruit – our son – that there will be no need for any other being in this world [. . .] we will be three and one at the same time, as is fitting] (1987: 17). Commencing his period of gestation, the Brujo retires to his pyramid, feeling himself to be strong and inviolable, totally protected: ‘Estoy ahora protegido por la Triple E La Protección Sublime’ (1983: 197). [In that way I am protected by the Triple E Sublime Protection] (1987: 179). Meanwhile, Luisa Valenzuela is losing faith in her new form of attack. Her despondency is palpable in the lines: Ponerse a escribir cuando por ahí, quizás al lado, a un paso no más, están torturando, matando, y una apenas escribiendo como única posibilidad de contraataque, qué ironía, qué inutilidad. Qué dolor sobre todo (1983: 244) [Sitting down to write when over there, almost beside you, only a step away, innocent people are being tortured, killed, and one writes as the only possible way to counterattack. Goddammit, what irony, what futility] (1987: 226).

Closing this section, she takes the decision to write herself, at least in the form of the first person narrator, out of the novel.

¿Tres? Again the subheading can be read in more than one way. It is, as it proclaims, the third section of the novel, but it is also the section in which the Brujo culminates the dubious task of producing his child, the three in one. The doubtful nature of the enterprise, and indeed of its outcome, is emphasised by the question marks. In an orgy of surreal narcissism, the Brujo is collecting the semen from his masculine self, in order then to undergo hormone treatment, thus developing his feminine self, which is to be impregnated with his own semen: ‘Y ya liberado de mi parte masculina, podré entregarme a fruición a las hormonas para desarrollar

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

9/22/05

156

9:03 AM

Page 156

LINDA CRAIG

mi otro aspecto, el femenino. Y así lo gestaré a Yo, y Yo nacerá – renacerá – para apoyarme en mi/su/nuestra empresa’ (1983: 252) [‘I shall be able to devote myself successfully to hormones and develop my other aspect, the feminine one. And in that way I shall engender I, and I himself will be born – be reborn – to support me in my/his/our enterprise’] (1987: 234). Any counterbalance to the delirium of the Brujo in this section is much more low-key and non-confrontational. The Brujo no longer feels the need to fight against strong, tangible enemies, and at the same time his energy is directed inwards, towards his impossible task. The image of the lizard from the title reappears here, since, according to Valenzuela: ‘En el mundo de las lagartijas, cuando vienen épocas de sequía muy fuerte, toda la población se convierte en femenina y se reproducen por partenogénesis’4 [‘In the world of lizards, when very dry seasons come along, the entire population becomes feminine and they reproduce by parthenogenesis’]. The result of this new state of affairs, of this attempt to stretch his powers so far as to transcend gender differences, might best be described as an implosion. The combination of the lack of opposition and total self-absorption have led the Brujo to a point at which implosion is the only possible outcome. The scene is described thus: Arriba en la meseta de plumas y de olanes, algo que había reventado empezó desangrarse finito. Y una línea roja como hilera de hormigas se escurrió escalinatas abajo y un escalón tras otro fue avanzando [. . .] y enfiló hacia el sur (1983: 301) [Up above, on the platform of feathers and ruffles, something that had exploded began to bleed finitely. And a red line, like a string of ants, trickled down the steps one after another, and advanced [. . .] heading south] (1987: 279).

The prophecy has been fulfilled, although in a bathetic manner, given that the promised river of blood is actually no more than a thread. The possibility of twenty years of peace has come. The last paragraph of the novel, however, reveals a pessimistic view of the possibilty of any guarantee of a cessation of violence: ‘Las tiranías ya no vienen como antes. Ahora tienen piezas de repuesto. Un presidente cae y otro ya está listo para reemplazarlo. Generales no nos faltan’ (1983: 302) [‘Tyrannies are not what they used to be. Now they have replacement parts. One president falls and another is ready to take over. There’s no shortage of generals’] (1987: 280).

History/Fiction As has been referred to above in the section headed Roman-à-clef, the novel is actually made up of a very clever interweaving of historical fact with fiction. Thus, while its outrageous dimensions might seem to suggest that Valenzuela has 4

Valenzuela is cited as saying this in an interview with Monserrat Ordoñez (1985).

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 157

LUISA VALENZUELA

157

embroidered a tale that borders on pure play, many of the events recorded in the novel are based on fact. Grotesque images of torture and cruelty, and even accounts of people being thrown out of helicopters to drown in the river below, are based on empirical events, which have no need of hyperbole to blend in with this ‘esperpento’. On the contrary the equation would seem to work the other way; the reality of events in Argentina at that time was such that the fiction had to be violent, bloody and implacably cruel in order to knit with the historical facts. There is a direct correspondence between the principal figures of Peronism and their counterparts in the novel, so that la Muerta, long dead, and mythified by the different factions of the movement, is portrayed in mythical terms in the novel. Moreover the scene in which her corpse is returned to the Generalisísimo recalls the return of Evita’s corpse to Argentina. The significance attached to this corpse is noted by V. S. Naipaul (1980: 108) in his essay The Return of Eva Perón: ‘there is a story that for fifteen days before her death the man who was to embalm her was with her, to ensure that nothing was done that might damage the body’ (p. 108). He goes on to say that: ‘the actual embalming took six months’. Her body is a highly charged symbol in the ideology of Peronism, and the importance given to this theme in Cola de lagartija reflects this. The death of the Generalisísimo, and the Brujo’s fruitless attempts to resuscitate him reflect rumours that were heard in the streets of Buenos Aires at the time of Perón’s death, so this episode too corresponds, if not perhaps to historical fact, at least to the stories that were passed from mouth to mouth.5 The other important protagonist within the entourage is the Intrusa, otherwise known as the presidenta, who assumed the Presidency on the death of her husband. She is compared with la Muerta in a manner that reflects the contrast between Eva Perón and Perón’s later wife, Isabel as, for example, in the line: ‘La Muerta, de quien la presidenta era apenas un pálido reflejo’ (1983: 34) [The Dead Woman, of whom the president was no more than a pale reflection] (not in English version). All of the protagonists and some circumstantial events clearly have referential value, as too does the Brujo, particularly when he is depicted in his relationships with these other players. But to attempt to situate Cola de lagartija within a grid of historical realism would be a reductive exercise. I disagree with Sharon Magnarelli (1988: 135) who maintains that Cola de lagartija: ‘provides the additive that renders political rhetoric unfit for further human consumption’. For while, as has been pointed out above and as Magnarelli emphasises, it is true that the Brujo is depicted as: ‘a writer, a manipulator of language’ (1988: 136), there is no suggestion that his words actually go beyond those closest to him. His biography within the novel is underpinned by the presence of the implied author, and therefore cannot be seen as being truly his; and his greatest power lies not in his oratory skills but in his mysterious manipulations.

5 This information came from a conversation that I had with Viriato Justo, an Argentine who was in Buenos Aires when the news broke.

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

158

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 158

LINDA CRAIG

Rather than being an entity that manipulates discourse, thus degrading political rhetoric, the protagonist of this novel is a much more intangible, metaphorical figure, whose relationship to historical reality is extremely tenuous. Indeed there are a number of lines in Cola de lagartija which refer to the idea that he might be little more than the figment of a paranoid imagination, or, as the following lines suggest, an entity dreamt up by the military for their own ends: Decentralizar al enemigo es la mejor manera de desplazar responsabilidades. Y hacernos creer en la existencia de un enemigo decentralizado es la mejor manera de obligarnos a desplazar nuestro foco de atención. Estos militares son muy hábiles. Han digitado a la perfección esta campaña de rumores y trascendidos sobre la longevidad o resurrección o reincarnación del brujo para hundirnos en los pantanosos terrenos de la superstición y la leyenda donde no es para nada fácil hacer pie (1983: 44) [Atomizing the enemy is the best way to displace responsibilities. And making us believe in the existence of a distant enemy is the best way of obliging us to shift focus. These military are very, very skilful. They’ve calibrated to perfection this campaign of rumors about the longevity or resurrection or reincarnation of the Sorcerer in order to sink us in the swampy terrain of superstition and legend, where it isn’t at all easy to get a footing] (1987: 35).

This same narrator takes the idea even further, examining its psychological implications: ‘Se trata de un juego especular con un superyó represor en superficie (el gobierno) y su contracara represora bajo tierra (el brujo)’ (1983: 44–5) [It’s a perfect specular play: with a repressive superego on the surface (the government) and its repressive inverted image underground (the sorcerer)] (1987: 35). A later passage, referring to the Brujo’s supposed hiding place, ‘los esteros’, a swamp or a marsh, reads thus: ¿Pueden acaso ustedes encontrar una mejor representación que esa del inconsciente humano? Las claridades que ocultan, los olores pútridos que afloran al menor paso. Lo aceptamos como un lugar real porque así somos en las zonas más tenebrosas de nuestro ser (1983: 57) [Could you find a better representation than this of the human unconscious? The clarities that conceal, the putrid smells that surface with each step. We accept it as a real place because that’s the way we are in the darkest regions of our being] (1987: 48).

There is clearly a case for claiming that the Brujo has taken on a purely symbolic role. He has become the symbol of the terrifying, hidden fear that is permeating Argentine society at a time when disappearances and torture were routine, and when it was virtually impossible to talk about the loss of loved ones for fear of repercussions. But again this symbolic role could go beyond the specific situation. Shaw (1998: 112) concludes that Valenzuela ‘postulates a pathological condition in Argentina, symbolized by el brujo’s “enfermedad psíquica” ’.

