The Assault

Pentagonía #5

by Reinaldo Arenas, Andrew Hurley (Translator), Thomas Colchie (Introduction)

In this, the final volume in the series of five novels that constitute his "secret history of Cuba", Reinaldo Arenas paints a harrowing, and at times boldly entertaining, Kafka-esque picture of a dehumanized people living in a world where homosexuality is a crime punishable by death and a cockroach hunt makes for a national holiday. Narrated by a hate-filled government torturer who has become an agent for the "Bureau of Counterwhispering"," The Assault follows his travels through a blackly humorous shadowland as he winnow out whisperers, sexual deviants, and dissidents of every sort--until memory has been banished and spoken language has been nearly forgotten.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Literary Fiction, Surreal, Spanish Literature, Dystopia, Contemporary

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí. While there, his talent was noticed and he was awarded prizes at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists). His Hallucinations was awarded "first Honorable Mention" in 1966 although, as the judges could find no better entry, no First Prize was awarded that year.

His writings and openly gay lifestyle were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the Communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. In 1973, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of 'ideological deviation' and for publishing abroad without official consent.

He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976. In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States. He came on the boat San Lazaro captained by Cuban immigrant Roberto Aguero.

In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS; he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas died of an intentional overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York City. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote: "Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression that causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life... I want to encourage the Cuban people abroad as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom... Cuba will be free. I already am."

In 2012 Arenas was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people

Reviews

[Richard Jespers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Think Animal Farm meets 1984. Arenas creates his own biting satire of what life is like for Cubans, homosexuals in particular, in Castro’s Communist Cuba. Rather than recreating this hell realistically (as he does in Before Night Falls), Arenas limns a dystopian animal world in which the narrator—a hardline, hateful, and clawed beast of some kind—searches out his mother so that he can kill her. He also orders that any man (or woman) who dares to stare at an attired male animal’s crotch (even for a microsecond, as if one might discern such a move) will be annihilated. This cruelty is so absurd as to be laughable in a manner it would not be if portrayed realistically. I’m issuing no spoiler alert (oh, I guess this is it): narrator searches and searches for his wicked mother whom he hates with all his might, to no avail. Meanwhile, for his fine work killing queers, he is awarded one of the highest honors to be bestowed by the Represident. The narrator is shocked to learn that this represident is none other than his mother! He obtains a raging erection which is not allayed until he porks (to put it nicely) his own mother, she explodes into a million bits, and the narrator’s rage is finally released (ew). Ah, now that’s a climax: Kill queers and Oedipus all in one go.

[Leopoldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una de las menos leídas de la Pentagonía es también de las mejores. Un giro poético y grotesco a la novela distópica y su juego del lenguaje como forma de control.

[ava · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm updating this to five stars instead of four after a second read, and because we have been living breathing eating pissing fucking this book for an upcoming dance, 3-6 hours a day and you better get to liking it. Brilliant hallucinatory terrifying hilarious vision of oppressive society, i.e. Castro's Cuba...breeding permits...patriotic irrigation...cockroach-stomping holidays...TOTAL ANNIHILATION...grrrrr grrrr HOORAY

[Charlaralotte · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got the socio-political satire. And then it went on and on and on, with not much change or variation, and I lost interest.

This could have easily been a short story since you really don't want to spend much time with the main character. He has no redeeming qualities, and unlike the poor people in his country, you as the reader can escape his persecution quite easily by shutting the damn book.

[Jason McDowell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just read this for a class. Definitely not the best thing I have read in this genre.

Despite the weirdness of the satire and the unbelievable world Arenas builds here, I had the ending pegged about 40 pages in. The main character is completely unlikable. The good news is you can read it in a few hours.

To describe it simply, I'd call it violent, predictable, and longer than it needed to be.

[Alia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was this fun or what! In a weird way, it is absurd and violently fun in its excesses, but the underlying content is horrible and that is the genius part about it; if you think in the outrageous acts some governments indulge in you could say they are beyond logic, crazy but they are not and worst of all, they are systemic.

You go in a bananas journey with the main character, searching for his mother to kill her, in a world that kills you for anything, and he hurries, he needs to be the one to kill her, not the world, because life is nothing, there is only hate and a bunch of beings that are not human any more: in the end they even loose the language, the ability to articulate and the act that finally liberates them is one of beasts, but this is just a commodity to dehumanize, the real beasts are the ones that thrive in hate and violence, those articulated remains. So he goes in a genocidal romp, like any authoritarian (and not so seemingly authoritarian if you care enough to look) regime if it goes unchecked.

Heavy stuff aside, Arenas had a way with words, even in this hateful and absurd charade: he was a cheeky guy. Totally worth it.

