Juan Carlos Onetti's Short Stories | Review, Analysis, and Top 5

Hello, my friends. Welcome to my corner. With  this video I am celebrating a special occasion, because a few days ago I finally finished  reading the fiction of Juan Carlos Onetti, with this book right here: his Cuentos completos.  Juan Carlos Onetti is really an obscure author of the Latin American boom, and you might ask  me, “Jorge, what do you mean by obscure?” Well, this is always in comparison, right? It's  always relative. He's obscure if you compare him to García Márquez, to Vargas Llosa

, to Julio  Cortázar, to Carlos Fuentes, but let me tell you: all of these authors that I have just mentioned  had just deep admiration for Juan Carlos Onetti, and actually Vargas Llosa wrote an entire  book about him. He is still one of those authors that people might ask you, “Okay,  this Onetti guy. Was he really part of the Latin American boom?” You know what I mean? “Was  he really part of it?” Kind of like Juan Rulfo, like Miguel Ángel Asturias, like Alejo Carpentier,  sometimes maybe even

like Jorge Luis Borges. So he is one of those authors. We remember him in Latin  America primarily as a novelista, okay? So, he has some really, really good novels. His masterpiece,  if you ask me, is La vida breve, or A Brief Life, but there's also a novel like El astillero, or  The Shipyard, that has been very important for our literature. He was also a master of… my favorite  genre… novellas, of course. He wrote the novella Los adioses, or Goodbyes, or Farewells, depending  on what English v

ersion you are looking at, which is really one of the best examples that I  can think of of the genre in the region of the Río de La Plata, right? Like, the Southern Cone  region. And then also a novella like Para una tumba sin nombre, A Grave With No Name. These  are just masterpieces of the genre. However, Onetti was also a really, really good cuentista,  okay? He wrote many very good short stories, and that's the part of his work that I would like  to focus on with this video. Let me show you

, though, there is… I showed you the Spanish  edition, but I just wanted you to know that there is an English translation, by Katherine Silver, so  it's great, right? Of his complete short stories, titled A Dream Come True. So you can find all of  these in both languages. I'm going to give you a little bit more information about the two editions  here in a couple of minutes. So, basically, how do we describe Onetti, right? What kind  of writer or what kind of guy was he? He has been aptly and I

believe hilariously described  as “the steppenwolf of Uruguayan letters,” and I think the label really, really fits in this  case, because when you enter Onetti 's world you're going to realize that it's a world  marked by anguish, okay? It's the world of despair. So I see him primarily as an heir or an  inheritor of Roberto Arlt, in a way, kind of like Ernesto Sabato. And you may say, “Jorge, is that  fair, to compare Uruguayan and Argentinian authors kind of in the same…?” I'll say this, okay?

Both  countries, the literature of both countries have been in direct dialogue for many, many years, so  we are divided by the widest river in the world but there are many points of affinity between  the two literatures, and these authors navigated from one short to the next, okay? From one to the  other, so I believe it is really a cultural region that we can approach in that way. So it's a gray  world, really, the world of Juan Carlos Onetti. It is the world of the metropolis, okay? Some thin

gs  that you find in this world… when I read Onetti, for instance, I think about noir, okay? The  genre of noir, with its anti-heroes and its existentialist type of philosophy behind it. I  also see quite a bit of misogyny in his world, though that does not necessarily reflect him as  a person. In one interview he describes himself as a gentleman, but you can see that, you know,  many critics have pointed out that in Onetti 's world women are for the most part prostitutes  or, you know, fallen w

omen, as we could say, between quotation marks. So that is something  to consider. There are some angels in his works, but most of the time unfortunately they do not  meet a very positive end. So, something to keep in mind right there. And then, another preoccupation  that I find in Onetti’s works is that of money, okay? His anti-heroes are just struggling for  life, or they are struggling to make ends meet, and sometimes they go to, you know, undesirable  lengths in order to achieve that. So, t

