¿Qué es el pozo que describe el frustrado Linacero al final de sus ensoñaciones? Es un reflejo también de la botella del náufrago, es el justo momento en que se abren los ojos y comienza el sueño. El pozo es una noche artificial y desconocida, una que "me rodea, se cumple como un rito, gradualmente, y yo nada tengo que ver con ella". El pozo es el confesionario de la realidad y del día, una temblorosa hoja de papel "retinta" donde "abro la boca, hago chocar los dientes y muerdo suavemente la noche... fue ella la que me alzó entre sus aguas como el cuerpo lívido de un muerto y me arrastra, inexorable, entre fríos y bajas espumas noche abajo".
El pozo de Juan Carlos Onetti es donde, como un Pirandello uruguayo, Eladio Linacero se crea a sí mismo por las noches, en el momento en el que se sueña y sueña a todos los demás participantes de las historias... muy al borde de la realidad de su propia condición de personaje como al borde de la realidad del autor.
El pozo es el agujero donde descansan las frustraciones de cada uno de los personajes que ha creado Linacero en sueños. Al final, esa eterna búsqueda de la creación lo arrastra al mismo lugar en el que han quedado sus errores, el sueño ocupa el lugar de la realidad, el sueño se mimetiza con ella y el escritor, el poeta como dios-creador, se queda en el fondo oscuro de sus mitos.
Angélica Maciel.

I couldn’t help but continue my Onetti binge with this copy of two of his novellas, one of which, El Pozo, represents his initial explosion (a quiet, nearly unheard, yet important explosion) onto the Uruguayan and later Latin American literary scene. I’d been looking for a copy of this story for quite a while, so even though I thought maybe I should wait a little bit, since I just read one of his books a month or so ago, in the end I couldn’t help myself. I really enjoyed El Pozo. I was happy to get an idea of how Onetti’s literary world began, with Eladio Linacero sitting in a room writing his life story, alone, as the streets are full of people celebrating a holiday. It’s only about forty pages, and it reads almost like something that Remo Erdosain would have written in an odd moment of reflection sometime before his story as told by Roberto Arlt begins. Linacero agonizes over a world where “all of life is shit, and we are all blind men in the night, attentive and not understanding.” He has decided to write an autobiography on his fortieth birthday, which leads him to record his remembrance of a strange dream that takes place in a log cabin where an adolescent girl is exposed to him, a dream that encapsulates some strong feelings that he has twice tried to communicate to other people in his life, both times failing miserably in his quest to find understanding in others. As a result of his failed soul-barings, he feels very alone in a world that is dark and dirty and where no one really understands anyone else. Over forty pages he presents his frustrations and his pessimism with regard to the world, his roommate’s political fervor, and every human being that surrounds him. I liked this short, initial portrait of the type of man who slowly expands in Onetti’s work: from Linacero, who writes his life story, comes Brausen, who writes Díaz Gray’s story and creates Santa Maria, and from Brausen comes Larsen, who creates a whorehouse in Santa Maria and builds his own little world within a created world. Linacero’s story is the most straightforward, and it was very helpful to me in understanding how one thing led to another in the author’s work. It’s also a powerful voice of discontent and unhappiness with how little sense life might have had to an insignificant person in a rapidly expanding city of the Rio de la Plata region, surrounded by immigrants and growth and not really feeling a part of it.

I think that the inclusion of Para una tumba sin nombre in this edition along with El Pozo (I guess it doesn’t make a lot of sense to print a forty page book) was an excellent decision. It was written twenty years later and is firmly established in Santa María, so it doesn´t have any inherent connection to El Pozo. It´s a good story, though, about Doctor Díaz Gray and a story about a woman named Rita that was told to him by a young man in Santa María. Jorge Malabia, the storyteller, and Díaz Gray, the listener, both create the woman, Rita, who is buried in an unmarked grave at the beginning of the story. I liked the way that the central story, that of Jorge and his relationship with Rita, is bent and twisted through Díaz Gray´s influence, how he guides Jorge through the story and gets him to say the things that he might have otherwise kept hidden. It’s as if Jorge is creating the story as he tells it, fitting it to the needs and desires of his listener, even though it is supposed to be a true story. Then, at the end, Jorge and the other young man, Tito, turn the whole story of Rita on its head, although even in doing so they aren’t able to fully overcome Díaz Gray’s influence. It’s a hard story to summarize, but I thought it was really neat the way a simple enough story of a woman begging for money outside Constitución, in Buenos Aires, with a goat included in her ploy of tricking people into giving her “cab fare” to go to her relatives’ house in Villa Ortúzar. She´s discovered by a young man who recognizes her as a former servant of his family in Santa María, and he wants to meet her again and consummate his adolescent longings for her. One thing leads to another, and eventually she’s back in Santa María, although maybe not, and he’s burying her in disgrace. Over eighty pages, though, this short story is expanded and twisted in a lot strange ways, and I really enjoyed it.

There’s also a study of Onetti at the end of this edition that delves into some of the themes he introduces in El Pozo, and talks about his education as a writer. I enjoyed the highlighted, underlined copy of this book that I bought, because the previous owner was probably studying it as a part of some class, and gave me some added insights and connections to other works of Onetti in her barely-legible handwriting. Sometimes highlighting and stuff like that can be a drag, but I enjoy it when it adds an extra window to the reading experience, as was the case here. ( )