The Novels of Juan Goytisolo

Abstract

Many critics of the contemporary novel, among them Torrente Ballester, Juan Luis Alborg, Domingo Perez Minik, and Jos6 Castellet, have complained about the lack of density, literary culture, and controversy of contemporary novelists. Among the Spanish novelists who were very young during the Spanish Civil War, the one to whom the foregoing negative criticism would least apply is Juan Goytisolo in his interpretation and description of an anguished Spain haunted by its painful and unforgettable memories of the Civil War. Juan Goytisolo, whose ancestry includes Spanish, Basque, and French branches, was born on January 5, 1931, in Barcelona, which was also the birthplace of his parents. His father, a chemical factory executive before his retirement, was imprisoned during the War, and his mother was killed during an air raid by Franco's forces. Young Goytisolo spent part of the War in a refugee children's colony, an experience he later vividly recalls in one of his novels, in which, as in reaction to the external reality of Spain, he extracts his incidents, in part, from childhood experiences. Goytisolo attended law school at Barcelona, Madrid, and Paris, but he spent little time studying and was at one time dismissed from college for his anarchistic ideas. Today he works in Paris, where he has lived since about 1957 with the exception of trips to various parts of Spain. Goytisolo has written travel books, Campos de Nijar, 1960, and La Chanca, 1962, a portrayal of the incredibly impoverished life of the inhabitants of a district in southern Spain; critical essays, Problemas de la novela, 1959; and short stories, Para vivir aqui, 1960. In the last mentioned volume almost nothing happens. At times the stories remind one of the work of Azorin, although they are less charming and impressionistic. Some seem almost vignettes, though there is nothing dainty about any of them. The young author's first novel, Juegos de manos, published in 1954, when it placed third in the Nadal Prize competition, concerns a group of young intellectuals who have rebelled against an atmosphere which reflects their sordid, cruel, and treacherous inheritance and the unhealable wounds created by the Civil War. The suspense, protest, dramatic intensity, and violence reveal insights about well-meaning, permissive, and ineffective parents and disillusioned youngsters. David, a law student of good family and a member of the gang which plots the assassination of a minor political official, is chosen to be the murderer. The sensitive David is unable to carry out his task, and Agustin, the gang leader, kills him and gives himself up. The characters engage in a ceaseless round of action alternating with sloth. They do not know what they want, but they hate their middleclass background, and some seek to avoid all possibility of forgiveness by their parents by committing some irrevocable act which will cut their parental ties forever. Agustin's action, unopposed by David who is quite willing to die, constitutes a kind of guilt atonement for their own, their companions', and their parents' shortcomings in a meaningless world. Eduardo Uribe, David's cousin, a drunkard and weakling, seeks escape from the world and from himself in a make-believe existence. Luis Piez, the aimless wanderer, Ana, the dedicated revolutionist, and others form a world of hopes and fears, hates and loves