hose are three things: I think of noir, I  think of the misogyny that is present there, and also the element of money. Onetti is famous  for another thing: he created a fictional city, which is called Santa María, okay? And you  may not know this, but you know Buenos Aires, right? The capital of Argentina, where I was born.  The original name of Buenos Aires was Santa María del Buen Ayre, so there you have the connection:  Santa María and Buenos Aires. Though we must say that Santa María is not

really Buenos Aires, okay?  It's a composite. It's a mix between Montevideo and Buenos Aires. It could be any city, really, in  Latin America, so because of this, because of the fact that Onetti created this fictional space for  his characters to live in, he has been compared to, of course, William Faulkner. You could also  draw the comparison with Gabriel García Márquez and Macondo, right? And then also with Juan Jose  Saer, the Argentine author who also created one of these fictional spaces fo

r their characters. So,  in the world of Onetti, like throughout his works, you're gonna find cynicism, you're gonna find  sarcasm as a kind of a defense mechanism, a way to deal with life's so it doesn't  destroy you, and you're going to find a lot of bitterness here too. But it is just, you  know, the unmistakable, the inventive prose and style that just keeps you turning the pages. That  is really what I, you know, as a… as a reader, that is the main reason why I read Onetti in the  first pla

ce. So, we're going to talk about his short stories, right? If you look at this volume  that I showed you before, his Cuentos completos, this includes 50 tales plus four additional texts  that are described as unpublished or, you know, fragments, or things like that, and all of the  texts included in this book were published between 1933 and 1994. So we are looking at more than 60  years, really, of a short story output from him. But if you ask me, the best short stories by  Onetti are the ones

that he published during the 40s, 50s, and 60s. That is where you will find  his best work, if you ask me, right? This is just my opinion. Now, in the English edition you do  not have those four extra texts, but honestly, they are pretty much for completists. I would  describe myself as one, so I'm happy that they included those in the Spanish edition, but  don't worry, you know, it's four texts, really, that kind of add something to the mix but they are  not absolutely necessary for the general

reader or for somebody who's trying to kind of enter,  you know, the literary or fictional world of Juan Carlos Onetti. So what you're going to find  is that towards the end of the collection there is a tendency towards what we call today flash  fiction or maybe even the short short, you know, so his longest stories are towards the beginning  or in the middle of his writing career. So what we're going to do is, what I put together for you,  is basically a top five of his short stories, and we'r

e gonna do this in countdown fashion, okay?  So the last story that I'm going to talk about is the one that I consider to be the best one by  Onetti. Then after that I'm gonna give you some honorable mentions, you know, short stories that  I believe you should check out but that, you know, are not really the absolute best, and I'm going  to share with you a couple of quotes, and that's pretty much the plan for today. So, let's see what  we have here. We're going to begin at number five with the

story “Bienvenido, Bob,” or “Welcome,  Bob,” okay? This is a story in which we have a narrator who is in love with a young woman, right?  And he wants to marry her, but the problem is that this young woman has a brother, Bob, okay? Who  opposes the marriage because he thinks that the narrator, at that time that he wanted to marry  his sister, was old, okay? We have an older guy, right? So there's that conflict right there. So  what Bob does is kind of to talk to his sister and just poison the wh

ole relationship. Now, this is  a static story, okay? One of the reasons why I can tell you what it's about is because nothing really  happens in the story. It's about the narrator, he meets Bob regularly at this café that they  both go to, and he's just reflecting on the whole situation, on this thing that happened  years before, when he wanted to marry this young woman and Bob kind of interfered. The main theme  of the story is the inexorable passing of time, so it's one of those stories about

time, you  know, which Tennessee Williams called “the enemy in us all,” you know. Time is this thing  that destroys us, especially in the work of Juan Carlos Onetti. This is really… this looking back,  right? Looking back to things is really one of the recurring themes in his novels, novellas,  and even in his short stories. And this one, “Welcome, Bob,” is really as much about love  as it is about hate, okay? Because you have the relationship between Bob and the young woman, so  that is love,

