Boucquey Thierry (General Editor). Encyclopedia Of World Writers. 3 volumes
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Other Works by Arthur Nortje
The Collected Poems of Arthur Nortje. Edited by Dirk
Klopper. Pretoria: University of South Africa
Press, 2000.
Deep Roots. London: Heinemann, 1973.
Works about Arthur Nortje
Berthoud, Jacques. “Poetry and Exile: The Case of
Arthur Nortje.” English in Africa, 11:1 (1984).
Bunn, David. “‘Some Alien Native Land’: Arthur
Nortje, Literary History, and the Body in Exile.”
World Literature Today, 70 (Winter 1996).
Dameron, Charles. “Arthur Nortje, Craftsman for his
Muse.” In Christopher Heywood, ed., Aspects of
South African Literature. London: Heinemann,
1976.
Leitch, Raymond.“Nortje: Poet At Work.” African Lit-
erature Today, 10 (1979).
Nwapa, Flora (1931–1993) novelist
Flora Nwapa was born in Oguta, East Central
State, Nigeria. Her parents were both teachers,
and Nwapa grew up in a popular and wealthy
family. She graduated from the University of
Ibadan in 1957 and received her postgraduate
diploma in education from the University of Ed-
inburgh the following year. Nwapa returned to
Nigeria and worked as an education officer in
Calabar for a short time before assuming the po-
sition of geography and English teacher at
Queen’s School in Enugu from 1959 to 1962.
She remained in Lagos until the Nigerian civil
war—the attempt by the Igbo people of Nigeria’s
eastern area to establish a separate country called
Biafra—broke out in 1967. Like many members
of the Igbo elite, Nwapa and her family were
forced to return to the eastern region. Three years
after the war ended, she became the minister of
Health and Social Welfare of the east central state
from 1970 to 1971 and then the minister of
Lands, Survey and Urban Development from
1971 to 1974.
Nwapa was the first African woman writer to
publish her works in English. She is also the first
African woman to use the Igbo as the basis of her
stories. She established Tana Press in 1976, which
became the first indigenous publishing house to
be owned by a black African woman in West
Africa. The company published mainly adult fic-
tion, but Nwapa soon set up another publishing
house, Flora Nwapa and Co., that specialized in
children’s fiction. Nwapa took her role as an edu-
cator seriously: She continued to teach at colleges
and universities throughout her life and pub-
lished works dealing with moral and ethical is-
sues. She taught at various institutions in the
United States, including New York University,
Trinity College, and University of Michigan.
Nwapa died at age 62 in Enugu, Nigeria. At the
time of her death, she had just completed her
final manuscript of The Lake Goddess (1995)
about the goddess Mammy Water, who was a
source of inspiration for Nwapa’s fiction.
Nwapa is best known for her recreation of Igbo
life and traditions from a woman’s point of view.
In many ways, she could be considered one of
Nigeria’s and Africa’s first feminist writers. She
conveyed the positive optimism of her female pro-
tagonists and their strength and freedom to choose
their own paths. For instance, in Idu (1970), Idu’s
quest for personal fulfillment leads her to take her
own life in defiance of her community’s belief that
motherhood is the sole purpose of a woman’s exis-
tence. Idu, however, prizes her qualitative life with
her husband above all else, including her child’s
welfare. Her suicide is a commentary on a
woman’s love.
Critical Analysis
Nwapa’s debut novel, Efuru (1960), retells an Ibo
folktale about Efuru, a woman whose life mirrors
that of the lake goddess she worships. Efuru has
beauty and wealth but few children like the god-
dess. Efuru, however, has to struggle to find her
place in the society in which she lives. The novel is
indicative of Nwapa’s portrayal of strong female
characters who are adventurous, independent, ma-
terially comfortable, and also have the freedom to
make their own decisions. These portrayals of
328 Nwapa, Flora
women in Ibo society, however, go against conven-
tional views as presented in traditional Ibo texts,
which tend to show Ibo women as weak, promis-
cuous, and fickle minded. Nwapa challenged these
traditional views and set the foundation for later
women writers to challenge and question the de-
piction of Ibo women in literature.
