40
PARTISAN REVIEW
there's just one side to things. And all power tends to be malevo–
lent.
Christ:
One-sided maybe, but the end of
Hell Has No Limits
has puz–
zled many readers .
Donoso:
But it's quite clear.
It
was funny, because I put in an appear–
ance at a seminar where they were discussing this book. I asked
them how the novel ended and they didn't know. They had just
finished reading it and they didn't know how it ended! So I asked
them: when Pancho and Othario take Manuela to the brook-re–
member?-what happens? What is it that they do? And nobody
came up with the answer. Of course it is a violation, a sexual vio–
lation, penetration. Nobody in the seminar could face that. They
couldn't face that because, of course, if there was sexual violation,
they would have to revise the whole reading of the novel. And
they didn't dare revise Pancho because they would have had to re–
vise themselves, which is the key to the whole thing, of course . On
the other hand,
The Bird
is a much more intellectual book. It's
much more of a novel where ideas and symbols are played with,
and in which form is played with.
Christ:
You have a very clear grasp of all this. Do you ever find that
your critical faculty gets in your way?
Donoso:
No, because I think the one process is so completely different
from the other. Analysis is always something which will
workjor
you rather than against you . It does, really. I mean, when I'm
writing a book and then I go to bed at nine or ten, say, with my
journals, and then I analyze lucidly what I've done before and
what I'm going to do next-this doesn't work against me at all. It
feeds it and it helps me to go one step beyond. This is why I think
that, in
The Bird
especially, one gets a sense of mystery. Because I
want to go beyond each time, you see.
If
I've arrived here, let's
say, in the writing of a book, one day I'll write beyond that, up to
here, in the criticism . And the next day, from this point I'll write
further, up to here, let's say, and that night with the criticism I
will write further and so on. It works. It is a cumulative thing.
Christ:
Since criticism goes hand in hand with the sensibility of the
Boom writers, how is it that we get so little first-rate criticism from
Latin America?
Donoso:
The thing is, you see, that I think that the most valid kind–
at least to me the most interesting kind - of criticism is that which
doesn't ask
why
and doesn't ask
what
is the meaning of a work . It is
the criticism that asks the question
how?
And I don't think that
