Understanding Juan Benet: New Perspectives by Benjamin Fraser (review)

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Reviewed by: Understanding Juan Benet: New Perspectives by Benjamin Fraser Anne Walsh Fraser, Benjamin. Understanding Juan Benet: New Perspectives. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2013. Pp. 162. ISBN 978-1-611-17152-5. Juan Benet (1927–93) is an author of undoubted skill and talent whose work, of late, has not been the subject of much critical attention. Benjamin Fraser sets himself the task of righting that wrong in this monograph aptly titled Understanding Juan Benet: New Perspectives. It is significant that it is not the author who is the subject of study, but, rather, the man, the engineer who was an author or, perhaps, the author who also happened to be an engineer. Fraser aims to clarify the significant crossover between both facets of Benet’s career, by continuing critical exploration carried out to date, and to bring an interdisciplinary approach to bear, which so far has been absent. He offers his readers four chapters, the titles of which underline the importance of the concepts of space, place and memory, and how, honed by Benet’s knowledge of engineering, these appear in his writings. Chapter 1 (“The Spanish Civil War and Beyond: The Spatial Question”) focuses specifically on Benet’s life during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and its aftermath. The division of Spain into two opposing sides, the Republicans and Nationalists, is seen as key to understanding Benet’s response (18). Benet has given his own account of the war in ¿Qué fue la guerra civil? (1976), in which he clarifies that not one but two revolutions took place on Spanish soil in the late 1930s, one from the right and the other “from the left seeking a much more radical approach to Spanish democracy than a simple Republican state could provide” (21). This quote throws light on one possible reason why Benet’s writings have been marginalized in earlier criticism. While he did not support nationalism or Francoism, he did not view republicanism through rose-tinted glasses either. It may also explain why now is the time to “rescue” Benet’s writings since it is becoming increasingly possible to find a more balanced position between opposing views. In a way, Benet was a man before his time in that he could see the complexities in what others considered binary opposites. This first chapter provides a backdrop for understanding the complicated situation unfolding in Spain in the twentieth century. Indeed, Benet’s views, voiced in 1976, the year after Francisco Franco’s death, warns that little had been learned in the 40 years after the outbreak of that war: “Such is the Spain of today: the same habits of 1936 fueled by the same fury” (27). Chapter 2 (“The Civil Engineer and the Author: Hydraulic Works, Water, and Literature”) looks in detail at the overlap between Juan Benet, civil engineer, and Juan Benet, the author, seeing him as “a creative giant” (36) and using the metaphor of bridge-building to explain Benet’s views. Two texts are examined, Volverás a Región (1967), and Herrumbrosas lanzas (1983). Benet’s imaginary setting, Región, referred to in the title, is a safe place in which to discuss war and the effects of war, relationships with neighbors (living in the equally imaginary Macerta), memory of the past, and the paralysis that can ensue from that memory. Bridges and railroads take on extra dimensions in these fictional settings, creating connections but also reasons for conflict. Fraser makes a convincing case of linking Spain’s history and Benet’s fiction with the bridge—a symbol, in both, of “the ruin of Republican Spain” (51). Curiously, a text itself can also be seen as “a bridge of sorts between the author and the reader” (69). Chapter 3 (“Juan Benet’s Bergsonism: Time, Memory, and Knowledge”) uses the filter of Henri Bergson’s philosophy through which to view Benet’s work, particularly in his essays [End Page 513] “El ángel del señor abandona a Tobías” (1976) and “Un extempore” (1967), and his second novel Una meditación (1969). Of interest are the concepts of time, space and memory and the connections between all three, which, Fraser claims convincingly, are...