The Obscene Bird of Night

by José Donoso, Hardie St. Martin (Translator), Leonard Mades (Translator)

This haunting jungle of a novel has been hailed as "a masterpiece" by Luis Bunuel and "one of the great novels not only of Spanish America, but of our time" by Carlos Fuentes. The story of the last member of the aristocratic Azcoitia family, a monstrous mutation protected from the knowledge of his deformity by being surrounded with other freaks as companions, The Obscene Bird of Night is a triumph of imaginative, visionary writing. Its luxuriance, fecundity, horror, and energy will not soon fade from the reader's mind. (Verba Mundi)

Genres: Fiction, Horror, Magical Realism, Classics, Latin American, Spanish Literature, Novels

438 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

From Wikipedia: José Manuel Donoso Yáñez (5 October 1924 – 7 December 1996), known as José Donoso, was a Chilean writer, journalist and professor. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States and Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death.

Donoso is the author of a number of short stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. His best known works include the novels Coronación (Coronation), El lugar sin límites (Hell Has No Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some societies are wide open… And some societies are hermetic…

It was a sealed world, stifling, like living inside a sack and trying to bite through the burlap to get out or let in the air and find out if your destiny lies outside or inside or somewhere else, to drink in some fresh air not confined by your obsessions, to see where you began to be yourself and stopped being others…

The Obscene Bird of Night is magic realism and beyond… It is magic realism on the Gothic side. The Obscene Bird of Night is a world seen through a prism of madness…

He felt the need to twist normal things around, a kind of compulsion to take revenge and destroy, and he complicated and deformed his original project so much that it’s as if he’d lost himself forever in the labyrinth he invented as he went along that was filled with darkness and terrors more real than himself and his other characters, always nebulous, fluctuating, never real human beings, always disguises, actors, dissolving greasepaint…

A norm is what a majority considers to be typical so if monsters constitute the majority then monstrosity will become a norm.

[Guille · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Mi obra entera va a estallar dentro de mi cuerpo, cada fragmento de mi anatomía cobrará vida propia, ajena a la mía, no existirá Humberto, no existirán más que estos monstruos, el tirano que me encerró en la Rinconada para que lo invente, el color miel de Inés, la muerte de la Brígida, el embarazo histérico de la Iris Mateluna, la beata que jamás llegó a ser beata, el padre de Humberto Peñaloza señalando a don Jerónimo vestido para ir al Club Hípico, y su mano benigna, bondadosa, madre Benita, que no suelta ni soltará la mía...”

Donoso tardó 10 años en escribir este libro. Durante todo ese tiempo acumuló infinidad de material que se le resistía, al que no conseguía darle cuerpo. Viéndose incapaz de escribir la novela llegó incluso a pensar en quemarlo todo. No fue hasta después de una operación en la que le administraron morfina, a la que era alérgico, y por la que tuvo «un increíble acceso de locura, con alucinaciones, paranoia y, sobre todo, un terror más ancho que la vida» que encontró las claves para dar forma a la novela y escribirla de principio a fin en solo ocho meses.

Este obsceno pájaro es, pues, la narración de un delirio y, por tanto, una novela confusa, extraña, contradictoria, en cierto modo difícil, pero maravillosa y única. Es un exorcismo que el autor se autoimpone contra sus propios demonios, esa clase alta, gobernante, poderosa, inalcanzable, y su reverso, los sirvientes, con su mirada envidiosa, siempre necesaria para la felicidad de aquellos pero con la fuerza de los miserables, el odio de los testigos, representados en las viejas criadas encerradas en la Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales de la Encarnación de la Chimba que, como el propio autor afirma “encarnaban todo lo que yo detestaba en mi país, lo retrógrado, lo reaccionario”. Es también el retrato de la derrota en la lucha por una identidad imposible, por ser alguien, por elevarse en la jerarquía social, por poseer un rostro propio. Y, por último, es la búsqueda de una forma literaria que pudiera dar encaje a todo ello.

“Humberto no tenía la vocación de la sencillez. Sentía necesidad de retorcer lo normal, una especie de compulsión por vengarse y destruir y fue tanto lo que complicó y deformó su proyecto inicial que es como si él mismo se hubiera perdido para siempre en el laberinto que iba inventando lleno de oscuridad y terrores con más consistencia que él mismo y que sus demás personajes, siempre gaseosos, fluctuantes, jamás un ser humano, siempre disfraces, actores, maquillajes que se disolvían... sí, eran más importantes sus obsesiones y sus odios que la realidad que le era necesario negar.”

La novela se maneja con reglas propias, no se atiene a lógicas temporales o espaciales, ni rinde pleitesía a la verosimilitud o a la coherencia. La novela es un universo tan cerrado en sí mismo como lo son las dos casas que centran la historia, la Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales de la Encarnación de la Chimba y la Rinconada, casas construida para encerrar y ocultar, dónde unos y otros se refugian de los peligros del mundo exterior para anhelar la salvación que ese mundo exterior les podría ofrecer. No existe una realidad, la polifonía de narradores nos impone el desconcierto de no saber qué es o no verdad, qué es fruto del desvarío, qué de la imaginación o producto de las leyendas que se imponen a la percepción, qué pasó o no, quién existe o no.

“Todo ese mundo bulléndole adentro de la cabeza hasta tal punto que expulsaba todo lo demás: gran parte del tiempo, le confesó a don Jerónimo que no pudo dejar de admirar al artista, no sabía cuál era la realidad, la de adentro o la de afuera, si había inventado lo que pensaba o lo que pensaba había inventado lo que sus ojos veían.”

En esta ambigüedad nos sumerge Peñaloza, la voz principal en este coro de voces, con su discurso caótico e inconexo, secretario de Don Jerónimo y enamorado en secreto de su mujer Doña Inés, organizador de la vida en La Rinconada, donde se le construye una realidad paralela al monstruoso hijo que aquellos engendraron en una noche prodigiosa, el mudito de La Casa de la Chimba, “vieja, guagua, idiota, fluctuante mancha de humedad en la pared”, gigante con cabeza de cartón, hijo de la Iris, de Inés, de la Peta, hasta Jerónimo llegó a ser una noche de trifulca, y que terminará hermanando su existencia con el imbunche, ser mitológico que tiene obstruidos todos los orificios del cuerpo, y que significará su derrota total en una paz solipsista.

“…cuando Jerónimo entreabrió por fin las cortinas de la cuna para contemplar al vástago tan esperado, quiso matarlo ahí mismo: ese repugnante cuerpo sarmentoso retorciéndose sobre su joroba, ese rostro abierto en un surco brutal donde labios, paladar y nariz desnudaban la obscenidad de huesos y tejidos en una incoherencia de rasgos rojizos... era la confusión, el desorden, una forma distinta pero peor de la muerte.”

[°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ʜᴇʟᴇɴ Ροζουλί Εωσφόρος ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° ★·.·´¯`·.·★ Ⓥⓔⓡⓝⓤⓢ Ⓟⓞⓡⓣⓘⓣⓞⓡ Ⓐⓡⓒⓐⓝⓤⓢ Ταμετούρο Αμ · Rating 5 out of 5]

«η φυσική κληρονομιά εκείνου που ειναι ικανός για πνευματική ζωή είναι ένα ανυπόταχτο δάσος όπου ουρλιάζει ο λύκος και τερετίζει το άσεμνο πουλί της νύχτας».
Χένρι Τζέιμς ο πρεσβύτερος.


Όποιος ακούσει το Άσεμνο πουλί της νύχτας να κελαηδάει με χιλιάδες ανθρώπινες φωνές και μελωδίες απο τις εφιαλτικές ορχήστρες της παράνοιας,τότε σίγουρα έχει οργανώσει το χάος των τρόμων και των φαντασιώσεων του.

Έχει δει και έχει κατανοήσει το μαγικό λαβύρινθο της σχιζοφρένειας,του πραγματικού,του εξωπραγματικού,του ύπνου,του ξύπνιου,του ονειρικού,του φαντασιώδους. Έχει βιώσει το βιωμένο και αυτό που πρόκειται να βιωθεί.

Έχει εμμονές και αναμνήσεις πραγματικές και αλλόκοτες.
Έχει εκτιναχτεί απο την έκρηξη του υποσυνείδητου που παραληρεί με μια αυτόνομη λογική και μπορεί να εκφράσει σε εμάς έναν κόσμο αποσύνθεσης,απόλυτης μοναξιάς,λήθης και διάψευσης της οποιασδήποτε ελπίδας.

Αυτό ακριβώς πετυχαίνει αριστουργηματικά ο Χιλιανός συγγραφέας με τούτο το μοναδικό μυθιστόρημα.

Αυτό το έργο τέχνης,υπόδειγμα για μια πραγματικότητα που ως ανεξάρτητη αρχή φυσικής εξέλιξης δεν είναι διόλου σαφής. Ξεπερνάει τα όρια. Συνυφαίνεται με την παράλογη λογική και τον κοινωνικό ρεαλισμό.

Υπέροχα συγκλονιστικό βιβλίο.
Η γραφή του απασχόλησε το συγγραφέα οχτώ χρόνια και του επέφερε ψυχωσικό επεισόδιο «τρέλας».
Έπειτα απο μακρόχρονη κρίση παράνοιας και θεραπεία ο Δονόσο επιστρέφει απο το χάος και δίνει σε αυτό το βιβλίο μια απο τις εξήντα διαφορετικές εκδοχές που είχε γράψει.

Μεγαλειώδες, τεράστιο έργο ψυχής και μανίας,πάθους,μίσους,έρωτα,
φόβου,βάθους παραισθήσεων και ανείπωτου τρόμου. Ενός τρόμου που ήταν «πιο πλατύς κι απο τη ζωή» όπως αναφέρει χαρακτηριστικά.

Είναι μάταιο να χαρακτηρίσει κάποιος αυτό το έργο ζωής με αντιστοιχίες πραγματικότητας. Δεν μπορείς να εκφράσεις με λόγια αυτά που αισθάνεσαι ζώντας ένα συνεχές παραλήρημα με αλληλοδιαδοχή εικόνων,προσώπων,ονείρων και οραμάτων που γεννάει το υποσυνείδητο.
Παρόλα αυτά δεν είναι δύσκολο ή ακατανόητο. Η ανάγνωση του ειναι τρομερά γοητευτική και άκρως ελκυστική,ίσως και εθιστική σε βαθμό ταύτισης.
Επικίνδυνο βιβλίο!!
Ασυνήθιστο!!
Ηδονικά παράλογο και αινιγματικό.
Αλλά, πλήρως αντιληπτό απο μυαλά που αναζητούν τη λαγνεία της πνευματικής έξαρσης και της φιλοσοφίας.


