Strategies for Reader Participation in the Works of Cortazar, Cabrera Infante and Vargas

Llosa
Author(s): Lydia D. Hazera
Source: Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 13, No. 26 (Jul. - Dec., 1985), pp. 19-34
Published by: Latin American Literary Review
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20111356 .
Accessed: 15/06/2014 14:52

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Latin American Literary Review is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Latin
American Literary Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 STRATEGIES FOR READER PARTICIPATION IN THE
WORKS OF CORT?ZAR, CABRERA INFANTE AND
VARGAS LLOSA

LYDIA D. HAZERA

Because most
comtemporary writers consider the novel a form of
dialogue between
author and reader, they are greatly preoccupied with the
relationships between author and reader and text and reader. Traditionally,
Spanish American writers have looked upon the novel as a medium for
communicating their social concerns. In the early nineteenth century, Jos?
Joaqu?n Fern?ndez de Lizardi, in El Periquillo Sarniento^ expounded the
virtues of education, thrift, and hard work while satirizing Mexican colonial
society. Later, in 1852, Jos? M?rmol depicted the tyranny of dictator Juan
Manuel de Rosas and protested vehemently against it in the novel Amalia.
Mexico's best-known nineteenth century novelist, Ignacio Manuel Altami
rano, ascribed to the novel the value of being an appropriate vehicle for
elevating the masses. This trend of social criticism continued into the twen
tieth century.
Since writers representative of this trend were primarily motivated by
social concerns, they were mainly interested in using the novel as a means
for conveying those concerns and not for expressing their ideas as creators.
Ra?l Castagnino observes that until the 1930s novelists endeavored to have
their works reach the reader as finished products divested of the framework
and literary theories that oriented the author during his creative vigil.l They
sought to shape the dialogue with the reader so as to keep him within the
author's mental constructs, often addressing him directly in authorial com
mentary or indirectly through a narrator within the fiction. In contrast,
present-day writers seek to trigger the reader's active participation, expect
ing him to flesh out the signs with meaning and construct his own fiction
from the author's
fragmentary narrative.
Among the writers to be treated in this essay ?Julio Cort?zar, Guiller
mo Cabrera Infante, and Mario Vargas Llosa?Cort?zar is noteworthy for
giving primary importance to the role of the reader. In his masterpiece,
Hopscotch, Cort?zar 's alter ego Morelli writes:

... I wonderwhether someday I will ever succeed in making it

felt that the true character and the only one that interests me is
the reader, to the degree in which something of what I write

19

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
20 Latin American Literary Review

ought to contribute to his mutation, displacement, alienation,

transportation.2

Cort?zar's interest in the role of the reader stems from his discontent with
the traditional novel, which he criticizes for failing to create a reader.
Among the traditional novel's elements which Cort?zar-Morelli would
remove are the division between content and form, preordained character
psychology, and linear structure.
The main issue, however, is the apprehension of reality, for according
to Cort?zar reality must be possessed. This view forms an important part of
his poetics. Dissatisfied with the traditional concepts and modes of
representing reality, he demands, above all, a subversion of attitudes and
concepts limited by the rational, logical Cartesian process. Particularly
disturbing to him is the dualistic perception of reality: the real-versus-unreal
dichotomy. Cort?zar proposes a reality that is ?fundamentally discon
tinuous, porous and dynamic.?3 To him, the unreal is part of the real to be
glimpsed in the interstices of the real.
Viewing language as a means for apprehending reality, he rebels
against ?literary language,? ornamental expression, hackneyed phrases,
and clich?s. Instead, he urges the search for a language that will possess
reality, not mediate it. To possess reality man must rehabilitate his im
aginative capacity, he must reawaken his analogical faculty, interred in the
unconscious by centuries of obeisance to the Cartesian process. According
to Cort?zar only the poets have not lost the analogical capacity:

It is said that the poet is a ?primitive? to the extent that he is un

enclosed by any petrifying conceptual system because he prefers
to feel than to evaluate, because he penetrates the world of
things themselves rather than that of the names of things which
end by obliterating things . . .4

To recapture the loss of analogical capacity, Cort?zar suggests a return to a

state of innocence. This search for an unadulterated condition unhampered
by reason or logic takes two forms inHopscotch: that of an ontological
quest through the author's surrogate, narrator-protagonist Horacio
Oliveira, and that of the author's own search for a new novel and reader.
Since the main concern of this essay is the relationship between author
and reader, it will center on the role of the reader in the reading process.
Cort?zar's approach to the role of the reader may be described as
phenomenological, for it takes ?into account not only the actual text but
also, and in equal measure, the actions involved in responding to that
text.?5

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Cort?zar, Cabrera Infante and Vargas Llosa 21

