462
PARTISAN REVIEW
oHorm (sex !language), which in the novel means loosening the grip of Plot
on Word, freeing Character from Personality, Subject from Theme and thus
creating a "divine" book which is its own hero, plot and subject-that is, a
work of words. Individual words and even vocables reign supreme here. So
Cobra
is essentially paratactic in its entirety as well as in its elements, repeat–
edly devolving through series ofclauses, words, and letters toward the smallest
elements in discourse as it echoes, quotes, and parodies itself and other texts
(including Sarduy's). Ms. Levine is right, then, in pointing out that
Cobra
is a
culmination of boom literature as a text about itself.
In fact,
Cobra
is a theory of the text and its embodiment at the same
time; it is spirit and flesh in "divine" incarnation . As such, it is difficult,
mysterious, fascinating, funny, weird, and horrifying. Explicitly structuralist,
with allusions to such as Lacan and Derrida, the book delights in counter–
pointing seemingly precise, pseudo-scientific language and decadently lush
prose in such a way that we are always getting' 'the story" and a conception of
that story at the same time . Here is an especially clear example from the
chapter' 'To God I Dedicate This Mambo," where the opening sentences and
first footnote describe the two queens (Cobra and Cadillac), the Madam, and
a dwarf double of Cobra named Pup:
Like a goose's neck , the envious Cadillac's arm undulates in the mist,
plumed white on the gloomy platform . The three are going away, or the
two which add up to three 1 . ..
1 [Mme.
+
Cobra
(+
1
=)
Pup
=
(3/2)]
Self-consciously newer than the' 'New" novel,
Cobra
does about as well
as some ofGertrude Stein's works at getting the story out offiction, but
Cobra
does it with a uniquely quicksilver, campy, tony, cool prose. Deliberately not
areader's writer, Sarduy is already having an important effect on writers in Latin
America and France, where he has been greeted enthusiastically. Perhaps
we should recall that Borges, too, was often called a writer's writer until
readers caught up with him. In its direct challenge to the nature of fiction and
the act of reading
Cobra
is surely the most decisive book to be published in
Latin America since Borges's
History of Infamy.
Certainly it is the most decisive
to
be translated into English. Its difficulty
is inherently decisive, and both
Cobra
and
Conversation
constitute Herculean
tasks for the translators, so their appearance here says a good deal about the
state of translation from Spanish into English. How successful they will be is
another question. Neither fits the formula:
Conversation
is not witty or
fantastic, and Vargas Llosa is unrelenting in keeping the focus of his elaborate
technique on'
'/a vie socia/e"
;
Cobra
is not
engage,
except in the sense that it
is committed
to
writing, but Sarduy never lets you forget that his work is a