Nwapa also wrote short stories, poetry, and
children’s books. Her stories were not restricted to
themes that dealt only with women’s rights or a
woman’s place in society; she also drew on experi-
ences from the Nigerian civil war, folktales, and
other political conflicts that occurred during her
lifetime. In Never Again (1975), which is set in the
Nigerian civil war, her main character starts off as
a fervent supporter of the Biafran cause but ends
up trying to piece her life together and questioning
her actions. In her children’s stories, Nwapa drew
on her rich reservoir of legends and folktales to
emphasize the morals of the stories. Her major
contribution to world literature rests in her char-
acterization of the heroine as independent and
strong and in her descriptions of the continual
subjugation of women in Africa.
Other Works by Flora Nwapa
Efuru. London: Heinemann, 1966.
Never Again. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1992.
One Is Enough. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press,
1992.
This Is Lagos and Other Stories. Trenton, N.J.: Africa
World Press, 1992.
Wives at War and Other Stories. Trenton, N.J.: Africa
World Press, 1992.
Women Are Different. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World
Press, 1992.
Works about Flora Nwapa
Brown, Lloyd W. Women Writers in Black Africa.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981.
Emenyonu, Ernest. “Portrait of Flora Nwapa as a
Dramatist.” In Marie Umeh, ed., Emerging Per-
spectives on Flora Nwapa. Trenton, N.J.: Africa
World Press, 1998.
Nwapa, Flora 329
330
¯
Oba Minako
(Shiina Minako) (1930– )
novelist, short-story writer, essayist, poet,
playwright
¯
Oba Minako was born in Tokyo to Shiina Sabur¯o
and Mutsuko. From a very young age,
¯
Oba nur-
tured an interest in reading. Her love of books was
so intense that, even as she fled World War II air
raids, she always grabbed a book to pass the time.
¯
Oba witnessed the mushroom cloud of the atomic
bomb dropped on Hiroshima and tended radia-
tion sickness victims as they escaped the city. After
the war, she studied American literature at Tsuda
Women’s College, where she met
¯
Oba Toshio,
whom she later married. The turning point in
¯
Oba’s life came when her husband was stationed in
Alaska for 11 years. Removed from the restrictions
placed on women in Japan,
¯
Oba had the freedom
to travel and to pursue a graduate-level education,
although she never earned a degree.
¯
Oba completed her first short story, “A Picture
with No Composition,” in 1963 while she was at-
tending a graduate art program at the University of
Wisconsin. Four years later, she wrote “The Rain-
bow and the Floating Bridge” while attending a
graduate art program at the University of Wash-
ington in Seattle and then “The Three Crabs” once
she returned home to Alaska. In 1969,
¯
Oba wrote
“Fireweed,” notable for its Alaskan setting and her
depiction of an untraditionally ferocious nature.
Her major works include The Junk Museum
(1975), Urashima Grass (1977), Without a Shape
(1982), and Birds Singing (1985), none of which
have yet been translated into English.
Like the novelists ¯
OE Kenzabur¯o and Gabriel
GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
,
¯
Oba is noted for reusing charac-
ters and events from earlier stories. She frequently
portrays strong female protagonists who challenge
social mores, particularly with regard to women’s
roles. She has won numerous awards for her fic-
tion, including the Gunz¯o New Writer’s Prize, the
Akutagawa Prize, and the Tanizaki Jun’ichir¯o
Prize.
Other Works by O
¯
ba Minako
“The Pale Fox.” In Roberta Rubinstein and Charles
R. Larson, eds., Worlds of Fiction. New York:
Macmillan, 1993.
“The Smile of a Mountain Witch.” In Stories by Con-
temporary Japanese Women Writers. Translated by
Noriko Mizuta Lippit and Kyoko Irye Selden. Ar-
monk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1982.
A Work about O
¯
ba Minako
Wilson, Michiko Niikuni. Gender Is Fair Game:
(Re)Thinking The (Fe)Male in the Works of
¯
Oba
Minako. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1999.
O
objectivismo
In the later half of the 20th century, objectivismo
was a movement in Spain that was closely related
to the French
NEW NOVEL and particularly to the
writings of Alain ROBBE-GRILLET and José Camilo
CELA. Objectivismo, or objectivism, refers to the at-
tempt to write novels that were completely free of
subjective material and, therefore, closer to mate-
rial reality. This involved the rejection of all con-
ventional modes of narrative literature such as
plot, chronological progression, and metaphorical
description. The novels of objectivismo would, for
example, feature extravagant, long descriptions of
a piece of furniture or a geographic location and
then repeat the same descriptions periodically
throughout the book. Cela’s La Colmena (The
Hive, 1951) is a prime example.