Η ιστορία μας έχει τρεις βασικούς πυρήνες. Δραματικός χρόνος αόριστος και αινιγματικός.

Οι χαρακτήρες δεκάδες,αυτόνομοι και παράλογοι ή δορυφόροι και μεταλλάξεις άλλων βασικών προσώπων.

Όλο το μυθιστόρημα είναι το παραλήρημα του Ουμπέρτο-Μουδίτο μέσα απο τον οποίο γεννιούνται όλα και κυρίως οι πολλαπλές μεταμορφώσεις και τα ταξίδια σε έναν αντιφατικό κόσμο κατοικημένο απο φαντάσματα,τέρατα,μάγισσες,
κληρικούς,μισότρελες γριές με εξαιρετικές ικανότητες και ανικανότητες,εχθρούς,απειλές,
καθυστερημένες ορφανές υπάρξεις και πληθώρα συμβολισμών μιας ανυπόφορης πραγματικότητας.

Οι πυρήνες μας ειναι: το τερατόμορφο παιδί του τοπικού άρχοντα που ίσως να είναι ο λυτρωτής των βασανισμένων ψυχών.

Η μονή-άσυλο των
παραμορφωμένων σε όλα τα επίπεδα γριών,και ένας λαϊκός ινδιάνικος μύθος που μιλάει για τερατόμορφα κακά πνεύματα τα
«ιμπούντσε». Παραμορφωμένα όντα με μαγικές ιδιότητες. Σύμφωνα με την λαϊκή ινδιάνικη δοξασία οι μάγισσες έκλεβαν τα μικρά παιδιά,τους έκλειναν τις οπές του σώματος τους και τα μετέτρεπαν σε ιμπούντσε. Η αποστολή τους ήταν να να φυλάνε κρυμμένους θησαυρούς.


Το μοναστήρι είναι ένα φρικαλέο και αχανές πλίθινο κατασκεύασμα χτισμένο πολύ παλιά απο κάποιο πρόγονο του τοπικού άρχοντα. Χτίστηκε βιαστικά και καταραμένα γιατί έπρεπε να εξιλεώσει την μοίρα της κόρης του απο τη μαύρη μαγεία και την ερωτική επαφή.
Παρόλα αυτά αποτελεί την Ενσάρκωνση του Κυρίου. Η κόρη εκείνη εικάζεται ως οσία μη αναγνωρισμένη.

Με σκοπό την ευτυχία του τερατόμορφου παιδιού του ο τωρινός τοπικός άρχοντας και ευγενής χτίζει την Ρινκονάδα. Μια φανταστική πολιτεία που κατοικούν μόνο τέρατα αποκρουστικά και ποικίλα τα οποία υπηρετούν το γιο του προκειμένου να μεγαλώσει πιστεύοντας πως τα «τέρατα»είναι οι φυσιολογικοί και αρτιμελείς άνθρωποι.
Σουρεαλιστικά απαίσια πόλη που μαγεύει τον αναγνώστη κυριολεκτικά.

Μέσα σε όλα αυτά τα πολυεπίπεδα αναγνωστικά βιώματα υπάρχει ο Ουμπέρτο,ένας αποτυχημένος συγγραφέας ταπεινής καταγωγής και γραμματέας του τοπικού άρχοντα.
Ο Ουμπέρτο είναι βαθιά ερωτευμένος με τη σύζυγο του αφεντικού του,παράλληλα έχει μαι παράξενη σεξουαλική ταύτιση και με τον ίδιο τον άρχοντα.

Χρονικό άλμα.

Ο Ουμπέρτο μεταμορφώνεται στον Μουδίτο τον κωφάλαλο επιστάτη της καταραμένης μονής. Στην αχανή μονή ο Μουδίτο βρίσκει καταφύγιο απο τα πραγματικά τέρατα της ζωής.
Περνάει την ώρα του σφαλίζοντας και χτίζοντας πόρτες και περάσματα με σκοπό να προστατευτεί απο τις εξωτερικές απειλές.
Οι μισότρελλες γριές είναι η οικογένεια του στη μονή μαζί με τις μικρές διαταραγμένες ορφανές.

Μια απο τις ορφανές γίνεται η μητέρα που κυοφορεί το θαυματουργό παιδί που θα τους λυτρώσει όλους.
Αυτός ο λυτρωτής βέβαια προέρχεται απο μια ανήλικη έκφυλη και αφελή Μαγδαληνή στη θέση της Παναγίας.
Ποιος ειναι ο Σωτήρας;
Υπάρχει;
Θα λυτρώσει τα βασανισμένα κορμιά και μυαλά απο τα βασανιστήρια και τις απειλές;

Ο Θεός λείπει. Σίγουρα δεν εγγυάται τίποτα απο όσα καρτερούν οι άνθρωποι και ολα τα όντα παραμορφώνονται,χάνουν τις φυσικές διαστάσεις τους και καταλήγουν μη αναγνωρίσιμα.
Τρελά, κολασμένα,απελπισμένα και σάπια απο την υγρασία της πραγματικότητας.

Τι είναι όλα αυτά;
Γιατί συμβαίνουν;
Ποιος τα ορίζει και τι σκοπό έχει;
Φυσιολογικό και αφύσικο.
Πραγματικό και φανταστικό.
Παράνοια και σοφία
Αγιοσύνη και αμαρτία.
Σεξουαλικά κίνητρα και αιώνια αφοσίωση.
Κοφτερές και επικίνδυνες σκέψεις για τον ανθρώπινο νου.
Ποια επιστήμη μπορεί να εξηγήσει τα μεταφυσικά που βιώνονται ρεαλιστικά ;

Παραληρηματικός άθλος και πολύπλοκα αποτυχημένη μεταφυσική αναζήτηση;
Θεωρώ δεν υπάρχει απάντηση...

Επιβάλλεται υπόκλιση σεβασμού και θαυμασμού στα πνεύματα της λογοτεχνίας που απλώς ΞΕΡΟΥΝ να ποιούν λόγο...και ΜΠΟΡΟΥΝ.

Εν κατακλείδι προκύπτει καθαρά υποκειμενικό ηθικό δίδαγμα:

ΑΓΑΠΗΣΤΕ ΑΥΤΟΥΣ ΠΟΥ ΜΠΑΙΝΟΥΝ ΜΕ ΚΑΠΟΙΟ ΑΣΕΜΝΟ ΤΡΟΠΟ ΣΤΗ ΖΩΗ ΣΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΠΕΡΙΒΑΛΛΟΥΝ ΤΟ ΠΡΟΒΛΗΜΑ ΚΑΙ ΤΟ ΦΟΒΟ ΤΗΣ ΨΥΧΗΣ ΣΑΣ ΜΕ ΑΣΕΜΝΗ ΑΓΑΠΗ.

«ΤΑ ΚΑΛΥΤΕΡΑ ΠΑΙΔΙΑ...ΕΧΟΥΝ ΨΥΧΟΛΟΓΙΚΑ»
💟💟💟💟

Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς άσεμνους ασπασμούς.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely incredible. A masterpiece that deserves much wider readership.

Looking at some reviews around the place for this and noting the struggles some seemed to have had, I wanted to (in a non-spoilery way) set out how I would propose approaching the reading of this incredible book.

However I will just say that it is also entirely possible to read the novel in a relatively linear fashion - with book 2 mostly coming temporally prior to 1 and 3 - i.e. Humberto meets and is employed by Jeronimo, has sex with his wife while J fucks Peta, is punished by being surgically mutilated and castrated and becomes Mudito and who then, due to his lacking genitals, becomes the seventh "old woman" in the Casa etc etc and all the stuff in Book 1 take place...but I don't want to, as it is much more fun to leave the whole thing in contradictory flux

What needs to be understood from the outset is that the author is not being wantonly opaque - you are not expected to engage in close reading in order to sleuth out who our narrating persona is at any given time. The point is that there is only one, though its incarnation, its performed self, its sense of its own being (and other's interactions with it) moves between a number of contradictory forms.

The explanations for the fluidity of the "I" of the novel are there (and who is who), if one keeps ones eyes open for them:

"Okay. I'm gonna dress you up, then." "Okay."
"Fork over the fifteen hundred."
I hand them to him. Romualdo gives me a pair of flowered cotton trousers. I pull them on.
"Does the jacket come next?"
"No, first the head, then the jacket, to cover up the strings I'm gonna tie the head on with real good."
You put it over me, as if going through a ritual, like a mitered bishop crowning the king, eradicating with this investiture each of my previous existences, every one of them: Mudito; Don Jerónimo's secretary; Iris's dog; Humberto Peñaloza, the sensitive prose writer who offers us, in these simple pages, such a deeply felt and artistic vision of the vanished world of yesterday, when the springtime of innocence blossomed in the wisteria gardens; the seventh witch. All of us dissolved in the darkness inside the mask. I can't see. Now, besides lacking a voice, I'm sightless, but no, there's a slot here in the Giant's neck to see through. No one will think of looking for my eyes in this papiermåché puppet's throat."

And also

"knowing how to change disguises and melt into their fluid existence that bestows the freedom of never being the same, because rags are never permanent, everything being improvised, everything fluctuating; today I'm myself and tomorrow no one can find me, not even I myself, because you're what you are only for as long as the disguise lasts. Sometimes I feel sorry for persons like you, Mother Benita, who are enslaved to one face and one name and one function and one station in life, to the clinging mask you'll never be able to shed, to the oneness that holds you prisoner in a single identity. Those who came to warm themselves at my fire, on the other hand, fluctuate like its flames and its shadows, they take me into their number benevolently, now that I've burned my name forever, lost my voice a long time ago, no longer have a sex because I can be just another old woman among all those in the Casa. "

In a society where one's place in the social structure is paramount, what more political act can there be but to reject definition and move chaotically through gender and age and role and belief?

Your confusion as a reader of the text is deliberately engendered, and should be enjoyed rather than fought against. Narrowing down the novel to a single strand, or to "what actually happened" is to entirely defeat its point - chaos and flux, contradiction, a Rhizome even (perhaps). The wearer of a mask does not remain unchanged beneath the papiermaché. The fluidity of subjectivity. To privilege one persona (Humberto) over the others is to do a disservice to the text (something both the blurbs and many reviews often do).

I have been told by a reader of the original that the prose is a wonder. In which case we must give thanks to our translators because I had a similar response to the English-ed.

Breathtaking at times, disturbing, funny, beautiful. What more could anyone want?

