Juan Carlos Onetti

Juan Carlos Onetti Borges (Montevideo, July 1, 1909-Madrid, May 30, 1994) was a Uruguayan writer, considered one of the most important narrators of his country and of literature. Hispanic American. A forerunner of the modern novel and existentialist literature, he won the prestigious Miguel de Cervantes Prize in 1980 and the Uruguayan National Literature Grand Prize in 1985.

Uruguayan writer Cristina Peri Rossi considers Onetti to be "one of the few existentialists in the Spanish language". Mario Vargas Llosa, who published an essay on Onetti, called him "one of the great modern writers, and not only of Latin America".

Biography

Early Years

Juan Carlos Onetti Borges was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, on July 1, 1909 at 6:00 a.m., the son of Carlos Onetti (a customs official) and Honoria Borges (descendant of an aristocratic Brazilian family from Río Grande do Sul). He had two brothers: one older than him, Raúl, and a younger sister, Raquel. Onetti recalled his childhood as a happy time, describing his parents as a very close and loving couple with his children. His original family name was O'Nety, of Irish origin or Scottish. The writer himself commented about this some time later: «The first one who came here, that is, my great-great-grandfather, that man was English born in Gibraltar. It was my grandfather who Italianized the name."

In 1930, when he was barely twenty-one years old, Onetti married his cousin, María Amalia Onetti. In March of that same year the couple traveled to the city of Buenos Aires, where they moved. On June 16, 1931, his first child was born: Jorge Onetti Onetti. In 1933 Onetti's first published story appeared: "Avenida de Mayo-Diagonal-Avenida de Mayo", in La Prensa, after winning a contest organized by the newspaper. wife and a year later, back in Montevideo, he married again, this time with María Julia Onetti, María Amalia's sister. Around this time he wrote the novel Time to Embrace , which he published decades later, in 1974.

Onetti Memorial Plate in Montevideo.

Onetti continued to practice different trades and write stories and articles which were published in various media in Buenos Aires and Montevideo until 1939, the year in which he published his first novel, El pozo (considered the first opening the creation novel or new novel in Latin America), and was appointed editorial secretary of the weekly Marcha, for which he wrote columns under the pseudonyms "Grucho Marx" and "Periquito el Aguador". At that time he separated from his second wife. Also, around that time he developed an interest in the plastic arts. He held the position of editorial secretary until 1941, when he left the weekly due to differences with Carlos Quijano and began working at the Reuters news agency. That year, Onetti won second place, with his novel No Man's Land , which he published in 1941, in a contest organized by the Losada publishing house. The jury was made up of Guillermo de Torre, Norah Lange and Jorge Luis Borges. He was awarded first place to Bernardo Verbitsky's novel It's difficult to start living, Shortly after, Onetti was sent as a correspondent to Buenos Aires, where he stayed until 1955.

Literary career

Department in which Onetti lived in Montevideo between 1955 and 1973.

Onetti worked as editorial secretary of the magazines Vea y Lea and Ímpetu. In 1943 he published For Tonight, his third novel. In 1945 he married a co-worker at Reuters: the Dutch Elizabeth Maria Pekelharing. On July 26, 1949, his first daughter was born: Isabel "Litti" María Onetti.

In 1950 he published La vida breve, a central novel in his work. Despite the fact that the novel was not very successful in its first editions, it did not take long for it to be recognized as one of the most innovative novels of its time, and it is still considered one of the most important works in the Spanish language today. In 1954 he published the short novel Los adioses. At the end of 1955 he returned to Montevideo and began working in the newspaper Acción, and married for the fourth time, this time with the young Argentine of German descent Dorothea "Dolly" Muhr, whom he had met in 1945 and who became his last partner. In 1959, Onetti published the short novel For a Nameless Tomb , and in 1961 The Shipyard , another of his most celebrated novels. In 1964 he published Juntacadáveres , a novel which was a finalist for the Rómulo Gallegos Award in 1967, but lost to La casa verde by Mario Vargas Llosa.

