José Donoso (1924–1996)

Donoso remains The Man!
Ten years before Allende's Casa de los espíritus came its power-acid prequel, Obsceno párajo de la noche. The best review and explanation I can give for potential readers is that Donoso takes people's intentions and turns them into characters.
Donoso, as several commenters here have already noted, lived in a tense moment as his country lost its hold on the rigid and criminal class system left over from the British Empire. And anyone who knows Latin America at that show more time doesn't have to guess that Donoso would've been more than versed in Marxism. So with that in mind, prepare to read how he takes the desires and needs of conflicting classes and forces them into monstrous incest. He takes ideas that we all know --a child is supposed to fulfill its parent's life, a powerless person wants to take power, birthright and inheritance, --and flips them in these super-clever ways such that the characters rob each other of their intentions' outcomes, overtake each others' perspectives on things and even nest their identities, in this bidirectional class-war way that makes total sense if you're sick or stoned enough to follow it on a nervous level. Although I do dig the imbunche riff that critics have focused on, that's like, just the beginning of his analysis of South American bourgeois morality. One of the greatest works of art ever to realistically portray abusive relationships, even if it had to go ballistic to do it. If Isabel Allende is Billy Joel, Donoso is GWAR.
NOTE although my review is in English, I did in fact read Donoso's own voice as this GR edition indicates show less

This is the creepiest book I've ever read. Donoso uses his prose as a tool to keep you bewildered and guessing, but probably more importantly, to keep the world(s?) and story(ies?) he's constructing fluid. You'll be reading the story in first-person, and all of a sudden the person you thought was the "I" is suddenly referred to in third-person. Similarly, the narrator will be speaking of a particular character, and all of a sudden the character will become "you" instead of show more "Ines/Jeronimo/whomever." Obviously this gets confusing, but sentence-to-sentence, you follow everything. Donoso is a master at this: you can tell he's only muddling the parts he wants to muddle, and what he wants to communicate clearly you get.

So what I was left with was this constantly shifting story. Characters and narratives that seem separate will coalesce and dance around each other, and it's fascinating. What never leaves or becomes unclear are the moods and atmospheres that Donoso creates. And seriously, it's creepy. The book is filled with self-effacement and obsession. The narrator's "member" is powerful and potent, then limp and impotent, then a shriveled black "fig" of a vagina, etc. etc.

In the beginning, it was not hard at all for me to get through the book. Donoso creates an incredibly engaging and fascinating universe, bewildering though it is. But the book is long. Despite never losing interest and loving the whole thing, it's too intense and too confusing. You can't just breeze through the thing, so I had to rotate it out with some easier reads toward the end. But holy shit, really. show less

Complejo pero fascinante, un libro que podría haber caído en la experimentación aburrida y los pecados onanistas por los que pasaron varios escritores de los años 70' en busca de ser disruptivos pero que en cambio se consolida con una trama de intriga identitaria que construye espacios bien diferenciados, como si uno pudiera ver el sol de los exteriores, sentir el vaho opresivo del convento, la ácida anomia de la mansión de la emperatriz.

Uno de esos libros que vale la pena releer show more después de un tiempo. show less

José Donoso’s collection of three novellas (published in Spanish in 1973 and in English translation in 1977) satirizing the pretentious attitudes and aspirations of Barcelona’s hip young professional bourgeoisie is a classic of whimsical, self-conscious magic realism. In “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” the aesthetically flawless surface of Ramón and Sylvia’s marriage is disturbed by a new friendship with another couple. This is a world where men control women, dismantle and manipulate show more them like dolls for their pleasure. But before the end of the tale, Sylvia and her new friend Magdalena have turned the tables on their husbands, broken free of the confining role that society has assigned them and asserted their independence. In “Green Atom Number Five,” well-off childless couple Roberto and Marta have achieved the pinnacle of material success by moving into the ideal apartment and filling it with their things. Once installed however, they find themselves frighteningly subservient to the possessions they have accumulated throughout their marriage, which begin to walk out the door while they stand by and watch, powerless to do anything about it. Blaming each other for what is happening, they set out in pursuit of what has gone missing, but instead lose their way altogether. And in “Gaspard de la Nuit,” Sylvia (a professional model) is bewildered and stymied by the odd behaviour of her teenage son Mauricio, who normally lives in Madrid with her ex-husband but who is staying with her in Barcelona for the summer. Sylvia approaches the boy with offers of gifts and food and trips to the beach, which he refuses. When she fawns over him, Mauricio slinks out of her reach. His sole obsession is the complex and melodically elusive Ravel piano piece from which the story gets its title. Mauricio, who confronts the world wrapped in an impenetrable cloak of sadness, prefers to spend his time alone, walking the unfamiliar Barcelona streets whistling and seeking connection with other pedestrians through Ravel’s music. His loneliness reaches its crescendo when he discovers his double (a homeless boy) in a public park, and the two connect in a way that changes the direction of both their lives. Sacred Families is an excellent introduction to the high-spirited and eccentric social and political comedy that emerged in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s. By turns funny, shocking and perplexing, these novellas are loosely plotted and sometimes illogical, but also endlessly imaginative, deviously unpredictable, and delightfully subversive. show less