JOSE DONOSO
39
rate world in the novel. A symbol of it is seen in Pancho's relation
to the world of the little girl who got chicken pox from him and
whom he used to see playing behind barbed wire.
Christ:
Is the world as you experience it so divided?
Donoso:
No, no. It's just my simplification. But you can't say that
The
Bird
is binary; it's more than just binary. I think I held onto the bi–
nary until I could face the multiplicity of things. One of the things
that I see wrong with
Coronation
is the black-and-whiteness of it.
The fact that it is so binary in many ways. I think that I've had to
leave my own world of childhood, of adolescence, to be able to
face a world of multiplicity. And this has happened.
Christ:
Is writing one of the ways you resolved the division?
Donoso:
To resolve is not to make a rational order out of anything: to
me that would only superimpose another layer of confusion. But
to resolve would be to understand,
with the whole oj me
(and I'm not
trying to be Lawrence, but just to debunk the idea that to resolve
can be equated with rational order, at least in literature), and
with my life, and with the exploration into aesthetics that a novel
is, with the adventure into the mad, dark thing that living and so–
ciety are, that writing a novel is.
Christ:
Given the narrator,
Coronation
had to be binary.
This Sunday
already opens up, begins to bifurcate; and once you allow Umber–
to in
The Bird
to be what he is, then everything in that book bifur–
cates.
Donoso:
Umberto was a very late addition to
The Bird.
As an addi–
tion, he was one of the latest. And the yellow bitch was very, very
late. That was a year before the end of the novel.
Christ:
How long were you at work on it?
Donoso:
Eight years. I went around, around, around, and around the
novel and I couldn't grab it. Until I went mad, and then I cried.
Christ:
Dogs are important in your symbol box.
Donoso:
Yes. Sure, they're related to my biography. I have been a
dog person all my life. I have always lived among dogs. My wife
and I are very fond of dogs. My father has always had a huge
number of dogs around the house-Great Danes and great, big
Boxers and what have you, dogs of all kinds.
Christ:
In your writing they tend toward the terrifying, the malevQ–
lent.
Donoso:
As a symbol of power, I'd say, don't you think? Again, all
power, to me and in my books, is wicked and avenging. One of
the things in my books is that they are not dialectical. I mean,