Cort?zar believes that a text must incite the reader to participate, i.e., it
must be material in gestation: the experiential immediacy must be trans
mitted through words but using the least aesthetic words possible.6 It is only
through such a text in gestation, conveying experiential immediacy, that the
reader will be aroused to become a coparticipant and cosufferer of the
creator's experience at the same moment and in the same form. Cort?zar
wants the reader, in the process of reading, to go through a creative ex
perience similar to the one the author had while writing. When the text and
reader converge, not only does the text come into existence but a new text is
made possible. Although the new text is controlled by the limits of the
author's text, it is new because it has been enhanced by elements provided
by the reader's imagination.
InHopscotch Cort?zar-Morelli refers to the antinovel as the form most
appropriate for encouraging reader participation, citing its rejection of
description, psychological motivation or explanation, plot, individual
characterization, and linear development. He further observes that the anti
novel is fragmentary, like a series of photographs capturing moments in
time. The gaps between pictures are to be filled in by the reader with his own
literary experience, presumptions, hypotheses, and inventions. In focusing
on the gap as an element in narrative structure for encouraging reader par
ticipation, Cort?zar has percipiently pointed to an element that is central in
any text-reader relationship. According to Iser, the gap is pivotal to the
whole text-reader relationship. Iser explains:

Communication in literature ... is a process set in motion

and regulated ... by a mutually restrictive and magnifying inter
action between the explicit and the implicit, between revelation
and concealment. What is concealed spurs the reader into ac
tion, but this action is also controlled by what is revealed; the ex
plicit in its turn is transformed when the implicit has been
brought to light.7

In Hopscotch the concealment spurring the reader into action takes two
forms: gaps in meaning and blanks interspersed between sections. The
reader, according to Morelli, will have to establish his own links, his own
causal articulation. The author will provide raw things but no ?explanation
or psychologies.? As observed previously, Morelli maintains that reality is
like a series of still photographs of fixed instants. The bridges between in
stants will be invented by the reader:

The book would have to be something like those sketches pro

posed by Gestalt psychologists; and therefore certain lines would
induce the observer to trace imaginatively the ones that would

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
22 Latin American Literary Review

complete the figure. But sometimes the missing lines were the
most important ones, the only ones that really counted.8

The book alluded to is undoubtedly Hopscotch as it is organized in the

table of instructions provided by the author. In her study of the narrative
structure of the novel, Ana Maria Barrenechea describes Cort?zar's alter
nate organization of the book as a distribution of the chapters of part III
(?From Diverse Sides?Expendable Chapters?) among parts I and II.9 The
result of that distribution is that the chapters of part II often enhance anec
dotes presented in parts I and II. Barrenechea has divided her organization
of the book into primary and secondary sequences. The primary sequences
center on relations between Horacio and La Maga and their relations with
the Serpent Club in Paris (part I) and, later, Horacio's with Traveller and
Talita in Buenos Aires (part II). The secondary sequences she describes as
?enclosed within a primary one or spread like a cobweb over several
primary sequences.?10 Though they are interspersed within the primary se
quences, the reader must supply the causal articulation, which often is non
existent. For instance, in the midst of a primary sequence denominated by
Barrenechea as the ?record session? there is a secondary sequence dealing
with tortures. The secondary sequence begins with Wong showing
photographs of Chinese tortures to the other members of the Serpent Club
as they listen to jazz. The only link between the fragments of the secondary
sequence seems to be an association of different forms of torture. The in
ference here is that the author is seeking to stimulate an analogical orienta
tion in the reader.
Evelyn Picon Garfield observes that Cort?zar, like the surrealists, at
tempts not only to encourage analogical orientation but also to oblige the
reader to share in the genesis of the novel.n However, before he can obtain
such participation he must prepare the reader to dispense with such familiar
reading patterns as linearity, psychological motivation, and casual articula
tion. This he accomplishes by the strategem of negation. The author ex
pends several pages of Morelliana negating the value of the traditional novel
and advocating the production of a new novel, an antinovel. Having been
denied familiar patterns and attitudes, the reader must replace them with
others. According to Iser: ?. . .if the starting-point of the novel is a set of
negations, then the reader is impelled to counterbalance these negations by
seeking their positive potential. . ,?12 The positive potential revealed in the
numerous critical readings of Hopscotch centers on a) the importance of
reader participation in the creative process; b) new perspectives on the ap
prehension of reality; and c) equating the reading process with an on
tological quest.
If the actual reader is to become a ?reader-accomplice? he must share
the author's values and identify with his purposes. Wayne C. Booth ex