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Despite the constant chopping and changing of first-person narrators - sometimes even in mid sentence without you realising it - and the fact that one does need their patience to slot into sixth gear, there is still so much of this novel that I will be remembering for a very very long time. There are four or five scenes in particular where I just couldn't quite believe what I was reading!

A damn right masterpiece in my eyes. It's the sort of thing Gabriel García Márquez could have wrote had he been locked up in a cursed lunatic asylum with Alejandro Jodorowsky, David Lynch, Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, the Wicked Witch of the East, and Mother Teresa.

The overriding theme that the novel digs into is that of possession and the possessed - in all its freakish and holy spirited glory. The story of the last Azcoitia son is only part of this delirious maze‐within‐a‐maze novel, and I'm not even going to bother mentioning certain characters here and who is who, with the disguises - including papier-mâché heads - and apparent body/organ swapping going on - although I'm still not too sure.

If you like challenging and dense stories/writing and astonishing imagination, don't mind being disgusted, disturbed, have moments where one could feel like cramping up with laughter - although the book is predominantly dark and perverse, feeling like being in a fever dream, like the idea of paradoxical legends and creepy old cronies being nursed like new born babies and masquerade balls full of mutant people, and can handle the fact there is no real closure or ending that gives you that extra bit of satisfaction, then this is one Latin American novel that I'd highly recommend.

[Fuchsia Groan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Al terminar El obsceno pájaro de la noche me queda la sensación de haber participado en un delirio. He leído cada línea dando por cierta una realidad que ahora me parece imposible, buscando a la vez una interpretación para los datos que no cuadraban, para los personajes que no podían ya estar ahí, para el tiempo retorcido. Una vez formulada en mi cabeza una posible explicación, al poco tiempo la veía inverosímil, con lo que dejaba paso a otra, que venía también a destruirse unas páginas más adelante. Siempre buscando un orden dentro del caos, pero a la vez dejándome llevar, he disfrutado muchísimo esta lectura.

La voz de Mudito nos arrastra, nos hace creer que su fantasía es el mundo real, creemos en la historia que él se ha construído para sí mismo, un mundo hecho a su medida, un paraíso para huir de su realidad. Para nosotros es creíble quizás porque de paraíso no tiene nada, ¿pueden nuestros deseos ser los terrores de otros?, ¿puede alguien fantasear con lo que nosotros consideramos una pesadilla? Sí, supongo que todo depende de la realidad de cada uno.

El obsceno pájaro de la noche es al principio un duermevela, en el que poco a poco van colándose elementos que distorsionan la realidad, que desafían las leyes del espacio (patios y claustros infinitos conectados por pasadizos interminables) y del tiempo (es imposible ordenar los hechos de forma cronológica), entrando de lleno en la lógica de los sueños, en ese caos que solo dormidos tiene sentido.

Es una historia de rumores, de leyendas, de recuerdos alterados, de locura, de sueños incumplidos y verdades que han de olvidarse para poder seguir viviendo. Las diferentes historias se contradicen unas a otras, lo que leemos, lo que pensamos, lo que se deja ver: Mudito nació en la Casa, o Mudito fue un escritor al servicio de los poderosos Azcoitía; Boy, un niño nacido “monstruo” al que su padre le construye un mundo a su medida, o Boy, ser deforme rechazado, olvidado y escondido; Mudito, al frente de La Rinconada, o Mudito, encarcelado en La Rinconada; Iris, niña virgen embarazada, o Iris, niña prostituta; Inés, mujer que convive con la pasión desmesurada de su marido, o Inés, violada cada noche por un marido que intenta engendrar un hijo que no llega... es también una historia de fuerte componente social, una historia de clases, opuestas y dependientes unas de otras, los poderosos siempre necesitados de los más humildes para confirmar su estatus, en la que los siervos ejercen su dominio, incluso desde la opresión: El poder de las viejas es inmenso. No es verdad que las manden a esta casa para que pasen sus últimos días en paz, como dicen ellos. Esto es una prisión, llena de celdas, con barrotes en las ventanas, con un carcelero implacable a cargo de las llaves. Los patrones las mandan encerrar aquí cuando se dan cuenta de que les deben demasiado a estas viejas y sienten pavor porque estas miserables, un buen día, pueden revelar su poder y destruirlos. Los servidores acumulan los privilegios de la miseria... o quizás, en realidad, una historia en la que el humilde no es nadie para el poderoso, nunca más que un objeto, insignificante, poco más que un desecho cuando ya no le sirve.

¿No ve, madre Benita, que lo importante es envolver, que el objeto envuelto no tiene importancia?

Es también la historia de una búsqueda, la de Mudito, o Humberto Peñaloza, de su lucha imposible por ser “alguien” abandonando a quien realmente era (hay tan pocas máscaras...). Derrotado, humillado, pretende crear un imbunche, tapia ventanas, puertas, todo cosido, los ojos, la boca, el culo, el sexo, las narices, los oídos, las manos, las piernas, para refugiarse de los males del mundo, de la realidad, creando su propio ”paraíso”, cada vez más pequeño, más reducido, hasta ser solo imaginación: la verdad puede entrar por cualquier rendija.

Nada, nadie, no soy nada ni nadie.
Ahora que conozco la realidad, sólo lo artificial me interesa.

[María Carpio · Rating 5 out of 5]

El imbunche es un ser fantástico de la mitología mapuche (Chile), es deforme, contrahecho, los brazos y piernas retorcidos, la cabeza pegada hacia atrás. No existe por creación natural, es generado por los brujos a partir de un niño robado y se usa para maleficios. No habla, sólo emite sonidos monstruosos. Si han leído esta novela, llegando a su final recomiencen la lectura, apenas unas páginas, y verán que toda la novela es el proceso de construcción de un imbunche.

Pero como todo proceso mágico y fantasioso, todo ello podría no existir y quemarse en el fuego como un paquete de trapos e hilos cosidos por una vieja medio bruja, una criada, una nana de una familia como los Azcoitía, una vieja que podría llamarse Peta Ponce y sería inseparable, una especie de doble cara de la moneda, de Doña Inés de Azcoitía, esposa de Jerónimo, un hombre de rancio abolengo que, al tener un hijo deforme, decide recrear un mundo paralelo monstruoso, en el que la anomalía y la deformidad serían la norma. No existiría más realidad que esa para su hijo Boy, y para ello contratará una tracalada de seres deformes, enanos y con malformaciones, que harán de Boy uno más de los normales en la propiedad que Don Jerónimo ha preparado para que su hijo viva ahí, La Rinconada.

Pero esto, que parecería una trama simple, en realidad es apenas parte (y quizás igual de ficticia y deformada que el imbunche) de un universo de lo grotesco y lo imposible, en el que el secretario y factótum de Don Jerónimo, Humberto Peñaloza, pasa de aspirante a escritor a convertirse en un ser fantástico que va transmutando en un ser mítico-mágico que finalmente se diluye en los linderos de la ficción. Entre otras cosas, se fusiona con Don Jerónimo y es operado hasta ser reducido a un mini-monstruo por el doctor Azula. Humberto, que no se sabe si algún día fue normal o no, es el narrador principal de esta novela, aunque sus voces se confunden en las de otros personajes, y lo que tenemos es una especie de flujo de conciencia no fiable de Humberto, que también es el mudito (un joven sordomudo que vive en La Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales de la Encarnación de la Chimba, una especie de convento/orfanato, en el que se desarrolla gran parte de la trama, y que es una de las propiedades de Inés de Azcoitía). Aquí, una de las huérfanas, la Iris Mateluna, espera un niño producto de una especie de violaciones de El Gigante (que es una máscara de cartón piedra que terminan usando varios hombres para tener relaciones con ella). Pero la niña es virgen, así que las viejas que viven en la casa, deciden que es un milagro, una Encarnación.

¿Quién es el niño del que está embarazada Iris? ¿Es el mudito? ¿Es Boy? ¿Es el propio Humberto Peñaloza encarnándose desde el plano fantástico de la ficción? ¿Es el imbunche? Es todo eso y nada, y ha existido desde siempre, según las viejas del convento. Pero cómo es posible que fuera Boy ese niño, si fue engendrado en una especie de ritual en el que la Peta Ponce y Humberto Peñaloza se mimetizaron con Doña Inés y Don Jerónimo, respectivamente, para dar a luz a un ser monstruoso producto de la magia (o quizás de la fantasía producto del enamoramiento de Humberto hacia Inés). Pero eso tampoco será así, porque aquí todo es ambivalente y cambia constantemente cuando las capas de la verdad fantástica se van revelando como andrajos desgarrados, esos andrajos que muerde Humberto para tratar de escapar de esa coraza amarrada y cosida sobre él, como una humita, como un bebé antiguo que apenas puede moverse. Y así, como un bebé, las viejas lo tienen, y lo crían, lo amamantan. Así, privado de sus genitales por las amarras, el mudito es una vieja más, un ser deforme, un bebé monstruoso y un imbunche con todos los orificios cosidos y tapados. Sí, todo imposible y muy perturbador. Mucho. Una abyección que en 1970 era novedosa, pero que hoy aparece como una corriente en boga en la narrativa latinoamericana actual. Pero, Donoso ya lo hizo de largo y con ventaja enorme sobre todo lo demás. Esto es lo no visto. Muy distinto a sus otras novelas (de las que he leído, como El lugar sin límites o Coronación).

Ahora, lo más llamativo de la novela, además de su composición esperpéntica, es que se trata de un juego metaliterario. Es una metaficción, ya que Don Jerónimo ha encargado a Humberto Peñaloza escribir una biografía sobre su hijo. Entonces, lo que leemos es y no es a la vez (la ambivalencia otra vez) aquello que Humberto está escribiendo, por lo que, toda la historia (fragmentaria) y los personajes, incluido el propio Humberto, podrían ser simples productos de la ficción, de aquellas páginas que escribe Peñaloza. Pero nada está dicho, porque el puente entre realidad (dentro de la coherencia ficcional) y fantasía es una presencia constante, tomando a la Peta Ponce como el pasadizo entre ambos planos y a la Rinconada y La Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales como los espacios físicos de una y otra dimensión.

Leer esta novela es un ejercicio lector extremo, aunque la técnica narrativa no llega a ser del todo confusa, tiene una lógica aunque sea la del delirio. Los largos párrafos con un ritmo más propio del lenguaje oral pero con vericuetos literarios como los del cambio de perspectiva entre personajes sin ninguna transición, tienen un ritmo intenso, vertiginoso, un ritmo que surge de un lugar desconocido y profundo, el inconsciente quizás. Creo que es lo más tétrico, oscuro y descarnado que ha escrito Donoso. Pero con un valor literario enorme. También resalta el uso del lenguaje coloquial y los chilenismos que imitan la lengua oral, pero de una manera armónica y en su justa medida, ya que Donoso lo utiliza con precisión, sin inundar la novela ni convertirla en costumbrista, más bien incorporando el dialecto chileno en una prosa con un lenguaje más universalizado.

