User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
One of the giants of Latin American literature, Ernesto Sábato (1911-2011) lived most of his life in Buenos Aires, Argentina and periodically committed his own manuscripts to the flames, noting in one interview with wry satisfaction how fire is purifying. Fortunately, in addition to many essays, three of his novels survive. Before commenting on
The Tunnel, his first novel written in 1948, some observations on his other two:
On Heroes and Tombs, Sábato’s dark, brooding 500 pager includes an entire hallucinogenic, mindbending section,
Report on Blind People. The novel also features young Martin and the object of his obsessive love, Alejandra, a reclusive young lady who deals with serious bouts of madness. With every page turned, a reader is led ever further down murky, winding corridors of memory and imagination. Not an easy read.
And Sábato’s second full-length novel,
The Angel of Darkness is even darker and more brooding, where Sábato himself takes on the role of main character and first-person narrator. In one outlandish scene, Sábato has a nightmare where he shows up on his wedding day as groom wearing only his underwear, marrying a television celebrity with blind Jorge Luis Borges standing in as best man. I mention Borges’s blindness since this novel also involves a search for a Society of the Blind rumored to be responsible for all the world’s ills. With its unique combination of magical realism and philosophic reflections, I judge this as one of the greatest novels ever written. However, on this point, I am an army of one since nearly all critics and readers cite this work as dense, heavy and overly cerebral.
Turning to
The Tunnel, Juan Pablo Castel, first-person narrator of Sábato’s short novel, is a painter who becomes obsessed with a young woman who has a particular appreciation for a scene in one of his paintings. And although
The Tunnel is the same length as Camus’s
The Stranger and both are considered works of existential alienation, the obsessive Castel is a universe away from Meursault’s indifference. And to whom may we compare Castel? For my money, narrators in Tommaso Landolfi’s tales of obsession – aristocratic and condescending down to their toes, looking at their fellow humans, even those educated and cultured, or, perhaps, especially those educated and cultured, as a rabble of vulgar, ugly, gluttonous, gross morons.
Back to Castel’s obsession for the young woman. The opening line of the novel: “It should be sufficient to say that I am Juan Pablo Castel, the painter who killed Maria Iribarne.” Hi sits in the room where he is locked up and writes down how once he set eyes on Maria Iribarne he was driven mad by desire. This is one compelling story. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put the book down until I finished. My sense is Sábato wanted his reader to do exactly that – read in one sitting to get the full emotional and psychic impact of Castel’s obsession.
At one point Castel relates a nightmare where he is in an unfamiliar house surrounded by friends and one sinister stranger. We read, “The man began to change me into a bird, into a man-size bird. He began with my feet: I saw them gradually turning into something like rooster claws. Then my whole body began to change, from the feet up, like water rising in a pool. . . . but when I began to speak it was at the top of my voice. Then I was amazed by two facts: the words I wanted to say came out as squawks, screeches that fell on my ears as desperate and alien, perhaps because there was still something human about them, and, what was infinitely worse, my friends did not hear the squawking, just as they had not seen my enormous bird-body.” This nightmare foreshadows a scene in
The Angel of Darkness where Sábato walks down a street in Buenos Aires, having been transformed into a half-blind, barely aware, four foot bat.
The theme of blindness pops up continually. Maria Iribarne’s husband is blind. During one emotionally charged conversation, Castel accuses Maria of ‘deceiving a blind man’. At another point, Castel conveys how he was blinded by the painful glare of his own shyness and at still another, how his blindness prevented him from seeing a flaw in an idea. And, turns out, we can see how Castel’s obsession made him blind when it came to Maria. For example, the following exchange where Castel first converses with her:
The hardness in her face and eyes disturbed me. “Why is she so cold?” I asked myself. “Why?” Perhaps she sensed my anxiety, my hunger to communicate, because for an instant her expression softened, and she seemed to offer a bridge between us. But I felt that it was a temporary and fragile bridge swaying high above an abyss. Her voice was different when she added:
“But I don’t know what you will gain by seeing me. I hurt everyone who comes near me.”
Rating: really liked it
El túnel = The Tunnel, Ernesto SábatoThe Tunnel is a dark, psychological novel, written by Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato, about a deranged traditional painting technique, Juan Pablo Castel, and his obsession with a woman.
The story's title refers to the symbol for Castel's emotional and physical isolation from society, which becomes increasingly apparent as Castel proceeds to tell from his jail cell the series of events that enabled him to murder the only person capable of understanding him.