In 1967, Onetti recorded an album for the Latin American series Voz Viva, which contains the reading of fragments of the author's work in his own voice. In that same year The first edition of his Complete Stories appeared in Buenos Aires by the Latin American Publishing Center, and in 1970 a first edition of his Complete Works was published in Mexico. In 1973 he published the novella Death and the Girl. In 1974 he published a second edition of his Complete Stories and the short novel Tiempo de abrazar, together with all his short stories written and published between 1933 and 1950, as well as being a jury member of the Annual Narrative Prize organized by Marcha, which was awarded to Nelson Marra for his short story “El guardaespaldas”. Because both the story and its author were censored by the Uruguayan dictator Juan María Bordaberry, Onetti was arrested and locked up in a psychiatric hospital, from where he managed to get out after three months thanks to the intervention of the then director of Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, the Spanish poet Félix Grande, who collected signatures to obtain the release of the Uruguayan writer and that of the Spanish diplomat Juan Ignacio Tena Ybarra (then director of the Institute of Hispanic Culture). After another brief stay in Buenos Aires, he was once again invited to Madrid by the International Institute of Ibero-American Literature to participate in a conference on the baroque. Onetti then decided to settle permanently in the Spanish capital, where he lived for almost twenty years.

Onetti's years in Spain were characterized by less literary production but many prizes and participation in conferences. In 1979 he published Let the wind speak, a novel that concluded the "Santa María saga" (trilogy made up of La vida breve, El astillero and Juntacadaveres), and which is dedicated to his friend Juan Ignacio Tena Ybarra, in gratitude for the steps he took to allow his release. In addition to this novel, he continued to write articles, often dealing with the problem of Latin American exiles. In 1981 he was announced as the winner of the 1980 Cervantes Prize, thus receiving the most important award of his career, the same year that he was proposed by the Spanish Pen Club as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he did not received. When democracy returned to Uruguay in 1985, the president-elect, Julio María Sanguinetti, invited him to the installation ceremony of the new government. Onetti appreciated the invitation but decided to decline the offer and remain in Madrid.

Last years and death

Onetti Memorial Plate at Avenida de América (Madrid).

In 1987, Onetti published When Then, his first novel in eight years. At that time, he led an increasingly hermitic life: he spent his last twelve years locked up in his apartment on Avenida de América, where he received visits from readers and journalists. He hardly left his bed, where he spent his time reading, smoking and drinking whiskey.In 1993 he published his last book, the novel When It Doesn't Matter Anymore.

Onetti died on May 30, 1994 at the age of 84, in a Madrid clinic due to liver problems. Following his last will, his remains were cremated in the La Almudena Cemetery (Madrid).After his death, in Uruguay, the Municipality of Montevideo renamed the Municipal Literary Contest the Juan Carlos Onetti Literary Contest.

Influences

Onetti's literary work was influenced by two distinct roots. The first of these was the admiration for the work of William Faulkner. Like him, Onetti created an autonomous fictional world, whose center is the non-existent city of "Santa Maria." The second of those roots was his admiration for existentialism and the French literature of Louis Ferdinand Céline, Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, among others.

Legacy

The critic Emir Rodríguez Monegal was the first to analyze Onetti's work and draw attention to it. The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa said, in an interview with the AFP agency, that Onetti "is one of the great writers modern, and not only from Latin America: [...] He has not obtained the recognition he deserves as one of the most original and personal authors, who introduced modernity in the world of narrative literature above all. [...] his world is a rather pessimistic world, loaded with negativity; that means that he does not reach a very vast audience ».