Finalmente, pongo parte del epígrafe de la novela, que es el párrafo de una carta de Henry James a sus hijos, y de donde se desprende el título de la novela. La pista es un mundo espiritual facilmente asimilable a la veta sobrenatural (o preternatural) de la novela y el inconsciente:

"La herencia natural de todo aquel que es capaz de vivir la vida espiritual es un bosque indómito donde el lobo aúlla y el obsceno pájaro de la noche parlotea".

[Katia N · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the one of those novels when the reader is the active participant in the text. There are infinite number of interpretations one can give to the book. And I am sure, if I would read it more times, each time I would come up with something slightly different. One thing is clear - this book defies many conventions of story telling. There is no time frame or chronology, the characters are fluid. There is one strong unifying voice emanating from the book, and I suspect it is the author’s voice. If anything, it might be considered as a gothic tale. There is a lot of horror mixed with love, deformation and distortion mixed with beauty and sometimes replacing it all together. There is a lot of suffering which feels very authentic.

Nabokov once said: “The author clashes with readers on because he is his own ideal reader and those other readers are so very often mere lip-moving ghosts and amnesiacs”. I think it is very relevant to Donoso and this book. I could feel something very personal is reflected in this chaos of a novel. And his symbolism, what he truly meant is impossible to understand without knowing the history of this book creation. But, on another hand, it is not necessary as everyone in their capacity of a reader could find his own way through the maze and either create his own narrative or simply enjoy the ride.

One thing is clear though and I find it quite beautiful. It is impossible to try to put any events into chronological order, or in general define the temporal aspect of the events. It is also impossible to define a single canvas of the events as well. Some of them collide, contradict each other, both happen and not happen. And if one is to enjoy the book, one has to play with this. The way how the narrator describes the sorcery of old woman is wonderfully referential to the novel:

“Old women like Peta Ponce have the power to fold time over and confuse it, they multiply and divide it, events are refracted in their gnarled hands as in the most brilliant prism, they cut the consecutive happening of things into fragments they arrange in parallel form, they bend those fragments and twist them into shapes that enable them to carry out their designs."

These few lines were the key for my understanding and letting me into the book.

One thing which is precisely defined in the novel is the setting. There are two main places where the actions happen. One is the Casa de Ejercicios, the covent of a sorts, managed by a few nuns and the refuge to a few dozens of the old women, a few orphan girls and a mute helper called Mudito. Another place is Rinconada, initially a rich family estate converted into the confined area populated solely by the people with different deformities. Both places come across as limitless but confusing and confined, intimidating mazes physically separated from the outside world. This contrast between “inside and outside” is the one of the main themes of the book. It is usually bad idea for the inmates of both places to get out. Even inside, the new physical barriers are constantly being erected further limiting the space. Somehow the novel has managed to combine a bleak claustrophobic atmosphere with irresistible energy.

I deliberately avoid discussing the plot or giving my interpretation how it all works together. If you are interested to read the author’s story how the book was created, you can find it here https://www.thefreelibrary.com/A+Smal.... It explains some of the symbols, ideas and gives the context of the author’s life. I would recommend it.

But the main theme for me was the desperate search of the characters to escape from the boundaries - both the internal and external. The main ones are the boundaries of their own identities. And at the same time, they are building the new obstacles to shield themselves from certain knowledge or a threat which might ruin them. I’ve read somewhere that the problem with boundaries if one seal them too tight, one would stop to exist as he would not have a means of interaction with external world. The powerful metaphor of Imbunche - the human creature with all his orifices sewed up plays huge importance in the book. On another hand, if one would totally destroy the boundaries between himself and the other, if one would forget what is different and special about him, the one would stop to exist, his identity would totally disappear.

PS

Donoso is considered the one of the LatAm Boom authors (Cortazar, Marquez, Fuentes). They left two powerful influences on the LatAm literature - the one is intertextuality and another one is dealing with the surreal, macabre, sometimes supernatural (in extreme, this leads to well worn out ‘magic realism”). This particular book is more towards the second type. I much prefer the first. However, there is no magic realism (i.e. ghost alive and other paraphernalia). It is ingrained in authentic and specially created mythology. There is strong north american gothic influence as well, i think more Poe than Faulkner here. There are metamorphoses as well which could bring Kafka name to the surface. However, I do not think it is more than superficial comparison.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

About a hundred pages in, there is a scene where a shriveled elderly dwarf woman pretends to be the baby for an obese partially retarded teenage girl and the relationship between the two quickly turns disturbingly sexual.

Why relate this? Because it sets the tone for what this novel is like better than saying probably everything I'm going to say.

This novel is a mess. It's disturbing and beautiful and grotesque and horrific, but it's also a mess. Someone could probably go through book with a fine tooth comb and untangle the mess of chronology, points of view and who in fact is the narrator and who is the I in each and every scene. I have a feeling that if you cared enough to do all of this that the answer you'd find would be very unsatisfactory. Like it wouldn't make much difference who was the I, what the real order of the events were, and whatever else confuses the reader, that there would still be these massive fucking sinkholes and abysses to a perfect understanding of even the simple narrative question of what happened.

That is not a criticism of the book, maybe just at a particular way of reading this particular novel. But I don't mean it as a criticism.

What follows is my reading of the novel. There are spoilers. But they are interpretational spoilers. You will probably read this book differently. Each of us probably will, at least until a Harold Bloom type lets us know what is the correct way to read the book, and then we will all read it that way.

The only reliable parts of the novel are the first and last chapters.

With this in mind two out of thirty chapters are based in reality (what a silly thing to say about a novel, reality as opposed to what? Out with the ugly red pen and slash that line and give me the lowest possible grade one can get for turning in a paper filled with bullshit), and that means that everything on the back of the book (i.e., what you can read the novel is about up above in the good reads synopsis) is not the reality of the narrative. Or it's not reliable. It might never have happened.

The story therefore is that of an old woman who dies in a decrepit convent that is no longer a home for nuns but for old women who were once servants but who no longer have anyone to take care of them. The old woman dies and her funeral is the last mass said in the convents chapel before it is decommissioned by an Arch-Bishop. The convent is going to shortly be demolished and the old women are going to be moved to modern facilities, instead of living in a run down building with no resources.

The remaining twenty eight chapters of the book are a mishmash of dreams of the women residing in the convent, the deaf mute handyman and convent itself through the family that built and maintained it. Like dreams there can be an awful lot that is true and there can be just as much if not more that is only the projection of imagination, desires and wishes.

Each chapter explodes the chapters preceding. There are no narrative unfurlings, no resolution, because the novel moves on by re-writing it's own history, by ignoring and re-imagining what might have come before, by following an inherent logic that falls apart and expires after every nuanced instance it is deployed. Like a dream. Which is what this novel is (in my reading), and as in any dream worthy of being called a dream, there are more threads than one can consciously count (are there two or three major story lines? But they meld and then there are the new ones, but does that one count? is it just the continuation of that story or is it a new story with the same characters but characters who do not share the the past with the characters who shared the same name a few pages ago.... etc.,)there is the reality that makes sense in the moment but falters and crumbles under the thoughts of daylight, there are all there are of course the Freudian nods and the Jungian archetypes played out with ancient Myths projected with modern undertones. There is father killing and motherfucking and impossible creatures and fairy tales and all of those things that people love about dreams.

What does the whole dream mean? What you'd like for it to mean, as the reader you're in a way the dreamer of it, and it's meanings are for you to decide on. Unless you're one of those jerks who think that a dream interpretation book will really tell you anything.

[Adam Floridia · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect review of The Obscene Bird of Night would actually be this.

The image that burned in my brain as I read was Goya's El Gran Cabron




Pathetically, that's about the best review I can offer...which is surprising because I'm usually so stingy with my 5-star ratings.

This was NOT what the back of the book promised--the story of an aristocrat who "protects" his deformed child by imprisoning him in a world of monsters. Sure, that was in there, but the primary story is driven by the narrator(s??)/protagonist(s??). You want to talk about "narrative fidelity" in a book, well here's one where there is never a moment of solid footing for readers to establish a truth, making every event conceivably the imagination/nightmare of an insane/deranged/non-existent narrator.

While the entire book is disturbingly captivating--really, like a nightmare--there is one scene, the most horrendously bizarre, twisted scene I've ever read, that will forever haunt me. (I'm not brave enough to describe it...just read pages 95-99.)

God, this really is a book I would LOVE to discuss with others. Also, need to re-read it to see if I can develop some of the themes/motifs I noticed the first time through: Identity, Imprisonment, Reality vs. Myth vs. Dream vs. Gossip, Loneliness/Isolation, Freedom, Masks, the Imbunche and Chonchon. I really don't think this book is going to leave me alone for quite a while...


Epigraph: "Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters."
-Henry James Sr. writing to his two sons

[Szplug · Rating 5 out of 5]

The dark terrors that roil in the benighted depths of the subconscious, bursting forth to poison midnight dreams and shadows, put their stamp on all of the mythologies that man wove from the preternatural mysteries that surrounded, oppressed, and exhilarated him from the furthest nebulous reaches of humanity's dawn. Their particular imprint on South American magic and witchcraft—and the chilling meme of the imbunche, a helpless infant with all nine orifices cruelly sewn shut in order to become the plaything of the chonchónes who worship the darkest powers—forms the stunted, malformed building blocks with which José Donoso constructs his bizarre, disturbing, enigmatic, and stunning labyrinth of conflicting memories, merging and diverging personalities, leaps and plunges into the running waters of time, and layered strands of personality and consciousness in their solipsistic struggle against the one and the whole.