right? And then his relationship, in a way, with the brother, which is one of  hate. So as I read the story I kept thinking, remember that Robert Mitchum character in  The Night of the Hunter, who has tattooed, you know, “love” in one hand and “hate” in the  knuckles of the other hand? He does this thing, you know, how the two forces are constantly  fighting each other, and which one will win? You know. So I kept thinking about that as I read  “Welcome, Bob,” by Juan Carlos Onetti. This is, if y

ou want me to describe it in a different way,  I would say this is the story of a revenge that does not happen because it doesn't really need  to happen, in a way, okay? That's all I'm gonna say. I'm gonna let you check it out, and you'll  see what I mean when you read the story. Number four is going to be “La cara de la desgracia,”  or “The Face of Disgrace,” okay? And the first thing that I noticed about this one, and I want to  say that, is that it is a rewriting of a previous story. I was re

ading the story and I was like,  “Wow, I have read this before. Where did I read this before? I cannot have made the mistake of  reading the same story twice.” So I realized that it was a rewriting of a story titled in Spanish  “La larga historia,” and the title in English is “A Long Tale,” which in this book you can find  on page 91. So I thought it was very interesting, and there are many differences between the two  versions. For one, “La cara de la desgracia” is longer, even though the other

one is titled “La  larga historia,” this other story is, you know, longer. And the main difference between these  two is that in “La larga historia” we have a third person narrator, whereas in “La cara de la  desgracia” it is a first person narrator. Now, this guy is… the protagonist, right?… he feels  guilty for the fact that his brother has committed suicide. So he really feels responsible about  that, and the story really starts with a change, when this young woman… it's actually a girl,  yo

u know, an adolescent… arrives at the town, and this person, the narrator, is just captivated  by her and he just has to meet her. One of the differences, you know, another difference between  the two stories is that in “La larga historia” the meeting does not happen. In “The Face of  Disgrace” it does happen, so we hear a lot more about the girl, and I think that makes for such  a better story, you know, in comparison to the earlier version. So they meet, right? And this  is I would say a story

about guilt primarily, of course, because of the responsibility that  this guy feels for his brother's suicide, but it is also about defeat, it is about loss,  right? It is about resignation. Those are some of the themes that I find in “The Face of Disgrace.”  Now, the ending I think you're really gonna like, because it includes a revelation that I don't want  to say “forces you,” but inspires you to reread the story immediately to see how, you know, things  change because of this revelation. A

nd I think, you know, as a short story writer, if you  have that ability to inspire your reader to reread something that you have written almost  immediately, that is just a very good ability to have, and this is one of those stories where I was  like, “Oh my gosh, I want to read it again to see how I missed some things,” because of that final  revelation. We're going to go now to number three, and that is “La casa en la aena,” “The House  in the Sand.” This one is a very important story for the

Santa María cycle. You know, in the  novels and the novellas of Onetti… not all of them deal with Santa María, this fictional city that he  created, but many of them do, and this one is just like key, okay? It's like really important for the  saga of Santa María. It features uh Dr. Díaz Grey, who is one of the recurring characters  in this saga of this fictional city, and at this point in “La casa en la arena” he is  not really practicing anymore, so he's a doctor, of course, but he doesn't jus

t… he  just doesn't practice anymore. He's living in a house close to the beach, and he  constantly interacts with a man named Quinteros, okay? But the story really begins with an arrival,  just like the previous one that I talked about, okay? The arrival of this person that changes  everything, that is another theme in Onetti. So, a pyromaniac known as Colorado arrives, and when  you add a woman to this mix, right? And in this case that's going to be Quinteros's wife Molly,  there you have, you

know, the recipe for disaster that Onetti often presents to us. I would say that  in this story one of the things I like about it is that his style here is at its best, okay? It's  just that mesmerizing obscurity of the style that just keeps you turning the pages because  you want to find out what's going to happen, right? What's going on, sometimes. Because it can  be confusing. But I would say in terms of theme, right? What we have here in “La casa en la arena,”  “The House in the Sand,” is t

