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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2023
Censorship
Valenzuela says of this, her second novel:
Para mí la obra más divertida y más extraña de mi zoológico, es El gato eficaz. Porque fue el momento de la ruptura con lo que podía llamarse cierta ‘literatura tradicional’. Es cuando encuentro mi propia voz que estaba buscando.
[For me the funniest and strangest book in my zoology is El gato eficaz, because it was the moment of the break with what might be called traditional literature. It's when I find my own voice, what I was looking for].
In a sense it might be seen as Valenzuela's version of Rimbaud's Le Bateau Ivre, because in this, by far her most revolutionary work, she metaphorically cuts herself off from her moorings and sets off on an uncharted journey. Certainly this novel is very different from Hay que sonreír, and the most striking difference between the two novels lies in their totally different approaches to language. Referring to this change Valenzuela (1984: 13) has said:
La primera novela la veía como quien ve una película: yo creo que la gente que empieza a escribir hace eso. Y después ya empecé a oír palabras, como Juana de Arco … Yo escribo con el idioma. Es decir el lenguaje es lo que me lleva a cambiar. Es el lenguaje el que me lleva al argumento: no el argumento el que se impone sobre el lenguaje. Creo que mi principal protagonista es el lenguaje siempre.
I saw my first novel like a film: I believe that people who are starting to write do that. And later I began to hear words, like Joan of Arc … I write with language I mean language is what makes me change. It is language that leads me to the storyline: not the storyline that imposes itself on the language. I think that language is always my principal protagonist.
It would seem that the principal motivation behind this change of perspective is, above all, the search for a language beyond censorship in all of its forms.
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