Onetti. Juan Carlos Onetti.

Petri Liukkonen

Juan Carlos Onetti (1909 – 1994)

Uruguayan novelist and short-story writer, a master in fusing fantasy and realism. Onetti was awarded Uruguay's national literature prize in 1963 and Spain's prestigious Cervantes Prize in 1980. In La vida breve (1950) Onetti created the fictional city of Santa María, which also is the setting of his later works. The narrator of the novel, Brausen, invents a fantasy existence for himself as Díaz Grey, the protagonist of a screenplay he is writing.

"Onetti's uneven, troubled career has resolved itself into a large body of critically admired prose that, finally, hews to a single driving artistic impulse: the necessary predominance of writing process. Onetti's anguished, detached narrators, creators of public words and private torments, brought Latin American fiction out of its provincial stasis at a time when talent, opportunity, and attention were poised to grant it greatness, and the Latin American novel from the 1940s onward stands as the heir to Onetti's artistic, self-examining vision."
(Bart L. Lewis in Contemporary World Writers, ed. by Tracy Chevalier, 1993)

Juan Carlos Onetti was born in Montevideo. He never completed his secondary education and spent his first twenty years in his native Uruguay. He then moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he worked as a journalist and began publishing short stories in the early 1930s. From 1946 to 1955 Onetti edited Vea y Lea, in Buenos Aires.

In Montevideo Onetti edited the highly regarded weekly journal Marcha from 1939 to 1942. He was editor for Reuters News Agency, first in Montevideo (1941-43), and then in Buenos Aires (1943-46). From 1955 to 1957 he was a manager of an advertising company in Montevideo. During his years in Marcha Onetti promoted a radical transformation of literature and emphasized devotion to art. He attacked the tendency to focus on Nature, and gauchos were for him old-fashioned literary types. Onetti saw that writers should develop stories about the cities. With his stories about urban reality Onetti came close to Roberto Arlt. He also admired William Faulkner - they both used unconventional narrative methods. Santa Maria developed into Onetti's Yoknapatawpha. Another source of inspiration was Louis-Ferdinand Céline, especially his use of language.

Onetti's first novella, El pozo (1939) was hailed by many critics as the first truly modern Spanish American novel. It used modernist technique and brought on the scene a character familiar from the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. The protagonist, Eladio Linacero, leads his aimless life in a city where he is unable to communicate with others. In his nightly self-torture, Linscero recalls his rape of a girl and moral degradation.

The three-volume cycle of novels and stories, often called the 'Santa Maria Sagas', included La vida breve, in which the narrator is Juan María Brausen, a creator of characters, Los adioses (1954), and Una tumba sin nombre (1959), depicting a man who is sexually obsessed with a prostitute. One of its characters states: "the only thing that matters is that when I finished writing this story I felt at peace." In La cara de la desgracia (1960) a guilt-ridden protagonist accepts responsibility for the death of his brother and a young girl. El astillero (1961), also set in Santa Maria, focused on the life of Larsen, an ex-owner of a whorehouse, who works in a rusting shipyard. The character appeared first time in Onetti's second novel, Tierra de nadie (1941). Juntacádaveres (1965) took Larsen back to a time when he was a brothel owner.

In 1957 Onetti became a director of Municipal Libraries in Montevideo. As a writer he attracted little critical attention outside Uruguay until the mid-1960s. Onetti's international reputation, and the fact that he was considered the most distinguished Uruguayan author, did not prevent his imprisonment in 1974 by the military dictatorship. He had been a member of the jury that awarded a literary prize to a short story by Nelson Marra, which the authorities considered to be pornographic and offensive. Onetti was briefly incarcerated in a mental institution.

Onetti moved to Madrid and in 1975 he became Spanish citizen. He refused to go back to his country even when democracy was restored. In Spain Onetti worked at a number of odd-jobs including a waiter, salesman and doorman. In 1985, the new president of Uruguay travelled to Spain to present Onetti with the National Literary award.

Onetti wrote with a mixture of comedy and sadness about the loneliness of life, absurd values, the futility of religion, and the breakdown of modern town life. Although his tone was often pessimistic, his stories were rich in imagination. In Madrid Onetti's novels and short stories became more and more pessimistic, and in Dejemos hablas al viento (1979) he had Santa María destroyed by fire. He received several awards including the National Literature Prize in 1962, William Faulkner Foundation Ibero-American Award in 1963, Casa de las Américas Prize in 1965, Italian-Latin American Institute Prize in 1972, Miguel de Cervantes Prize in 1980. Onetti was married four times, first with his cousin María Amalia Onetti (1930), in 1934 with his cousin María Julia Onetti, in 1945 with Elizabeth María Pekelharin, and in 1980 with Dorothea Muhr; they had lived together for 25 years. Onetti died in Madrid on May 30th, 1994.

For further reading: An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature by Jean Franco (1966); The Formal Expression of Meaning in Juan Carlos Onetti's Narrative Art by Y.P. Jones (1969): Entorno a Juan Carlos Onetti, ed. by L. Gómez Mango (1970); Las trampas de Onetti by Fernando Aínsa (1970); Onetti by J. Ruffinelli (1973); Homenaje a Juan Carlos Onetti, ed. by H.F. Giacomán (1974); Three Authors of Alienation: Bombal, Onetti, Carpenties by Ian M. Adams (1975); Juan Carlos Onetti by D. Kader (1977); Onetti: obra y calculado infortunio by Fernando Curiel (1980); Onetti by Hugo J. Verani (1981); Reading Onetti by Mark Millington (1985); Juan Carlos Onetti, ed. by Hugo J. Verani (1987); La Figura en el tapiz: Teoria y practica narrativa en Juan Carlos Onetti by Sonia Mattalia (1990); The Landscapes of Alienation: Ideological Subversion in Kafka, Celine, and Onetti by Jack Murray (1991); Onetti and Others: Comparative Essays on a Major Figure in Latin American Literature, ed. by Gustavo San Roman (1999)

Selected works:

El pozo, 1939 - The Pit (trans. by Peter Bush)
Tierra de nadie, 1941 - No Man's Land
Para esta noche, 1943 - Tonight
La vida breve, 1950 - A Brief Life (trans. by Hortense Carpentier)
Un sueño realizado y otros cuentos, 1951
Los adioses, 1954 - Goodbye and Stories (trans. by Daniel Balderston) / Farewells (trans. by Peter Bush)
Una tumba sin nombre, 1959 - retitled Para una tumba sin nombre - A Grave with No Name (trans. by Peter Bush)
La cara de la desgracia, 1960
El astillero, 1961 - The Shipyard (trans. by Nick Caistor)
El infierno tan temido, 1962
Tan triste como ella, 1963
Juntacadáveres, 1964 - Body Snatcher
Jacob y el otro, y otros cuentos, 1965
Tres novelas, 1967
Cuentos completos, 1967
Los rostros del amor, 1968
La novia robada, y otros cuentos, 1968
Novelas y cuentos cortos completos, 1968 (2 vols.)
Obras completas, 1970
La muerte y la niña, 1973
Cuentos completos, 1974
Tiempo de abrazar, 1974
Réquiem por Faulkner, 1975
Tan triste como ella y otros cuentos, 1976
Dejemos hablar al viento, 1979 - Let the Wind Speak (trans. by Helen Lane)
Cuentos secretos, 1986
Presencia y otros cuentos, 1986
Cuando entonces, 1987
Goodbyes and Other Stories, 1990
Cuando ya no importe, 1993 - Past Caring