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Cort?zar, Cabrera Infante and Vargas Llosa 23

plains that the reader must subordinate his beliefs and practices to those of
the author.13 On the other hand, the author ?creates, in short, an image of
himself and another image of his reader; he makes his reader, as he makes
his second self, and the most successful reading is one in which the created
selves, author and reader, can find complete agreement.?14 Booth's views
on the identification of the implied author with the implied reader are
shared to some extent by other critics. For instance, Iser, citing the above
quotation, agrees that Booth's suggestion of the two selves is tenable ?for
those are the roles offered by the text and the real reader's own disposi
tion . . .?15 Iser further observes that the reader's role prescribed by the text
will be stronger. However, the reader's disposition will never totally disap
pear. The role of the reader is ?definable in terms of textual structure and
structured arts.?16 The text guides the reader to assemble the meaning. ?But
since this meaning is neither a given external reality nor a copy of an in
tended reader's own world, it is something that has to be ideated by the
mind of the reader.?17 Booth's and Iser's observations seem to place on the
author and text the onus of guiding the reader. Authors resort to a diversity
of strategies to orient the reader in the realization of his role. It must be
underlined that realization is a continuous interactive process during the
reading of a text.
In addition to negation and the use of blanks as strategies to stimulate
the reader in the realization of the role of reader-accomplice, Cort?zar pro
vides a profile of the reader-accomplice by incorporating into the novel a
group of fictional readers who serve as role models. The Serpent Club
members as readers of Morelli's notes reflect characteristics which Morelli
perceives as requirements for the reader-accomplice. In keeping with
Morelli's ideas that a novel must be free of ?psychologies,? the members
are not endowed with individuality: each member is defined by his activity.
For instance, Etienne is a painter; Ronald, a jazz musician; Ossip Gregoro
vius, like Horacio, an intellectual. The one member who seems out of place
in the group is Perico because he insists on using logic to explain in
congruous situations. He obviously is included to serve as counterpoint to
the other members, who approach daily events with wonder and do not de
mand a sensible explanation for the unexpected. It isHoracio Oliveira, the
intellectual-protagonist, who provides the best model, for he is the most
responsive to Morelli's ideas and the one who embarks on the ontological
quest which runs parallel to the development of the reader-accomplice.
Cort?zar devotes at least four sections to the group's reading of
Morelli's notes. When they approach Morelli's sanctum they are filled with
awe and wonder:

Etienne ran his fingers slowly over the molding of the door.
They waited in silence for him to find the light switch. The

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
24 Latin American Literary Review

apartment was small and dusty, the soft and domesticated lights
enveloped it in a golden air in which the Club breathed with
relief for the first time and went about looking over the rest of
the place, exchanging impressions in low voices . . .?18

They discover folders and files and read aloud excerpts from his notes.
Finally they sit around a table. Lamps are turned down except for the one il
luminating the green velvet notebook, Morelli's latest workbook. Gathered
around the table, concentrating on the green book, each with a glass of
cognac in hand, they seem involved in a spiritual s?ance. In this warm
secluded ambience, the readers experience a sense of otherness with one
another and with the author whose work has been providing them with new
openings for perceiving reality. This scene suggests that Cort?zar sees the
reading process as an activity full of expectation and promise which is
capable of involving the reader completely. Descriptions of the group
reading Morelli's notes convey to the actual reader the attitudes that the
author seeks to provoke in him: for instance, a willingness to engage emo
tionally and intellectually in the work unfolding before him. Cort?zar im
plies through his choice of fictional readers that readers with creative in
clinations are best suited to respond positively to Morelli's ideas on
estrangement, reality, and ontology. The author also underlines recep
tiveness and tolerance to the ideas and to eccentric behavior as qualities in
the implied reader; the reader must be ready to break old mental habits and
to shake off the fetters of reason and logic. As he puts together the collec
tion of notes, meditations and excerpts from books and periodicals, he is
not only constructing his own fiction but, what ismore important, realizing
his role of implied reader.
A consideration of Cort?zar's strategies for inciting reader participa
tion cannot neglect the role of language. According to Cort?zar, the writer
must:

...
set language on fire, put an end to its coagulated forms and
even go beyond it, place in doubt the possibility that language is
still in touch with what it pretends to name. Not words as such,
any more, because that's less important, but rather the total
structure of language, of discourse.19

To put an end to ?coagulated forms? Cort?zar resorts to extensive verbal

play. According to Garfield, Hopscotch

... is more than a metaphysical game of man's rebirth in life

and a structural game which transforms the novel. It is also an
author at play with his own language. Once again, the game is a

