24
PARTISAN REVIEW
them. But simply because they are what I have been able to grasp
and use . In and of themselves, they're not important to me . But
they're charged with possibility, like a battery: in itself a battery is
inactive, but if you connect it with certain other things, it becomes
active .
Christ:
Is their activating quality, rather than their implication , what
has led you to say that there's no social message in what you
write?
Donoso:
I didn't say that there was no social message . I'm just very
angry when people harp on it as the beginning and end of every–
thing. It's the first thing they see and they never go beyond it. It's
okay if they see it, but if they see it as part of something. The peo–
ple I'm angry at are ones who only see that, as I would tend to be
angry-but not so much-at the people who only see structure .
Christ:
The Latin American critics have tended mainly to see the so-
cial implications.
Donoso:
Sure. Predictably .
Christ:
How do you think you've fared with North American critics?
Donoso:
A little hard, because the critics have not really been critics
but reviewers, which is something different. I haven't had any
criticism, per se, in America .
Christ:
As a little critical background, then, what British and Ameri–
can writers have had an influence on you?
Donoso:
I suppose Faulkner at one point sort of turned all hell loose
in me. In Latin America we were writing a very flat, realistic
prose. And here came Faulkner, with his huge power of doing
strange things with a sentence and not minding about tacking ten
adjectives onto a noun .
Christ:
As your own work develops , your own sentences tend to get
longer and more convoluted, but the diction stays simple.
Donoso:
You see, what happens in most of my work is that the struc–
ture is complicated or complex but the things out of which that
structure is made are not complicated . The elements are not com–
plicated even though the structure itself is complicated. You can
say the same thing about my sentences : the sentence itself may be
complicated but the words with which I've made that sentence
complicated , in themselves , are fairly simple .
Christ:
They tend to be loose, cumulative sentences, so there's no
problem of deciphering or decoding. Not like Proust's sentences .
Donoso:
Oh, no, no , no, not at all. Not like Henry James's sentences
either.