This is a difficult work to digest—from the very start Donoso plays fast and loose with the narrator, switching gender, person, even abandoning the physical body altogether—as the reader is presented with several possible divergences of the tale's reality, from the mythological to the historical, and all of them touched by an irrational evil and bordered upon by the infinite. The Chile of the author's lifetime was a society with rigid class structures and a looming showdown between an energetic and radical left-wing and landowner-based reaction. This conflict of left against right, anarchic freedom versus ordered privilege runs coterminous with Donoso's themes of personalities striving desperately for recognition: to be born in the lower or middle classes is to be rendered faceless and shorn of identity; to be forced to don a multitude of masks, to perform a variety of roles, in ritual performances which, if enacted with skill and daring, will be rewarded with an actual face, with recognizable features forming themselves out of the ashen, lumpy clay of anonymity. In turn, the upper class, though immensely wealthy and the possessors of all manifestations of power, must forever guard against various pieces of their identity being collected by their servants; for in gossip and secrets, proximity to the sexual, mental, and physical quirks and hangups of their employer, the slave gains a vast potentiality for vengeance, mischief, and manipulation against the master. This yearning to acquire, and passion to retain, one's identity against those who would seek to deny, or steal, such a precious self-definition resonates throughout Donoso's creation. Such endless conflicts and tensions, the chafing of the spirit by the darkest passions, makes for a fertile breeding ground for the monstrous: in a world of us against them, there are few impediments to the distortions of hatred and resentment in vitiating one's opponents to the point where they become as physically repulsive as they are ideologically. Beauty and ugliness, after all, are not aesthetic absolutes, but rather abstractions that can only be judged against something else; and in a community of the malformed and disfigured, one who is physically perfect will be deemed a monster.

The majority of the novel takes place in and around the Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales de la Encarnación in La Chomba, a suburb to the north of Santiago. The Casa, a religious house in the possession of the aristocratic de Azcoitía family, is a vast, mazelike warren of cells and courts amidst crumbling adobe walls and an army of secret-bearing shadows. Dedicated to an ancient de Azcoitía ancestor who is alternately a saint and a witch, the crones and orphans who call it home will figure (have figured) in the birth (the death) of the final heir to the illustrious de Azcoitía name; an heir upon whom magic and religion, illusion and truth, the irrational and the rational will boldly make their claims.

This is a superb book, wonderfully translated by the combined efforts of Hardie St. Martin and Leonard Mades, who allow the frequent monolithic stretches of stream-of-consciousness to retain their beguiling beauty and expressive power. Reading this book upon the heels of Steve Erickson's millennial one-two punch of The Sea Came in at Midnight and Our Ecstatic Days , I can see the influence this masterpiece has had upon Donoso's fellow interpreters of our magical and macabre world; authors who also dipped into the stuff of dreams and darkness, of lore and legends, in order to sketch their own eerie and compelling visions of spiritual verity, of human truth.

[Ema · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Obscene Bird of Night is one strange, twisted, haunting, obscene book. It may well be the most difficult novel I've read so far. There were moments when I felt that I could connect to it and even understand it, but most of the time I felt like floating inside a grotesque nightmare, with walled-up windows and doors, not being able to find my way out. If, by chance, I was brusquely expelled into reality, I was compelled by an utter fascination to go back in and have my brains turned to mush.

You could almost hear this book breathing, like a a shape-shifting sort of being which is carefully wrapped up in several layers of phantasmagorias, starting to resemble the mythical Imbunche of the ancient Chileans - a deformed monster with all its nine body orifices sewn in, obstructed, with one of its legs bent backwards, over its back. Do not attempt to visualize it, or you may feel sick.


Where should I start when talking about The Obscene Bird of Night? What I experienced from the very beginning was a deep confusion. I couldn't understand who were those people, who was talking, who was the narrator. Gradually, with pen and paper in hand, I began to make my way through this dense and chaotic jungle of a book.

The protagonist is Humberto Peñaloza, who lives (or better said, hides) in the House of Spiritual Exercises of the Incarnation in Chimba, under a makeshift personality - that of the Mute (El Mudito). He used to be the secretary of Jerónimo Azcoitía, a senator who comes from a wealthy, old family who founded the House.

There is a whole cast of characters and I'll name just a few: Inés Azcoitía, Jerónimo's wife; Iris Mateluna, an orphan living in the House who, at some point, is believed to be pregnant; Peta Ponce, Inés' nursemaid; Boy, the monstrous son. Frankly, this enumeration does injustice to the immense complexity of the book, it is bland and sterile, just like the book is rich and full of meaning.

The narrator is omniscient, omnipresent, it impersonates almost every character in this book, sometimes in the course of the same sentence. The point of view shifts abruptly, like a ray of light bouncing from a rough crystal. After some time I started to follow the change in character more quickly, which was a relief. They seem like a row of empty houses, the deserted setting of a movie, in which a single mad janitor enters them randomly and, for a moment, infuses them with life.

Just as the narrator's voice passes from one character to another in a chaotic manner, also their personalities undergo several changes: throughout the book they play different roles, just like in a multiplied one-man show. It is not a radical transformation, it is just perceived as such: for example, Humberto Peñaloza is, in turns, a poor and obscure young man/a failed writer/a monster through his normality, among deformed people/a mute and deaf/the seventh old woman deprived of sex/a baby boy who continues to shrink/an Imbunche.
Iris Mateluna is an orphan, but also Gina the slut/bearer of a miraculous pregnancy/mother of an old-woman-turned-child/Madonna with a child/Inés the pious.

The characters also shift their traits - Jerónimo steals Humberto's wound, while the latter steals Jerónimo's potency. Inés Azcoitía imitates the voices of those around her, impersonating them. Past and present seem to cohabitate, as if the hands of a witch has confused time, breaking its line and arranging the segments in parallel.

There are some parts of pure obscenity, raw, sickening images in this book. But there are also parts of pure beauty: unending paragraphs, in which the reader almost gets lost; a backyard full of broken statues of saints, from which new saints are randomly built. There are the phantom-like old maids who populate the House, with their habit of hiding trifles under their beds, with the strength they've gained through their decrepitude, with the power they have over their former masters, by knowing their filth and their weaknesses. There is the legend of Inés the pious/Inés the witch, who was confined in a monastery by her father. There is the haunting story of the monstrous Boy, who was surrounded by a world of deformed people just like himself, thus reversing the meaning of normality and beauty.

The whole novel is infused with the myth of the Imbunche, even the House is transformed gradually into one, as the windows are bricked-up, rooms and corridors hidden under false walls, as if they never existed. There is a continuous switch between inside and outside, dream and reality. There are so many mind-blowing details in The Obscene Bird of Night that I almost tend to forget the bad parts (because they were, too).

I have a lot of other things to say, but I would never finish this review. Maybe I'll come back and add some more thoughts... Anyway, I wish I had someone to discuss it with, it would take some hours and a couple of beers to turn the matters on all sides. I don't regret the time spent reading it, that's for sure.

[Marisol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Para hablar de esta monumental novela de Donoso hay que remitirse a un concepto manoseado y recurrido infinidad de veces pero que tiene pocos exponentes máximos, el origen fue Juan Rulfo y Pedro Páramo publicado en. 1955, continuo Elena Garro y Los recuerdos del porvenir en 1965, se popularizó con Gabriel GM y 100 años de soledad en 1967 y para mi, culmina con esta novela publicada en 1970.

Pregunte a la IA cuáles fueron las contribuciones de Donoso a la literatura y la respuesta enumera las mejores características de esta novela.

Realismo mágico: sin este concepto no cabría esta novela y sería un disparate épico, la mezcla de linaje familiar con leyendas alrededor de él, la ruptura de lo lineal en el tiempo y el espacio, la realización de los proyectos más extraños, el paroxismo y rareza máxima al que llegan la mayoría de los personajes hace que el realismo mágico en Donoso sea siniestro, oscuro, sin límites.

Preocupación de la identidad, la mayoría de los personajes principales de esta novela están preocupados sobre su papel e importancia en la vida, Jerónimo el último de su linaje está preocupado por la falta de heredero, Inés su esposa, vive abatida ante su esterilidad, el mudito centro de toda la historia es un personaje tan complejo que su preocupación va más allá de saber quién es, el sabe quién fue, quien se esperaba que fuera, pero nunca pudo descifrar quién quería ser, ante esta disyuntiva prefiere borrarse progresivamente, para dejar de ser simplemente.

En algún momento existe un juego de identidades donde sin quererlo o sin buscarlo la criada se vuelve la señora de la casa y está a su vez se transforma en la criada.

Crítica social, la anécdota inicia en una especie de convento donde viven viejas criadas que son llevadas por sus patrones para pasar sus últimos días, en la pobreza total, llenas de enfermedades y de pertenencias míseras que ellas guardan como si fueran tesoros, la mayoría son olvidadas y solo una llamada Brígida sigue teniendo contacto con su señora, la misia Raquel. Aquí se expone la opulencia de la familia Azcoitia y sus ilimitados recursos contra la miseria de la mayoría.

Experimentalismo formal, más allá de una nueva técnica literaria, Donoso reinventa y mejora herramientas ya existentes, ignora también los límites lógicos que la historia trata de imponer, casi construyendo muchas realidades o escenarios para los mismos personajes, no existe una secuencia lógica o cuando menos no con la lógica que esperamos, hay que ajustar nuestras perspectivas y dejarnos atrapar por una narración que rompe, para volver a destruir, y destruir hasta que los cimientos caigan y con ellos todo.

Como temas recurrentes están la transexualidad, la vejez, la marginalidad, la ignorancia, el imaginario colectivo como hacedor y constructor del pasado a través del famoso dicen- que suena cada tanto en la historia para afirmar o negar datos que no se pueden comprobar ni verificar sino a través de las voces que murmuran.

Es un libro que agota, que no da tregua, que nos abre la puerta a un mundo retorcido, sofocante pero muy parecido a la realidad, pero en cierto sentido literal y metafórico en esta historia los personajes andan desnudos exponiendo lo mejor y peor de ellos.

Impresionada por el manejo del idioma, de la manera en que un narrador como el mudito da nuevo sentido a las frases y nos deja pensando, o nos trasmite todo ese dolor que arrastra como si llevara a cuestas generaciones de personas que han vivido y muerto solo para servir.

Una reseña no da para tanto que hay que hablar, discutir y debatir sobre esta novela, un desafío mayúsculo que entrega buenos réditos.

[Hux · Rating 2 out of 5]

Where to begin? I suppose with the fact that it's extremely difficult to enjoy a book when there's nothing to latch onto, nothing solid that you can grab, with both hands, and ingest in a way that makes the thing come alive. It's like trying to grab hold of a piece of air. I think there was only one chapter (towards the beginning) where I did get a momentary glimpse of sanity and could actually cling to something tangible but this vanished almost immediately. The structure is chaotic from start to finish and any logic or coherency you might find is either accidental or located in madness. 