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Cort?zar, Cabrera Infante and Vargas Llosa 25

ritual experience, a search for new modes of expression, a

revival of language aimed at freeing it from outmoded and
habitual molds.20

Gags, jokes, puns, farce, jargon, invented forms like ?gliglish? are an in
tegral part of language inHopscotch. Games and the ludicrous are offered
as incentives or openings for reader participation. To Davi Arrigucci, verbal
play is an important part of what he denominates Cort?zar's poetics of
destruction.21
Cort?zar's criterion that reality should be possessed and not mediated
is successfully applied by Guillermo Cabrera Infante in his novel Three
Trapped Tigers. In his work Cabrera Infante has managed to capture the
essence of the nightclub world of pre-Castro Havana through language.
Emir Rodriguez Monegal observes that Three Trapped Tigers, like
Hopscotch ybelongs to the rhetorical category roman comique:

Only Hopscotch follows Morelli's program to the letter but

TTT can easily fit into his direction: it is a book in which the
humor and comedy are also elements that dissolve reality, in
which a text, or a subtext, can be decoded beneath and parallel
to the visible text, in which the reader necessarily becomes an ac
complice, in which the antinovelistic predominates although the
novelistic abounds, in which irony and incongruence are the
constant notes.22

Like Cort?zar, Cabrera Infante resorts to a fragmentary structure to

provoke reader participation. While Hopscotch is a collage of written
texts, Three Trapped Tigers1* is a collage of spoken texts. Unlike Cort?zar,
who orients the reader in the arrangement of the parts by providing a table
of instructions, Cabrera Infante guides the reader by maintaining the same
title, the same narrative point of view, and the same mode of speech in all
sections of the novel dealing with a given subject. For instance, all sections
entitled ?I Heard Her Sing? deal with C?dac's chronological narrative of
Estrella Rodriguez, the nightclub singer. These sections can easily be ex
tracted from the novel to form a short story. The psychiatric sessions are
consecutively numbered and may also be put together to form a coherent
narrative sequence. Though both ?I Heard Her Sing? and the numbered
psychiatric sessions are dispersed throughout the work, the point of view
and mode of speech facilitate identification of the narrator. Other sections
like ?Mirrormaze? and ?Bachata? consist of ongoing conversations be
tween Silvestre and Cue and serve as a framework for narratives from other
points of view. The reader soon becomes aware that there is no traditional

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
26 Latin American Literary Review

plot, no individual psychology, only voices to render the nightclub reality of

pre-Castro Havana.

Among the strategies considered previously, negation is one which an

author may use to stimulate reader participation. Cabrera Infante uses
negation to introduce his reader to his text. In his ?Advertencia? he informs
the reader that this book is written in Cuban, a Spanish dialect, that it is not
a book to be read but one to be heard, thereby putting the reader on notice
that his is an unliterary book, a book of the spoken language, instead of a
literary one. The fact that he stresses that it is written in a dialect announces
to the reader the author's antirhetorical stance. By denying literariness,
Cabrera Infante predisposes the reader to counter the negation and
substitute a positive view, to discover the potential of the spoken language
as literature.
In her perceptive article on Three Trapped Tigers Stephanie Merrim
stresses the polyphonic qualities of the novel and points to features belong
ing to the carnivalesque novel:

It is well-known that the structure of a carnivalesque work is

characterized by an extraordinary freedom of composition
which manifests itself in a multi-generic or collage texture, by
the lack of a finalizing authorial presence which allows
characters to evolve their own truth in a Socratic conversation of
divergent voices, and by an apparent shattering of the customary
novelesque logic of narrative . . .^

Citing Mikhail Bakhtin, Merrim points to another feature of the car

nivalesque novel, skaz (from the Russian to show or to tell). According to
Bakhtin, skaz is ?first of all the orientation toward the speech of another
person . . . and as a consequence of that fact is also the orientation toward
spoken language.?25 Josefina Ludmer refers to the language used in some
sections of Three Trapped Tigers as parodie skaz-26 Parodie skaz is an ap
propriate denomination, for often the author introduces into the speech of
the character a semantic direction which is opposed to the original one.
There are different levels of parody in Three Trapped Tigers: a style of
speech, a person's social and cultural manner of seeing, thinking, and
speaking, and literary styles of well-known writers are parodied. Bakhtin
observes that ?. . . parody can be more, or less, deep: one can parody only
superficial verbal forms, or one can parody the deepest principles of the
other person's word. Furthermore, the parodistic word itself can be
employed by the author in various ways: parody can be an end in itself (the
literary parody as a genre, for example) . . .?27 In Three Trapped Tigers

parody of different verbal forms and at varying levels may very well be the
most salient tool for inciting reader participation. The work begins with a

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Cort?zar, Cabrera Infante and Vargas Llosa 27

skillful parody of the Master of Ceremonies in the Tropicana Nightclub.

