Metonymy is oriented toward keeping things moving, while metaphor is oriented toward finality, just as the instinct of self-preservation is in obvious conflict with the idea of suicide. (p. 110)

It is precisely [the] idea of metaphor versus metonymy, of continuance versus closure, that is enacted in José Donoso's El obsceno pájoro de la noche (1974). The narrative is concernd in this case with itself, with keeping itself moving, keeping alive despite its own tendency to end. Donoso's text, for our purposes, combines elements from Sarduy, Onetti, and Lezama: the idea that the characters are nothing more than permutations of the poles of narrative, metaphor and metonymy, the idea that these poles are in opposition, and the idea that the only possible subject of the narrative is the narrative itself, that the text is a self-consuming, self-generating verbal object.

Such a text is, of course, monstrous…. Monstrosity is an...