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 159

LUISA VALENZUELA

159

The Brujo’s symbolic nature can also be discerned from the temporal setting of the novel. For although it recounts some of the events which took place around the time of Perón’s second presidency, the actual fictional present, as conveyed, for example, in the first section under ‘Capital. Noche’ and ‘Capital . Día’, occurs at a later date during the military dictatorship that put an end to the presidency of Isabel Perón, and López Rega had, in fact, already left Argentina by this time. López Rega, deeply unpopular, found himself with no choice but to leave the country in July 1975, spending the next eleven years on the run in a number of countries before giving himself up to the Argentine authorities. He died a prisoner in Argentina.6 The Triple A ceased to exist. It was clearly no longer necessary, for the military had taken over its function, and in fact, López Rega was no longer a figure of much interest in Argentina. This chronological jump in the novel, therefore, decontextualises the Brujo in Cola de lagartija, and underlines his metaphorical status.

Narcissism The Brujo’s narcissism has already been mentioned several times in this chapter, and at this point a closer examination of this aspect of his nature could prove a useful approach to a reading of the novel as a whole. In an interesting article on Cola de lagartija in which she makes use of Lacanian theory, Martha Paley Francescato (1985: 877) refers briefly to the Brujo’s narcissistic nature saying: ‘El descubrimiento de su tercer testículo, su hermana Estrella, es la primera experiencia del Brujo de sí mismo como objeto de amor, su narcisismo’ [The discovery of his third testicle, his sister Estrella, is the Brujo’s first experience of himself as a love–object, his narcissism]. She does not, however, take this idea further. I propose to extend the implications of Francescato’s point beginning with a look at Freud’s views on narcissism. Initially Freud saw narcissism as a stage in the sexual development of the infant at which it takes its own body as its love object and obtains satisfaction solely through its body. In an essay published in 1914 under the title On Narcissism, he developed the concept further by postulating a link between narcissism and the development of the ego. As Laplanche and Pontalis (1985: 255) point out, Freud theorises the subject as always involved in a process in which the ego is invested with his/her libido or the object is invested with his/her libidinal energy. He is actually postulating a see-saw effect between ego-libido and object-libido. Moreover, there appears to be an antithesis between ego-libido and object-libido in the sense that the more one is employed, the more the other is depleted. Freud himself suggests that:

6 This information is from an article written on the event of his death, in the Buenos Aires Herald of 10 June 1989.

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

160

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 160

LINDA CRAIG

libidinal object-cathexis does not raise self-regard. The effect of a dependence upon the loved object is to lower that feeling: a person in love is humble. A person who loves has, so to speak, forfeited a part of his narcissism, and it can only be replaced by his being loved.7

If we look at the chief protagonist of Cola de lagartija from this perspective, it is immediately apparent that during the process of the development of his ego, no libidinal object-cathexis took place. This idea is confirmed by the fact that his mother died in childbirth, and, given that at this point there is no mention of a substitute mother other than the strange, aforementioned red ants, he clearly had no love-object. There is thus no see-saw effect since there is no possibility of object-libido; the Brujo is trapped in a state of pure ego-libido. Moreover, the killing of the mother is a killing of the feminine. The Brujo’s efforts to co-opt the feminine within himself denotes a fear of the feminine outside. Freud developed his view of narcissism further by instituting a distinction between what he called primary and secondary narcissism. The first of these, according to Laplanche and Pontalis (1985: 337): ‘denotes an early state in which the child cathects its own self with the whole of its libido’, while the second ‘denotes a turning round upon the ego of libido withdrawn from the object which it has cathected hitherto’. Within these categories, primary narcissism is conceptualised as a state in which the child takes itself as its first love object, and this coincides with a state of mind in which the child cannot differentiate between itself and another. It is in a state of omnipotence which knows no boundaries and in which it does not recognise the existence of another. Secondary narcissism is such that the libido is withdrawn from the object as the result of some perceived rejection or disappointment, and is reinvested in the ego. The Brujo is virtually a text book case of primary narcissism, for he knows no boundaries, and he sees himself as being all-encompassing. Any concept of other is swallowed up in his omnipotence, for, as Paley Francescato (1985: 877) points out: ‘en su caso él es el otro’ [emphasis hers]. Or, as the Brujo himself says: ‘El opa Eulogio gritó y gracias a ese grito yo fui el Otro, el señalado’ (1983: 22) [‘The idiot Eulogio shouted, and thanks to that shout I was the Other One, the marked one’] (1987: 14). He also clearly accords with the Freudian description of narcissism as a view of oneself as perfect and able to provide every satisfaction: ‘¿Mujeres? ¿Para qué quiero mujeres? Yo vengo con mujer incorporada, soy completo. No tengo por qué andar buscándome en espejos’ (1983: 32) [‘Women? What do I need women for? He would ask himself. ‘I come with a built-in woman. I’m complete. I’ve got no reason to go looking for myself in mirrors’] (1987: 24). Moreover his rejection of the very idea of object love is so strong that it is reflected in the form of his chosen hideout:

7

Freud ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’ (1984: 93).

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 161

LUISA VALENZUELA

161

Su castillo El Tacurú es un vientre materno lleno de vericuetos y escondrijos como él se merece y él patea las paredes y trata de destruir una vez más el vientre, volver a matar la madre. Provocar el derrumbe (1983: 29) [His castle, the Tacurú, is a maternal womb full of twists and turns and hiding places, and he kicks the walls and tries to destroy the womb. Tries to kill the mother once again. To bring on the collapse] (1987: 21).

Clearly it is not difficult to apply Freud’s definition of narcissism to Valenzuela’s depiction of the Brujo. Indeed he ‘protests too much’ that this extreme narcissism masks his fear of woman – the ‘other’, hence his attempt at destroying the feminine principle – the womb. But if a Freudian reading of the novel, or at least of its central protagonist, serves to contextualise his particular form of madness, some reference to Lacan’s theories also proves useful. According to Lacan, the infant begins life in an amorphous state with, as Elizabeth Wright (1984: 107) puts it ‘no boundaries to its experience of sense or of need’. This is followed by what has become one of Lacan’s most famous concepts: the mirror stage. He refers to Freud’s work mentioned above, On Narcissism, and specifically to what Wright describes as ‘the key metaphor of narcissism, that of the mirror’. She goes on to say that: For Lacan there is a mythical, and sometimes a literal, moment of a mirror stage, in which the infant makes an imaginary identification with its reflection in a mirror. [. . .] Whereas before it experienced itself as a shapeless mass, it now gains a sense of wholeness, an ideal completeness, and this all without effort. This gratifying experience of a mirror-image is a metaphorical parallel of an unbroken union between inner and outer, a perfect control that assures immediate satisfaction of desire. (1984: 108)

While for Lacan this signifies an early though crucial stage in the development of the subject, one which is to be disrupted by forces which come in to play subsequently, Valenzuela’s Brujo seems to have remained trapped at this point. Certainly the reference to ‘a perfect control which assures the immediate satisfaction of desire’ describes his self image as he recounts it, and he is also shown to be obsessed by his mirror image. In order to protect himself from external forces, he has a pyramid built facing the four cardinal points, the interior of which is covered in mirrors: ‘. . . no en lisa superficie especular, sino espejos dispuestos en miríadas de facetas de distintas formas, tamaños, orientaciones, que logran desdoblar multiplicar fragmentar mi imagen repitiéndola hasta el hartazgo’ (1983: 243) [‘. . . not in a smooth mirrored surface, but mirrors placed in myriads of facets of different shapes, sizes, orientation, which succeed in doubling, multiplying fragmenting my image by repeating it to satiety’] (1987: 224–5). His image may be fragmented, but it reflects him constantly, thus bringing him immediate satisfaction. It is ubiquitous and virtually infinite as far as he is concerned. It implies a certain defensiveness, however, such that the Brujo now feels the need to shield himself. Opposition exists, other voices can be heard.

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

162

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 162

LINDA CRAIG

This pre-linguistic stage as we have seen is what Lacan calls the realm of the Imaginary, and he contrasts it with the Symbolic Order, that of language, of ‘the Father’s rules, laws and definitions’ (Wright: 1984: 109). And what can be found in the second section of Cola de lagartija, D*OS, is a tension between the two principle narrators, Luisa Valenzuela and the Brujo, both of whom are laying claim to these two realms. The opposition is total, so that not only are both working on novels, which incorporate both the Imaginary and the Symbolic, and therefore trying to control language, but also Luisa Valenzuela and her allies are attempting to defeat the Brujo in his own territory, in the pre-linguistic world of witchcraft. Yet the idea of symmetry which might be implied by these oppositions is constantly undermined. The Brujo, with his three testicles is depicted with his aidede-camp, el Garza, who is castrated, and here the resulting image is a playful one embodying a false symmetry. Moreover, the duality of opposition is shattered by the number three, referring again to the three testicles which become ‘la Triple P’ in a passage which reads: ‘La Triple P habíamos formado ¿adivinen por qué?’ (1983: 80) [We formed the Triple P. Guess why?]. And later ‘La Triple E’ (1983: 197), both of which play with, and even ridicule, the name of the notorious Triple A. The idea of some kind of symmetrical opposition is also undermined by the other camp. For, as Paley Francescato (1985: 880) points out: ‘En la novela, la mujer domina los dos reinos por igual a pesar de sus dudas iniciales. El Brujo cree dominarlos’. She goes on to indicate that although the Brujo believes that he is all-powerful, this is not, in fact, the case. For it is Luisa Valenzuela, the narrator, who, despite fearing that the power of the Brujo is infecting her, is sufficiently powerful to stop writing him. In the closing paragraph of the second section, it is she who is in a position to decide: En esta sencilla ceremonia hago abandono de la pluma con la que en otras sencillas ceremonias te anotaba. Ya ves. Somos parecidos: yo también creo tener mi gravitación en los otros. Callando ahora creo poder acallarte. Borrándome del mapa pretendo borrarte a vos. Sin mi biografía es como si no tuvieras vida. Chau, brujo, felice morte. (signed) Luisa Valenzuela (1983: 245) [In this simple ceremony I abandon the pen with which, in other simple ceremonies, I took note of you. So you see. We’re alike: I, too, think I can make you silent. By erasing myself from the map, I intend to erase you. Without my biography, it will be as if you had never had a life. So long, Sorcerer, felice morte] (1987: 225).