Most readers are familiar with this stereotype. No doubt most have seen and
heard him in the nightclubs of Vegas, Atlantic City, New York, London,
Paris, or on a television special. Stylization will instantly provoke laughter
in the reader. For instance, the exaggerated intrusions of English into the
Spanish dialect will incite laughter and a questioning attitude. Exaggera
tion, an important aspect of stylization, essentially distorts reality, and
distortion is the very essence of parody. This distortion conveys the author's
critical view of the hybridization of the native tongue.
The language of Bustr?fedon, the novel's absent character, incor
porates ingredients present in parody: humor, distortion,
several and satire.
Though Bustr?fedon is physically absent, his vocal presence permeates the
novel in the form of tape recordings reproduced by C?dac and the quota
tion of his ideas and opinions by Silvestre and Cue. His iconoclastic attitude
toward language is expressed in endless verbal play and in parodies of the
literary styles of consecrated Cuban writers. According to Merrim, word
play centering on the physical properties of the sign de-emphasizes the
signifier.28 By divesting the sign of semantic direction and converting it into
a sonorous nonreferential sign the author creates a parody of language as a
means of communication. This is confirmed in the parodies of the literary
styles. In narrating one event, ?The Death of Trotsky,? in the literary styles
of seven writers, Cabrera Infante not only parodies their styles but also
communicates the ambiguity of language. The possibility that one event will
provoke such different versions sustains his view that language is fraught
with deception. This pervading view provokes in the reader a continuous
questioning attitude toward language.
In literary parody the author reveals his role as reader and writer, for in
parody he must read (decode) and write (encode).29 He is both critical and
sympathetic toward his target. Because Cabrera Infante parodies style in
stead of meaning, his intention differs from that of the literary parodist
whose intent is oriented toward distortion of meaning. Cabrera Infante's
parodies underline the extent to which the style of these writers has become
part of the oral tradition: for what he stylizes is rhythm, vocabularly, syn
tax. For instance, in ?Los hachacitos de rosa,? a parody of Jos? Marti's
style, he distorts the title of a well-known children's poem, ?Los zapaticos
de rosa,?30 published in La edad de oro, a magazine dedicated to the
children of America. of parodying
Instead the poem, he imitates Marti's
modernist ornamental style. Trotsky's assassination, retold in this familiar
style, provides, because of its political associations, an opening for other in
terpretations besides that of debunking literariness. Merrim posits a second
possibility: that Cabrera Infante aspired to ?include the whole gamut of
Cuban literary culture, showing how Cuban writers might adapt themselves
to the demand of socialist literature.31 This is quite probable, but within the

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 28 Latin American Literary Review

tone and attitude that prevail throughout the book the parodies are essen
tially an attempt to demythify literature, divest it of exclusivity and in
tegrate it into the linguistic system of Cuba. It is not surprising that C?dac,
commenting on Bustr?fedon's taped parodies, says that he is now returning
them to their rightful owner, folklore.32
The incorporation of Bustr?fedon's tapes into C?dac's narrative and
into Cue's and Silvestre's dialogues and the comments of all three pro
tagonists about what Bustr?fedon says, make them listeners and writers as
well as protagonists. C?dac, Cue and Silvestre, by mirroring Bustr?fedon in
their speech, also reflect and comment on his oral text, thereby inviting the
reader to formulate his own views on the text. In so doing, the reader begins
the creation of his own metafiction.
Bustr?fedon is an appropriate mask for the author who, like him,
negates written reality. Therefore, it follows that the section entitled ?Some
Revelations? consists of blank pages: for Bustr?fedon, ?alter ego of the
author, never wrote a page: he only spoke them, in the same way that the
novel attempts to speak. . .?33
When Cabrera Infante uses the blank page to signify ?revelation,? he is
using graphics to parody and attributing an aesthetic function to the page.
The page and its graphic form an inseparable part of the overall design.
Because of this view, Cabrera Infante incorporates graphic design into his
novel to help the reader visualize form and meaning. In addition to visual
images (graphic and verbal), he uses auditory images (verbal) to orient and
stimulate reader participation. Indeed, the mode of speaking of each of the
four protagonists (Erib?, Cu?, C?dac, and Silvestre) is characterized by a
predominance of either visual or auditory images. Throughout his work,
Cabrera Infante reveals a penchant for stimulating the reader through sense
perceptions.
Whereas narrative structure in Three Trapped Tigers and in Cort?zar's
Hopscotch seems difficult to reconstruct, the composition of Mario Vargas
Llosa's novels gradually reveals a coherent, if fragmented and nonlinear,
narrative. The alert reader soon becomes aware of the patterns and begins
to reconstruct, guided essentially by the mode of speech of the narrator or
character, by perceptual and conceptual point of view, and by the time
frame in which the action takes place. Two critics who have examined
reader participation in Vargas Llosa's works are John J. Hassett and Rilda
L. Baker. Hassett,34 in a discussion of techniques in The Green House,35 in
cludes cinematic techniques, interior monologue, omissions of punctuation,
rapid temporal and spatial dislocation, and ambiguity. Baker, analyzing
reader performance in The Time of the Hero*6 examines the ?markers?
that orient the reader, such as framing,37 the title, contrapuntal structure,
temporal fragmentation, detective-story frame, ambiguity, and paradox.38
The techniques and elements considered by Hassett and Baker testify to

