{"id":1720,"date":"2009-05-17T00:01:18","date_gmt":"2009-05-17T04:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=1720"},"modified":"2018-02-12T12:56:12","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T16:56:12","slug":"guillermo-rosaless-the-halfway-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2009\/05\/17\/guillermo-rosaless-the-halfway-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Guillermo Rosales: The Halfway House<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Halfway House<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
\nby Guillermo Rosales (Casa de los n\u00e1ufragos<\/em>, 1987)<\/span>
\ntranslated from the Spanish by Anna Kushner (2009)<\/span>
\nNew Direction (2009)<\/span>
\n144 pp<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"the-halfway-house\"<\/a>[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″]F[\/fusion_dropcap]or me, one of the most exciting publishing houses is New Directions<\/a>. Consistently they release important world literature that is innovative\u00a0in its form and substance and\u00a0in how those two comingle.\u00a0While I don’t suggest they aren’t business-minded, their output suggests their main goal is not necessarily to top the New York Times bestseller list but rather is to\u00a0provide us with literature of true quality.\u00a0They are succeeding.<\/p>\n

This Thursday, May 21, if you’re in the New York City area, they are hosting a Cuban themed party<\/a>, celebrating their publication of Guillermo Rosales’s incredible — incredible<\/em> — The Halfway House<\/em>.\u00a0A semi-autobiographical allegory, this is the best book I’ve read so far this year, and one of the best books I’ve read period. It is stunning in its execution and its content — indisputably the work of a literary master.\u00a0Unfortunately, this gem is one of\u00a0only two books\u00a0we have from Rosales (he left only this\u00a0one and El Juego de la Viola<\/em>, which is also forthcoming from New Directions).\u00a0He destroyed the rest\u00a0of his work before, in 1993 at\u00a0age forty-seven,\u00a0committing suicide.<\/p>\n

The highly literate Rosales spent time in several halfway houses.\u00a0He considered himself a double exile: once from his country and again\u00a0from his fellow Cubans in America:<\/p>\n

The house said “boarding home” on the outside, but I knew that it would be my tomb.\u00a0It was one of those marginal refuges where the desperate and hopeless go — crazy ones for the most part, with a smattering of old people abandoned by their families to die of loneliness so they won’t screw up life for the winners.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rosales’s narrator, the dispassionate William Figueres, is also highly literate, having “read all of Proust when I was fifteen years old, Joyce, Miller,\u00a0Sartre, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Albee, Ionesco, Beckett . . . .” He spent twenty years in the Cuban Revolution, and has now left to go to America. His Cuban relatives in America looked forward to his arrival.<\/p>\n

They thought a future winner was coming, a future businessman, a future playboy, a future family man who would have a future house full of kids, and who would go to the beach on weekends and drive fine cars and wear brand-name clothing like Jean Marc<\/em> and Pierre Cardin<\/em>.\u00a0The person who turned up at the airport the day of my arrival was instead a crazy, nearly toothless, skinny, frightened guy who had to be admitted to a psychiatric ward that very day because he eyed everyone in the family with suspicion and, instead of hugging and kissing them, insulted them.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Though we know\u00a0Figueres is not completely stable, we also know he is not completely insane. He’s been gutted by the Cuban Revolution and the ensuing oppression, ending up in the United States and this halfway house not so much because he’s\u00a0crazy but because he’s completely lost in existence. Indeed, the most recent Spanish edition of this book was titled\u00a0La Casa de los N\u00e1ufragos <\/em>(“The House of the Shipwrecked”).\u00a0When\u00a0Figueres enters the halfway house, unlike most of the other residents he sees what it is: filthy, abusive, cast-off, pure federally-funded depravity. The other residents apparently don’t notice, and this sets Figueres apart.\u00a0He\u00a0just doesn’t seem to care that much. His apathy extends to his dispassionate description of the other residents and the way the owner and manager abuse them all.<\/p>\n

Which brings up a point that must be made.\u00a0This is an exceedingly cruel book.\u00a0If it weren’t for the issues it’s rotating around, the incredible statements it makes about the Cuban Revolution and the subsequent totalitarian machine,\u00a0The\u00a0Halfway House<\/em>‘s\u00a0cruelty would be unbearable. It’s not\u00a0that it’s\u00a0exceedingly violent, but the disinterested narration (so perfect here) brings the reality much closer to the surface.\u00a0Figueres\u00a0has been the victim of much hatred and violence. We pity\u00a0him and perhaps even\u00a0respect his apparent meekness.\u00a0Where the book turns on its head is where Figueres becomes complicit in the cruelty. There’s no great transition. Figueres is meek and cruel, understanding and apathetic.\u00a0Rosales perfectly imbues these attributes into an ambiguous yet credible narrator, making in Figueres an excellent portrayal of a great tragedy as well as a version of Rosales himself. In his excellent introduction to the book Jos\u00e9 Manuel Prieto says, “Rosales, like no other Cuban author before him, knew how to leave behind the narrow road of victimhood for the larger, more arduous one of full responsibility. He looked deep into the tragedy and found himself to be a part of it.”<\/p>\n

The book becomes more disturbing and hopeful when a new resident moves in who, like Figueres, is not insane but lost. Frances is also an exile from the Revolution and her own family, and Figueres is drawn to her at once, being both tender and cruel.\u00a0In one portion of the book, she and Figueres walk around Little Havana:<\/p>\n

She looks at me with tired eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I think I’m dead inside,” she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Me too.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The book is not just worth reading because of its content, though. The style is simple, as shown in the passages above, yet all the more poignant because of that. Also, the structural integrity was astonishing to me.\u00a0 I just didn’t expect it.\u00a0Full of leitmotifs that never become overdone, the style has a subtle rhythm that can make your heart pound even in its quiet moments. And the penetrating look at the Revolution and its effects are more fully realized when Rosales has Figueres describe seven dreams throughout the story.\u00a0In these dreams, Fidel Castro himself becomes a character (he already was, though). In one, Castro is brought into a room in a coffin. The coffin opens up and Fidel rises and gets out, asking for a cup of coffee. “Well, we’re already dead.\u00a0Now you’ll see that doesn’t solve anything, either.”<\/p>\n

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