44
PARTISAN REVIEW
didn't know at all. Everybody seems to be reading her.
Christ:
You've talked about writing in English. Any definite plans?
Donoso:
Not particularly. I would like to write a few magazine arti–
cles. I'm looking forward very much to writing travel books. I've
tried to move away from novels a little bit, I'm sort of tired of
them. I want very much to write a screenplay, and I'm going to go
to Ethiopia to see what's in it. I want to write a play about the
death of Rimbaud, about the last period of his life . He's a writer
I'm very much interested in - not particularly his poetry , but his
life . I'm interested in the orchestration of time there. I would like
to branch out at this point. I'm sort offed up with writing novels. I
want to get through with this big one I'm doing now and just for–
get them for awhile. Perhaps some articles in English relating to
houses . I'm also looking forward to writing things about myself.
You see, a novel is not only a novel but it's what you can write
about
it as well, or around it. And I would like to do these sort of
parasitical thint>"s on my novel, satellites and parasites and things
around me: how it happened, why it happened , what were the
mechanics of it, what is the relation of that to my biography.
Christ:
To write more books like
The Boom in Spanish American Fiction?
Donoso:
Yes, I would very much like to go in that direction a little bit
in a deeper way .
The Boom in Spanish American Fiction,
of course ,
was really the introduction to a book of essays that I was planning
to write; there were about ten essays on contemporary Latin
American fiction, of which I'd written
The Boom
and one more on
Vargas Llosa.
Christ:
That essay hasn't been published yet?
Donoso:
No, it hasn't been finished. It's part of my future.