As far as the story is concerned the only meaningful narrative I could find (and I'm still not entirely certain about this) revolved around a man called Mudito (who occasionally has other names and other physical forms) who lives in a weird little enclosed square of witches and orphans and these witches are either controlling him (or vice versa) and he is their child or creation (or vice versa) and he is potentially a monster (an imbunche in Chilean culture) or at least turning into one, and there's a girl called Iris who gets pregnant and he is both the father and the child but also... he isn't. And there are other characters who come and go (but I really didn't know who they were) and then there's a guy called Humberto (but he's also Mudito). Then there's Jeronimo who has a deformed son and wants him to be raised in this same place of misfits so that his son feels less weird. Oh and Jeronimo and Mudito might also be the same person. So yeah... things are happening... it's a fever dream of incoherent madness and even when you momentarily know what's happening and who people are, the very next chapter morphs them into something, or someone, else until everything is a blur of static and white noise. These people seem to be trapped outside of time and exist only in the minds of the narrator (who himself only exists in someone else's mind) and nothing is ever remotely stable or fixed. Got that? Good then I shall continue...

It's all over the place. Even when the book is weirdly compelling (such as when the old lady pretends to be Iris's baby and suckles on her tits before they massage her old-lady vagina??) the book is hard to stay focused on. It's so difficult to maintain eye contact with this thing. But then, I suppose that's the point. And Donoso admits as much in moments of lucidity...

Old women like Peta Ponce have the power to fold time over and confuse it, they multiply and divide it, events are refracted in their gnarled hands as in the most brilliant prism, they cut the consecutive happening of things into fragments they arrange in parallel form, they bend those fragments and twist them into shapes that enable them to carry out their designs.

It's all very interesting stuff but as I said at the start, it's very difficult to enjoy any of this when you can't latch onto anything. I never had a strong sense of what was happening or who these people were. Without that, it's extremely difficult to care. Why would I invest in such a (long) book if I get so very little back?

Reading and watching some of the positive reviews of this book is eye opening; people will admit that they found it a slog, that it could have had hundreds of pages removed without losing anything, that it was impossible to follow, but then they'll finish their review by saying.. it's a masterpiece!! Do these people not know what the word masterpiece means? They sound like battered wives defending their husband's violent behaviour because he happens to be wearing a really nice suit. It's bizarre. People are so desperate for literature to matter beyond mere reading experience that they will imbue books which, by their own admission, are unpleasant to get through, as magnificent. Plus the fact that Donoso can clearly write is a factor. But so what? If I go to a urinal and see some beautifully written and profound graffiti on the wall, it doesn't change the fact that I'm surrounded by shit and piss. That Donoso can write only makes this worse (like all those talented writers who, having read Joyce and seen how much respect he commands, choose to waste their talents on banal stream-of-consciousness drivel. Some may even tell you that it's playing with themes regarding the novel and what constitutes plot, character, etc, challenging those expectations. But again, that's like me making you eat a turd and telling you that I'm challenging the bourgeoisie expectations of what food can be. In the bin with that pretentious crap! This might be a good time to confess that I absolutely despise magical realism. I mean, I just utterly despise it. 

I remember reading Pedro Paramo and thinking... well, at least this ethereal weirdness is short. But this one is NOT short. It never ends. It's like Donoso read Sabato's On Heroes and Tombs and ignored all the reality and said, I'm gonna focus on those parts of the book where obsession spirals into an incoherent mess of nightmarish surrealism and drag it out until the reader loses their fucking mind. Its's a book worth investigating but one which, I assure you, can only ever disappoint (even if you like it). As such the only people I can recommend this book to are people who genuinely love magical realism (you sickos!) or hipsters (so they can impress their wife Susan and their boyfriend Steve all at once). Otherwise, for me, it's a book that I just couldn't find any love for. If I read this for a thousand years (a form of hell no doubt), I would still never enjoy it. I might understand it better. But I still wouldn't like it.  

[Iluvatar . · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird? Oh yeah. Scary? You bet

I have a feeling that David Lynch had the idea of the artistic choices of Eraserhead after reading this book

Is there a plot? I don’t really know.

I really think that Donoso wrote the book after a horrible experience such as being arrested and tortured because this was a literal nightmare

A one of a kind novel
very experimental in the topics and narrative choices
You go into this experience on your own
It can’t be recommended

[cycads and ferns · Rating 5 out of 5]

Years ago Don Jerónimo, part of the wealthy Azcoitias family, was encouraged by his uncle to enter national politics and to finally marry. Jerónimo chose the beautiful Inés but before the wedding, Inés insisted that Peta Ponce, her maid and possibly a witch, must come to live with her. Jerónimo, elected a Senator, lived at La Rinconada, the Azcoitias estate, with Inez, Peta Ponca and his secretary, Humberto. For many years the young couple tried to have a child, always with Humberto present, but without success. Then finding watching insufficient, Humberto slept with Inés, or was it Peta Ponca, and months later she discovered that she was pregnant. The baby was born with severe abnormalities and Jerónimo wanted to prevent others from learning of his son’s condition. He had La Rinconada closed off and filled it with other deformed individuals to keep Boy company. He instructed Humberto to oversee the project with the help of Emperatriz, Jerónimo’s cousin and a dwarf, and Dr. Azula. Having watched over Boy for years, Humberto began to suspect that he was being ridiculed by the other residents of the house and that he was in fact the one who was deformed. After years of heavy drinking, Humberto fell ill and Dr. Azula intervened to save his life. As he recuperated, Humberto began to believe that his blood and organs were removed and that he was reduced to a portion of his former self.

Mudito the mute lives at the Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales, owned by the Azcoitias family, and works for the older women and orphans who live there. One day Mudito puts on a papier-mâché head of a giant to have “yumyum” with one of the orphans, Iris. Many other men don the mask, including Jerónimo, and has “yum-yum” with Iris. Years ago, Mudito, then Humberto, was Jerónimo’s secretary and an aspiring writer. Since leaving his employment, Mudito has refused Jerónimo his eyes, leaving Jerónimo impotent. Iris is pregnant, the father unknown, and is hidden away to prevent anyone from finding out. The older women living at the casa begin to believe that the baby was divinely conceived. Iris’ son, Boy, is born and kept out of sight due to his severe deformities.

Jerónimo decides to sell the Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales and the contents are soon auctioned. Having not been beatified in Rome, Inés takes a vow of poverty. She returns to the casa, refusing to have it sold, and insists on living there with the old women, the orphans, and Mudito.

After many years, Jerónimo decides to visit his son, now in his teens, and during his stay at La Rinconada, drowns in the pool. Boy wants the memories of his father surgically removed by Dr. Azula. La Rinconada is inherited by Emperatriz and the doctor.

The Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales falls into disrepair due to a lack of funds. Inés is institutionalized, Iris runs away, and Mudito is sewn into a burlap sack. The casa is locked, ready to be demolished, and the old women and orphans are sent elsewhere. Encased in burlap and made into an imbucha, Mudito is stuffed and sewn into yet another sack by an unnamed woman. The woman fills the burlap sack with papers and then leaves the casa, heading for the bridge. Finding a fire, she feeds it with the contents of the sack, eventually emptying all of it. The fire subsides, the wind disperses the ashes into the wind and what remains are the blackened stones.

Was Humberto also Jerónimo and the Boy? Was Inés also Peta Ponca and Iris? Was La Rinconada also the Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales? This was my first five star read of the year and I remain in awe of the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s and 70s.

“The author battled with the fears and fantasies lurking in his subconscious- both individual and collective— and won: Donoso achieved an artwork that goes beyond traditional and even experimental forms of literature. It’s a laying bare through masks and disguise, a communication of something that can’t be looked at head-on, but only hinted at through images seen sideways: an imbunche’s grunt becoming an articulate and eloquent affirmation of existence.”
-Megan McDowell, translator

[Ricardo Carrión Libros · Rating 5 out of 5]

El obsceno pájaro de la noche es reconocida como la mejor novela del escritor Chileno José Donoso. En su tiempo, rompió todos los esquemas narrativos conocidos, abandona el orden, el realismo y nos sumerge en una especie de pesadilla; en un caos. El mismo autor la cataloga como una novela coral, de muchas voces, como una sinfonía; en vez de aflorar notas musicales, son ideas que se amplifican y se reducen, pero que siempre están ahí; afloran cuando el autor las llama, y a veces lo hacen al unísono.
En el inicio, parte de una base sólida, como si se tratara de una novela lineal. Nos presenta "La casa de ejercicios espirituales de la Chimba", una especie de convento, o claustro en decadencia, cuyo fin inicial se remonta a finales del siglo XVIII; ahora es una simple propiedad que ha pasado de generación en generación, perteneciente a una familia de la aristocracia chilena de origen vasco: "Los Azcoitía". Es una casona que con los años se fue ampliando, pero que se encuentra en franco abandono y deterioro. El personal religioso es un residuo de lo que fue, y el resto de los habitantes son ex-sirvientes o "viejas", que por la edad ya no tienen dónde vivir ni trabajar, y unas jóvenes huérfanas sin ningún destino. El personaje principal, el narrador de esta historia es: "el mudito", una suerte de conserje que arrastra un carrito con materiales de limpieza y trastos, por los oscuros y olvidados corredores de la casa de la Chimba.

Donoso no especifica una fecha exacta en donde se desarrollan los hechos, como si quisiera dejar su historia flotando en otro plano dimensional, lo que acentúa aún más la sensación de pesadilla. Pero hay algunas pistas con las que podríamos deducir una fecha. En un momento da a entender que la Casa de la encarnación de la Chimba, lleva más 150 años a manos de la familia Azcoitía. Y también cuenta que se fundó a fines del siglo XVIII, por lo que probablemente la historia se desarrolle en el Chile de mediados del Siglo XIX; en los años cincuenta o sesenta.

Los habitantes de la Casa tienen una estrecha relación con los últimos vástagos de la familia Azcoitía: Inés y Jerónimo. A este matrimonio le pertenece la casa, y hay discrepancias entre ellos sobre su destino: Conservarla o demolerla. Este hecho es el que de alguna manera les da el primer impulso a los personajes: hecha a andar un mecanismo de autodestrucción. La decisión de demoler o no la casona de adobe, es el resultado final de una serie de historias pasadas y presentes, que corren paralelas y luego se entrelazan. Se conocerán en profundidad las vidas de Inés y Jerónimo, como además las de algunas de las habitantes de la casona y la del misterioso narrador: "el mudito".

Reseña completa en: http://eligeunlibro.blogspot.cl/2017/...

[Έλσα · Rating 5 out of 5]

Λένε πως τη νύχτα που η πλάση ησυχάζει, που επικρατεί σκοτάδι, πως φανταστικά και μαγικά πλάσματα ξυπνούν χορεύοντας στη φύση. Λένε πως τη νύχτα δρουν σκοτεινές δυνάμεις, πως οι άνθρωποι βλέπουν σκιές κ περίεργες εικόνες...πως πλάθουν εξωπραγματικά όντα με τη φαντασία τους.