Strongly influenced by existential philosophy of
Heidegger, the main point of objectivismo is that re-
ality, before human interpretation, is just there. Be-
fore any of the narrative meaning that human
beings give to it, the most important feature of real-
ity is its simple presence.
By refusing to concentrate on action or mean-
ing, objectivismo texts have a sort of physical pres-
ence, in the philosophical sense of the word
physical. More important, the texts imply that the
author and human personality are essentially illu-
sions. By an aesthetic act of will, the author may
overcome these illusions and present a text free of
his presence. The novels of Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio
(1924– ), such as El Jarama (1956; translated as
The One Day of the Week, 1962), and the early work
of Juan Marsé, are examples.
Literary critic Roland Barthes was a major influ-
ence on both the New Novel and objectivismo. He
believed that too much importance had been given
to the author’s intentions in interpreting literature.
He argued that, in fact, meaning, specifically the in-
tentional meaning of the author, was an imperma-
nent and changing thing based more on cultural
context than anything else. Objectivismo is a literary
style that supports and is supported by this idea.
The novels of objectivismo are texts that push the
reader to supply interpretations. They are presented
with compressed and repetitive events that are ex-
plained only in glimmers so that any meaning the
reader gleans will not be definitive.
A Work about Objectivismo
Robbe-Grillet, Alain. For a New Novel: Essays on Fic-
tion. Translated by Richard Howard. New York:
Grove Press, 1966.
¯
Oe Kenzaburo¯
(1935– ) novelist
O
¯
e Kenzabur¯o was born in a small village in Ehime
Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. By the time he
entered school, Japan was at war, so he underwent
strict moral training intended to instill unquestion-
ing loyalty to the emperor. Before the end of the war,
his father died, leaving him in the care of his
mother. Under her guidance,
¯
Oe developed an in-
terest in literature, including Western novels. In
1954, he formalized that interest, entering the
French literature department of Tokyo University.
While at Tokyo University,
¯
Oe began to write
plays for a student drama group. In 1957, he con-
verted one of his plays into a short story, “A Pecu-
liar Occupation,” about a student who takes on a
part-time job of exterminating dogs used for ex-
periments. That story brought him to the attention
of established writers, and he quickly found accept-
ance in the literary world. During the next two
years, he published a number of stories, including
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, about a group of aban-
doned boys, which won the Akutagawa Prize, en-
suring
¯
Oe’s place among the literati.
¯
Oe increasingly became politically active, no-
tably opposing nuclear proliferation and the
Japan–United States Mutual Security Treaty. His po-
litical concerns carried over into his writing and, in
1961, parodying a 17-year-old extremist who had
assassinated a leader of a Socialist faction, he wrote
the short story “Seventeen.”
¯
Oe’s literary career took a radical turn in 1963.
Three years after his marriage to Itami Yukari, the
sister of renowned film director Itami J¯uz¯o, his
son Hikari was born with a birth defect that
damaged his brain. From this point,
¯
Oe turned to
more personal reflection in his writing.
O
¯
e Kenzaburo¯ 331
Critical Analysis
In 1964,
¯
Oe published one story and one novel that
dealt specifically with the birth of his son. “Agwhee
the Sky Monster” is the short story of a composer
wrestling with a decision he made to let his son, di-
agnosed with a potentially fatal birth defect, die. The
story is told from the perspective of a young college
student who has been hired to watch over the com-
poser.
¯
Oe’s novel A Personal Matter is widely re-
garded as his greatest work. In this novel, rather
than killing the child, the protagonist, Bird, decides
to save his son’s life. The story trails the twists and
turns of Bird’s dilemma until he finally makes the
decision to keep his child.
In his next major novel, The Silent Cry (1967),
¯
Oe explores simultaneous story lines. The first
involves a sibling rivalry in which one brother
attempts to destroy a powerful supermarket chain
and sleeps with both his brother’s wife and his
younger sister. The second story is set 100 years ear-
lier. In it, their great-grandfather’s younger brother
foments an uprising against feudal authorities and
has an affair with his brother’s wife.
Although The Silent Cry received attention for
its originality, critics regard his 1979 A Game of
Contemporaneity as the pinnacle of this style of
juxtaposing timeframes. The story is told in a series
of letters from the narrator, Tsuyuki, to his sister,
Tsuyumi. Tsuyuki is to develop a record of the history
and myths of their village and, in doing so, relays a
number of stories in fragmented form to his sister.
