Looking into a mirror: when the writer speaks to you

 

(Me smoking in an attempt to look like a character from the book)

Fourth entry;

A book will always spark a reaction from us. This is as certain as own mortality. It is practically an axiom. Anyone who claims they can read any book objectively, completely devoid of reaction, is either lying or not quite human. We naturally react strongly to themes that resonate with us. In fact, it could be argued that the very purpose of literature is to touch the reader's feelings in one way or another. That would explain what a clerk said to me a long time ago, when I first bought a book with my own money: "There is always a book for everyone, a story that resonates with yours, don't forget that."

Such is the case of Onetti and myself.. My first encounter with him was through a collection of tales of his. My favorite is "The Face of Disgrace". After that, he became the standard I would follow when it came to judging a writer's use of a language or a story's emotional weight; Unsurprisingly, it has become increasingly difficult for me to find any author that impresses me the same way Onetti did. But it is not only because his masterful writing, but also the topics he touches what make me feel so drawn to his books. Having lived in a time where Latin American literature was all about denouncing social injustices, discretedly critizing the military dictatorships or highlighting the local traditions and costumes, Onetti ignored all that and went on writting about deeper, more intimate topics such as the meaninglessness of life, the imposibility to love or the pain of nostalgia. 

Having said this, The Shipyard stands not only as personall all-time classic, but also as a place of solace when life becomes too overwhelming. As I have mentioned in previous entries, this novel's core topics are failure and how the lack of a sense of purpose drives people to madness, two feelings I, for personal reasons, am sadly all too familiar with. For the longest time, I have wanted not people tell me the usual, sugar coated words to cheer me up. I do not need them, for optimism is only a white lie to cover the irremediable wrongness of things. Instead, I wanted to know there was someone somewhere who went through the same situations than I. And it happened that, as I read this book and knew more about its characters, I felt more and more related to them as the situations described in the novel, save for some literary differences, were a reflection of what I had been through. Eventually, it became so personal I felt tempted to think I was reading my own biography (note the irony here). This personal connection to the book made its reading some type of catharsis. 

But, to end this entry on a more positve note, I find it fascinating how stories written by other people, perhaps from a time way before we were born, can still resonate so deeply with us even today. Onetti is a prime example, but countless authors have spoken to me across the years, each offering a unique perspective that resonated with the person I was at that specific moment. This only proves literature is capable of trascending time and space to reach the least expected person and serve them as a compass to navigate through the ups and downs of human experience. 

Beyond objectivity: Onetti and the subtle art of implication

                                                  (Old piece of machinery, La Costanera, Asunción)

 Third entry:

So far, I have only spoken about the book's events and the character's reactions to them. I must admit, focusing solely on the book's events and character reactions falls short. Not only does it repeat the text, but it also contradicts the very nature of Onetti's literature. To try and make sense of what happens to us is a waste of time, to seek certainty in a life devoid of meaning is, at best, a futile exercise. Sometimes, what is important is not what happened but what it means to us. Therefore, speaking with the truth, for Onetti, is pointless. As expressed in his 1949 novel, The Well, "There are several ways to lie, but the most disgusting of all is to tell the truth, the whole truth, hiding the soul of the facts."

This approach to objectivity is central to understanding Onetti's work, including The Shipyard. He avoided following the realist tradition of his time while also regarding the magic realism's formulas as a lame experiment, and instead choosing to sustain all his narrations through an indirect point of view. And this reflects on the overall sense of incompleteness The Shipyard transmits, and which captivated me the first time I read it. The story does not lay on an onmiscient narrator but on a secondary witness, someone who elludes or ignores basic information. Sometimes, a whole chapter is based merely on a rumor or a thirdhand piece of gossip. But their interpretation is never exact nor reliable. The nameless narrator, another character within the novel, acts as an imprecise eye, wandering through the text, incapable of explaining its own bewilderment.

Besides, let's ask ourselves, when we tell something to someone, do we go through each exact detail, having a full comprehension of every single element, accounting for the big picture? Isn't our version inevitably subjective and shaped by our perspective? Onetti knows this all too well and, as a fervient admirer of Faulkner, he also is aware that the writer owes nothing to the reader. Nobody but the characters has a full comprehension of the story, so the writer's job only consists of sharing it in the best way he can. Literature isn't, and shouldn't be, a mirror or a photograph of the real world. Its domain is the unreal, which is not the same as fantasy. Fantasy combines the possible with the impossible, whereas the unreal is the product of a mind that dreams, reflexes, creates and omits. 

However, I believe this is the actual charm of this book, its essence. Instead of being a guided walk through the park, we are set to take an active role in the story by taking in the little pieces of information we are given and combining them together however we see best. The meaning we construct is our own, and ultimately the most valuable one to share. The real causes don't really matter, as they are subjected to ambiguity and arbitrariness. Just as in real life, the elements are there and we are free to make our own interpretation, for who is in possession of absolute truths? No one. Because facts are always empty, they are just vessels that will take the form of the feeling that fills them. Lying is always more ethical than pressuming certainties.