Works

Novels

• 1939: The well
• 1941: Land of no one
• 1943: For tonight
• 1950: Short life
• 1954: The goodbyes
• 1959: For a nameless grave
• 1960: The face of misfortune
• 1961: The shipyard
• 1964: Boardcadáveres
• 1973: Death and the girl
• 1979: Let's talk to the wind
• 1987: When then
• 1993: When it doesn't matter

Short stories and novellas

• 1951: A dream made and other stories
• 1962: Hell so feared and other stories
• 1964: Jacob and the other
• 1967: Full stories
• 1968: The stolen girlfriend and other stories
• 1974: Time to embrace and the stories from 1933 to 1950
• 1974: Full stories
• 1976: As sad as she and other stories
• 1986: Stories of secrets
• 1986: Presence and other stories
• 1994: Full stories
• 2004: Full stories
• 2009: Tales, articles and miscellaneous
• 2012: Brief novels

Articles

• 1975: Requiem by Faulkner and other articles
• 1994: Periquito the avocado and other texts
• 1995: Confessions of a reader
• 2009: Tales, articles and miscellaneous

Correspondence

• 2009: Letters from a young writer. Correspondence with Julio E. Payró

About Onetti and his work

Filmography

Fiction

• 1977: Per questa notte. Adaptation of the novel For tonightby Italian director Carlo Di Carlo.
• 1980: Hell so feared. Adaptation of the same story by the Argentine director Raúl de la Torre. He won the Silver Condor to the best film in 1981.
• 1989: Luck is cast. Adaptation of the novel The face of misfortuneby Argentine director Pedro Stocki.
• 1994: The airship. Directed by Pablo Dotta; film about a French journalist who arrives in Uruguay to search for information about Onetti.
• 2000: The shipyard. Adaptation of the homonymous novel by Argentine director David Lipszyc.
• 2008: Nuit de chien. Adaptation of the novel For tonight by German director Werner Schroeter.
• 2009: Bad day to fish. Adaptation of the story "Jacob and the other" by the Uruguayan director Alvaro Brechner.

Documentaries

• 1973: Juan Carlos Onetti, a writer. Interview with Onetti at his home in Montevideo, led by Julio Jaimes.
• 1990: Onetti, portrait of a writer. Documentary about Onetti, directed by Juan José Mugni.
• 2001: Cortázar: Notes for a documentary. Directed by Eduardo Montes-Bradley; film about Julio Cortázar which has the testimonial participation of Onetti.
• 2009: I never read Onetti. Documentary about Onetti by the Uruguayan director Pablo Dotta.

Bibliography

• 1977: Onetti, the process of building the story (from Josefina Ludmer)
• 1991: The current Hispanic American novel (from Darío Villanueva)
• 1993: Construction of the night: The life of Juan Carlos Onetti (from Carlos María Domínguez and María Esther Gilio)
• 2003: Onetti/The imagined foundation. The author's parody in the Santa Maria saga (from Roberto Ferro)
• 2007: The creation of an imaginary: the Literary Generation of 45 (from Elvira Blanco Blanco)
• 2008: The trip to fiction. The World of Juan Carlos Onetti (of Mario Vargas Llosa)
• 2015: Stories from memory (July Maria Sanguinetti)
• 2015: The voices of the story (from Alberto Paredes)
• 2017: Insinuated defamated relieved cross. Written by Juan Carlos Onetti (from Elvira Blanco Blanco)

Translations

• 1968: The Shipyard (English translation by Nick Caistor The shipyard)

Awards and distinctions

• 1962: Uruguay National Literature Award
• 1974: Award for the best foreign book Italian American Institute of Culture by the Shipyard. Italy
• 1979: Critics Award
• 1980: Miguel de Cervantes Award
• 1985: Uruguay National Literature Award
• 1990: Latin Literature Union Award
• 1991: Grand Prix Rodó a la labor intellectual por parte de la Intendencia Municipal de Montevideo

Predecessor: «ex aequo» Jorge Luis Borges and Gerardo Diego

Miguel de Cervantes Award 1980

Successor: Eighth Peace

Bibliography

• White White, Elvira (2017). Reread, defamed, insinuated, transvestite. Written by Juan Carlos Onetti. Rumbo Editorial.