A Game of Contemporaneity also represented an-
other significant development in
¯
Oe’s writing
—myth making. Most of his recent works reflect
this style, particularly The Burning Green Tree
(1993–95), a trilogy that focuses on the story of a
man named Gii. Having lived abroad in his youth,
Gii moves to a village in Shikoku. Soon thereafter, a
local medicine woman dies, and the villagers
believe that Gii has inherited her healing powers.
In 1994,
¯
Oe received the Nobel Prize in litera-
ture. During his Nobel speech, he called himself the
last of the postwar writers—those who had wit-
nessed the hardship of war but still retained hope
for the future. He concluded his lecture, “As one
with a peripheral, marginal and off-center existence
in the world I would like to seek how—with what I
hope is a modest, decent and humanist contribu-
tion—I can be of some use in a cure and reconcilia-
tion of mankind.”
Other Works by
¯
Oe Kenzabur ¯o
Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels.
Translated by John Nathan. New York: Grove
Press, 1977.
The Catch and Other War Stories. Selected by Shoichi
Saeki. New York: Kodansha International, 1981.
Works about
¯
Oe Kenzabur ¯o
Napier, Susan. Escape from the Wasteland: Romanticism
and Realism in the Fiction of Mishima Yukio and
¯
Oe
Kenzabur¯o. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1991.
Wilson, Machiko N. The Marginal World of
¯
Oe
Kenzabur¯o: A Study in Themes and Techniques. Ar-
monk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1986.
Ogot, Grace (1930– ) novelist
Grace Ogot was born in Butere near Kisumu, dis-
trict Central Nyanza, Kenya. She attended several
girls’ schools before training at the Nursing Training
Hospital at Mengo, Uganda, from 1949 to 1953.
From 1958 to 1959, she was a midwifery tutor and
nursing sister at Makerere Hospital. She married
Bethwell Ogot, history lecturer at Makerere Univer-
sity, in 1959. Two years later, Ogot became the prin-
cipal of the Women’s Training Center in Kisumu.
In 1963, she returned to Makerere Hospital as nurs-
ing officer. She was also actively involved in activities
that supported the women’s movement. She was a
member of the Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organiza-
tion of Women and the Executive Committee of the
Kenya Council of Women.
Ogot’s writings reflect not only her feminist lean-
ings but also her belief in the importance of perpet-
uating tradition and history in the face of
technological progress and modernization. Her
novel The Promised Land (1959) describes the Luo
(an ethnic group in Kenya) migration from Uganda
to the eastern shore of Lake Victoria during the
colonial period. Migration, which is a dominant
motif in this novel, highlights the sense of alienation
and displacement experienced similarly by those
who are victims of colonial exploitation and male
332 Ogot, Grace
domination. Ogot uses strong female characters,
such as Nyapol, to comment on the hypocrisy of
male domination by discrediting the male personal-
ities in her novels and short stories. Nyapol’s hus-
band Ochola’s mental deterioration in the new
settlement is contrasted with Nyapol’s strength and
perseverance, and this challenges the misrepresenta-
tion of African females as meek and passive.
Ogot’s volume of short stories, Land Without
Thunder (1968), which was more successful and
popular than The Promised Land, reinforces her at-
tempts to undermine patriarchal authority by chal-
lenging ideas of male dominance. By developing
the reversal of roles in her fiction, Ogot creates a
platform for the female voice and discloses the male
biases inherent in traditional African literature. In
“The Old White Witch,” for example, the white ma-
tron’s shock at discovering that her female charges
are more defiant and vociferous in their resistance
to her domination than the men challenges the
stereotypical view that men form the foundation of
the African resistance movement.
Ogot’s greatest contribution to African and
world literature lies in her criticism of a male-
dominated Africa and in her accurate and insight-
ful depiction of many marginalized indigenous
groups, such as the Luo, in Kenya.
Other Works by Grace Ogot
The Graduate. Nairobi: Uzima Press, 1980.
The Island of Tears. Nairobi: Uzima Press, 1980.
Miaha. Nairobi: Heinemann, 1983.
The Other Woman: Selected Short Stories. Nairobi:
Transafrica Publishers, 1976.
The Strange Bride. Translated by Okoth Okombo.
Nairobi: Heinemann, 1989.
