Writing, Plot, and Desire DIAMELA ELTIT Translated by Ramsey McGlazer In this talk, I want to go very freely back over some cul tural as pects of my lit er ary ex pe ri ence. This might seem like a ju ve nile thing to say. But I don’t know how else to ex press it. I have ded i cated a fun da men tal part of my life to lit er a ture. First as a pre co cious read er, then later as a lit er ary reader attached, I remem ber, to the act of read ing in a com plex ad o les cence, when it of ered lib er a tion and flight from the ev ery day. And then, in what was clearly a path laid out, a route al ready writ ten for me, uni ver sity stud ies in lit er a ture, why not, un der taken at two Chilean uni ver si­ ties: The Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile for un der grad u ate study and the Universidad de Chile for grad u ate school. Writing was on my ho ri zon. It was there as a de sire and dis com fort. Because my ex ces sive read ings, my fas ci nat ing uni ver sity stud ies and their ap proach to Latin Amer i can lit er ary his to ry, had of course wrought havoc and im posed lim its on the task of writ ing that were too rig or ous. A space had opened up where knowl­ edge had be come in im i cal. It is pos si ble, or it is cer tain, that I made the lit er ary into a space that was per haps to tally tran scen dent. But, in the end, it was what I had. Or, as the Chilean writer Marta Brunet would say, lit er a ture was “mine, mine.” A de sire had stuck to me, em a nat ing from within a prac tice of read ing that was, as I have said, in ces sant. I re mem ber that I thought, when I was ten or eleven years old, af er read ing Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, the first novel in my his to ry, that I wanted to be a writ er. At that same time, I read the books Heart and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. These were dra mat ic, heart rend ing read ings. I read these books sub merged in too much sen ti men tal ism, which to day seems un nec es sary to me. By con trast, Hemingway’s novel en tered me in an other way, as a source of as ton ish ment, as a dis cov ery in the most lit eral sense of the word. From that point for ward, I com mit ted to a path that was per haps too rig id. Possibly. CRITICAL TIMES | 3:1 | APRIL 2020 DOI 10.1215/26410478-8189889 | © Diamela Eltit This is an open ac cess ar ti cle dis trib uted un der the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 148 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-times/article-pdf/3/1/148/806462/148eltit.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 This desire to be a writer grad u ally be came more com plex. In a cer tain way more in ac ces si ble. Although I was writ ing, I wasn’t writ ing what I was writ ing. I wrote alone, and in my sol i tary ef orts I re wrote what oth ers had writ ten. I knew it and suf ered. Until I un der stood that my greatest lim i ta tion in volved the writ ing, not the ar gu ment or sto ry, but the writ ing itself. The cen tral prob lem wasn’t what to write but how to write. In that spe cific mo ment, I think I discov ered what has since seemed to me to be the spi nal cord or life blood of the lit er ary sys tem. Of course, what I am claiming is not a gen er al iz able norm, not at all . I am re fer­ ring in stead to a kind of subjectivation, an agreement, a personal place in which to shield one self. Reading had al ready been de cided on as my main ac tiv i ty. I could eas ily es tab lish a se ries of read ings. I was able to dis cern how cer tain texts had the power to shape force ful pol i tics, aes thet ics, and po et ics. I grad u ally de cided on the read ings, from a di verse lit er ary range, that cap ti vated me. My ad mi ra tion was placed in those works that, in one way or an oth er, turned to un ex pected strat e­ gies of writ ing, moved signs. Their im ages were dif use but pow er ful. In short, they established new pol i tics of read ing. I am not re fer ring to “orig i nal i ty” in the sim­ plest sense of that word, but rather to a re think ing of po et ics, as in the novel Pedro Páramo. Of course, Juan Rulfo has re la tions to many oth ers. This is be cause, from my per spec tive, lit er a ture, in one of its senses, can be un der stood as a geo log i cal field marked by mul ti ple re la tions. Or it is a rhizomatic sur face that is pulled, cov­ ers over oth ers, is un cov ered, ad vances. I think that by read ing a bit of “ev ery thing” I was able to de cide on cer tain av e­ nues that be came ap pren tice ships or self­ap pren tice ships. One way or an oth er, the realm of lit er a ture had narrowed, which im plied a re duc tion. I was sure that my task depended on the full ness of the writ ing, that this was the chal lenge. The bat tle with writ ing took over what would be my first nov el. The mil i tary coup and its in cal cu la ble and un fore seen ef ects forced mil li ons of us to re or ga nize our lives from top to bot tom and to change our ways of mov ing through pub lic spaces. It is still dif­fcult for me to talk about those very om i nous years. I have al ways been afraid that talking about the dic ta tor ship would re duce it, flat ten it, and even sofen it. Mentioning it in a gen eral way could change it into a set of empty phrases, into a series of com mon places, into a sim ple re mark. It turns out to be very com pli cated to talk about that time, which was shot through with rules that came to per me ate ev ery thing, that took root ev ery where, mo ti vated by fear. In fact, I have never re cov ered from the trauma caused by what I lived through dur ing those years. I am re fer ring es pe cially to their im pact on vic tims, the malice of the hard ships of those years, their wounds, the cru elty of their deaths. Women raped by an i mals, our un der stand ing that the worst in hu man ity was fully in cor­ po rated into the heart and mar row of the sys tem, that the cru elty was within the coun try. It is still harrowing for me to see an old photo of a disappeared de tain ee. ELTIT | WRITING, PLOT, AND DESIRE | 149 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-times/article-pdf/3/1/148/806462/148eltit.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 But this was the con text, the ter ri to ry, the ev ery day life, the dis place ment, the pow er less ness, the set of primor dial con nec tions with my friends from that time, the lone li ness, that I felt. And the ter ri to rial en clo sure. I know that I could have lef, and I also know that I could not have lef Chile. I know that those of us who stayed, stayed, and I know how we stayed. It was pre cisely in this at mo sphere that I be gan to write my first nov el.1 Its set ting: a pla za. In a pre vi ous year, I had be gun a story that took place in a pla za. A man went to die there. I returned to my place in the pla za. This time, in this new at tempt at writ ing, there was a woman there. At night. I envisioned the night. I saw it, in fact, be cause the im po si tion of the cur few forced us to return home, to shut ourselves into our hous es, at first starting at 6:00 p.m., then at 8:00, then later at 9:00, then at 11:00. Later, at 2:00 in the morn ing.