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Cort?zar, Cabrera Infante and Vargas Llosa 29

Vargas Llosa's awareness of the reader as an indispensable element in the

author-text-reader relationship. Vargas Llosa has emphasized that the
quality of the story is ?measured by the story's intrinsic power of persusion,
by its ability to impose itself upon the reader as a living and coherent reality
in and of itself?*9 This criterion leads the Peruvian author to use tech
niques which distance the creator from his work.
Because Vargas Llosa's works often treat social and political conflicts,
the reader expects some form of authorial evaluation, some form of solu
tion to questions posed by the works and is often perplexed by the ambigui
ty of the solution. Most critics agree that the behavior of the characters in
his novels is to a large extent circumscribed by environmental factors and
that its presentation is so objective and free of authorial judgment that the
reader is the sole agent in the formation of any moral evaluation. Hassett
observes: ?... there is no unequivocal answer if indeed there are any
answers at all to the obscurity surrounding Vargas Llosa's characters.?40
Hassett is referring to the identity of the characters in The Green House
whose names change according to the location in which they are living. For
instance the young Aguaruna girl converted by the Spanish nuns is
Bonifacia while living at the convent and becomes Wildflower when she
enters into prostitution. To obscurity of identity one might add ambiguity
in the explanation of Bonifacia-Wildflower's behavior, of her radical
change from innocent convent girl to bordello whore. Itmust be added that
physical and social environment interacts with and affects, the actions and
reaction of the characters. Paradoxical behavior and lack of identity are
forms of negation that the reader will seek to counteract with his own ex
planation or justification.
One possible explanation is offered by existentialism. Discussing exis
tentialism in Vargas Llosa's work, Jean Franco observes that:

Unlike the classical-realist novelists of the nineteenth century for

whom moral responsibility was often related to the gradual un
folding of a personal identity, Vargas Llosa projects a self
radically separated from any continuity with the past and only
able to acquire ethical status by the conscious reinvention of a
project.41

She further explains that since existentialism places the ?onus of freedom
on the reader and not necessarily on the characters, the author must offer as
little mediation as possible in the way of value-loaded descriptions and com
ments.?42 Given that the reader is endowed with the freedom to reinvent a
character's project, he will involve himself closely with the character and his
circumstances. Because Vargas Llosa's characters are installed in situations
which enhance their negativity, the reader may feel defeated by the whole

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 30 Latin American Literary Review

enterprise of reinvention. Another result may be that, despite existen

tialism's emphasis on autonomous moral responsibility, the reader will at
tempt to ascribe moral responsibility to individual characters. This is prob
able because texts which stress human actions will elicit moral judgment,
which is ?implicit whenever human beings act.?43
The absence of value-laden comments is a form of negation (denial of
moral judgment) which the reader will try to counteract by interpreting the
text within his repertoire of social norms. For instance, a reader whose
norms of conduct are centered on individual responsibility will attempt to
attribute responsibility to individual characters. However, if the author has
provided no clues to guide him in that direction he will momentarily be dis
oriented. Iser explains that negation ?produces blanks not only in the reper
toire of norms but also in the reader's position, for the invalidation of his
norms creates a new relationship between him and the familiar world.?44
When a strategy influences a reader's personal code, it becomes a for
midable tool particularly if it effects a change of perspective in the reader.
The works examined here exemplify the degree to which the reader has
become an indispensable consideration during the writing of a literary text.
This is, in part, an outgrowth of the authors' self-awareness as creators.
Vargas Llosa, citing the diversity of themes, purposes, styles, and structures
of the Spanish American contemporary novel, observes that ?beneath this
diversity, which is the novel's greatest asset, there is one central and unify
ing element: an awareness of form, an artistic impulse.?45 There is no ques
tion that an important part of this awareness is focused on the role of the
reader in the creative process.
Vargas Llosa has often stressed the involvement of the reader in the
construction of a ?new reality.? To fully understand this concept, one must
take into account his modus operandi as a writer. Invariably, in interviews
or essays Vargas Llosa will inform his readers of events and personal ex
periences which provide material for his novels. For instance, in the pam
phlet Secret Story of aNovel he describes the events leading up to the gesta
tion of The Green House. In the opening paragraphs, he compares the
writing of the novel to a striptease in which the author reveals his most in
timate obsessions. He adds: ?I have thought that itmight be interesting for
you, reader of novels, to attend one of those strip-teases that results in a fic
tion.?46 Luys A. Diez, commenting on the sources of the novel (including
the Secret Story), concludes that the novel is a paradigm of true narrative
transposition: ?Each of those images or experiences, once recorded in the
sensitive mind of a talented novelist, underwent an intensive process of ger
mination, surfacing at times to blend with newly acquired impressions.?47
Diez's reader on how such devices as fragmentation, montage, and multiple
point of view transform documentary material into an artistic work. Such
techniques are effective devices for conveying an ambiguous and timeless

