A Brief Life

Onetti's subject is the decay and materialism of the modern world, but he presents it in a dense, indirect prose style that creates a world often bordering on nightmare. The narrator of A Brief Life (1950) creates a number of other existences for himself to escape the boredom and limits, symbolized by his wife's mastectomy, of his own. Ultimately, the created worlds take over supposed reality. The Shipyard (1961), generally considered his best novel, demonstrates the central character's inability to control his life in an absurd existence. Onetti's characters never cease trying to create meaning, but they flounder helplessly in a world that is beyond their efforts at control.

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