The apparent balance was illusory. Although both sides have transgressed the boundaries of any kind of clear opposition, Luisa Valenzuela is in charge. Paley Franscato (1985), echoing the Lacanian duality, says: ‘Abandonando el orden simbólico, orden del lenguaje masculino, la mujer deja de escribir y termina la segunda parte de la novela’ [Abandoning the symbolic order, the order of masculine language, the woman stops writing and completes the second part of the novel]. She goes on to talk of the third section, asking: ‘¿Quién controla el

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 163

LUISA VALENZUELA

163

discurso en esta parte? La Autora vuelve al Texto, pero lo hace como ‘huésped’, como ‘Rulitos’; su inscripción es lúdica’ (1985: 881) [Who controls the discourse in this part? The Author returns to the Text, but she does it as ‘a guest’, as ‘Curly’; her inscription is playful]. In the third section of the novel it becomes clear that the Brujo is gradually losing his power, his virility, for as he puts it: ‘Mi virilidad queda así depositada en estos tubos de ensayo como falos de vidrio . . .’ (1983: 253) [. . . my virility remains on deposit in these test tubes that are like glass phalluses . . .’] (1987: 234). He nevertheless perceives himself as having taken control of the dominant discourse, of the Symbolic Order, and therefore to be all-powerful, autonomous, capable of functioning without the help of the female of the species. Perceiving no direct opposition at the level of language, the Brujo has been lulled into a sense of security which allows him the time he needs to develop his plans. However, while I would agree with Paley Francescato that there is a certain playful quality to the part that Luisa Valenzuela the narrator, now back in the guise of Rulitos (Curly), plays in this section, it is necessary to examine more fully the implications of this situation. For if, again according to Paley Francescato: ‘. . . ella logra desvirgar el mito del discurso masculino [. . .] el látigo de la palabra es el ‘lenguaje hémbrico’ con el que golpea al hombre y lo penetra’ (1985: 882) [. . . she succeeds in deflowering the myth of masculine language [. . .] the whip of the word is ‘women’s language’ with which she whips and penetrates the man], there should be clues as to the nature of this ‘lenguaje hémbrico’ within the text. In what remains of this chapter, I shall examine the possibility of searching for what is specifically feminine in it. Magnarelli (1988: 145) points out that the reader is ‘forced, throughout the novel, to read between the lines’. She goes on to highlight the many times within the text that this message is stated overtly: ‘creo en la virtud de leer entre líneas’ (1983: 198) [‘I believe in the virtue of reading between the lines’] (1987: 179), ‘Leer entre líneas es la consigna’ (1983: 230) [‘Reading between the lines is the key’] (1987: 211), ‘Hay que leer entre líneas, entre letras, fuera de caja’ (1983: 231) [‘We have to read between the lines, between the letters, out of the box . . .’] (1987: 213). Moreover, from the very opening pages of the novel, in the prophecy quoted earlier in this chapter, the existence of a disruptive voice is apparent. For the powerful naming voice in the prophecy is constantly interrupted and undermined by comments in parenthesis. In the third section of the novel, this opposition is crucial, so that the Symbolic Order, the world of language to which the Brujo has now been consigned, is disrupted and distorted at every level. Julia Kristeva (1984: 21–2) addresses what she calls ‘the awkward question of the extra-linguistic’, which, she says, ‘has always been a particular problem for semiotics, which is concerned with specifying the functioning of signifying practices such as art, poetry and myth that are irreducible to the ‘language’ object’. In order to view language, or the signifying process, as a whole, incorporating both the extra-linguistic and the “language object”, she ‘designates two modalities for what is, for us, the same signifying process’ (1984: 23–4). These modalities she calls ‘the semiotic’ and ‘the symbolic’.

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

164

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 164

LINDA CRAIG

The second of these designations, ‘the symbolic’ accords with the Lacanian concept of the law of the father, but the first, which is of particular interest to this reading of Cola de lagartija, is less familiar and harder to define. Kristeva talks of the ‘semiotic chora’, and she approaches the concept primarily by drawing a parallel between the term ‘semiotic’ in its Greek sense as a distinctive mark, trace, precursory sign, imprint; and the Freudian idea of the facilitation and disposition of drives. As Kristeva (1984: 25) puts it: Discrete quantities of energy move through the body of the subject who is not yet constituted as such and, in the course of his development, they are arranged according to the various constraints imposed on his body – always already involved in a semiotic process – by family and social structures. In this way the drives, which are ‘energy’ charges as well as ‘psychical’ marks, articulate what we call a chora.

The term chora is one which she borrows from Plato, and which she defines as an indeterminate articulation which owes nothing to the idea of representation; indeed it ‘precedes evidence, verisimilitude, spatiality and temporality’, and it differs most from ‘the symbolic’ in the sense that it is not articulated as the absence of an object. Both ‘the semiotic chora’ and ‘the symbolic’ are constantly present within the signifying process. However, the semiotic chora would be apparent in slippage, in condensation and in rhythms within the text, which could correspond to the type of disruption and distortion to be found in Cola de lagartija. While these features occur throughout the text, they achieve greater importance in the final section, for here, having left the realms of the Symbolic, the author/narrator could be deemed to have merged with ‘the semiotic chora’. She could be discerned, therefore, in moments of incoherence, in gaps in the text and in word games, such as the lines which describe the Brujo in his attempt to transcend gender differences: ‘Le Bruj ahora tan dulce, por fin acariciable, radiante, morbid, tod de blanc vestid’ (1983: 274).8 Kristeva (1983: 29) goes on to ‘ally the functioning of that “air or song beneath the text” with woman’, by citing the importance of the mother’s body to the infant, and by quoting some lines from the poetry of Mallarmé which posit literature as a rhythm made intelligible by syntax, and which describe that rhythm as ‘she’ and ‘our Lady’. The idea echoes Paley Francescato’s mention of what is actually Valenzuela’s own description of a ‘lenguaje hémbrico’. The Brujo’s downfall comes about, therefore, as the result of his attempt to imprison both masculine and feminine discourses within the Symbolic Order. For in his delirium of omnipotence, he excludes the feminine principle from his

8 The English translation cannot capture the extent to which this disrupts grammatical gender. It does, however, describe the Brujo as ‘s/he’.

Mono219-CH-08.qxd

9/22/05

9:03 AM

Page 165

LUISA VALENZUELA

165

calculations. He had no mother, and for that reason, no means of access to the feminine principle. In his narcissism he is unaware of the Other and he sees himself as all-encompassing, but, in fact, at the most basic level of the text, it is clear, as Magnarelli points out, that Cola de lagartija is opened, closed and organised by a female voice. Thus, despite moments in which the narrator displays feelings of disillusionment and desperation, Cola de lagartija is ultimately a novel which succeeds in its attempt to find a way of counteracting the violence and senselessness into which Argentina was plunged in the 1970s. By means of language, her only weapon, she has found a way of isolating the perpetrators within the Symbolic Order and thus of controlling them. The role of the writer in situations such as these is to name the evil abroad, and thereby to demystify it. It should be clear that this is not to say that the Semiotic as described by Kristeva is only available to the female of the species, nor that Valenzuela’s text holds this to be the case. Quite the contrary. Cola de lagartija is not dealing with the concepts of male and female as essential, given entities, but rather with a more metaphorical idea of masculine and feminine attributes. The military dictatorship, in its strivings for law, order and total control, has lost sight of any alternative discourse, and Valenzuela has set herself the unusual task of exploring this, of, as Kantaris (1995: 44) in his telling study of this novel puts it: ‘resignifying the very same “arms” which have been used to deny plural signification, to deny access to multiple meanings.’ This rigid mentality, which, returning to Kantaris: ‘marks the irrational psycho-sexual edge of fascism’ (1995: 45), is not infinite. It has boundaries and gaps which can be and have been profitably exploited by their political and discursive opponents. Whether or not this peace is only to last for twenty years, since ‘lo que vendrá puede ser postergado para siempre’ (1983: 9) [What’s coming can be postponed forever], is unclear. Shaw (1998) appears to agree with Cordónes-Cook and Bruce Gartner who emphasise the negative nature of the novel’s ending, suggesting cyclical returns to violence. Certainly the idea of total success is not postulated, the issues are too complex. While that battle is over, the war has not been won, the feminist project is far from complete, and moreover the difficulties around the Argentine people’s implication in their difficult history are not fully resolved.