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Cort?zar, Cabrera Infante and Vargas Llosa 31

perspective to the reader and for involving him in the creation of a new
reality. The mystery surrounding the characters' origins and fates and the
ambiguous causes of their development will incite reader participation, for
the reader must complete the fiction and explain the causes. Gregory
Rabassa calls attention to the linking of the primitive jungle setting and the
urban brothel in the symbol The Green House (title of the book) as an effec
tive means of surrounding the novelesque events with the suspense and
mystery necessaryfor reader participation: ?The reader is given his oppor
tunity here, then, to create feelings, to impute them or to ignore them.?48
The Spanish American authors' continuing interest in reader participa
tion in the creative process is evidenced by such essays as Carlos Fuentes'
Don Quixote or the Critique of Reading.*9 Fuentes explains that Don Qui
xote encompasses the criticism of reading principally because the pro
tagonist owes his existence to being both a reader and the subject of
readings. Initially, don Quixote comes into being as the reader of novels of
chivalry. Later his epic adventures become the subject of a book read by
characters in the book bearing his name. Subsequently, don Quixote
himself finds out that he has been the subject of an apocryphal novel by one
Avellaneda. As the subject of readings he has undergone as many transfor
mations as readings, beginning with Avellaneda's apocryphal version. Thus
Fuentes observes:

The endlesscircle of readings and writings winds itself anew;

Cervantes, author of Borges; Borges, author of Pierre M?nard;
Pierre M?nard, author of Don Quixote; Don Quixote, author of
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.?50

It is not surprising that Fuentes makes reference in his circle of readings

to Borges' short story, ?Pierre M?nard, Author of Don Quixote.?
M?nard's version of a familiar text is an excellent example of how each new
reading yields a new text which reflects the new reader's cultural and literary
experience. M?nard, an imaginary French symbolist writer, provides a ver
sion of Don Quixote that is more ?allusive, infinitely richer, subtler, and
more complex?51 than Cervantes' work. Thus it confirms that there are as
many texts as readings and that each new reading is prefigured by the
reader's cultural repertoire. Fuentes' essay further illustrates the contem
porary author's continuing interest in the role of the reader in the creative
process. To Cort?zar, Vargas Llosa, Cabrera Infante, and most present-day
Spanish American authors, the reader is co-creator of the work for the text
comes into being only when it is interacting with the reader's imagination. It
is the reader who fills gaps of unwritten portions in the novel and provides
his own interpretation in areas of ambiguity. Therefore it becomes the

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 32 Latin American Literary Review

author's purpose to engage the reader in the creative process by maximizing

his participation.

George Mason University

NOTES

1. Ra?l H. Castagnino, Escritores hispanoamericanos, desde otros ?ngulos de simpat?a

(Buenos Aires: Editorial Nova, 1971), p. 350.
2. Julio Cort?zar, Hopscotch, tr. Gregory Rabassa (New York: Avon Books, Bard edition,

1975), p. 446.
3. Sara Castro Klaren, ?Ontological Fabulation: Toward Cort?zar's Theory of Literature,?

in Final Island, ed. Jaime Alazraki and Ivar Ivask (Norman, Oklahoma: University of

Oklahoma Press, 1978), p. 142.

4. Julio Cort?zar, ?Para una po?tica,? La torre, No. 7 (julio-septiembre 1954), p. 124. My
translation of: ?Se dice que el poeta es un ?primitivo? en cuanto est? fuera de todo sistema

conceptual petrificante, porque prefiere sentir a juzgar, porque entra en el mundo de las cosas

mismas y no de los nombres que acaban borrando las cosas ...?

5. Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Univer

sity Press, 1974), p. 274.

6. Cort?zar, Hopscotch, p. 407.
7. Wolfgang Iser, ?Interaction between Text and Reader,? in The Reader in the Text, ed.

Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 111.

8. Cort?zar, Hopscotch, p. 478.

9. Ana Maria Barrenechea, ?La estructura de Rayuelo de Julio Cort?zar,? in Textos

hispanoamericanos, de Sarmiento a Sarduy (Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1978), p. 207.

10. Barrenechea, p. 215. My translation of ?enclavadas sol en una de las mayores, o tendidas

como red de ara?a sobre varias de ellas.?

