SOURCE: Chappell, Fred. “The Longing to Belong.” Field: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics 35 (fall 1986): 23-29.

In the following essay, Chappell illuminates the figure of the alienated child in Jarrell's verse.

It is the dread question the interviewer never fails to ask: “Why did you become a writer?” The author sweats and stammers. He doesn't know why he became a writer. If he knew that he would know perhaps more than is good for him, certainly more than is good for his work.

But the novelist Jose Luis Donoso has a telling answer. Why is he a writer? “Because,” he says, “I wasn't invited to the party.”

His explanation is incomplete, of course, but it is neat, lacks self-aggrandizement, and encapsulates much of the theme of Tonio Kröger. And it points up the fact that the sense of detachment, even of alienation, which is indispensable for a writer is...