Mono219-Conclution.qxd

9/22/05

9:04 AM

Page 166

Conclusion And yet women do think. Think they do and think they have from time immemorial. Rosi Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance.

The aim of this work has been to look at marginality and gender as presented in the novels of Onetti, Valenzuela and Puig. These issues are enormous and many-faceted. They can at times be read as quite distinct and separate areas of thought, while at others they intertwine or even overlap to the extent of becoming one and the same. While I have not taken a specifically historical approach, the three writers do come from a similar period and geographical area. The novels examined span the forty-five years from 1939 (El pozo) to 1983 (Cola de lagartija), although they are concentrated mainly around the 1960s; and they are all from the River Plate area. As a result of this temporal and spatial coincidence, there are aspects of the works which reflect and highlight historical factors at play in the region, which reflect, themselves, the consequences of earlier historical and sociological phenomena. The overriding historical issue in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in both Argentina and Uruguay was the influx of millions of immigrants. David Rock (1975: 11) maintains that: ‘between 1869 and 1929, 60% of Argentina’s population growth can be attributed to immigration’. The vast majority of these people came from Italy and Spain, while others came from Russia, the Balkan states and many other regions of Europe. What was to be found, therefore, apart from the growing ranks of people in cities such as Buenos Aires and Montevideo, was a situation in which small towns with largely immigrant populations grew up in spaces which had previously been virtually empty. Or certainly they had been depicted as such, especially in the wake of the genocidal killing off of the native population in the late nineteenth century.1 Onetti’s imaginary Santa María, a small town on the banks of the River Paraná, whose population has surnames such as Larsen, Díaz Grey and Barthé, reflects this historical process. So too does Puig’s Coronel Vallejos, which is based on the small town

1 This issue is still contentious. Currently a group, led by a historian, Osvaldo Bayer meets every two weeks in the centre of Buenos Aires by the statue of General Roca, leader of ‘la campaña del desierto’ [The desert campaign]. This was an example of ethnic cleansing in which indigenous people of this region were simply wiped out in massacres. Bayer and others are protesting that historians should be teaching who Roca was, and that the statue be removed. Another suggestion he has made is that the town of General Villegas be renamed Manuel Puig. http://argentina.indymedia.org/news/2004/05/197493.php (consulted 1 May 2005).

Mono219-Conclution.qxd

9/22/05

9:04 AM

Page 167

CONCLUSION

167

in the pampa, Coronel Villegas, where he grew up. In La traición de Rita Hayworth, this immigrant background is overtly referred to when mention is made of the existence of relatives who are working the land in Italy. In contrast with the image of freedom and space conjured up by the seemingly vast empty spaces, recalling similar representations in Hollywood westerns, the towns depicted are narrow, rigid little places, where the majority of the population is engaged in leading particularly dull, conventional lives. This is viewed as it were from the ‘outside’ (or through the eyes of somewhat unconventional characters) in Onetti’s works, and from the ‘inside’ in those of Puig, who, with tremendous humanity, reveals the poverty of the limited discourses available to these people. Onetti’s El astillero and Juntacadáveres, and the novels by Puig examined in this thesis, La traición de Rita Hayworth and Boquitas pintadas, are all set in small provincial backwaters, and Clara, the chief protagonist of Valenzuela’s Hay que sonreír, is depicted as coming to Buenos Aires from a similar place. Thus there is a way in which the historical events in these two countries perhaps inevitably inform the novels; indeed such events can be said to have had a profound influence on their very settings and on the discourses common to the different protagonists. The foundation of Santa María is actually described, if in a rather fantastic way, in another of Onetti’s novels, La vida breve, and if La traición de Rita Hayworth maps out the different tensions and cultural norms at play in such a setting, Puig’s next novel shows the beginning of a tendency to abandon such places for the city. This, as has been pointed out above, is echoed in Valenzuela’s Hay que sonreír. The common historical background leads to the appearance of a shared cultural heritage. For these immigrants to the ‘new world’2 were often anxious to leave behind, as far as possible, all traces of their past lives, and to assimilate themselves into a new society, its values and its culture. There is, therefore, a search for new cultural symbols exemplified, in the works of all three of the writers, by the tango. The melancholy and irony of tango pervades many of these texts. The absurd, almost touching, image of Larsen with his trousers rolled up, soaking his feet, listening to a tango recalls Onetti’s claim, quoted in the chapter on Juntacadáveres, that if you want to understand something of his writing, and of men from the River Plate region in general, then you have to listen to Carlos Gardel, perhaps for years. The use of tango in Puig’s novel Boquitas pintadas has been explored in some detail in the chapter on that novel, where it is included within a broader argument around the issue of marginality. Tango appears, too, in the work of Valenzuela, again in Hay que sonreír, where Clara finds one of her ex-lovers singing tangos in a particularly seedy dance hall populated by prostitutes and pimps. 2 I concentrate mainly on the experience of the immigrant populations because the novels do too. Some allusions are made to the indigenous population in Onetti’s dark prostitutes, and in some of the characters in Boquitas pintadas, and some of the issues regarding the even greater marginalisation of these people are outlined in the chapter on the latter.

Mono219-Conclution.qxd

168

9/22/05

9:04 AM

Page 168

LINDA CRAIG

The works of these three writers, therefore, depict a common history and a common cultural background. However, while these areas have been explored within this study wherever relevant, I have not taken a historico-cultural approach so much as a psychoanalytic one. Although I have used the works of diverse theorists, some psychoanalytic and some more social, the principal theoretical issue explored here is that of the Symbolic and Imaginary Orders as explored in the work of Lacan. In his re-reading of the Freudian Oedipal conflict, Lacan emphasises the importance of language within this developmental model. In the broadest terms, this division into the Imaginary and Symbolic orders, which is fundamental to Lacanian psychoanalysis, is held here to represent the perceived division between that which is held to be central, or to incorporate an image of centrality, which would pertain to the Symbolic, as opposed to that which escapes from that image of authority, or which in different ways exceeds its boundaries, which would be representative of the Imaginary. The latter, deemed here to take many different forms, but always supplementary to some rigid belief system, incorporates the idea of marginality. Carrying on in the same vein, I have appealed to Kristeva and to Irigaray for their accounts of Lacanian thought, accounts which further open up issues of language and gender. In other sections I have drawn on the more social analysis of other theorists. Bakhtin’s work on the carnivalesque, for example, much used in Latin American critical circles, provides a useful tool with which to examine the nature of the strange language employed by Valenzuela in El gato eficaz. Foucault points out how we are trapped within the realms of language, and thus within discourses which denote issues such as marginality and gender; and both Lyotard and Jameson provide insights into the postmodern project, which also addresses such issues, and they also appear in this work; but my primary approach has been psychoanalytic. There is a number of reasons for this choice of approach. First, there is the importance given to psychoanalytic, and more specifically to Lacanian, thought particularly in Buenos Aires. There are many Argentine Lacanian psychoanalysts. Another area in which his ideas have been explored is that of literary criticism. In this field his influence is felt beyond the boundaries of Buenos Aires in much of Latin America, as is exemplified in the work of René Alberto Campos, cited in this thesis, on Puig; and in that of Martha Paley Francescato on Valenzuela. Thus the idea of reading Latin American works from a Lacanian perspective is one which is already established within the sub-continent. Moreover, Valenzuela herself is deeply influenced by psychoanalysis. She has written theoretical work which explores different areas of the subject,3 and both El gato eficaz and Cola de lagartija are couched in terms which point to her interest in the field. Puig shows a similar leaning; indeed, in one of his novels not touched on

3 An example of Valenzuela’s theoretical work with a psychoanalytical bias is ‘Mis brujas favoritas’, which can be found in Theory and Practice of Feminist Literary Criticism, Gabriela Mora and Karen Van Hooft (eds.) (1982: 85–95).

Mono219-Conclution.qxd

9/22/05

9:04 AM

Page 169

CONCLUSION

169

in this book, The Buenos Aires Affair, visits to an analyst form part of the plot. That novel is less immediately relevant to the issues examined here, but it does highlight Puig’s concerns. A psychoanalytic approach also raises questions of fantasy, which are vital to the works of all three writers. Fantasy is central to the worlds of Onetti’s Linacero and Larsen. Similarly Puig’s device of the hidden narrator allows his protagonists to give full rein to their fantasies, and two of Valenzuela’s works, El gato eficaz and Cola de lagartija could be read as protracted fantasies. Lastly, there is a fluidity of identification allowed for in psychoanalytical theory which brings out aspects of these novels which a socio-cultural approach would not allow. This is not to say that a socio-cultural, or socio-political, approach does not have its strengths. Jean Franco’s article on El astillero, entitled ‘La máquina rota’ (1980), is one which I have referred to in the chapter on that novel, and it explores the idea of fullness or plenitude in the novel as depicted in works by Balzac and Thomas Mann, and contrasts this with the pervasive emptiness to be found in Onetti’s novel. Franco talks of the use of Christian and capitalist symbols and examines how these symbols are ultimately revealed to be empty, no more than representations of illusions. Referring specifically to the capitalist system as represented in the novel, she points out that capitalism originated in Europe where over time the institutions and ideologies necessary to that system were created, whereas in Puerto Astillero, such laws of historical evolution were not obeyed. Rather this system was grafted on to a very different reality. As Franco says, the image of fullness and of belief in the possiblity of progress to be found in the nineteenth-century European novels of Balzac, and even persisting into the twentieth century in those of Mann, were written from what was then deemed to be the cultural centre, the metropolis. Such an image cannot hold up in countries which are marginal to it. Onetti provides, in this sense, no more than a particularly stark example, for the images of plenitude and progress to be found in the bourgeois, Realist novel bore little relevance to the historical reality of Latin America. Juan Carlos Onetti is of course from a slightly earlier generation than the other two writers. Significantly, the novel looked at in the first chapter, El pozo, dates back to 1939, while his later novels, like those of Puig and like Valenzuela’s first novel, Hay que sonreír, are from the 1960s. The reason for having chosen El pozo should perhaps therefore be stated. The point is that this is an early work of an author who established the nature and the concerns of his literary universe within it. While not wishing to diminish in any way the breadth and depth of Onetti’s oeuvre, it is nevertheless a fact that many of the themes and preoccupations which are explored and developed in his later writing are already present in this early work. One of the purposes of including the work of Onetti, apart from its indisputable literary value, has been to point to his work as a kind of touchstone, a representative of a literary world against which the other two writers are kicking. Thus El pozo, a novel which is fundamental to Onetti’s work, becomes fundamental here too. The idea of marginality in Onetti’s work, while it can be analysed as Jean Franco has done, as a result of socio-political factors, can also be addressed in