Works about Grace Ogot
Conde, Maryse. “Three Female Writers in Modern
Africa: Flora Nwapa, Ama Ata Aidoo and Grace
Ogot.” Présence Africaine 82 (1972).
Lindfors, Bernth. “Interview with Grace Ogot.” World
Literature Written in English, 18:1 (1979).
Okara, Gabriel (1921– ) novelist, poet
Gabriel Okara was born at Bumoundi in the Ijo
country of the Niger Delta in Nigeria. His parents
were both members of the Ekpetinma clan. Okara
received his early education at St. Peter’s and Proc-
tor’s Memorial School and later attended the Gov-
ernment College of Umuahia. His education was
temporarily interrupted by the outbreak of the
World War II, but he resumed his studies during the
war at Yaba Higher College. Under the guidance of
renowned sculptor Ben Enwonwu, Okara became a
painter; then later he turned to bookbinding, jour-
nalism, and creative writing. His first poems were
published in the Ibadan-based journal Black Or-
pheus in the 1950s. He has been a part-time lecturer
at the University of Nigeria, a government official,
general manager of the Rivers State Broadcasting
Corporation, and a founding member of the Asso-
ciation of Nigerian Authors.
Though Okara had no formal training in writ-
ing, his works effectively blend intense expression
with masterful diction. Okara has written only one
novel, The Voice (1964), which was critically ac-
claimed for its experimental and unorthodox style.
This satire contains a strange narrative of events de-
tailing a romantic hero’s search for righteousness in
a corrupted world. An eccentric writer, Okara
amuses and inspires through his creative rendering
of themes—colonialism, racism, and the fear of los-
ing one’s heritage—that consume most African
writers of his time. He has also written two chil-
dren’s books: Juju Island and Little Snake and Little
Frog (both 1982).
Folktales and myths are a strong source for
Okara’s poems, which attempt to revitalize the en-
chantment of Nigerian folklore through their repre-
sentation of primordial acts of bravery and wisdom.
Okara uses an unusual blend of ambiguous symbols
and powerful imagery to relate these acts. The poem
“You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed,” for ex-
ample (anthologized in Biddle), juxtaposes the cold
laughter of the civilized world against the ancestral
strength of Africa:
Then I danced my magic dance
to the rhythm of talking drums
pleading, but you shut your
eyes and laughed and laughed and
laughed . . .
Okara, Gabriel 333
The poem relates how that cold laughter is ulti-
mately thawed (“Now it is my turn to laugh”):
...you whispered;
‘Why so?’
And I answered:
‘Because my fathers and I
are owned by the living
warmth of the earth
through our naked feet.’
His poems, which are written in a simple lyrical
form, are also characterized by energy and vi-
brancy paralleled by a constant underlying protest
against social injustice. “The Fisherman’s Invoca-
tion,” for instance, highlights Okara’s concerns
with the tribulations of nation building during the
Nigerian civil war.
Okara received first prize in the British Coun-
cil’s 1952 short-story competition for his piece,
“Iconoclast.” In 1953, his poem, “The Call of the
River Nun,” won the best entry prize at the Niger-
ian Festival of Arts, and he won the Common-
wealth Poetry Prize for “The Fisherman’s
Invocation” in 1979. Okara was also awarded an
honorary doctorate by the University of Port Har-
court in Rivers State in 1982 in recognition for his
efforts to involve Nigerians in their cultural and lit-
erary heritage.
Other Works by Gabriel Okara
Biddle, Arthur, ed. Global Voices: Contemporary Litera-
ture from the Non-Western World. Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1995.
The Fisherman’s Invocation. London: Heinemann Edu-
cational Books, 1978.
The Voice. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1987.
Works about Gabriel Okara
Anozie, S. O. “The Theme of Alienation and Commit-
ment in Okara’s The Voice.” Bulletin of the Associa-
tion for African Literature in English 3 (1965).
Egudu, R. N. “A Study of Five of Gabriel Okara’s
Poems.” Okike 13 (1979).
Shiarella, J. “Gabriel Okara’s The Voice: A Study in the
Poetic Novel.” Black Orpheus 2:5–6 (1970).
Ondaatje, Michael (1943– ) poet,
novelist
Born in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), of
Dutch, English, Sinhalese, and Tamil descent, Philip
Michael Ondaatje is the youngest child of Mervyn
Ondaatje, a tea-and-rubber-plantation superin-
tendent, and Enid Doris, who ran a dance and the-
ater school. In 1962, Ondaatje emigrated to Canada,
where he studied English and history at Bishop’s
University in Quebec; he has baccalaureate and
master’s degrees.