Marked by its existential themes, The Tunnel received enthusiastic support from Albert Camus and Graham Greene following its publication in 1948.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و هشتم ماه آوریل سال 2008میلادی
عنوان: تونل؛ نویسنده: ارنستو آر ساباتو؛ مترجم: مصطفی مفیدی؛ مشخصات نشر: تهران، نیلوفر؛ 1386، در 174ص، شابک 9644482956؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان آرژانتین - سده 20م
عنوان: تونل؛ نویسنده: ارنستو آر ساباتو؛ مترجم: مریم تاجیک؛ ویراستار مهدی صادق؛ مشخصات نشر تهران، روشنان؛ 1387، در 160ص، شابک9789649234816؛
رمان «تونل»، داستان «خوان پابلو کاستل» نقاش، و عشق او، به «ماریا ایرپیارنه» است؛ او نقاش بیش و کم نامداری است، که دوست دارد کمتر به دیده های ناقدان آثار خویش بنشیند؛ از منتقدان گریزان است؛ خیال میکند ارزش کارش را نمیفهمند
این رمان با معرفی راوی با این جمله آغاز می شود: (من راضی خواهم شد که من «خوان پابلو کاستیل» هستم که «ماریا ایاریانی» را کشت)؛ «کاستیل» در حالی رمان را آغاز میکند که دنیای خودش را با بسیاری از پرسشهای مشکوک بیان میکند؛ که سوء ظن و وحشت را برانگیخته، و وضعیت روانشناختی آشفته اش را آشکار میکند؛ او به عنوان شخصیتی متکبر و پیچیده ظاهر میشود، که به چیزی؛ جز خودش باور ندارد، و این در عباراتی که هنگام ارتکاب جنایت علیه زنان روایت میکند، آشکار است؛ قهرمان داشت چیزهایی را از یک «تونل» تاریک میدید، که او را خشمگین میکرد، تا اینکه نگرانیهای او جمع شد و با ارتکاب قتل منفجر شد
نقل از متن: (بیش از هر گروه دیگری از نقاشها بیزارم؛ البته تا حدی به آن علت، که نقاشی رشته ای ست، که من، بهتر از رشته های دیگر، از آن سر درمیآورم، و معلوم است که برای ما، بسیار موجه تر است، که از چیزهایی که از آن سر درمیآوریم، بیزار باشیم)» پایان نقل
از متن: (شب ناآرامی را گذراندم؛ نه میتوانستم طراحی کنم، نه نقاشی کنم؛ هرچند بارها سعی کردم چیزی را شروع کنم؛ برای قدم زدن از خانه بیرون رفتم؛ و ناگاه خودم را در خیابان «کوریینتس» یافتم؛ اتفاق بسیار عجیبی افتاد: جهان را با چشمانی رأفت آمیز و دلسوزانه میدیدم؛ این گفته ام را یادم میآید که میخواهم در نقل این داستان کاملا بیطرف باشم، و حالا میخواهم نخستین دلیل آن را با اعتراف به یکی از بدترین خطاهایم ابراز کنم؛ من همیشه با بیعلاقگی به افراد نگاه کردهام، حتی با نفرت و بیزاری، به خصوص به جماعتهای مردم؛ همیشه از کنار دریا در تابستان، از بازیهای فوتبال، از مسابقات، و تظاهرات بدم میآمد؛ نسبت به تنی چند از مردان و تک و توکی زنان، محبتی احساس کرده ام؛ بعضی از آن زنان را ستایش کرده ام «من آدم حسودی نیستم»، با بعضی دیگر احساس همدلی واقعی داشته ام؛ نسبت به کودکان، همیشه با محبت و دلسوزی برخورد کرده ام: «به خصوص وقتی با تلاش ذهنی سخت سعی کرده ام فراموش کنم که یکروز آنها هم بزرگسالانی مانند دیگران میشوند»؛ ولی به طور کلی نوع بشر همیشه به نظرم نفرتانگیز رسیده است؛ برایم اهمیتی ندارد که به شما بگویم که بعد از مشاهده ی ویژگی خصلتی خاص، سراسر روز نمیتوانستم غذا بخورم؛ یا در هفته نقاشی کنم؛ باورکردنی نیست، که تا چه حد درجه ی آزمندی، حسادت، کج خلقی، ابتذال، مال اندوزی «به طور خلاصه طیف گسترده ی صفاتی که شرایط رقتبار ما را تشکیل میدهد» میتواند در چهره، در طرز راه رفتن، در نگاه، بازتاب یابد؛ فقط طبیعی به نظر میرسد، که پیش از چنین برخوردی، آدم نخواهد غذا بخورد، یا نقاشی کند، یا حتی زندگی کند؛ با اینهمه میخواهم این را روشن کنم، این صفت برای من افتخارآمیز نیست؛ میدانم که این نشانی از غرور، و خودپسندی است، و نیز میدانم، که آزمندی و مال اندوزی و حرص و ابتذال، غالبا نقطه ی خوشایندی، در قلب من یافته اند؛ ولی همانطور که گفته ام، میخواهم این قصه را با بیطرفی کامل روایت کنم، و بر این گفته ام همچنان پابندم)؛ پایان نقل
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 04/07/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 26/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Rating: really liked it
A misanthrope? A case of morbid jealousy? A monster?
There are times I feel that nothing has meaning. On a tiny planet that has been racing toward oblivion for millions of years, we are born amid sorrow; we grow, we struggle, we grow ill, we suffer, we make others suffer, we cry out, we die, others die, and new beings are born to begin the senseless comedy all over again.
The hero of
The Tunnel is a known painter but he is a loner, he hates people and he is alienated from everyone.
