The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Garden of Secrets, by Juan Goytisolo. Trans. Peter Bush; Landscapes of War: From Sarajavo to Chechnya, by Juan Goytisolo. Trans. Peter Bush.
reviewed by Thomas Hove

Serpent’s Tail, 2000. 147 pp. $24.00; City Lights, 2000. 225 pp. Paper: $16.95.

Following up his translations of Quarantine and The Marx Family Saga, Peter Bush has rendered into English two more works by the cosmopolitan Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo. The Garden of Secrets is a brief novel that continues the formal experimentation Goytisolo initiated in Marks of Identity. Like most of his fiction, it meditates on the Spanish Civil War and its repressive aftermath. It also explores the Christian-Jewish-Arab encounters his writings have focused on for decades, beginning with his most celebrated novel Count Julian. Emulating the creators of The Arabian Nights, The Decameron, Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, and Absalom, Absalom!, Goytisolo constantly calls attention to his fiction’s means of invention. Rather than presuming to represent reality, his experiments in narrative perspective reflect his distrust of realist pretensions. Accordingly, this novel consists of a collective story concocted by twenty-eight members of a professionally and culturally diverse reading group. In reconstructing the life of a poet named Eusebio who fled Franco’s Spain, their collaborative aim is to demolish "that disposable entity, the novelist" and "realise a creative mix of perspectives and possibilities." Eusebio bears biographical resemblance to Goytisolo himself, and his story develops the author’s frequent Joycean theme of exile as both liberation and alienation. In typical postmodern fashion, the facts of Eusebio’s life remain a mystery, and his poetic reputation may have been a complete sham. But the patchwork, eclectic fiction about him stands as another important addition to Goytisolo’s attempt to reinvigorate Spanish fiction by "poisoning" it with a transhistorical and international range of subject matter and with formal innovations that aim to open up new channels for thought.

While The Garden of Secrets will probably be of interest to those already familiar with Spanish and Arab literature and culture, Landscapes of War has a more direct appeal because of the depressingly persistent urgency of its subject matter. Written for Madrid’s El País from 1993 to 1996, Goytisolo’s journalism confidently covers a wide variety of topics: the psychological effects of warfare; the urban geography of bombed-out, sniper-riddled Sarajevo; the reassuring aims and unfortunate excesses of collective Islamic consciousness; the semiology of everyday life in occupied Palestinian territories; and the history of Russia’s occupation of Chechnya. The collection is nicely rounded off with a long informative essay that offers a recent history of Islamic relations with the West and calls for a more respectful inclusion of Muslim countries in global society. Goytisolo’s fiction parodies traditions, dwells on solipsistic estrangement, and with coy postmodern irony questions the attempt to represent reality. But his journalism bleeds sincerity, and it uncompromisingly insists that ideals like toleration, respect, and magnanimity be put into political practice. Take, for example, his thoughts on leaving war-torn Sarajevo: "One’s sense of morality is refined and improved. . . . Things that previously seemed important wane and lose substances; others slight in appearance suddenly acquire greatness and stand out as self-evident truths. Direct contact with the brutality and cowardice of the paladins of ethnic cleansing and the courage of the women and men who, defying sniper bullets and Serbian nationalist shelling, go out in search of water armed only with their faith and attachment to life, creates experiences and images that don’t fade from the mind." By so movingly expressing "the need for commitment, the urgency of solidarity," Goytisolo invests his outrage at overdue political solutions with a power that one hopes would become infectious.