SOURCE: Magnarelli, Sharon. “How to Read José Donoso.” In Understanding José Donoso, pp. 3-13. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993.

In the following introductory chapter to her full-length study of Donoso, Magnarelli discusses several common themes in Donoso's work.

Critics disagree, often vehemently, about how to read the works of José Donoso. Many, particularly his early critics, have insisted on perceiving his works in a traditional, realistic, or naturalistic mode, specifically as social realism whose goal is to critique the Chilean bourgeois society. Donoso maintains, and it would be hard for the careful reader to disagree, that on some level his work always encompasses a fissure with realism or social reality and that the social message is only one aspect of his work. For Donoso, reality is little more than a word, and not a very reliable one at that. Unlike the static, tangible, objective entity implied by...