Ondaatje is one of a few Canadian writers who
also is published in the United States and Britain
and is known internationally. His early poems ap-
peared in New Wave Canada: The New Explosion in
Canadian Poetry (1967). His poetry collection Sec-
ular Love (1984) explores the pain of the failure of
his first marriage and celebrates his second.
In his first foray into fiction, The Collected Works
of Billy the Kid (1970), Ondaatje retells the story of
the outlaw William H. Bonney through a mixture of
poetry, prose, photographs, and other illustrations.
In Coming through Slaughter (1976), too, he inter-
weaves biography, history, and fiction to relate the
story of jazz cornetist Buddy Bolden, who went in-
sane. In the Skin of the Lion retells the story of the
building of Toronto’s Prince Edward Viaduct. In
1978, after a 24-year absence, Ondaatje returned to
his homeland, now Sri Lanka. In journals, he
recorded family anecdotes and stories that devel-
oped into his “fictional memoir” Running in the
Family (1982), which is composed of vivid, rhap-
sodic reminiscences.
In many of his novels, Ondaatje uses his central
characters to explore a violent reality, mixing the or-
dinary and the fantastic to create a surreal montage,
as can be seen in The English Patient (1993). Here a
quartet of characters—Hana Lewis, a Canadian
nurse; the “English patient,” burned beyond recog-
nition, who is in fact a Hungarian count; thief and
double agent David Caravaggio; and sapper Kip
Singh, who has been sent to clear the area of enemy
mines—shelter in a dilapidated Italian villa during
the last days of World War II. Douglas Barbour re-
marks, “As the complexly ordered fragments of the
novel accumulate, their pasts, their presents, and
334 Ondaatje, Michael
their possible futures intertwine in an intricate col-
lage,” creating in the process, as Lorna Sage observes,
“an improbable civilization of their own, a zone of
fragile intimacy and understanding....”
Fascinated by history, documentation, and biog-
raphy, Ondaatje reinvents history through imagi-
nation. The dominant features of his style are a
dynamic beauty and a scarcely contained violence.
He has won many awards, including the Governor
General’s Award three times, the Booker Prize, and
the Toronto Book Award.
A Work about Michael Ondaatje
Barbour, Douglas. Michael Ondaatje. Boston: Twayne,
1993.
Onetti, Juan Carlos (1909–1994) novelist,
short-story writer
Juan Carlos Onetti, the son of Carlos Onetti and
Honoria Borges, was born in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Considering that he would go on to become a major
novelist, the most remarkable thing about Onetti’s
childhood was that he never finished high school.
He dropped out in his early teens and spent the next
20 years working at odd jobs and living the life of a
bohemian. However, he continued to read con-
stantly and educated himself in modern politics and
literature.
Onetti was particularly fond of the novels of the
Norwegian writer Knut
HAMSUN. His first novel, El
Pozo (The Pit, 1939), resembles Hamsun’s novel
Hunger (1890). Both works follow an alienated pro-
tagonist (similar to protagonists found in works by
Jean-Paul
SARTRE and Albert CAMUS) through an un-
friendly city, concentrating on the main character’s
thoughts and his disconnection from everyone
around him. Present in Hunger but far more pro-
nounced in El Pozo is the introduction of elements
of fantasy in what is mainly a realistic narrative. El
Pozo was completely unsuccessful when it was first
published; now, it is recognized as a precursor to the
MAGIC REALISM movement and as perhaps the first
truly modern Latin-American novel.
In La Vida Breve (A Brief Life, 1950), Onetti
again focuses on a main character, Juan María
Brausen, who is alienated from society and com-
pletely absorbed by his own thoughts. Brausen is
himself a writer, and the reader watches him create
narratives within the narrative. The novel takes
place in the fictitious town of Santa Maria and com-
bines
REALISM
with philosophical asides and ele-
ments of fantasy. Onetti would go on to write about
Santa Maria again and again in his fiction. In this
way, he resembles and is a precursor to
GARCÍA
MÁRQUEZ
. Both authors worked at not only telling
distinct stories but also creating an imaginary
world. Unlike the mythic grandeur of García
Márquez’s Macondo, Onetti’s imaginary world is re-
strained, tinged with the melancholy of philosophi-
cal dilemmas.