his idea that there's always a defining memory for each one of us. You  know that moment? If somebody asked you, “Okay, what is that memory that… of the moment that  defined your life?” And that is what Díaz Grey, the doctor, is doing in this story. He's  thinking about that memory, you know, that moment that basically changed everything,  right? It reminds us, really, that sometimes all we have is one piece of the puzzle. We have  just that one piece, and all we can do, really, the best we can

do, is just to try to imagine what  the rest of the puzzle was like, based on that little element of it that we have. This is a story  that does not have an ending because the ending is not in the story, but in another novel. If you  want to find out the “ending,” quote-unquote, to the story, you have to read the novel Dejemos  hablar al viento. I don't really know how that was translated into English, but I would say  something like Let the Wind Speak, something like that. That is the literal t

itle of the novel,  at least. Number two, okay? That's where we are right now. That will be “El infierno tan temido,”  or “Most Dreaded Hell.” This one is about a man who works at a newspaper. He covers the races,  you know, the horse races, and all of a sudden, at one point in the story, he begins to receive  these photographs from his ex-wife, and he's just deeply disturbed by these photographs, right? And  he starts, based on the photographs, to recall his relationship with this woman: how th

ey met, you  know, how their bond pretty much deteriorated, and finally how they ended up separating. So this  story, what I'm saying, basically, is that it is about one of my favorite themes, which is, you  know, that old idea that “the past is not dead because it's not even past,” and so forth. That  is what you find here. The past is inescapable, and in this story you find it through the pictures  that the narrator keeps getting from his ex-wife, and how that story complicates itself. It's  a

story about sadism. It's about masochism, right? It's about that tendency that leads some  people to just destroy themselves, you know, to abase themselves and to try to drag others with  them and just make everybody descend to the depths of hell, basically, because that is what the  title of the story kind of in indicates. There is a really, really good movie adaptation of this  one by the Argentine director Raúl de la Torre, and I highly recommend it, okay? It stars Graciela  Borges, one of o

ur greatest actresses. By the way, she has nothing to do with Jorge Luis Borges. That  is a… kind of an artistic name that she adopted. But I would say try to watch the movie, you know.  You can find it online. And even if you don't speak or understand Spanish, if you read the story  and then you watch the movie, you're gonna get a really, really good experience in any case, so I  highly recommend that adaptation of “El inferno tan temido,” by Raúl de la Torre. And we come to  number one, the on

e that I believe to be Onetti’s best short story, and that is”Un sueño realizado,”  or “A Dream Come True,” so it makes sense that they decided to title the English edition of his  works with that short story, “A Dream Come True.” This one is about a strange lady who approaches a  theater impresario with a personal project, right? So the guy's like, “Okay, what is this about?  What do you have for me?” And she says, “No, no, it's nothing to do… I don't have a script, I  have nothing like that. I

have just had a dream, and I want to see it represented on the stage.  No audience, nothing. This is just for me.” Really good premise, okay? Which is, by the  way, something that you rarely find in the work of Onetti. Sometimes I think this is what  keeps many people from reading him. If you read the synopses of his works, his short stories,  novels, novellas, you're like, “That doesn't sound very interesting.” Because it's not about  the what; it's about the how, okay? With Onetti it's about

the style, it's about the prose, and  it's about the way that he tells you the story, that just kind of involves you right there. But  in this one we do have a very, very interesting premise. So, the narrator, he has a friend, and of  course they need money. That is a typical motive for actions in Onetti's work. And they decide to  humor this lady and to put on this show, right? On the stage for her alone. This is, I would  say, you know, one of Onetti's deepest stories, and I really like that p

remise, as I said before.  It's really extra-ordinary, you know, literally, it's extra-ordinary and it is really memorable,  so really, you know, it’s just amazing. And then, when you get to the end, you're going to find  that the ending is… right, very, very… what's the word that I'm looking for here? It's open, but I  want to say it's ambiguous, okay? That's the word that I'm looking for. It's really ambiguous, so  don't expect Onetti to do the work for you with this one. This is one of those

stories that you're  gonna keep thinking about for a while, you know, because it's just, you know, just mesmerizing,  once again, and involving, and complex, right? So it's really one of my favorites. Now, I  wanted to share with you some honorable mentions that I noted right here in this copy of the book,  and those are… first of all, I have “Esbjerg en la costa,” okay? “Esbjerg by the Sea.” That is  one of Onetti's also very famous stories, and this one is primarily about homesickness, right? 