Στο συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο στο οποίο κυριαρχούν όντως φανταστικά πλάσματα, τερατόρμοφα άτομα, μάγισσες υπάρχει μία διαφορά. Όλα αυτά τα όντα πήραν σάρκα κ οστά από την ευφυία κ την παρανοία του Χοσέ Δονόσο.

Κ όμως, ο συγγραφέας με ένα πλούσιο βιογραφικό, με λογοτεχνικές καταβολές από Προυστ, Χένρι Τζέιμς, Μάρκες, Μπόρχες κ άλλες σημαντικές κ ανεκτίμητες προσωπικότητες της λογοτεχνίας, έγραψε αυτό το αριστούργημα του μαγικού ρεαλισμού. Δυσκολεύτηκε πολύ να το τελειώσει. Η λογοτεχνία ήταν το πάθος του. Ένας πάθος που αναμφίβολα διακρίνεις διαβάζοντας ένα βιβλίο του. Όλες αυτές οι εικόνες που κατέγραψε προήλθαν από τις εφιαλτικές νύχτες που πέρασε στο δωμάτιο του νοσοκείου αφού του είχε χορηγηθεί μορφίνη έπειτα από εγχείριση στομάχου. Η αγάπη του για τη λογοτεχνία τον οδηγούσε σε άγχος. Εξού κ το γεγονός πως το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο είχε 60 εκδοχές. Από αυτό κ μόνο μπορούμε να αντιληφθούμε τη συγγραφική δεινότητα του Δονόσο.

Όλα τα πλάσματα του βιβλίου συνθέτουν ένα πάζλ. Τα κομμάτια τα τοποθετεί ο αναγνώστης σύμφωνα με την κρίση του. Αυτό που με ενθουσίασε είναι πως κ ο ίδιος ο αναγνώστης δημιουργεί δικές του φανταστικές εικόνες κ αυτό γίνεται με ένα μαγικό τρόπο που μόνο ο Δονόεο θα μπορούσε να μας εξηγήσει. Άλλωστε θα τον τολμούσα να τον χαρακτηρίσω 《μάγο》 της λογοτεχνίας.

Οι ήρωες του κειμένου έχουν πολλούς ρόλους κ εξυπηρετούν δικούς τους σκοπούς. Κινούνται μεταξύ πραγματικότητας κ φαντασίας, μεταξύ του καλού κ του κακού, μεταξύ της αλήθειας κ του ψέματος. Τέρατα που θεωρούνται φυσιολόγικα, μάγισσες που λειτουργούν καταχθόνια, κακά πνεύματα, τρομακτικά όντα που ονομάζονται 《ιμπούντσε》 θρύλοι κ μύθοι που σε ανατριχιάζουν.

Δεν είναι ένα εύκολο βιβλίο. Απαιτεί αφοσίωση, χρόνο κ συγκέντρωση. Αν αποφασίσεις να το πιάσεις θα πρέπει να βουτήξεις βαθιά στην άβυσσο. Θα χρειαστεί να βγεις στην επιφάνεια, να πάρεις ανάσα κ να βουτήξεις ξανά στον κόσμο του. Η ανάγνωσή του μοιάζει με κινούμενη άμμο.. βυθίζεσαι αργά...προσπαθείς να δραπετεύσεις αφού κατανοήσεις τα μηνύματα που σου στέλνει.

Όσοι αγαπούν τον μαγικό ρεαλισμό θα το λατρέψουν! 😘📚📖

[Pablo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Por donde comenzar...
Una par de veces en mi vida he sufrido de parálisis del sueño, esa sensación de estar despierto pero seguir dormido, dentro de un sueño que se funde con la realidad, sin tener control de la situación. Sin poder diferenciar entre lo real y lo imaginario. Pero llega el momento en que uno de verdad se despierta, y la realidad le parece muy obvia, no sabe porqué fue tan estúpido para confundir un sueño o pesadilla con la realidad. En el Obsceno pájaro no existe ese despertar. No hay un momento de claridad, no hay algo que no sea onírico, de pesadilla.
Si en la Conversación en la catedral de Vargas Llosa se hace un uso perfecto de la polifonia y saltos en el tiempo en el relato; en este libro se lleva a los extremos dichos recursos. El narrador de la novela, el Mudito, es todos y ninguno a la vez. Esta en todas partes y todos los tiempos, pero pareciera no existir.
A pesar de lo experimental en su forma de relatar, en los temas que trata, el argumento y la trama, el libro se disfruta de principio a fin. Logra cautivar, la prosa fluye muy bien. No para leerlo en un par de días, pero si para querer avanzar un poco a diario.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating shape-shifting beast of a novel. Perspectives change, characters themselves morphing throughout the book.

I was half-expecting some sort of horror novel about a monstrous creature but this turned out to be way more interesting than that.

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread, in the McDowell/NDP unabridged edition, November 2024.

[Fede · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Obscene Bird of Night" is a surreal nightmare of horror, feverish eroticism and visionary claustrophobia that eludes any attempt to classify it in any well-defined genre.
"The House of the Spirits" and Goya's "Black Paintings"; Victor Hugo's "The Laughing Man" and J.P. Witkin's photography; such are the literary and visual references I was reminded of while reading this book. Crippled bodies and obscure rituals, deformity and superstition haunt this weird tale in which the plot eventually wanes like a cloud of incense in a crypt.

The narration is divided into three parts, very different with regards to style, technique, contents (I'll try and hold my tongue not to have my review flagged by some GR zealot, but the chronological order would be: 2-1-3).
The protagonist is the Unreliable Narrator par excellence, whose point of view shifts from male to female and from individual to crowd, thus bringing the reader to a state of absolute bewilderment. All we seem to understand is that a mute, maybe misshapen man (Humberto the 'Mudito') lives in a creepy Chilean convent, the Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales, inhabited by old women, a few nuns and a bunch of orphans, one of which gets pregnant. The old women's delirious fantasy turns the event into a miracle, although charging it with a latent (and quite revolting) eroticism that leads them to... okay, I'm talking too much.

Then (second part) we learn more about Humberto's past: his life at the service of a landowner, Don Jerónimo, who puts him in charge of his deformed son's education. The child is to be raised among any sort of freaks, a Court of Miracles deliberately gathered by Jerónimo in a country estate, so to deprive his misshapen heir of any knowledge of the outside world. We're also told about the controversial history of the convent.
Legends, superstitions, rumours have indeed leaked through the centuries and now seem to permeate the walls of the cloister, crawling with ghosts barely distinguishable from the human inhabitants. Is there a link between the supposedly 'miraculous' pregnancy and the obscure events that took place in the past?

In the third part the narration gets increasingly confused. We lose any grip on the story as it turns into a downward spiral dragging us down, down, down through the depths of sick fantasies and insane episodes of religious frenzy. Now the three narrative threads get inextricably entangled; like a serpent swallowing its tail, the novel revolves around itself, mercilessly abandoning the reader in the middle of a maze whose only way out has been walled up.

I was delighted by the wild morbidity of Donoso's imagery. The Chilean author's fantasy is so artistically outrageous that my baroque taste for excess was utterly satisfied.
Hence the problem though: Donoso's talent is mostly displayed in the first part, whereas the rest of the novel gets weaker - only occasionally surprising the reader with some disturbing scene of depravity.
Let aside this flaw, which is a matter of personal taste anyway, I did enjoy this novel very much. It's dark, poetic, controversial... it's a jigsaw puzzle and a charade. It goes without saying that it's not for everyone.

[Marc Kozak · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an absolutely bizarre masterpiece, a towering work of creativity by an author that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as his more recognized contemporaries like Roberto Bolaño, Gabriel García Márquez and Julio Cortázar. It's tempting to simply add this to the list of the other great magical realism works of the Latin American boom, but this is really something else, much more akin to the surreal griminess of Cărtărescu's Solenoid.

It's also a difficult piece of work, not because of the language but because there really is no singular reality to the story. First-person point of view shifts between multiple characters, often within the same paragraph (or even the same sentence). The events are not laid out linearly and certain characters seem to exist throughout an impossible span of time. Throw in the mother of all unreliable narrators and you've got a book where you have to stay sharp to piece things together.

That being said, once you surrender to the flow, those things are all features, not bugs. It's a wildly enjoyable reading experience where even if you're not 100% sure what is going on, you can see what the author is getting at.

And he's getting at quite a lot. The story, as much as it's possible to do justice to it in a brief summary, is about the mute caretaker of a crumbling and forgotten abbey that was once the jewel of a great family, but is now the rotting home to a group of old sisters who may be witches. The origin of the building is intertwined with elements of real Chilean folklore, and as generations pass, what's true and what's legend all depends on who you ask.

The caretaker, Mudito, was (according to him) once an assistant to the heir of the owning family, a promising author of lower class that was envious and resentful of his master. What the reader is left to decipher is what Mudito's story really is. Is he magically cursed by shape-shifting witches who have meddled in affairs of the estate since it's very origin? Or is it something much more mundane, a case of a sad and envious man who can't handle being simply ordinary? Who can say, and since Mudito is often the narrator, we mostly get his perspective, one in which he believes he is manipulating events to get his revenge.

His version of the story is quite spectacular. Witches possess other people's bodies to seduce and impregnate in order to continue family lines. He somehow steals another man's ability to get aroused. A young orphan may have a baby that is either a holy savior or Mudito reincarnated or both (or there is no baby at all). It's an often gross and disturbing world, the underbelly of a society underneath and around the ruling class.

The writing of this book nearly consumed Donoso's life, and there's a lot of himself in there. Questions of identity are central to the story; it's the tale of a man desperate to elevate himself from his station, consumed with bitterness and rage that he should be so close to the society he believes himself to be a part of, forever not accepted, not remembered, an insignificant man to be used, chewed up and spit out. "The Obscene Bird of Night" is his revenge, his document of the things keeping him and others like him from happiness, even if his insecurities keep him from really believing that happiness is anything that he deserves.

Mudito's narration can get a little repetitive at times, but it's easy to imagine it as the ramblings of someone who is forever harping on his miseries and the things that he believes brought him so low. Still, it's a minor criticism of an otherwise spellbinding work, a truly singular book that more than belongs in the conversation alongside the best of those big, dense, weird, complicated stories that attract a certain kind of reader. You know who you are. Go get it and get to work.

[Rowena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suspect that with a re-read of this book I'd probably give it a 5-star rating. I went into this book not really knowing what to expect, I was very intrigued by the title.

This was a strangely compelling book,though it took a while for me to get into it.It's a story full of magical realism, which I read that someone described as a dream/nightmare. A very fitting description.
I had no idea who the narrators were half the time but I did enjoy it a lot. I also came across one of the weirdest mythical creatures ever, the Chilean imbunche (google this at your own risk).

