Taratuta and Still Life with Pipe: Two Novellas

by José Donoso, Gregory Rabassa (Translator)

These striking novellas are the witty crystallizations of José Donoso's concerns over a lifetime of writing. In them he poses many of the questions raised by his fellow Latin American writers, Fuentes, García Marquez, and Vargas Llosa: What is truth? How does one use history in fiction? How does an artist create? Taratuta is a mystery story in which a writer tries to track a slippery Russian revolutionary in history and in life. Still Life with Pipe shows the comeuppance of an ambitious man when he meets true art and can't escape its grasp. Donoso is the author of the classic novel The Obscene Bird of Night .

Genres: Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

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

[Gabriel Soll · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first exposure to Jose Donoso, and it will not be my last. I learned of Donoso through reading the Letters of Kurt Vonnegut. As it turns out, the two met while teaching at the Iowa Writer's Workshop and became life-long friends thereafter. As a devotee of Vonnegut, I felt duty-bound to inquire. When I learned of Donoso being Chilean and the influence he had on "The Boom," I felt like an inadequate former Latin American Studies major (who has many cousins in Santiago!). Needless to say, I had to get on this and this set of two novellas was available at a local library!

The writing is excellent in both and I am incredibly happy to have made my introduction to Donoso. Selfishly, I hope that the epublishers put his translated works into eformat...but...we'll get there and luckily I still remember how to operate one of those paper dealies. I know that Vonnegut loved to discuss the shape of a story, usually employing a bent/crooked line or arch to do the trick (as was also done by Lawrence Sterne a few hundred years before)...and that is what I kept returning to while reading Taratuta. Other commentators have done a great job capturing the theme, but the story's arch is really was got me. At first reading, you think the line is doing one way. But then a twist comes along and you realize that the original line had merely been a tangent. Without being obnoxious, this happens a couple more times until you realize the true path the story was taking and the dips you took along the way. The structure itself plays into the theme of historical knowledge and the value of identity very well.

SLwP was more straight-forward and less subtle in its commentary (perhaps by choice). I enjoyed it immensely, but there was nothing to "figure out," as in Taratuta. The plot is a little thicker and easier in that it is more linear. I enjoyed it as well, just not as much.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up on a lark from the st louis library book fair (it was a dollar) and I am SO GLAD I did. These two short stories provide an incredible exploration of our quest for meaning and identity in history and art, and how our analysis of art and history both impacts and is impacted by our social surroundings. Incredibly funny and full of a sort of murky half-light, Donoso's characters are not creators of art or history, but commentators, boosters, investigators. As such, they can provide clear and cutting insight into our relationship with history, art, and ourselves as consumers/interpreters of same. I will track down some of his longer fiction at the library.

[Leopoldo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me doy cuenta de que, conforme pasa el tiempo, menos me siento obligado a terminar los libros que no me gustan. Por ejemplo, el caso de "Taratuta", de José Donoso. Me animé a leer esta edición porque inmediatamente antes que esté, leí las "Tres novelas cosmopolitas" antologadas por el Fondo de Cultura Económica. Quedé completamente fascinado por ésta, y la inercia me empujó a leer este libro que tenía arrumbado en mi librero desde hace rato. Pero temo decir que "Taratuta" es muy distinta a las anteriormente leídas, es decir, "Átomo verde número cinco", "El tiempo perdido" y "Naturaleza muerta con cachimba". Estas tres últimas son más bien relatos largos, noveletas de ritmo magistral y que siguen una sola trama hasta sus últimas consecuencias. Pero "Taratuta" tiene más de relato metaficcional, que trata varias tramas y dialoga con los sucesos históricos que unen a varios continentes. A pesar de que lo que cuenta puede parecer interesante, da la sensación de morder más de lo que puede tragar.

A diferencia de lo que veo con varios reseñistas, "Naturaleza muerta con cachimba" me gustó muchísimo más.

Me queda claro que Donoso es un escritor extraordinario, pero me quedo con sus otras obras.

[Stephen Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

TARATUTA deserves five stars. It's a witty, suspenseful, metafictional mystery with occasional precise, memorable insights into history, storytelling, and identity. STILL LIFE WITH PIPE is a fitting companion piece, but aside from an unexpectedly beautiful ending, it's much less interesting, with flat characters, awkward pacing, a predictable plot, and satirical themes involving art, pretension, and class that aren't particularly fresh. Altogether, though, this brief book is a worthy read.

[Jim Manis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book in a discount bin nearly 30 years ago and have been carrying it around ever since, always intending to read it. I got it towards the end of my fascination with Latin American writers, not that I no longer read them, but I just don't find them as compelling as I did back then. The two novellas remind me of Carlos Fuentes with whom his work has been paired at times.

[Eugenio Negro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Donoso remains The Man.

[José Díaz-Bahamonde · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me parece que lo novelesco en la vida real rara vez resulta novelable: para crear un mundo estético el autor suele partir de datos más bien modestos, el rasgo familiar de una persona conocida, la ventana semi-entornada de un dormitorio revuelto, una palabra con resonancias infantiles, la expresión que delató la falsedad de un padre, de un sacerdote, de una mujer, y es el ojo del artista el que elige, compone y descompone para construir la otra verdad, la del engaño.
(...)
su fealdad es de los escasos datos de ella que sobreviven después de casi un siglo, así es que esta característica debió ser verdaderamente notable
(...)
La fama, citaba el cuidador, no era más que el homenaje que le rinde la mediocridad a lo que no entiende, por eso el olvido era el mayor de los halagos.

PROS
«Taratuta» y «Naturaleza muerta con cachimba» son dos novelas cortas cuyas tramas son una excusa para que el autor reflexione sobre la memoria, la identidad y la creación literaria.
En el caso de «Taratuta», la pregunta es sobre el sentido de un personaje que habría estado relacionado con Lenin pero de quien no ha quedado registro. ¿Qué tan fiable es la recreación realizada por el escritor o historiador, con su selección de fuentes e invenciones, y qué esperar del impacto de tal recreación en un supuesto descendiente?
En tanto, en «Naturaleza muerta con cachimba», se cuestiona el papel del artista y la relación con su arte, así como el rol de los críticos de arte y agencias burocráticas. ¿Qué tan fiable es el narrador de esta historia, un sujeto egoísta y antipático, qu parece buscar reconocimiento personal?

CONTRAS
La prosa es elegante pero en algunas secciones es descuidada.

FINAL
Muy entretenidas novelas.

[Hugo Mallen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read this book before and I am currently in the middle of Still Life with Pipe. This last section gets a lot of hate so I am going to defend it. I like it a little more than Taratuta. I find it more engaging overall and while the SLwP can be a little hard to read at first because the narrator/protagonist is a bit of a jerk, I think that is because the story is running commentary on the grotesque nature of ownership versus a meaningful life, i.e a life as performance art. The author puts it thus: "It's life that has to be a work of art, he used to say: art [the object] is shit." (my parenthesis).

[Melissa Massello · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting novellas, definitely in the traditional style of Latin American fiction. Neither one was brilliant, but they were interesting all the same. Taratuta was more interesting from a narrative perspective than Still Life With Pipe.