Mono219-Conclution.qxd

170

9/22/05

9:04 AM

Page 170

LINDA CRAIG

metaphysical terms. This is an idea that Franco does in fact touch on, but does not really develop. The concept of alienation, not so much in Marxist terms but rather in an existential sense, is one that has been addressed at some length. The similarities between Onetti’s Linacero and Sartre’s Roquentin have been analysed, and there can be no doubt that there is a measure of existential angst to be found, not only in the persona of Linacero, but also in that of Onetti’s later protagonist, Larsen, whose constant search for meaning in a world full of empty symbols proves fruitless. This metaphysical alienation could be perceived as a state of marginality from a mythical or symbolic image of centrality which, in El astillero, is represented by the figure of Jeremías Petrus, the embodiment of all that Larsen aspires to. In Juntacadáveres, it is represented by the despised townsfolk and the priest. There is, in Onetti’s work, a constant dynamic between marginality as a positive or a negative state. While the use of a third-person narrator, and a certain coherent surface structure, lend Onetti’s work a certain hint of literary realism, which is profoundly at odds with the writings of Puig and with Valenzuela’s El gato eficaz and Cola de lagartija, a closer look at his work actually reveals a constant questioning of realism. This can be found in many of the different elements which make up his novels. The constant reference to the very process of construction, particularly apparent in El pozo, serves to distance the reader from the temptation of seeing the novel as a representation of reality. This is true of other devices such as the unreliable narrator and the questioning of time. It is almost as though the novels of Onetti were to provide a stepping-stone between realism and the more overt experimentalism of Puig and Valenzuela. The image of outsiders, of characters marginalised from a centre, is common to all three writers. But the nature of their marginality is depicted, in many respects, quite differently. In Onetti’s works the pervading image is one of a group of men which includes a number of secondary characters who, in a sense, marginalise themselves, from mainstream society. These men, in contrast to the more conventional characters around them, question their existence, choosing to lead less accepting, what they believe to be more honest lives than those of the general mass. In Lacanian terms, these protagonists reject the constraints of the Symbolic Order; law, church, and general prohibitions. They lead lives which have a freer quality, lives with space for their fantasies. They even marginalise themselves physically: Linacero closes himself away in his ‘pit’, and Larsen lives outside of the town of Santa María. Yet while Onetti’s novels explore the metaphysical probings of these marginal protagonists, they do not problematise in any way the situation of their female counterparts. Onetti’s novels fail to interrogate the situation of women. In fact, his is a metaphysics based on the exclusion and marginality of women, a repetition of the Greek tradition which aligns men with the mind, with thought and with the concept of transcendence, and women with the body and immanence. It is interesting how Onetti has managed to explore and examine a world of marginality, while he has at no point begun to integrate an analysis of gender. So that while the most marginalised characters of all within his novels are the female

Mono219-Conclution.qxd

9/22/05

9:04 AM

Page 171

CONCLUSION

171

protagonists, beings who have not so much rejected the Symbolic Order, but rather have been totally excluded from it, the novels barely address the female problematic. At best, very little understanding of their condition is expressed; at worst, they are juxtaposed with objects, or described as corpses, rather than viewed as sentient human beings. The concept of marginality in Onetti’s work has also been explored from the point of view of an all-pervading sense of geographical division. The image of Santa María, far from any geographical centre but rather a place of rootlessness, can be deemed to reflect a general feeling of distance from a centre, a feeling which was part of the inheritance of the generations of Uruguayans and Argentines who either came from Europe or were of European descent. These two issues take on very different resonances in the work of the second author, Puig. For in his writing the idea of marginality is constantly explored and called into question, and that of gender is much less fixed than it is in the work of Onetti. Whereas the concept of marginality as it is found in the works of Onetti carries an overwhelmingly metaphysical charge, in the novels of Puig it takes on a much more directly social one. The geographical setting might serve a similar function in the works of the two writers, placing them on the margins of society, but the depiction of the protagonists is quite different. Thus while Onetti’s central protagonists are almost exclusively adult males, those of Puig represent a much wider cross section of society in terms of age, class, colour and gender. The main protagonists in La traición de Rita Hayworth are Toto, a young boy who is depicted first as a baby and ultimately as a teenager, and Mita, his mother. Other protagonists claim centre stage at different times; these include a spinster, a widow, other teenage boys and girls and a young woman crossed in love. The only adult male of importance is Toto’s father, and he is conspicuous mainly by his absence. Indeed the lack of a father could be seen as the central theme of the novel. The plurality of protagonists is apparent from the first chapter where a chorus of voices of indeterminate identity, engages in what might be described as ‘women’s talk’ and gossip. The other novel by Puig, Boquitas pintadas, shows a similar tendency, although the emphasis is on early adulthood. Moreover, two of these protagonists are men, but the tendency to favour other protagonists continues since much more narrative space is dedicated to the girls and their development into womanhood. One of the principal characteristics shared by the two novels is their impersonal writing technique. There is no third-person narrator, no authoritative voice. If Onetti had already questioned the construct of the third-person, omniscient narrator by employing the idea of the ‘unreliable narrator’, Puig took this idea further by totally banishing the possibility of a voice of authority. The novels are written in such a way that, by means of different devices, such as letters, police reports, extracts from diaries and school compositions, among others, the protagonists speak for themselves. It is a technique which, through language, allows a particularly clear view of class and gender differences and which highlights at

Mono219-Conclution.qxd

172

9/22/05

9:04 AM

Page 172

LINDA CRAIG

times different protagonists’ profoundly differing perceptions of the same situation, perceptions coloured by race, class and gender. This absence of the central voice of authority allows the marginalised, those who are so often rendered invisible, to take centre stage, and with these lowermiddle class and working class protagonists come the forms of culture that they lived with and consumed. Thus popular culture in the form of Hollywood women’s films, the tango and the folletín are also brought in from the margins. Puig’s novels actually privilege the marginalised, they bring to the centre previously ignored types of people and cultural forms and succeed in disrupting the very idea of marginality. If Hollywood is to serve as the paradigmatic centre, then that centre is a myth, indeed the very concept of a centre is a betrayal. Thus the idea of a centre and margins gives way to a different construct, an image which does away with the concept of ‘other’, for these protagonists and cultural forms would generally be held to denote ‘otherness’. Here such a concept is replaced by an image which might best be described as more of the same. The issue of marginality is therefore profoundly questioned in these two novels and so, too, is that of gender. Onetti’s corpses are not to be found in the work of Puig, but this is not to say that the female protagonists in Puig’s work take on some kind of rounded characterisation as might be presented in novels of the realist genre; rather Puig depicts protagonists who are trapped within the constraints of the discourses that surround them. These discourses, while they denote a broad spectrum of issues including those of race and class, are probably most apparent and most deeply probed in the area of gender. In Boquitas pintadas, the area of sexual conventions and of gender roles is highlighted since it is of overwhelming importance to this group of young adults. Their lives are governed by such issues. So the two men play out stereotypically machista roles, drinking, gambling and using women. These roles in both cases lead to their deaths, while the women strain, manipulate and suffer within the confines of their allotted place. While the masculine model is shown to be deadening, fatal, it is the feminine model which is given greater weight; so if the novel depicts social life as performance for men it is shown to be very much more so for women. These women live within a culture – within discourses which demand the impossible of them. They must be pretty, must at least appear to be virgins, must be knowing and manipulative while appearing to be sweet and innocent; and the prize for succeeding at playing this game is marriage, a state which is unlikely to bring any true satisfaction. There is, throughout the novel, a feeling of concern for women bounded within such parameters, and an implied critique of these social roles. The situation in La traición de Rita Hayworth in terms of gender roles is, if anything, even more complex. Here it could be said that gender does not correspond with sex; for Mita, Toto’s mother is depicted as a strong, capable woman who has married her husband for his looks, and who is working to maintain the household, a traditional masculine role which he is incapable of fulfilling. If Mita is an example of a masculine woman, this is not as pronounced as the depiction of Toto as a feminine man or boy. Toto lives within spaces coded as feminine,

