Body Snatcher by Juan Carlos Onetti
I’m always tempted to break up my anally alphabetical ordering of books to create a special shelf of books that, to me, constitute lessons in writing. These are not necessarily the best books–although they often are–but they are the books I feel I could read and reread in hopes of penetrating the secrets of their consruction. They are the books that would signpost the way to the literary style I’d most like to emulate. Body Snatcher by Juan Carlos Onetti would find a place on that shelf.
Onetti remains a bit of an unknown in the States, but one hopes that the surge of interest in Roberto Bolano will spur interest in some of his Latin American predecessors and contemporaries. Onetti was born in Montevideo, but eventually fled to Spain after being persecuted by the Uruguayan dictatorship in 1974 for presenting a prize to a short-story considered pornographic by the powers that be. His heroes number among mine–Knut Hamsun, William Faulkner, Celine–and his writing shows their influence.
Published originally in Spanish in 1964, Body Snatcher was translated into English by Alfred MacAdam in 1991. It tells the story of the arrival of a brothel in a small town named Santa Maria–which is the setting of many of Onetti’s works. The Body Snatcher of the title is Larson, a sort of pimp, who runs the brothel, but this story is not his alone. It is also the story of Jorge, a boy in his teens who is having a strange but seductive relationship with the unhinged widow of his dead brother. It is also the story of Father Bergner, who runs a complicated campaign against the moral deterioration of Santa Maria, and it is the story of Marcos, a gritty man of violence and indignation who keeps both sides guessing. I say Body Snatcher is a story, but that’s only true in the sense that As I Lay Dying is a story about a burial. Onetti’s style is the main attraction. There are subtle tricks of narrative perspective and tormenting convolutions of language that are, to be honest, only poetic in retrospect. It all fuses together, however, into something magical.
I love this book, and I hereby add Onetti to my list of heroes. If the translators don’t get on it, I might have to learn more than get-to-the-bus Spanish.