I would also advise the reader to not read this book while eating. There are some truly candid and disturbing descriptions throughout the book.

[Florencia Rabuco Quiroga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deslumbrante.

Pensaré en qué escribir como reseña.

[Cardenio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una de la madrugada y yo terminaba de contemplar la desgracia de Mudito, transformado en un imbunche por las viejas grotescas y arrugadas de la Chimba, Jerónimo abatido por la relación con su hijo, Inés evocando a la beata del pasado, y así, cada uno de los personajes viviendo un infierno personal del cual es imposible desprenderse, como un destino establecido desde antes.
Es un libro inabarcable, una fuente de agua a punto de resbalar y desbordarse en el piso. Con maestría, Donoso utiliza un millón de recursos modernos: ideas sueltas y corriente de la consciencia, narradores que relatan desde diferentes perspectivas y momentos, un entremezclado de tiempos y hechos que, dentro del esquema mental se debe ordenar por sí solo. Personajes complejos, que contemplan su desgracia y la aceptan, porque son parte de una de las dos clases sociales que imperan dentro del contexto de la historia, miles de interpolaciones textuales que se entrecruzan dentro de algunos momentos, y continuamente, se deshilvana una obra maestra, tanto desde el punto de vista de la forma como del contenido.
"El obsceno pájaro de la noche", más que ser una novela, es una experiencia. El mismo Donoso decía en una entrevista que le tomó alrededor de ocho años terminar el libro. Antes se había convencido de dejarlo ahí, entre el esbozo y el ensayo, a un pájaro que le cortan las alas, pero fue su mujer quien lo convenció de seguir armando a este pájaro, ya que o si no sentiría una carga consigo mismo desde siempre. Y así fue, ya que cuando el autor se decidió a dejarlo en el esbozo, cae enfermo. Se percata de que debe terminarlo.
Hay muchos temas interesantes que propone esta novela-experiencia. Hay un millón de citas marcadas, pero no me referiré a ellas porque, sería abarcar la totalidad del libro. No hay un momento más importante que el otro ni una narración más memorable que la otra. En su conjunto, esta experiencia demuestra ser lo mejor de la literatura chilena, y probablemente mi novela favorita.

Uno de los temas propuestos es el de la identidad. Se ven claramente dos clases sociales que se sitúan desde dos peldaños diferentes. Por un lado, Azcoitía con su fortuna y carrera política, y por el otro, Humberto Peñaloza, Mudito escritor, pobre, desgraciado. Ambos se vuelven uno solo desde el momento en que se vieron y Azcoitía roza con su mano a Mudito. Desde un momento de la trama, se conciben a ambos como un personaje que pelea por el amor de Inés, a la que le es indiferente esta situación. Peñaloza se transforma luego en un ser asexuado, en una vieja más de la Casa de la Chimba, un imbunche que va transformándose en un bulto deforme, en una "guagua cochina", guardián de las brujas.
Toda la historia se relata desde lo grotesco y lo oscuro. El paisaje de la obra donosiana se percibe como un lugar de monstruos y lamentos. Fácilmente podría ser visto como un círculo del infierno de Dante, ya que en "El Obsceno Pájaro", cada una de las viejas de la Chimba viven en un permanente estado de ocio, desgracia y lamento circular. Necesitan del imbunche que las lleve al cielo y que las libre de los monstruos.

[Yuri Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is difficult to say anything about this work that has not been said many times before. It is, unquestionably, a great work, a high point of 20th century literature.
It is not particularly difficult to read, but one must pay constant attention because of a certain complexity imposed by the use of multiple, first-person, not always reliable narrators.
This is a work concerned with the convolutions of power: interchangeable and scared masters and slaves waiting for a miracle they may not recognize perchance they were to bump into it in the dark.
For me it required a slow read, others may wish to tackle it differently – but I sincerely recommend it to anyone who regards literature as something beyond bedtime reading to put you to sleep.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

themes of identity, humanity, reality, and belonging cycle through and circle the obscene bird of night. it's not really pleasant to read, though there are moments where a smile is not out of order. most often it's really bizarre, and misleading, horrific even as it is compelling. before philip k. dick died he was trying to write a book called the owl in daylight. i suspect he would have written his own version of the obscene bird of night. i think he would have understood this book. i cannot say i do. i am certainly in awe of it, in all its monstrosity, its virtuosity, despite the fact that it left me depleted and brain sore, overwhelmed by images of the grotesque, yes, obscene scenes that came alive, that are still burning in my mind. i will likely read it again half a dozen times, if not more, in trying to comprehend it. most of the action takes place in a rest home for old servants, owned by an old and respected family, and later, in the summer house of that same family, where a grand experiment is made, both buildings edifices that are bigger inside than out, and labyrinthine in nature, much like the book itself.

the main narrative voice is often one "i" but not always, a male servant. the fluidity of this "i" means it shifts and tricks you, so that it is no longer he but yet someone else, and just when you think you are beginning to understand, the "i" slaps your hand, and shows you something else. there's not really a central figure in this novel for me, unless it is the imbunche, the mythological creature story that has at its heart a witch that steals children, and seals up their nine orifices. the shards of the narratives are dark, stark, and nasty, yet somehow donoso (who is the ultimate "i" though not the only writer in this book) is matter of fact, makes you want to keep looking into all the different mirrors that he holds up, makes you want to keep reading even though your mind is reeling. the effect of his facility with these characters softens the blow somewhat; he makes horror palatable, as nabokov did when he made me empathize with humbert humbert. to me, it makes perfect sense (and i wondered if it was a tip of the cap to lolita) that the most-of-time-narrator is most-of-the-time called humberto. when he is not mudito. or an old lady. or a child. or a lover. or a papier-mache head. and iris is also gina. and ines can do everybody's voices, she's a natural mimic, so you can imagine where that might go. there are no villains really, there are no saints, though these capering fools will try to invent some, as the story unfolds.

since pkd never wrote the owl in daylight, i'll say this book is like a south american nightmare mutation of the sound and the fury. i didn't immediately understand all the threads in that book either but that's what keeps me coming back to it, and it's why i will read the obscene bird of night again -- that slap is a challenge that still stings.

[Guillermo Valencia · Rating 5 out of 5]

El obsceno pájaro de la noche es una novela tan caótica como perfecta, tiene sus raíces en el realismo mágico latinoamericano; corriente característica de su momento y que sirvió a grandes autores del continente latinoamericano a alcanzar fama mundial. Esta novela implica todo un reto como lectura y comprensión debido a que de la mano del narrador nos introducimos en una atmósfera cargada de delirio y locura. Muchos capítulos tienen un aura de caos donde las voces de los personajes se van haciendo presente y exponen parte de la línea argumental formando una estructura narrativa donde se requiere de una máxima concentración.

"Cuando Jerónimo de Azcoitia abrió por fin las cortinas de la cuna para contemplar a su vástago tan esperado, quiso matarlo ahí mismo: ese repugnante cuerpo sarmentoso retorciéndose sobre su joroba, ese rostro abierto en un surco brutal donde labios, paladar y ojos desnudaban la obscenidad de sus huesos..." Pero no lo mató. Al contrario, creó todo un universo obsceno y extraño donde seres deformes de todos los lugares del país se reunieron en La casa de la Rinconada para criar al pequeño niño imbunche y crear un nuevo orden de deformidad. Esta es la línea argumental sumada a los acontecimientos fantásticos y surrealistas que suceden en la Casa de la Encarnación de la Chimba, un lugar habitado por una cantidad de "viejas" y huérfanas donde conoceremos al Mudito, nuestro narrador.

El obsceno pájaro de la noche es en gran parte producto del delirio de su autor que tras muchos años, tuvo que rozar la locura para poder dar sentido a esta historia donde caos, desorden y perfección se entrelazan mediante numerosas voces de un solo narrador que va mutando durante la novela en diferentes personajes, otorgándoles vida, voz y género. El autor a la vez nos muestra personajes de distintas clases sociales pero todos destinados a su destrucción. José Donoso se interesaba mucho por retratar este aspecto social y adherir a los personajes costumbres, léxico y religión de manera perfecta.

Es la locura del narrador lo que nos introduce en esa fiebre de voces, de cuerpos deformes, de muerte y de inseguridad. En esta novela el lector tiene frente a él una escritura densa y decadente que te absorbe llevándote por rincones oscuros y misteriosos, donde Humberto Peñaloza es el Mudito, es las viejas, es el padre del niño deforme, es el niño deforme y es todos a la vez. Podemos percibir claramente su perturbador delirio, su destrucción, sus miedos y deseos. El obsceno pájaro de la noche es tan caótico como maravilloso, una joya de la literatura latinoamericana que aunque no es de fácil entendimiento nos muestra la maestría de un autor plasmando todo un cosmos de un país en sus diferentes aspectos.

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

[Korcan Derinsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

Edepsiz Gece Kuşu, başından sonuna dek atmosferi, dili ve anlatımıyla gerçekten usta işi bir roman. İlk sayfalardan itibaren okuyacağımız metnin herhangi bir metin olmadığını hissediyorsunuz. Değişen anlatıcıyla beraber başlangıçta romanın dünyasına girmek çok kolay olmuyor ancak alışınca uyum sağlanıyor. Hemen her sayfaya sinen tuhaf ve karanlık bir hava ile yaratılan kaos, bir müddet sonra kendi içinde bir düzene kavuşuyor. Bu da metni bambaşka bir noktaya götürüyor. Sınıf çatışmasına, kimliğe, olan/görünen çelişkisine (bunlar ilk katmandan idrak edebildiklerim) dair çok şeyler söyleyen Edepsiz Gece Kuşu, alegorik metinlere mesafeli olsam da çok çok iyi yazılmış bir roman bence. Fakat… anlatılan her şeyi anladım mı, ondan emin değilim. Anlamak zorundaymışım gibi de hissetmiyorum ayrı konu ama böyle metinler bitince hep aynı his peydah oluyor. Hayranlık duysam da duygusal olarak bağ kuramadığım için bir boşluk hissi eşlik ediyor şu an mesela. David Lynch filmlerini izlerken yaşadığım duygunun aynısı bu: hayranlık, şaşkınlık ama asla tam anlamıyla dahil olamama hali. Bir adım dışarda durunca da bir şeyler eksik kalıyor zihnimde. Bu tabii çok kişisel bir yorum. Bu kadar biricik bir roman için söylenecek onca söz varken konu zaten bu da değil. Biraz sabır göstermeye hazır herkese tavsiye ederim. Yılın en “ilginç” okumalarından.