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 Uruguayan
novelist and short-story writer, a master in fusing fantasy and
realism. Onetti was awarded Uruguay's national literature prize
in 1963 and Spain's prestigious Cervantes Prize in 1980. In La
vida breve (1950) Onetti created the fictional city of Santa
María, which also is the setting of his later works. The narrator
of the novel, Brausen, invents a fantasy existence for himself as
Díaz Grey, the protagonist of a screenplay he is writing.
"Onetti's uneven, troubled career has resolved itself into
a large body of critically admired prose that, finally, hews to
a single driving artistic impulse: the necessary predominance
of writing process. Onetti's anguished, detached narrators, creators
of public words and private torments, brought Latin American fiction
out of its provincial stasis at a time when talent, opportunity,
and attention were poised to grant it greatness, and the Latin
American novel from the 1940s onward stands as the heir to Onetti's
artistic, self-examining vision."
(Bart L. Lewis in Contemporary World Writers, ed. by Tracy Chevalier,
1993)
Juan Carlos Onetti was born in Montevideo. He never completed his
secondary education and spent his first twenty years in his native
Uruguay. He then moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he worked
as a journalist and began publishing short stories in the early
1930s. From 1946 to 1955 Onetti edited Vea y Lea, in Buenos
Aires.
In Montevideo Onetti edited the highly regarded weekly journal
Marcha from 1939 to 1942. He was editor for Reuters News
Agency, first in Montevideo (1941-43), and then in Buenos Aires
(1943-46). From 1955 to 1957 he was a manager of an advertising
company in Montevideo. During his years in Marcha Onetti
promoted a radical transformation of literature and emphasized devotion
to art. He attacked the tendency to focus on Nature, and gauchos
were for him old-fashioned literary types. Onetti saw that writers
should develop stories about the cities. With his stories about
urban reality Onetti came close to Roberto Arlt. He also admired
William Faulkner - they both used unconventional narrative methods.
Santa Maria developed into Onetti's Yoknapatawpha. Another source
of inspiration was Louis-Ferdinand Céline, especially his use of
language.
Onetti's first novella, El pozo (1939) was hailed by many
critics as the first truly modern Spanish American novel. It used
modernist technique and brought on the scene a character familiar
from the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. The protagonist,
Eladio Linacero, leads his aimless life in a city where he is unable
to communicate with others. In his nightly self-torture, Linscero
recalls his rape of a girl and moral degradation.
 The
three-volume cycle of novels and stories, often called the 'Santa
Maria Sagas', included La vida breve, in which the narrator
is Juan María Brausen, a creator of characters, Los adioses
(1954), and Una tumba sin nombre (1959), depicting a man
who is sexually obsessed with a prostitute. One of its characters
states: "the only thing that matters is that when I finished writing
this story I felt at peace." In La cara de la desgracia (1960)
a guilt-ridden protagonist accepts responsibility for the death
of his brother and a young girl. El astillero (1961), also
set in Santa Maria, focused on the life of Larsen, an ex-owner of
a whorehouse, who works in a rusting shipyard. The character appeared
first time in Onetti's second novel, Tierra de nadie (1941).
Juntacádaveres (1965) took Larsen back to a time when he
was a brothel owner.
In 1957 Onetti became a director of Municipal Libraries in Montevideo.
As a writer he attracted little critical attention outside Uruguay
until the mid-1960s. Onetti's international reputation, and the
fact that he was considered the most distinguished Uruguayan author,
did not prevent his imprisonment in 1974 by the military dictatorship.
He had been a member of the jury that awarded a literary prize to
a short story by Nelson Marra, which the authorities considered
to be pornographic and offensive. Onetti was briefly incarcerated
in a mental institution.
Onetti moved to Madrid and in 1975 he became Spanish citizen. He
refused to go back to his country even when democracy was restored.
In Spain Onetti worked at a number of odd-jobs including a waiter,
salesman and doorman. In 1985, the new president of Uruguay travelled
to Spain to present Onetti with the National Literary award.
Onetti wrote with a mixture of comedy and sadness about the loneliness
of life, absurd values, the futility of religion, and the breakdown
of modern town life. Although his tone was often pessimistic, his
stories were rich in imagination. In Madrid Onetti's novels and
short stories became more and more pessimistic, and in Dejemos
hablas al viento (1979) he had Santa María destroyed by fire.
He received several awards including the National Literature Prize
in 1962, William Faulkner Foundation Ibero-American Award in 1963,
Casa de las Américas Prize in 1965, Italian-Latin American Institute
Prize in 1972, Miguel de Cervantes Prize in 1980. Onetti was married
four times, first with his cousin María Amalia Onetti (1930), in
1934 with his cousin María Julia Onetti, in 1945 with Elizabeth
María Pekelharin, and in 1980 with Dorothea Muhr; they had lived
together for 25 years. Onetti died in Madrid on May 30th, 1994.
For further reading: The Formal Expression of Meaning
in Juan Carlos Onetti's Narrative Art by Y.P. Jones (1969): Entorno
a Juan Carlos Onetti, ed. by L. Gómez Mango (1970); Las trampas
de Onetti by Fernando Aínsa (1970); Onetti by J. Ruffinelli (1973);
Homenaje a Juan Carlos Onetti, ed. by H.F. Giacomán (1974); Three
Authors of Alienation: Bombal, Onetti, Carpenties by Ian M. Adams
(1975); Juan Carlos Onetti by D. Kader (1977); Onetti: obra y
calculado infortunio by Fernando Curiel (1980); Onetti by Hugo
J. Verani (1981); Reading Onetti by Mark Millington (1985); Juan
Carlos Onetti, ed. by Hugo J. Verani (1987); La Figura en el tapiz:
Teoria y practica narrativa en Juan Carlos Onetti by Sonia Mattalia
(1990)
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