El pozo

El pozo / The Pit

Novel , 1939

Debolsillo

Eladio Linacero, 'a lonely man having a smoke in some old corner of the city', dwells upon fragments from his past on his fortieth birthday. From afar he sees the rising tides o Stalinism and Fascism in Europe, but is uninspired by the left-wing activities of his room-mate  and the mythical endeavours of thirty-three heroic gauchos fighting for Uruguayan national independence. His relationships with women –dominated by memories of his rape of a girl in his youth– are a futile quest for lost innocence. Married love perished when an interest in crockery and refrigetors took over. A chance encounter with the poet Cordés kindles a spark of friendship which soon dies when he responds coldly to Eladio's writing.'Why don't things happen tot he man who waits and reaches out with all his heart from some forsaken street corner?

"The birth of the Latin American novels dates from the appearance of The Pit, the first novel by the Uruguayan novelist Juan Carlos Onetti" Mario Vargas Llosa,  Times Literary Suplement