Javier Moreno on Cuentos Completos de Juan Carlos Onetti

By Javier Moreno — Published on December 7, 2009

Javier Moreno on Cuentos Completos de Juan Carlos Onetti

I have had the big and black Alfaguara edition of Cuentos Completos de Juan Carlos Onetti (“Complete Stories of Juan Carlos Onetti”) on my night table a few months already. I read one at random from time to time before I go to sleep. I believe that Juan Carlos Onetti should be read while lying in bed. Ideally, on Sunday afternoon. His stories are hard and cleverly written. Onetti is a master of controlling the flow of narrative information. Subtlety is his personal signature. Some of his stories are technical marvels in that respect. Everything happens when nothing seems to happen, as if he were performing a magic trick. While Borges was creating his universe full of obsessed scholars of the esoteric, tragic gauchos, and paradoxical intellectuals, the Uruguayan Onetti told us tales about the empty urban Latin American man: a little lost, a little confused, a little in love or heartbroken, a little tired of himself and his life of routines and long walks. His prose is sharp and beautiful. I still cannot believe his stories have not been translated into English. He is a huge classic.

Javier Moreno writes on movies and literature for various publications and is the author of the short story collection Lo definitivo y lo temporal, published by Fondo Editorial EAFIT.

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