And also about defeat. The theme of defeat repeats itself throughout his works, so that's another  good story to check out. Then I also have “Tan triste como ella,” translated into English as “As  Sad as She,” okay? This one is about relationship as hell, okay? About the awful things that people  sometimes do to each other. So it's really dark, you know? It's one of the saddest stories written  about a relationship that you will ever read, so if you're interested in that type of thing I  highly

recommend this one. Then another classic is “Jacob y el otro,” “Jacob and the Other,”  about a parasitic relationship. It's about a boxer who has seen better days, you know, he's  kind of like, getting old, and his manager, who does not entirely believe in him anymore,  right? So that is a longer story that sometimes people describe as a novella, because it's  a little bit longer. From the shorter ones, right? I am not a very big fan of the flash  fiction or the short shorts towards the end, bu

t some of them are very, very good. “Bichicome.”  It was translated into English as “Beachcomber,” okay? And this one is about growing up, but from  the perspective of an adult, so we have this kid who is in the… in the process of growing up,  but from that perspective of the older person, the narrator, okay? Very, very interesting story,  right here. Then I really liked “El album,” okay? “The Album.” It's a story of first love, and it's  the first love of a character who is famous in Onetti's w

orld, who is Jorge Malabia. So here we  read about his first love, and basically the theme would be those people who make an impression  on us, you know. Those lasting impressions, those encounters in our lives that we're never  gonna forget about, and they're gonna just, you know… People who maybe come into our lives  for one moment, and they leave, but in a sense you could say that they don't really leave, you  know, they stay with us for the rest of our lives pretty much. So I really like tha

t theme also.  And then I wanted to mention briefly… there's a story that… his longest story here, right? I  believe it's a novella, okay? So, it's included in collections of short stories in Spanish  and in English, but I believe it is a novella, and many people admire it, and that is “Death  and the Girl,” okay? “La muerte y la niña.” Now, I want to say this: I did not entirely enjoy  this story. And I was like, I felt that it was my fault, you know, I… I just… I just couldn't  get… couldn't w

rap my head around it, you know. So I went online and I tried to look for some  comments on this tale, you know, short story, or novella, or whatever it is, and I think one of  the reviewers online that I… that I found, really nailed it. He said this is the kind of story that  you read not for what it tells but for how it tells it. Which is what I was saying before, with  Onetti it’s often like that, but I still want to recommend it because it's really a Faulknerian  story, because of the multi-

perspective that you get, and… the same story, you know, but  from different perspectives. So I still wanted to mention it as a famous short story by  Onetti. Now, I wanted to show you something very interesting that I have here, and this is… It so  happens that before I bought these other books, right? And before I got from the library the  English edition, I had a book at home of some selected short stories by Onetti. This actually  belongs to my father. There was a collection that came out in

Argentina, and… that was published,  and he got this book as part of that collection, simply titled Cuentos, right? I don't know when…  how old this is, but you know, judging by the… by the appearance, I would say, I don't know,  sometime in the… I don't know, 14th century, or something like that. But anyway, what you find  in this book is really, you know, some of the stories that I already mentioned, so I thought,  you know, I had selected some good stories, because look at this: it has “Un s

ueño realizado,”  “Bienvenido, Bob,” “Esbjerg en la costa,” “La casa en la arena,” “El infierno tan temido,” “Tan  triste como ella,” and then one that I did not mention, which is “Justo el treintaiuno.”  Let me share with you the English translation of that title, because this is a famous story,  right? “Justo el treintaiuno” was translated as… let me see here… “On the thirty first,” okay? So  it's a story really about the 31st of December, if I remember correctly, so it's a new year story,  so

