Privileges of Misery | Max Pearl

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses the novel "The Obscene Bird of Night" by José Donoso, exploring its themes of power, class, and the "privileges of misery" experienced by servants.

📄 Section Summary

Privileges of Misery

• The narrator Mudito, a servant, suggests that servants can accumulate "privileges of misery" through demonstrations of pity, ridicule, handouts, and humiliations they endure.
• The article explores how stories about servants and masters often depict a war between classes, with privilege and misery as clear-cut categories.
• Donoso's novel challenges this notion by suggesting that sometimes "losing is the best way to win."

The Obscene Bird of Night

• The novel is considered a masterpiece of the Latin American Boom, known for its psychedelic horror and formal ambition.
• The story follows Mudito, a deaf-mute servant who moves between the decrepit convent and the estate of the aristocratic Azcoitía family.
• Mudito schemes to save the convent and the Azcoitía bloodline by impregnating a young girl, Iris, and passing off the child as the heir.

Blurring of Power Dynamics

• The novel blurs the lines between reality and fantasy, literal and metaphorical, subjective and objective.
• Characters like Inés and Peta Ponce demonstrate how domination and submission can become reversible states.
• The novel confounds both modernist and postmodern views of power, with characters serving as symmetrical metaphors for one another.

The Imbunche Metaphor

• The central metaphor of the "imbunche" - a kidnapped child transformed into a human talisman - is used to represent the characters and the convent itself, which have been "imbunchified."
• The novel's structure also mirrors the imbunche, collapsing in on itself to form a "clear and tangible image" by the end.
• The imbunche metaphor is connected to the broader themes of power and suppression, as seen in Ariel Dorfman's interpretation of it in relation to Pinochet's Chile.

💡 Key insights

• Donoso's novel challenges the traditional upstairs-downstairs genre by suggesting that "losing is the best way to win" and that power dynamics are more complex than clear-cut categories of privilege and misery.
• The novel blurs the lines between reality and fantasy, using characters as symmetrical metaphors for one another to confound both modernist and postmodern views of power.
• The central metaphor of the "imbunche" is used to represent the characters and the novel's structure, connecting to broader themes of power and suppression.