In 1974, Onetti was imprisoned by the Uruguayan
government for selecting a controversial short story
as the winner in a contest sponsored by the magazine
Marcha. He was held for three months and finally
released due to the outrage of the international
community. He moved to Spain the next year and
became a Spanish citizen.
Late in his life Onetti’s pessimism increased. In
Dejemos hablar al viento (Let The Wind Speak,
1979), he once again revisited Santa Maria, this time
narrating its destruction by fire and a cleansing
wind. This act of symbolically uncreating the imag-
inary world he had been building all his life res-
onates with both sorrow and purification. It is a
final abandonment of nostalgia and a preparation
for death.
In 1980, Onetti was awarded the Cervantes prize,
the most prestigious award given in the Spanish-
speaking world. He was the first Latin-American
novelist to hit on the particular mixture of fantasy,
reality, and formal experimentation, which such
writers as Carlos FUENTES, García Márquez, and VA R-
GAS LLOSA
later developed into their own styles of
magic realism. He is a writer of subtle humor and
great philosophical insight.
Other Works by Juan Carlos Onetti
Goodbye and Stories. Translated by Daniel Balderston.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
Past Caring? Translated by Peter Bush. London: Quar-
tet Books, 1995.
Onetti, Juan Carlos 335
The Shipyard. Translated by Nick Caistor. London: Ser-
pent’s Tail, 1992.
Works about Juan Carlos Onetti
Adams, Ian M. Three Authors of Alienation: Bombal,
Onetti, Carpentier. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1975.
San Roman,Gustavo. Onetti and Others: Comparative Es-
says on a Major Figure in Latin American Literature.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.
Ortega y Gasset, José (1883–1955)
philosopher
José Ortega y Gasset was born in Madrid, Spain.
Both his mother’s and his father’s families were
powerful and successful publishers. Ortega y Gasset
was trained to be a journalist, as well as to take over
his family’s publishing empire. However, when he
graduated from the University of Madrid, despite an
innate talent, he found the prospect of a career in
journalism unsatisfying. Instead, he chose to study
philosophy in Germany.
In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, he pub-
lished his first book Meditations on Quixote. The
book is a collection of essays on topics ranging from
the purely literary to features of life in modern-day
Europe. All of the essays mix cultural commentary
with the philosophical underpinnings that Ortega y
Gasset had absorbed through his study of German
philosophy, particularly that of Kant.
During the next 40 years, until his death, Ortega
y Gasset was extremely prolific. His complete works,
published in 1983, are 12 volumes of more than 500
pages each. He was also an important political figure
in Spain, working tirelessly for moderate liberal re-
form until his impatience with extremism led him
to retire in 1933.
Two of Ortega y Gasset’s works stand out from the
rest as having had a very large influence on later 20th-
century thought. The first of these is The Dehuman-
ization of Art (1925), in which he examines a unique
modern phenomenon, the unheard-of unpopularity
of modern art, and its rejection by the masses. Why,
he asks, does the art that is generally acknowledged by
critics and intellectuals as deserving of aesthetic merit
receive such a negative reaction from common soci-
ety? He finds that, unlike the highest forms of visual
art from the past, modern art emphasizes the fic-
tional aspect of the art medium and deemphasizes
the “human concerns” of art’s subject matter. Al-
though this brings increased pleasure to knowing
viewers who are educated to appreciate “pure” aes-
thetics, it alienates the uneducated viewers who want
to find in art something to relate to their own lives.
In The Revolt of The Masses (1929), Ortega y Gas-
set examines another 20th-century phenomenon,
the modern practice of sightseeing. Why,
he asks, do countless people wish to go to sights,
such as palaces or the Vatican, that formerly were
accessible only to the privileged few? In former
times, these places were used for specific functions.
However, the masses go not to use the places as they
were intended but simply to assert their own pres-
ence. Though somewhat elitist by today’s standards,
The Revolt of The Masses can be best understood as
an indictment of the fascist tendencies of many Eu-
ropean countries, including Spain, between the
world wars. Ortega y Gasset feared, often correctly,
that unfettered rule by the populace would end in
brutality and fascism.
Ortega y Gasset is one of the most important
Spanish philosophers of the 20th century. His ef-
forts brought modern philosophical thought into
Spanish culture. His influence has been worldwide,
and his thought has influenced literature, philoso-
phy, and art history.