[Michael Beblowski · Rating 2 out of 5]

The shortest of Reinaldo Arenas' genre-defying, experimental, semi-autobiographical five "agonies" (the pentagonia) The Assault was a dystopian novel where the Represident (a constant dictator and force of repression) has reduced humanity to vermin stripped of individuality, language and enforced a regime of perpetual work. Our contemptible anti-heroic narrator journeys through a post-apocalyptic landscape of human buses, not-parks, work camps, and prisons seeking his malignant mother. There are intertextual echoes of the previous novels, extending the thread of continuity across five stylistically divergent texts. In fact one could argue that the hallucinatory horror depicted in Singing From the Well, a physically and emotionally abusive mother the unnamed child protagonist loves and fears for her mercurial maternal affection and resentment, is mirrored by the reverse Oedipal quest to "assault" and destroy the loathed and deceitful mother of the Nation. The Assault was only 145 pages, but it was a forced march through a genre of literature that I ceased to find fascinating after adolescence ended. It was the only novel of Reinaldo Arenas that felt derivative.

[Chelsie Hinds · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't enjoy it, except for when it was finally over. It felt like it went on forever and I lost sight of the point. There are a lot of redeeming qualities -- the use of chapter headings that subvert the universe within the book, the reverse Oedipal complex, the really obvious symbolism regarding Castro's Cuba -- but not enough to make me recommend this to anyone. I imagine Arenas's other works are much better and surprisingly enough, I think I'd like to read them.

[P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reads like a mix of We, American Psycho, Dead/Alive and the back half of The Futurological Congress.

It's also the final of apparently 5 books the guy wrote about Castro's Cuba. Be interesting to see if he leads from a recognizable society into the brutal mutant hellscape nightmare of The Assault, or if that's just the setting, get used to it.

[Manu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ese final me dejó perpleja, en cierto punto lo entendía. Es un personaje muy turbado, al principio no podía simpatizar con él, pero en realidad es un personaje que tiene obvios problemas mentales, pero viendo en el contexto que fue escrito y que en el mundo que vive el protagonista, lo entiendo y simpatizo, ese final lo dejó un poco abierto... Creo que es un libro poderoso.

[selenophonic · Rating 4 out of 5]

C’est une dystopie très crue, misanthropie, sexualité et sadisme sont les maîtres mots de notre narrateur. Cet univers horrible et sordide nous fait questionner la société dans laquelle nous vivons et dans laquelle fut plongé l’auteur Reinaldo Arenas.

[Drosellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amé el uso del lenguaje, deformado pero claro. Amé la forma asquerosa y perturbada en que el protagonista describe su mundo. El final lo sentí un poco anticlimático, pero me dejó pensando un buen rato.

[Misael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mi libro favorito de Arenas.

[Bruno Carriço · Rating 3 out of 5]

A ideia é boa, mas o exagero e o absurdo que tão bem ficaram em "O mundo alucinante" parecem aqui mais forçados ou até supérfluos.

[B Frizz · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was just above my reading level fr... crazy premise and insane plot

[Iván]

Qué novela esta: tres frases le dan a uno la bienvenida a la historia, lo van dejando acomodar a paso lento en la trama, y de golpe, en una frase más, una fuerza que llega sin decir aquí voy lo coge a uno con la misma firmeza con la que uno sostiene el libro y se queda ahí hasta la última palabra: “La última vez que vi a mi madre fue detrás del Gran Consolidado de las Madres Patrias. Ella estaba inclinada, recogiendo unos palos. Estaba así, de espaldas, agachada, un poco como derrengándose por el esfuerzo que hacía para cargar con los palos. No perdí tiempo y me le abalancé para matarla”. Quien habla es un agente de la Contrasusurración, un tipo que se complace aniquilando gente por cualquier motivo, siempre justificado en los ideales patrios, mientras busca a su mamá para acabar con ella. Por si las dudas, ya en el primer párrafo, además de esa primera información, se dan pistas sobre el ambiente totalitario en que se desarrolla su búsqueda: “La cabrona; parece que me miraba con el ojo del culo, pues antes de que yo pudiese reventarla se volvió asustada, no por mí, sino por las leyes del Reprimero y sus agentes, que si la cogen llevándose las sobras del aserrío patrio, la ajustician. Es decir, la matan”.

Continúa... https://formasdedistorsionarelmundo.w...

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know how to review this novel - it didn't work for me - but maybe I need to read the other novels in the 'Pentagonia' before making a judgement on this novel. Despite my unease and disappointment I can't award it less than four stars - to give it less would be an insult to a writer I admire too much. This is not a good review, but I can't forget that this novel came out the same year poor Arenas topped himself, there are loyalties that are traps.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

Big Brother goes to Cuba. An acid-filled headbutt to the face of totalitarianism. A country (obviously Cuba)in which all-out slaughter of the citizens is carried out as punishment for the slightest of crimes by the narrator.

[Lina]

Didn't enjoy it that much

[Jerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a great book, a few interesting moments, but a strange kafkian book that is just a part of the larger oeuvre.

[Kai'l · Rating 3 out of 5]

in a word: violent.

[Robb Todd]

Dark and funny--and a warning. He may have had a different government in mind when he wrote it, but governments change and this book has relevance for many he might never have intended it for.

[Kara Crabb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cockroaches, anal sex, and fun!

[Boris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very different than anything I've ever read. Worth reading I think.