, very interesting, but I did not feel that it affected me the way that I was expecting it to,  because it is a really famous story. Other than that, just to give you an idea what you're going  to find here, you're going to find some crime stories, right? Like “The Tragic End of Alfredo  Plumet” and “The Perfect Crime.” Those are sort of crime stories. The first story that he wrote,  “Avenida de Mayo – Diagonal – Avenida de Mayo,” is very simple. It's about a guy who's walking around  in the cit

y and fantasizing, but that… many people say from that very first story you can already see  what Onetti is all about, right? So that's a very good one. Then you have some with interesting  titles, like “The Tale of the Rosenkavalier and the Pregnant Virgin from Lilliput,” okay? That  one you just have to read it because of the title, okay? So it's really very interesting. And  then, as I said, you know, when you get to page 460 or something like that you start to see some  um some flash fiction

. I really liked “The Piggy,” which is about the cruelty that children can be  guilty of sometimes. “Ki no Tsurayuki,” that one that you can find on page 501, is really good…  that one was very, very memorable. And just, you know, many of these other stories… “Her  Hand,” I thought that one was interesting too, on page 527. So I would say, you know, just  anything that you explore from here, you're gonna find some great short stories. Now, I wanted  to share with you a couple of quotes by Onetti

, one for them I want to share with you for the  style, right? And the other one for the approach. You'll see what I mean by that. So, let's go to  page 325 for the first one, and listen to this: “At the very moment the entire city became  aware that midnight had finally arrived, I was alone and almost in the dark, looking at  the river and the light of the street lamp from the coolness of the window while I smoked and  once again endeavored to find the memory that would thrill me, a reason to f

eel sorry for myself  and blame the world, contemplate with some kind of exhilarating hatred the lights of the city  that were advancing to my left.” Okay? So I'll just let that speak for itself. He's looking for  a reason, as he says, to, you know, feel sorry for myself and blame the world. And I really like  the beginning: “At the very moment the entire city became aware that midnight had finally arrived.”  So he's not saying, you know, “It was midnight, and I was alone and almost in the dark…

” No. It's  when the city realizes, as a whole, you know, the whole city realizes that it's finally midnight.  And then, on page 359, there's one that I want to share with you because this one kind of goes  for Onetti's approach to fiction and his poetics, in a way. This is what the narrator of “Matías the  Telegraph Operator” says: “For me, as you know, the bare facts don't matter at all. What matters  is what they contain or carry, and then to discover what lies beyond that, and then beyond  t

hat, till we get to the deepest depths, which we will never reach.” That is pretty much Onetti  in a nutshell, right? His approach to fiction and the stories that he likes to tell. So, bottom line  here. Onetti's short stories, I believe, are well worth your time. There are some excellent examples  here of the short story genre, especially in Latin America and particularly in the Southern Cone or  the Río de La Plata region. Some of the stories that you're going to find in this collection are  r

eally for completists, okay? And once again, I do describe myself as one of those, so I would  say he is not entirely… “nivelado,” would be a word in Spanish… he is not entirely, you know, at  the same level always with the… with the stories. For some reason, the word in English is not coming  to me at the moment. But I would say that of the 50 stories that are included here 25 of them, half  of them, could be described as either very good or directly excellent, and I think that is a very  good

percentage when we look at short stories, right? I believe that "Un sueño realizado,"  “A Dream Come True,” is definitely one of the best short stories ever published in Latin  America, so I will say that, okay? And from me, that is actually quite a statement. So I would  say, try the five stories that I recommended and maybe a couple of the other ones, of the honorable  mentions. I really encourage you to explore his other works, you know, the novellas and of course  the novels. So those are my

five cents on the short stories of Juan Carlos Onetti. Do you  have any questions, comments, recommendations, recipes? Just let me know. Thank you so much  for stopping by, and have a wonderful day.