Mono219-Conclution.qxd

9/22/05

9:04 AM

Page 173

CONCLUSION

173

marked most clearly by the women’s films he so loves, and he has no interest in following traditionally masculine pursuits. He is extremely ambivalent and insecure around gender issues, unwilling to let go of an imaginary safe, protected world to claim any strongly gender-marked identity. In Lacanian terms he remains within the Imaginary Order symbolised by his mother and his preference for the feminine and does not emerge into the Symbolic. What is to be found, then, in Puig, is that the greater narrative space allotted to female protagonists and the acute depiction of the limitations imposed on women by traditional gender roles lead to novels of tremendous insight which bring into question cultural models and traditional views of gender. As well as pointing out the nature of this imposition, they also highlight the limitations imposed on masculine subjects, creating a narrative which ultimately subverts conventional notions of fixed gender identity. A similar questioning of the idea of a fixed gender identity can be found in the novels of the last of the authors, Valenzuela. It is more apparent, though, in the later works, El gato eficaz and Cola de lagartija than it is in the first novel studied, Hay que sonreír. For the latter, while providing a sympathetic perception of the life of a prostitute, and a scathing denunciation of patriarchy, does not problematise the issue of gender identity. What is clear from Hay que sonreír onwards is that in Valenzuela’s work there is an intersection between the ideas of marginality and gender. From the figure of Clara, the above-mentioned prostitute, to the more sophisticated, metaphorical workings of the later novels, one of the major themes to be traced is that of women or ‘the feminine’ as marginalised from power and from language. The very idea of using as central protagonist a prostitute, a category of womankind which has ever been rendered marginal to society in every way and which has generally been without a voice, already points to this mapping over of the concepts of marginality and gender. As with Puig, Valenzuela is involved in the business of bringing to the centre those who would traditionally be marginal. Valenzuela, to an even greater extent than Puig, places women in centre stage. Hay que sonreír traces the story of the exploitation of women, of their sensations of powerlessness and fragmentation, and highlights the contradictory nature of patriarchal discourse as inscribed on women. Without being a protest novel in any overt way, it has a highly political charge, pointing out the nature of linguistic oppression upon the disempowered within society. The next novel, El gato eficaz, deals with this same issue in a very different way. Here any hints of realism which might be found in the previous novel are banished completely, giving way to a fluid rambling which bears a resemblance to the idea of the ‘stream of consciousness’. This fluidity involves an exploration of gender at a psychic level, so that, for example, the narrator at one point changes sex in mid-flow, and any idea of a fixed identity of any kind is constantly undermined. Life/death, masculine/feminine, black/white; all of these categories become mutable as too does the dichotomy marginal/central. Yet there can be no doubt that one of the underlying themes of the novel is the privileging of the marginal.

Mono219-Conclution.qxd

174

9/22/05

9:04 AM

Page 174

LINDA CRAIG

The black gatos de la muerte (cats of death), symbolising woman, are more subtle, more dangerous and more powerful than their counterparts, the symbols of manhood, the white perros de la vida (dogs of life); and ultimately what remains are images of masks, of false images of gender which are imposed by patriarchal language and the values it espouses on to both the male and the female of the species, though undoubtedly more so on the female. The novel takes the form of an almost complete deconstruction of language and of the possibility of coherence. This is a far cry from Onetti’s nostalgia for a time or place of certainty, for some kind of essence. Rather the novel is a hymn to the idea of untying all of these threads, a celebration of incoherence as a means of unmasking old belief systems and prejudices. That this voice should come from the geographical margins of Western society is hardly coincidental. The issue of marginality in this thesis is underlined by the experience of geographical marginality of the three writers, all of whom are writing from a place that is both inside and outside of the commonly-held boundaries of Western society. And the fact of marginality is doubly marked in the case of Valenzuela given that she is a woman. This view echoes Borges’ idea, quoted in the introduction, that: ‘los argentinos [. . .] podemos manejar todos los temas europeos, manejarlos sin superstición, con una irreverencia que puede tener y ya tiene, consecuencias afortunadas’4 [We Argentines [. . .] can use all of the European motifs, use them without superstition, with an irreverence which can have and indeed has had fortunate consequences]. From this vantage point, Valenzuela has produced a novel which, like Puig’s work, questions the idea of fixed gender roles, both masculine and feminine, and the myths and discourses which are their basis. However, she has another axe to grind, for El gato eficaz is a novel which concentrates even more on the issue of the role of women in our societies and on that of femininity as performance. She is pointing out the necessity of rethinking and redefining the very concept of woman, of releasing women from the oppressive myths that trap them. The last novel, Cola de lagartija, is ostensibly quite different, since it deals with actual historical characters and with a specific time. It can, however, be held to have a similar function. Here the Symbolic Order is symbolised by the brutal dictatorship in Argentina in the 1970s and those who wielded power at that time; and it is counterposed by a feminine voice which ultimately withstands the alldevouring attack, and survives. The feminine principle, the Lacanian Imaginary as opposed to the Symbolic, proves to be that which can overcome the excesses of this extreme form of patriarchy. What Valenzuela has done is to have made interesting use of psychoanalysis in order to address the socio-political. The argument, therefore, is that the issue of marginality is constantly explored within the works of these writers, and that the resulting acute perceptions are owed at least in part to the fact that they, themselves, hail from the margins of

4 As has been noted in the introduction, these lines from Borges are from ‘El escritor argentino y la tradición’ in Discusión (1964: 151–62).

Mono219-Conclution.qxd

9/22/05

9:04 AM

Page 175

CONCLUSION

175

Western society. Less attached to superstitions, as Borges puts it, and more irreverent, they are in a position to question the myths and discourses that surround us and them. The intersection of marginality and gender means that a similar depth of insight has also been brought to bear on the second of these issues, particularly in the works of the second and third writers studied, Puig and Valenzuela.

Mono219-Bibliography.qxd

9/22/05

9:06 AM

Page 176

Works Cited Acevedo, Hugo 2004. Juan Carlos Onetti: El astillero. Available at Onetti Website. El Original. http://www.borris-mayer.net/onetti/onetti-acevedo1.html Andreu, Alicia 1983. ‘El folletín: de Galdós a Manuel Puig’, Revista Iberoamericana, 49: 541–6. Angel, Albalú 1988. ‘De vuelta del silencio’ (unpublished interview, New York). Arlt, Roberto 1926. El juguete rabioso, Buenos Aires: Latina. Bacarisse, Pamela 1988. The Necessary Dream: A Study of the Novels of Manuel Puig, Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination; Four Essays (trans.) Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press. ——— 1984a. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (trans.) Caryl Emerson: Manchester University Press. ——— 1984b. Rabelais and his World (trans.) Hélène Iswolsky, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Barthes, Roland 1975. S/Z. (trans.) Richard Miller, London: Jonathan Cape. ——— 1984. Le Degré zéro de l’écriture, Paris: Seuil. Baudelaire, Charles 1973. Les fleurs du mal, Paris: Livre de Poche. Beauvoir, Simone de 1988. The Second Sex (trans.) H. M. Parshley, London: Picador. Belsey, Catherine 1980. Critical Practice, London: Methuen. Benedetti, Mario 1973. ‘La aventura del hombre’ in Jorge Rufinelli (ed.), Onetti, Montevideo: Marcha. Bergmann, Emilie 1987. ‘Reshaping the Canon: Intertextuality in Spanish Novels of Female Development’, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporanea, 12: 141–56. Bernheimer, Charles, and Clare Kahane (eds) 1985. In Dora’s Case, London: Virago. Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente 1981. Sangre y Arena, Barcelona: Plaza y Janes. Borello, Rodolfo 1991. ‘Boquitas pintadas: narración y sentido’, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 491: 7–20. Borges, Jorge Luis 1964. Discusión, Buenos Aires: Emecé. _____ 1971. Ficciones, Madrid: Alianza. Borinsky, Alicia 1975. ‘Castración y lujos: la escritura de Manuel Puig’, Revista Iberoamericana, 41: 29–45. Bouchard, Donald 1977. Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Braidotti, Rosi 1991. Patterns of Dissonance (trans.) Elizabeth Guild, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bush, Peter 1991. The Pit, London: Quartet. Butler, David 2002. ‘Juan Carlos Onetti: A Metaphysics of Time’, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 79 (4), July: 487–512. Butler, Judith 1990. ‘Gender Trouble: Feminist Theory and Psychoanalytic Discourse’, in Linda J. Nicholson (ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism, London: Routledge, 324–40.

