JOSE DONOSO
25
Christ:
But James has influenced you . How did that come about?
Donoso:
It came about at Princeton. I had never heard of Henry
James before I went to Princeton . That is, I had heard of him, but
he was just there, without any real importance. My first involve–
ment with James was a course given by Lawrence Thompson at
Princeton. We read-what was it?-twelve novels and one was
The Ambassadors.
I read it and I was absolutely amazed by the pos–
sibilities.
If
I'm honest about it today, however, the real
uncon–
scious
influence is that of Dickens and not James. Dickens is al–
ways at the back of my mind. Somehow the misery and filth and
decay of Victorian London seem a more pertinent comment on
Latin American filth and decay than comments written today :
things are that basic, that savage down there, and misery and pic–
tures of it seem to be the natural thing to do , the place where one
should begin . Not by choice, or at least not by conscious choice .
Even if one belongs to the middle class, and writes about oneself
and one's world, one cannot stay away from trash, garbage, ref–
use . Refuse is important, as it was in Victorian England and
means many things, as do decay and misery and poverty . The
conditions in our land today are pretty Victorian from many
points of view and trash being bundled up and cared for is a com–
ment on that, I guess : fear, psychologically and socially speaking,
bundling up refuse is the fear of
being
refuse . But when I read
J ames's
The Ambassadors
I found that there was the world and the
elements of Dickens transformed into something which is com–
pletely different, a complete structure and order, a beautiful
thing, a beautiful object where the intelligence is of paramount
importance.
Christ:
Your early work shows the Jamesian .element more than
The
Obscene Bird
oj
Night,
which seems more Dickensian. Andres in
Coronation,
for example, is a man like Strether in
The Ambassadors.
Donoso:
Sure . Quite a bit.
Christ:
Was Andres understood in Chile?
Donoso:
No-o . Nobody's ever read James in Chile . They described
Andres as decadent, showing the ills of decadence in our society .
But they didn't understand him in his origin and in his tradition .
Christ:
How about other writers such as Sterne and Virginia Woolf?
Sterne seems to have had a largely unacknowledged influence on
Latin American novelists .
Donoso:
Probably not directly, but as he influenced Virginia Woolf,
say, and Joyce (though I can't see him as an influence on me) . I
