Gustavo Sainz* an Analysis Of

RICE UNIVERSITY GUSTAVO SAINZ* AN ANALYSIS OF OBSESIVOS DIAS CIRCULARES by Dorothy Farrington Caram A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS Thesis directors signaturet Houston, Texas April, 1974 ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to analyze Obsesivos días circulares, the second novel written by the young Mexican novelist, Gustavo Sainz, while he was writer-in- residence at the State University of Iowa for the academic year, 1968-69. Gustavo Sainz has stated frequently in interviews that he wrote Obsesivos días circulares as a novel inten¬ ded for an "elite” type of reader and not for the general masses. This ‘'elite” reader is one who does not read novels solely for entertainment, but chiefly as an intel¬ lectual challenge) one who views the novel as an aesthetic object complete unto itself. In order to meet this intellectual challenge and to show how Sainz has structured his world, this investigation analyzes Obsesivos días circulares with particular attention to the structure of the narrator and the world content. The structure of the narrator in this contemporary novel is very complex despite the fact that at first view it would seem to present a first person dramatized narrator-protagon¬ ist. Sainz, being highly conversant with the techniques of Henry James, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and his own mentor, James Joyce, has written a novel in which all the dialogues and descriptions are presented in streams of con¬ sciousness, in interior monologues, or in letters, with ample instances of flashback, automatic writing, montage, and oneiric descriptions. He has assembled quotes from many literary sources, gathered clippings from newspapers» reproduced posters» and employed cinematographic references. The world content of the novel is derived from the cosmos of its language; the purpose of the author is to create a novel in which language at first is quite coherent» but gradually and systematically is decomposed until only one graphic sign remains. The characters» their perception and experiences of the world, the levels of reality, settings, motifs, and motivations are so structured that the reader is always conscious of the importance of languages a language of psychic phenomena not of physical reality. Nevertheless, when the world content is presented in its full physical reality (organized into rational, lineal spacial-temporal components), the sensation of living in the Mexico City of the late 1960 *s emerges vividly with its multitude of everyday situations and problemss street traffic subway construction, water, educational and moral-ethical debates, entertainment and cultural happenings, and especially political and criminal elements—all of it scrutinized in the light of a brilliant irony. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank not only my thesis director, Dr. Joan Rea Green, for her patience, support, and guidance, but also Dr. Maria Teresa Leal de Martinez and Professor Antonio Gila for the^considerable time that they have all devoted to the direction of this thesis. My thanks to the other faculty and staff members of the Spanish Department for their encouragement} to Dr. George G. Williams of the English Department for his suggestions; and also to the staff of the Rice University Library, especially Mr. Steve Strange and Mr. John Garcia, for their help in obtaining material pertinent to the analysis. I would like ..to thank Miss Lynn Niswander, Mrs. Howard Christian, and Mrs. Bob Cayard for typing this thesis. Special thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Barney Winkier for their care¬ ful proofreading. With great admiration I add my appreciation to Gustavo Sainz and his wife, Rosita, for the assistance they so freely have given me and also for the friendship they have extended me. I dedicate this thesis to my husband,' Pedro Caram, M.D.; our four sons, Pedro, Juan, Hector and José; my mother,’ Elena Farrington; my understanding relatives and friends; and to the memory of my father, Curtis L. Farrington. CONTENTS Introduction • •••••••••• 1 Chapter It The structure of the narrator • •••••• 15 Chapter II i The world content «42 A. Fable. ....... 42 Q. Sujet ••••••••••••••46 C. Levels of reality. •••••• • • 73 Conclusion. •••••••••••• 96 Bibliography* • ••••••••••••••• 98 Appendices, ••••••••• 104 of Gustavo Sainz •••••••••• i of Gustavo Sainz. •••••••• vi of letters, ••••••••••• viii III,ReproductionIV,GlossaryII.BibliographyI,Biographyof References • • • • xiv INTRODUCTION Susan Sontag,^ attempting to describe the young con¬ temporary novelist’s sensibility in relation to the cul¬ tural phenomena of the twentieth century, agrees with Marshall McLuhan2 that man is now living in a period of profound and bewildering historical change. Humanity is witnessing the creation of a new sensibility, which, through a succession of technological and scientific achievements, has extended human capacity and experience. Life itself has been accelerated as seen not only in the vast popula¬ tion explosion and in the social and physical mobility of man, but