38
PARTISAN REVIEW
novellas by Fuentes and Sarduy, metamorphosis or transforma–
tion seems to be the basic theme or technique.
Donoso:
Technique , I would say, rather than theme.
Christ:
Was there any collaboration between you three? Or were the
stories worked out separately?
Donoso:
Completely separate. Wait a minute. I think that Carlos
Fuentes was writing his when I was in Mexico writing mine . I was
living in his house, you see. I'm not sure if he was working on an–
other novel. We were in his garden in Mexico, and I remember
that there was a swing for his daughter Cecilia and they were
making a film from one of his stories and one of the actors began
to swing. Both Carlos and I were there talking with him. I re–
member Carlos questioning this boy and he told the little story of
Fuentes's
Zona sagrada (Holy Place).
He told the story and Carlos
picked it up from there; he elaborated it, of course. But there I
saw the beginning of
Zona sagrada,
there on that swing that morn–
ing. While I was writing
Hell Has No Limits,
which is dedicated
to Carlos.
Christ:
How did the idea for the paragraph in
The Bird
that became
the novella come about?
Donoso:
I can't remember the original idea . It's one of those ideas that
a writer suddenly has crop up in his typewriter without having
arry
control
of it whatsoever. You're writing something and then sud–
denly you just ... there's a paragraph that writes itself alone, with
no relation to anything you can find in relation to it - it just hap–
pens . And this was a paragraph I remember quite well- and it's
interesting that it should be that way-remember when Boy
leaves his father's house and goes out into the world and comes
back to La Riconada and wants the doctor to cut everything he
has seen away from his brain so that he will not remember it?
Well, what he saw outside was actually the brothel in
Hell Has No
Limits.
Remember one of the characters in
Hell Has No Limits
is
one of the prostitutes who has a gentleman coming from far away
to visit her and to make love with her? Well, that's Boy. That's all
that's left of Boy in
Hell Has No Limits.
Christ:
So even your novels have a kind of family relationship?
Donoso:
Certainly they do.
Christ:
In your three full-length novels , you are committed to telling
two stories.
Hell Has No Limits
is more radically unified.
Donoso:
Sure. It's a novel I wrote very quickly, in about a month and
a half. I could visualize, again, a world of separate classes, a sepa-