Mono219-Bibliography.qxd

9/22/05

9:06 AM

Page 177

WORKS CITED

177

Caistor, Nick 1992. The Shipyard, London: Serpent’s Tail Campos, René, A. 1985. Espejos: la textura cinemática en ‘La traición de Rita Hayworth’, Madrid: Pliegos. Castellanos, Rosario 1971. Album de familia, México: Joaquín Mortiz. Collier, Simon 1988. Carlos Gardel: su vida, su música y su época, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. Corbatta, Jorgelina 1983. ‘Encuentros con Manuel Puig’, Revista Iberoamericana, 49: 591–620. Cortázar, Julio 1979. Rayuela, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. Craig, Linda 1999. ‘ “The cadaver raised its head and tried to smile”: The Prostitute in Onetti’s Juntacadáveres and Luisa Valenzuela’s Hay que sonreír’, in Gustavo San Román (ed.) Onetti and Others: Comparative Essays on a Major Figure in Latin American Literature, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 121–32. Cuddon, J. A. 1982. A Dictionary of Literary Terms, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Deredita, John 1973. ‘El lenguaje de la desintegración: notas sobre El astillero’, in Jorge Ruffinelli (ed.) Onetti, Montevideo: Biblioteca de Marcha. Derrida, Jacques 1978. Writing and Difference, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Díaz, Gwendolyn (ed.) 2002. Luisa Valenzuela sin mascara, Buenos Aires: Feminaria. Eagleton, Terry 1983. Literary Theory: An Introduction, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Eloy Martínez, Tomás 1987. La novela de Perón, Buenos Aires: Legasa. ——— 1997. ‘Manuel Puig: La muerte no es un adiós’, Buenos Aires, La Nación: 1997 in http://www.literatura.org.TEMartinez/mpuig.html Felman, Shoshana 1985. Women and Madness: Literature /Philosophy/ Psychoanalysis, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Foster, David 2003. ‘Queering Latin American popular culture’, in Stephen Hart and Richard Young (eds), Contemporary Latin American Cultural Studies, London: Arnold, 253–67. Foucault, Michel 1970. The Order of Things, London: Tavistock. ——— 1981. ‘The Order of Discourse’, in Robert Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader, Boston: Routledge. Francescato, Martha Paley 1985. ‘Cola de lagartija: látigo de la palabra y la triple P’, Revista Iberoamericana, 51: 875–82. Franco, Jean 1980. ‘La máquina rota’, Texto Crítico, Xalapa, 18–19: 33–46. Frankenthaler, Marilyn 1980. ‘Onetti y Sartre: convergencias y divergencias’, in Texto Crítico, Xalapa, 18–19: 137–44. Frazer, James G. 1922. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, London: Macmillan. Freud, Sigmund 1977a. ‘Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes’, in On Sexuality, Pelican Freud Library, 7, Harmondsworth: Pelican, 323–44. ——— 1977b. ‘The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex’, in On Sexuality, 313–22. ——— 1984. ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’, in On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis, Pelican Freud Library, 12, Harmondsworth: Pelican, 59–98. Gartner, Bruce 1994. ‘Un regodeo en el asco: Dismembered Bodies in Luisa Valenzuela’s The Lizard’s Tail’, Indiana Journal of Hispanic Literature, 2.2: 203–25.

Mono219-Bibliography.qxd

178

9/22/05

9:06 AM

Page 178

WORKS CITED

Gartner, Bruce 1996. ‘Un regodeo en el asco: cuerpos despedazados en Cola de lagartija de Luisa Valenzuela’, in Gwendolyn Díaz and María Inés Lagos (eds), La palabra en vilo: narrativa de Luisa Valenzuela, Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 79–111. Giersberg, Sabine 1999. ‘I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind’: Onetti and Ecclesiastes’ in Gustavo San Román (ed.), Onetti and Others: Comparative Essays on a Major Figure in Latin American Literature, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 163–75. Gillespie, Richard 1982. Soldiers of Perón: Argentina’s Montoneros, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gledhill, Christine (ed.) 1987. Home Is where the Heart Is, London: British Film Institute. Graves, Robert 1955. The Greek Myths I, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Güiraldes, Ricardo 1926. Don Segundo Sombra, Buenos Aires: Proa. Haskell, Molly 1973. From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Chicago: University Press. Huizinga, Johan 1970. Homo Ludens, London: Paladin. Hutter, Bridget, and Gillian Williams (eds) 1981. Controlling Women: The Normal and the Deviant, London: Croom Helm. Ionesco, Eugene 1958. The Bald Prima Donna, London: Calder. Jameson, Fredric 1986. ‘Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism’ Social Text, 15: 65–88. ——— 1991. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, London: Verso. Jones, Ann Rosalind 1988. ‘Inscribing Femininity: French Theories of the Feminine’, in Gayle Green and Coppélia Kahn (eds), Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism, London: Routledge, 80–112. Kantaris, Elia Geoffrey 1995. The subversive psyche: contemporary women’s narrative from Argentina and Uruguay, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kaplan, E. Ann 1987. ‘Mothering, Feminism and Representation’ in Christine Gledhill (ed.), Home is Where the Heart is, London: BFI, 113–37. Kerr, Lucille 1987. Suspended Fictions, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Kristeva, Julia 1981. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ——— 1984. Revolution in Poetic Language, New York: Columbia University Press. Kuhn, Annette and Susannah Radstone 1990. The Women’s Companion to International Film, London: Virago. Lacan, Jacques 1970. ‘The Order of Discourse’ in Robert Young (ed.) 1981. Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 48–77. ——— 1977. Écrits: A Selection, London: Tavistock Publications. Laplanche, Jean, and J-B. Pontalis 1985. The Language of Psycho-Analysis, London: Hogarth. Levine, Suzanne Jill 2001. Manuel Puig and the spider woman: his life and fictions, University of Wisconsin Press. Ludmer, Josefina 1977. Los procesos de construcción del relato, Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana. Lyotard, Jean-François 1986. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester: University Press.

Mono219-Bibliography.qxd

9/22/05

9:06 AM

Page 179

WORKS CITED

179

MacAdam, Alfred 1990. ‘The Death of Manuel Puig’, Review: Latin American Literature and Arts, 43: 66. Magnarelli, Sharon 1984. ‘From Hay que sonreír to Cambio de armas’, World Literature Today, 58: 9–13. ——— 1985. The Lost Rib: Female Characters in the Spanish-American Novel, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. ——— 1988. Reflections/ Refractions: Reading Luisa Valenzuela, New York: Peter Lang. Maloof, Judy 1995. Over Her Dead Body: The Construction of Male Subjectivity in Onetti, New York: Peter Lang. Martínez, Z. Nelly 1979–80. ‘El gato eficaz de Luisa Valenzuela: la productividad del texto’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, 4: 73–80. Mast, Gerald, and Marshall Cohen 1976. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Reading, Oxford: University Press. Metcalf, Fred 1986. Penguin Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, London: Penguin. Millington, Mark 1985. Reading Onetti, Liverpool: Francis Cairns. ——— 1987. ‘No Woman’s Land: The Representation of Woman in Onetti’, Modern Language Notes, 102: 359–77. Minard, Evelyne 1988. ‘La pulsion orale, support de l’intertexte dans la composition de José Casals, “Chapitre XIII de La traición de Rita Hayworth” ’, Caravelle 51: 59–74. Mitchell, Juliet, and Jacqueline Rose 1982. Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the École freudienne, London: Macmillan. Modleski, Tanya 1982. Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women, London: Methuen. Moi, Toril 1985. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory, London: Methuen. ——— (ed.) 1986. The Kristeva Reader, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Moller Okin, Susan 1980. Women in Western Political Thought, London: Virago. Monsiváis, Carlos 1980. ‘Onetti: los monstruos engendran los sueños de la razón’, Texto Crítico, Xalapa, 18–19: 13–21. Moreno Aliste, Ximena 1973. Origen y sentido de la farsa en la obra de Juan Carlos Onetti, Poitiers: Centre de Recherches Latino-Américaines de l’Université de Poitiers. Naipaul, V. S. 1980. The Return of Eva Perón, London: André Deutsch. Nicholson, Linda, J. (ed.) 1990. Feminism/Postmodernism, London: Routledge. Okin, Susan Moller 1980. Women in Western Political Thought, London: Virago. Olivari, Nicolás 1982. La musa de la mala pata, Buenos Aires: América Latina. Onetti, Juan Carlos 1950. La vida breve, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. ——— 1975. Requiem por Faulkner y otros artículos, Montevideo: Arca. ——— 1982. El pozo, Barcelona: Seix Barral (trans.) Peter Bush 1991. The Pit, London: Quartet. ——— 1983a. El astillero, Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra (trans.) Nick Caistor 1992. The Shipyard, London: Serpent’s Tail. ——— 1983b. Juntacadáveres, Madrid: Alianza (trans.) Alfred MacAdam 1991. Body Snatcher, London: Quartet. Ordóñez, Monserrat 1985. ‘Máscara de espejos, un juego especular’, Revista Iberoamericana, 51: 511–19. Pauls, Alan 1986. Manuel Puig: ‘La traición de Rita Hayworth’, Buenos Aires: Hachette.

