Juan Goytisolo's "Fiestas," an Analysis and Commentary

Abstract

the people, which he attributes largely to Ortega's theories on the deshumanizacidn del arte. He feels very strongly the necessity to renew the dialogue which should exist between the author and his public. This is a means of communication which he would grant to few of the writers of the modernista and dictadura movements, and it is the lack of this communication which he thinks explains the presence of the two types of novel current in Spain: one a refined, esthetic novel of the type written by Jarnms, and the other, popular, by such writers as Pedro Mata or Felipe Trigo. This communication may be reestablished, he believes, by once again facing problems, by discussing and writing about them, by avoiding evasive and ivory-tower literature for ithe elite, and by writing about and directing the writing toward the pueblo. Goytisolo makes it eminently clear who his literary heroes are. He admires Gald6s and B roja, who write about types; Quevedo, Cela, and the writers of the picaresque tradition in Spain; and, in fact, all the writers who have contributed to the strong current of realism which has been present in Spanish literature from its beginning. In refutation of the criticism that the picaresque-and, as it may be equated, the realistic-has served to degrade the national image of Spain, Goytisolo says: Si estA de acuerdo en reconocer que la Novela Picaresca es un reflejo, un espejo a lo largo de un camino, deberi admitir que no es ella la que crea el mal; que el picaro y la sociedad que lo origina, existen; que Quevedo y Torres de Villarroel (o Baroja y Cela) se limitan a retratarlos.2 To follow the tradition of those writers