also in the speed of images, both visual and acous¬ tic, that man receives through such media as the telegraph, telephone, television, radio and cinema. Art, so often mimetic in nature, also has changed in its function and ’’today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modi¬ fying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility.. These modes of sensibility are made universal through the mass reproduction of the arts. No longer can the arts be ¿L “privileged means of perception for the few," rather, the arts have become the means of reflecting the total environ¬ ment that is universal to all mankind. As a form of art, the contemporary novel continues to 2 turn its mirror towards human nature. However, the mirror is now shattered, reflecting the multifaceted existence of contemporary life. The kosmos, as the world of the novel¬ ist, ^ has been expanded by modern technology to include as valid settings the outer limits of space and the depths of the ocean, as well as the darkest reaches of the labyrinth of man's subconsciousness. Such master writers as Henry James, H.G. Wells, William Faulkner, André Gide, and Alain Robe-Grillet have not hesitated to incorporate into the novelistic art the innovative techniques found in other art forms such as the cinema (with its montage, zoom lens, flashbacks, etc.), op art (with its mixture of alien textures, superimposed perspectives, and light-color effects), and most of all music, including the music of many periods and cultures, (with its rhythms, tones, themes and leitmotifs).^ Decid¬ edly there is a movement in fiction towards an acoustical perception of the world. Language is not only an essential ingredient of the novel, it has become its basic theme and function. Words are once more regarded as possessing "magical powers" which directly evoke an object. The sym¬ bolist poets in the late nineteenth century discovered the acoustic space of auditory imagination and influenced the formation of the twentieth century literature. James Joyce was very much a part of the cultural 3 phenomena that occurred when the huge shift in the geogra¬ phy of perception and feeling caused a breakthrough from g the visual world into the acoustic world. Joyce wrote prose like a poet and was fascinated by the possibility of language giving multiple dimensions to his work. His experi¬ ences with rhythm and sound transmuted his prose into melo¬ dic variations,- and also pointed the direction that the future novelists would take. Carlos Fuentes, in his book of essays, Casa con dos -puertas.- synthesizes the revolution, evolution and involution of the contemporary novel created by Joycei ...en el corazón de su obra,1 en Ulises... se despliega el arco del lenguaje por encima de las nomenclaturas sociales, sociológicas e ideológicas agotadas! el discurso poético sustituye a la descripción realista, el tiempo a la cronología, el espacio silmutaneo al espacio frontal, la taxonomia y el calambur al léxico, la escritura referencial a la escritura ideal, la contaminación a la pureza,* la ambiva¬ lencia yQla polivalencia a la univocidad ra¬ cional. ° For many years the cultural formation of literary specialists in Latin America has been accomplished by either a residency in Europe or the United States. Euro¬ pean ideas and techniques were adopted and effectively combined with nationalistic themes to reflect the social- political-economic crises experienced in all the Latin American countries throughout this country. Latin American poets were the first to gain inter¬ national recognition * beginning with Rubén Dario's modernism. 4 Vicente Huidobro's creationism and gaining momentum with such men as Borges, Neruda and Octavio Paz. Octavio Paz is joined by other contemporary poets such as José Gorostiza, Xavier Villarrutia and Salvador Novo, in extend¬ ing the meaning of the alienation of modem man by defining it as a "nostalgia del espacio".^ Universal history is now considered a common taskf El laberinto de la soledad is about all of humanity and isi "un punto de partida hacia la comunicación, la comunión y la comunidad."1^- Communication and the acknowledgement "that language offers the writer an opportunity to apprehend the totality of human existence, to integrate the individual with life, to close the separation between intellect and feeling,"^ has been emphasized in the Latin American novels especially since the appearance of Agustin Yañez's Al filo del agua in 19^7* The novel, as it has moved away from naturalism, has experimented more and more with linguistic structure, under the influence of Joyce, and made revolutionary uses of the latest narrative techniques such as Faulkner's super¬ imposed temporal-spacial slabs and cinematographic artistry. Recently a group of young novelists from the so-called "vanguardia" followed Cortazar's lead in writing novels which subordinate plot to language in an attempt to elimi¬ nate a conventional "objective reality" or "use it only as a pretext for games and verbal distortions! writing novels 5 that want to make fun of the very concept of the novel.

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