Other Works by José Ortega y Gasset
History as a System, and Other Essays Toward a
Philosophy of History. With an afterward by John
William Miller. New York: Norton, 1961.
Man and Crisis. Translated by Mildred Adams. New
York: Norton, 1962.
Meditations on Hunting. Translated by H. B. Westcott.
New York: Scribner, 1986.
The Mission of the University. Translated by Howard
Lee Nostrand. Piscataway, N.J.: Transaction Pub-
lishers, 2001.
The Origin of Philosophy. Translated by Toby Talbot.
Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Velasquez, Goya, and the Dehumanization of Art. New
York: Norton, 1972.
336 Ortega y Gasset, José
A Work about José Ortega y Gasset
Díaz, Janet Winecoff. The Major Themes of Existential-
ism in the Work of José Ortega y Gasset. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1970.
Osceola
See DINESEN, ISAK.
Ostrovsky, Nikolai (1904–1936) novelist
Nikolai Alexeevich Ostrovsky was born in the
small village of Viliya, Russia. His father worked as
a seasonal laborer, and the family was very poor.
In 1914, his family resettled in the town of Shep-
tovka, where Ostrovsky briefly attended elemen-
tary school. As a young teenager, he worked at
various laborer jobs and ran errands for the Bol-
shevik underground. He joined the Red Army in
1918 and fought for the Bolshevik cause. In 1920,
he was seriously wounded in battle and subse-
quently contracted typhus.
Ostrovsky was officially declared an invalid in
1922. Bedridden by his physical breakdown, he
dedicated his time to completing a correspondence
course with Sverdlov University in Moscow, but a
month after completing his course, he lost his vi-
sion and became partially paralyzed. He then
began to write articles for newspapers and jour-
nals, to speak on the radio, and to begin his only
full-length novel.
Ostrovsky completed How the Steel was Tem-
pered in 1930. The novel, published in 1934, is
firmly grounded in SOCIALIST REALISM and depicts
the struggles of workers and soldiers in forging the
Soviet Union, and its artistic aim of the novel is
reflected in the simple, utilitarian language of the
writer. Immediately hailed as a masterpiece of so-
cialist art, the novel garnered him the Order of
Lenin in 1935. His second novel Born of the Storm,
about the civil war in the Ukraine, was incomplete
when he died at the age of 32.
Ostrovsky achieved immense literary success
with only one published novel.Although he was not
prolific in his contribution to Russian literature, he
did influence a new generation of fiction writers
who attempted to glorify the building of a commu-
nist state.
Oz, Amos (Amos Klausner)
(1939– )
novelist, short-story writer, essayist
Amos Oz was born in a poor neighborhood of
Jerusalem to conservative Zionist parents who both
emigrated from Europe and met in Jerusalem. A
sabra, or native Israeli, Oz grew up speaking and
writing modern Hebrew. Oz’s mother died when
he was a teenager, and he left home at the age of 15
to join Kibbutz Hulda, one of Israel’s oldest com-
munes. There, striking out on his own, he changed
his name from Klausner to Oz, a Hebrew word
meaning “courage” or “strength.”
At the commune, Oz was allowed to write just
one day a week. Later, as his success grew, he was al-
lowed to increase his writing time. He described life
on a kibbutz in his first novel, Elsewhere, Perhaps
(1973), and in A Perfect Peace (1982), set in a kib-
butz in the 1960s. These and other of Oz’s works ex-
plore the conflicts and tensions in modern Israeli
society, examining human nature, its frailty, and its
variety. Many of his stories take place either on a
kibbutz or in Jerusalem, where he creates micro-
cosms of Israeli society.
Oz is a full Professor at Ben-Gurion University of
the Negev and was awarded the prestigious Israel
Prize for Literature in 1998, the 50th anniversary
year of Israel’s independence.
Other Works by Amos Oz
Fima. Translated by Nicholas de Lang. New York: Har-
vest Books, 1994.
My Michael. Translated by Nicholas de Lang. New
York: Vintage Books, 1992.
To Know a Woman. Translated by Nicholas de Lang.
California: Harcourt Brace, 1992.
A Work about Amos Oz
Cohen, Joseph. Voices of Israel: Essays on and Interviews
With Yehuda Amichai, A. B. Yehoshua, T. Carmi,
Aharon Applefeld, and Amos Oz. Albany: State Uni-
versity of New York Press, 1990.
Oz, Amos 337