Mono219-Bibliography.qxd

180

9/22/05

9:06 AM

Page 180

WORKS CITED

Picon Garfield, Evelyn 1985. Women’s Voices from Latin America, Detroit: Wayne State University. Prego, Omar 1986. Juan Carlos Onetti: perfil de un solitario, Montevideo: Ediciones Trilce. Puig, Manuel 1981. La traición de Rita Hayworth, Barcelona: Seix Barral, Nueva Narrativa Hispana (trans.) Suzanne Jill Levine 1981. Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, New York: Vintage Books. ——— 1986. Boquitas pintadas, Barcelona: Seix Barral, Biblioteca del Bolsillo (trans.) Suzanne Jill Levine 1973. Heartbreak Tango, New York: Penguin. Rock, David 1975. Politics in Argentina 1890–1930: The Rise and Fall of Radicalism, Cambridge: University Press. Rodríguez Monegal, Emir 1973. ‘Conversación con Juan Carlos Onetti’, in Jorge Rufinelli (ed.), Onetti, Montevideo: Marcha, 248–57. Rowe, William, and Vivian Schelling 1991. Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America, London: Verso. Ruffinelli, Jorge 1973. Onetti, Montevideo: Biblioteca de Marcha. ——— 1974. ‘Notas sobre Larsen’, Cuadernos Americanos, 292–94, Oct.–Dec: 111–17. Safir, Margery 1975. ‘Mitología: otro nivel de metalenguaje en Boquitas pintadas’, Revista Iberoamericana, 41: 47–58. Saltz, Joanne 1988. ‘Stories of Power: The Short Narrative of Luisa Valenzuela’, unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan. Sarduy, Severo 1969. ‘Boquitas pintadas: parodia e injerto’, Sur; 321: 71–7. Sarlo, Beatriz 1985. El imperio de los sentimientos, Buenos Aires: Catálogos. ——— 1988. Una modernidad periférica: Buenos Aires 1920 y 1930, Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión. Shaw, Donald 1998. The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction, New York: State University of New York Press. Sheridan, Alan (trans.) 1977. Écrits: A Selection, London: Tavistock. Smith, Paul Julian 1989. The Body Hispanic: Gender and Sexuality in Spanish and Spanish American Literature, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sobel, Lester A. 1975. Argentina and Perón, 1970–75, New York: Facts on File. Speranza, Graciela 2000. Manuel Puig: Después del fin de la literatura, Buenos Aires: Grupo Editorial Norma. Swanson, Philip 1999. ‘Onetti and Donoso: Heroes and Whores in Juntacadáveres and El lugar sin límites’, in Gustavo San Román (ed.), Onetti and Others: Comparative Essays on a Major Figure in Latin American Literature, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 35–49. Thompson, J. A. K. 1953. The Ethics of Aristotle: The Nichomacean Ethics, London: Allen and Unwin. Turton, Peter 1974–5. ‘Para una interpretación de El astillero de Juan Carlos Onetti’, Reflexión 2, 3–4: 275–95. ——— 1976. ‘Lo rectilíneo y lo circular en El astillero’, Texto Crítico, Xalapa, 4: 127–33. ——— 1983–1984. ‘Las permutaciones de la desgracia o Esberg en la costa’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 8: 75–87. Valenzuela, Luisa 1996. Hay que sonreír, Buenos Aires: Américlee Ficciones (trans.) in Hortense Carpentier and J. Jorge Castello 1976. Clara: Thirteen Stories and a Novel, New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.

Mono219-Bibliography.qxd

9/22/05

9:06 AM

Page 181

WORKS CITED

181

Valenzuela, Luisa 1972. El gato eficaz, Mexico: Joaquín Mortiz. ——— 1982. ‘Mis brujas favoritas’, in Gabriel Mora and Karen Van Hooft (eds), Theory and Practice of Feminist Literary Criticism, Ypsilanti, Michigan: Bilingual Press. ——— 1983. Cola de lagartija, Buenos Aires: Bruguera (trans.) Gregory Rabassa 1987. The Lizard’s Tail, London: Serpent’s Tail. Verani, Hugo 1980. ‘Un diálogo de artistas fracasados: Juntacadáveres’, Texto Crítico, Xalapa, 18–19: 165–70. ——— 1981. Onetti: el ritual de la impostura, Caracas: Monte Avila. Warner, Marina 1976. Alone of All her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Wright, Elizabeth 1984. Psychoanalytic Criticism, London: Methuen. Young, Robert (ed.) 1981. Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Mono219-Bibliography.qxd

9/22/05

9:06 AM

Page 182

Mono219-Index.qxd

9/22/05

9:04 AM

Page 183

Index Andreu, Alicia: 90 Aristotle: 47, 63–4 Arlt, Roberto: 2, 28 Bacarisse, Pamela: 78, 92, n.92 Bakhtin, Mikhail: see carnival Barthes, Roland: 11, 111, n111 Baudelaire, Charles: 109, 142–43 Benedetti, Mario: 12 Bergmann, Emily: 33 Blood and Sand: 86–7 Borges, Jorge Luis: 1, 4, 71, 144–45, 174–75 Borinsky, Alicia: 92–4 Butler, David: 16, n.19 Butler, Judith: 70, 83–4 Cabrera Infante, Guillermo: 69, 88 Campos, René Alberto: 78–9, n79, 85, n85, 168 carnival/carnivalesque: 137–41, 168 Castellanos, Rosario: 44, 117 Christian/Christianity: 40, 42–3, 47–8, 99, 139, 151, 169 Cixous, Hélène: 19, 136, n137 Collier, Simon: 91–3 Corbatta, Jorgelina: 86 Cortázar, Julio: 71 de Beauvoir, Simone: 45, 59, n73, 115–16 Deredita, John: 54 Derrida, Jacques: 52, n71, 136, n136 Díaz, Gwendolyn: n127 Eagleton, Terry: 8, 12 Eloy Martínez, Tomás: 149 existentialism: 16, n19, 56, 64, 170 Felman, Shoshana: n74 Foster, David: 70 Foucault, Michel: 7, 70, 73–5, 144 Francescato, Martha Paley: 159–60, 162–4, 168 Franco, Jean: 56–7, 169

Frankenthaler, Marilyn: 15, n19 Frazer, James George: 143 Freud, Sigmund/ Freudianism: 3, 13, 76–7, n77, 83–4, 119–20, 159–60, n160, 161, 164 Gartner, Bruce: 154, n154, 165 gender: 1–4, 166–174 in Boquitas pintadas: 102 in Cola de lagartija: 156, 164 in El pozo: 19 (quotation) in Hay que sonreír: 110 in La traición de Rita Hayworth: 70–1, 73–5, 79–85, 87–8 Giersberg, Sabine: 18, n.19, 51, n.51 Gillespie, Richard: 148 Grande, Felix: 16, 17, 22 Haskell, Molly: 86, n86 Hollywood: 76, 85, 87–9, 114, 167, 172 Huizinga, Johann: 49, 52 Ionesco, Eugene: 52 Irigaray, Luce: 83, 168 Jameson, Fredric: 89, n89, 90, 94–5, 97–101, 168 Kantaris, Geoffrey: 165 Kerr, Lucille: n91, 95, n95, 96 Kristeva, Julia: n40, 45, 116–7, 132–4, 136, 140, 163–5, 168 Lacan, Jacques: 3, 34, 70, n80, 83–4, 133, 161 Imaginary order: 17, 19, 35, 43, 162, 168, 173–4 Symbolic order: 3, 9, 19, 28, 35, 40–3, 80, 162–4, 168, 170–4 Levine, Suzanne: n69, 88 López Rega, José: 148, 159 Ludmer, Josefina: 8, 11 Lyotard, Jean-François: 46, 65, 89, 101, 168

Mono219-Index.qxd

184

9/22/05

9:04 AM

Page 184

INDEX

MacAdam, Alfred: 70 Magnarelli, Sharon: 70, 110, 112, n113, 127, n127, 128, 131, n134, 143–4, n145, 148–9, 157, 163, 165 Maloof, Judy: n26, n53, 61 marginality/ marginalised: 1–4, 166–174 in Boquitas pintadas: 94 (quotation), 102 in El astillero: 52,56–7 in El gato eficaz: 136–7 in El pozo: 15, 21 in Hay que sonreír: 109 in Juntacadáveres: 28–9, 33, 35, 37–8, 40, 42–43, 45 in La traición de Rita Hayworth: 70, 74–6, 88 Martínez, Z. Nelly: 113, 120, n120, n128, 145 Millington, Mark: 20, 31, 42, 49, 57 misogyny: 2, 24, 45, 65, 82 Moi, Toril: 34, 45, 120 Moller Okin, Susan: 125 Monsiváis, Carlos: 29 Moreno Aliste, Ximena: 13 Mulvey, Laura: 78, 84–6 Onetti, Juan Carlos: El astillero: 2, 27, n35, 46–65, 95 El pozo: 2, 7–25, 27, 40, n43, 61 Juntacadáveres: 2, n4, 22, 27–45, 58 La vida breve: 8, 10, 27–8, 39, n43, 167 Para esta noche: 29 Tierra de nadie: 27 ‘Un sueño realizado’: 24 Pauls, Alan: 75, n75 Prego, Omar: 32 prostitutes/prostitution: 19, 22, 30, 33, 38, 40, 43, 62, 64, 110, 115–8, 121, 123, 126, 173

Puig, Manuel: Boquitas pintadas:3, 89–106 El beso de la mujer araña: 3, n69, 101 La traición de Rita Hayworth: 3, 69–88, 89, 95, 104 ‘race’: 22, 99, 172 Rock, David: n73, 166 Rowe, William and Vivian Schelling: 89, 102, 104 Ruffinelli, Jorge: 29 Saltz, Joane: 111 Sarduy, Severo: 96, n97 Sarlo, Beatriz: 93, n93, 94, 100, 103–5 Sartre, Jean Paul: 14–6 Shaw, Donald: n128, 148, 153, 158, 165 Smith, Paul Julian: 89, 101, n101, 102 Speranza, Graciela: n95 Swanson, Philip: n43, n63 tango: 90–3, 99–100, 114, 117, 167 Gardel, Carlos: 32, 91, 167 Turton, Peter: 10, n35, 50, 61 Valenzuela, Luisa: Aquí pasan cosas raras: 147, n154 Cambio de armas: 111, 131, 148 Cola de lagartija: 4, 131, 147–165 Como en la guerra: 148 El gato eficaz: 4, 130–46 Hay que sonreír: n4, 109–29, 130, 147 Verani, Hugo: 37, 49 virgins/virginity: 39, 41, 62, 71, 75, 82, 85, 99, 105, 111, 172 Warner, Marina: 39