11. Evelyn Picon Gar field, ?Es Julio Cort?zar un surrealista! (Madrid: Editorial Gredos,

1975), pp. 216-223.

12. Iser, Implied Reader, pp. 34-35.

13. Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago and London: The University of

Chicago Press, Phoenix Books, 1967), p. 138.

14. Booth, p. 138.

15. Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Univer

sity Press, 1978), p. 37.

16. Iser, Act of Reading, p. 38.
17. Iser, Act of Reading, p. 38.

18. Cort?zar, Hopscotch, p. 444.

19. Cort?zar, Hopscotch, p. 456.

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Cort?zar, Cabrera Infante and Vargas Llosa 33

20. Evelyn Picon Gar field, Julio Cort?zar (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.,

1975), p. 109.

21. Davi Arrigucci, Jr., O escorpiao encalacrado (Sao Paulo, Brasil: Editora Perspectiva,
S.A., 1973), p. 59.
22. Emir Rodriguez Monegal, ?Structure and Meanings of Three Trapped Tigers, ? Latin

American Literary Review, Vol. I, No. 2 (Spring 1973), p. 31.

23. Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Three Trapped Tigers, tr. Donald Gardner and Suzanne Jill
Levine in collaboration with the author (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Colophon
Books, 1978).
24. Stephanie Merrim, ?A Secret Idiom: The Grammar and Role of Language in Tres Tristes

Tigres,? Latin American Literary Review, Vol. VIII, No. 16 (Spring-Summer, 1980), p. 97.
25. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, tr. R.W. Rotsel (n.p.: Ardis, 1973),
p. 159.

26. Josefina Ludmer, ?Tres tristes tigres. Ordenes literarios y jerarqu?as sociales,? Revista

Iberoamericana, Vol. XLV, Nos. 108-109 (julio-diciembre 1979), p. 505.

27. Bakhtin, p. 160.

28. Merrim, p. 107.

29. Margaret A. Rose, Parody/Meta-Fiction (London: Croom Helm Ltd., 1979), p. 128.
30. Jos? Marti, ?Los zapaticos de rosa? in Obras completas (La Habana, Cuba: Editorial

Lex, 1953), II, pp. 1296-1299.

31. Merrim, p. 109.

32. Cabrera Infante, p. 233.

33. Julio Ortega, ?An Open Novel,? Review (Winter 71/Spring 72), p. 20.
34. John J. Hassett, ?The Reader in Vargas Llosa's La casa verde,? Chasqui, Vol. I, No. 2

(marzo-abril 1972), pp. 24-35.

35. Mario Vargas Llosa, The Green House, tr. Gregory Rabassa (New York: Harper & Row,

1968).
36. Mario Vargas Llosa, The Time of the Hero, tr. Lysander Kemp (London: Jonathan

Cape, 1967).
37. Rilda L. Baker, ?The Reader's Performance in The Time of the Hero,? Texas Studies in
Literature and Language, Vol. XIX, No. 4 (Winter 1977), pp. 397-398.
38. Baker, pp. 398-406.
39. Mario Vargas Llosa, ?Introduction,? The Latin American Novel Today and World
Literature in Review, Books Abroad, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Winter 1970), p. 8.
40. Hassett, p. 32.
41. Jean Franco, ?Conversations and Confessions: Self and Character in The Fall and Con
versation in The Cathedral,? Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. XIX, No. 4

(Winter 1977), p. 452.

42. Franco, p. 453.
43. Booth, p. 397.
44. Iser, Act of Reading, p. 217.
45. Vargas Llosa, ?Introduction,? p. 10.

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 34 Latin American Literary Review

46. Mario Vargas Llosa, La historia secreta de una novela (Barcelona: Tusquets Editor,

1971), p. 8. My translation of: ?He pensado que pod?a ser interesante para ustedes, lectores de

novelas, asistir a uno de esos strip-teases de los que resulta una ficci?n.?

47. Luys A. Diez, ?The Sources of The Green House: The Mythical Background of a

Fabulous Novel,? Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. XIX, No. 4 (Winter 1977),
p. 442.
48. Gregory Rabassa, ?O Tempora, O Mores: Time, Tense and Tension in Mario Vargas

Llosa,? World Literature Today, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Winter 1978), p. 32.
49. Carlos Fuentes, Don Quixote or the Critique of Reading (Austin, Texas: Printing Divi

sion of The University of Texas, Institute of Latin American Studies, 1976).

50. Fuentes, p. 50.
51. Jeanine Parisier Plottel, ?Introduction,? Intertextuality. New Perspectives in Criticism,

ed. Jeanine Parisier Plottel and Hanna Charney, New York Literary Forum, Vol. II (New

York: 1978), p. xix.

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:52:07 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions