484
RO NALD CH RIST
NEW, NEWER, NEWEST
THE
OBSCENE BIRD OF NIGHT. By Jose Oonoso. Tran slat ed by
HardieSt. Martin and Leonard Mades. Alfred A . Knopf. $7.95 .
HEARTBREAK TANGO . By Manuel Puig . Translated by Suzanne Jill
Levine. E. P. Dutton. $6 .95.
CH ILDREN OF THE MIRE . By Octavio Paz. Translated by Rachel
Phillips. Harvard University Press.
These three books represent the new novel, the newer novel and the
newest novelty, a higher o rder o f criticism, from Latin America. They each
come to us with a distinction th a t is especia ll y remarka ble when you consider
our in sistent igno rance a bout tha t continent's writing unti l JUSt a few years
ago.
The Obscene Bird of Night
won the P .E.N. American Center
tran slation prize for 1974,
Heartbreak Tango
was named one of the ten
beSt books of the year by the American Library.Association and
Children
of the Mire
originated in distinction as the series of Charles Eliot Norton
LCClures tha t Octav io Paz gave a t Ha rva rd during 1971-1972. Wha tever the
rela ti ve merit of such hono rs, and whether o r no t Latin America is p roducing
" the liveliest litera ture in th e world today," as is sometimes a id, these are
works by a utho rs who deserve, if no thing mo re, the la bel o f
master
in the
Medieva l, guild sen se o f tha t word . Perha ps if we can see tha t rank as the
common denomina tor of the so-ca lled new o r Boom litera ture of Brazil and
Spani sh America, we wi ll better apprecia te its merits than those who praise
each new La tin American book as a masterpiece in prejudicia l wonder that it
ex ists a t all.
Th e Obscene Bird of N ight,
Don oso's th ird novel and the culmi –
na ti on of everything the Chi lean a uthor has done so fa r, is a phantasmagoria
chronicl ing the decay o f famil y, church and socia l system . Wha t ma rks it as
litera ture, though , is the brilliant handling of the na rration in such a way that
the boo k, like
One Hundred Years of Soiitude,
advances " in an
opposite d irection from rea lity" and ends up as pages being burned by a hag.
T he novel comes to its own end, like Garda Ma rquez's, as a physica l text both
in
the book we are reading and
as
the book we a re reading. T hroughout, con–
fu sions and confluences predomin a te as the na rra tor, a dea f mute, records what
he hea rs and writes down wha t he says in the course o f a monstrous, mythic
metamo rphosis where a legend in the first pa rt becomes the informing reality
of the second . Built like a Mobius strip with accounts o f the delapida ted con–
vent (where the mute lives and eventua ll y transforms himself in to a nun and
then in to an ancient ba by) and the esta te (where a ho rrendously mi sshapen
baby is ca red fo r by the mute as h e invents a society o f cripp les, dwa rves and