Some I knew by name, like Dr. Goldenberg, who had recently made quite a name for himself: in the course of treating a female patient, they had both ended up in a mental institution. He had just been released. I observed him closely, but he seemed no worse than the others. In fact he may even have been more placid, perhaps the result of his recent seclusion. The way he praised my paintings, I knew that he despised them.
Everything was so elegant that I was embarrassed to be seen in my ancient suit with the baggy-kneed trousers. The source of my uneasiness was not the trousers, however, but something I could not define. It had reached a climax when a beautiful young lady offered me an hors d’oeuvre as she continued her discussion with a colleague over some unimaginable problem of anal masochism.
But he falls in love and love becomes his tragedy…
He doesn’t live – he gropes his way in the dark tunnel but instead of leaving the tunnel and seeing the light he wants the others to be in that tunnel too. So there’s no way out.
Rating: really liked it
Sabato’s
The Tunnel (1948) resembles Camus’
The Stranger (1942), for both are spare, short novels featuring murderer-protagonists as first person narrators, men who are profoundly alienated not only from their societies but also from any meaningful personal relationship. But the two protagonists are very different from each other too. Camus’ hero Meursault, a shipping clerk, is an unimaginative man alienated from his own emotions; Sabato’s hero Castel, a well-known painter, experiences his emotions intensely but projects them all onto a woman, the only woman—he believes—who can ever fully understand him. Meursault’s alienation leads to a murder of indifference, Sabato’s to a murder of obsession.
The reader watches in growing frustration and horror as Castel poisons what might have been a brief, sweet dalliance with a married woman who notices something in one of his paintings he believed only he and his ideal woman could ever see. His relentless, all-consuming hunger for her absolute devotion devours each romantic encounter, draining it of joy, and further intensifying his isolation. Then one day, that isolation blossoms into crime.
This is a fine book about the desperate loneliness of romantic obsession. If such an obsession has ever touched your life, you should find this short novel both disturbing and fascinating.
So why is it called
The Tunnel? Sabato—and Castel--explains this metaphor toward the end of the book:
...it was if the two of us had been living in parallel passageways or tunnels, never knowing that we were moving side by side, like souls in like times, finally to meet before a scene I had painted as a kind of key meant for her alone, as a kind of secret sign that I was there ahead of her and that the passageways finally had joined and the hour of our meeting had come...What a stupid illusion that had been!...that the whole story of the passageways was my own ridiculous invention and that after all there was only one tunnel, dark and solitary: mine, the tunnel in which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my entire life.
Rating: really liked it
Just as Opaque the Second Time RoundIn The Tunnel, Ernesto Sabato has a mysogonistic, puerile, obsessive, apparently psychopathic murderer tell the reader his every thought about a
folie a deux with his victim and its rationale. My first time through The Tunnel left me bewildered. Of what literary rather than ideological merit is this work? For whose edification or amusement is it meant? My original conclusion: It’s a difficult book to be interested in much less like.
But I picked up on a hint by another GR reader and found that Sabato was a scientist before he was a writer and had incorporated quantum physics in The Tunnel as a sort of hidden metaphor. Indeed there is a short book by Halpern and Carpenter which outlines the way in which the metaphor is meant to work at key points in the book (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Quantum-Mech...).
This led me back into The Tunnel for another look. Halpern and Carpenter suggest that Sabato followed Borges in his interest in the ‘labyrinthine’ character of history through which the world changes direction at critical nodes. They also point out Borges allusions to alternative and even parallel universes that were of interest to Sabato. They contend that Sabato builds on these Borgian tropes to create scenes of discontinuous time in his story.
Maybe so. But I find the argument of Halpern and Carpenter to be somewhat tendentious. But even stipulating their observations, I don’t see the point. The metaphor, if there, is certainly not central to this tale of murder and psychopathy. Of course there are always alternative trajectories for any story, or for any historical reality. But the idea of using the ‘collapse of the quantum wavefront’ as the signal for a decisive turning point seems to me trivial and fatuous.
True, the protagonist, Juan Pablo, is continuously analysing his situation in terms of alternative possibilities, as in this internal monologue:
“I constructed an endless series of variations. In one I was talkative, witty (something in fact I never am); in another I was taciturn; in still another, sunny and smiling. At times, though it seems incredible, I answered rudely, even with ill-concealed rage. It happened (in some of these imaginary meetings) that our exchange broke off abruptly because of an absurd irritability on my part, or because I rebuked her, almost crudely, for some comment I found pointless or ill-thought-out.”
But this is a symptom of madness not a symbol of impending quantum resolution. Even the speaker recognises that
“this damned compulsion to justify everything I do,” isn’t normal
Consequently it seems to me that the metaphor of quantum physics does nothing to explicate Sabato’s very dark story. Juan Pablo is a misanthrope without any mitigating, not to say redeeming, features. The Tunnel, therefore, doesn’t get any more interesting with a possible metaphorical foundation. Unless of course sabato’s intention was simply to create a sort of quantum uncertainty about this very foundation. In any case: not terribly stimulating.
My original review us here:
Cui bono?I have been trying to finish this short novel for weeks. But I can only get through 10 pages at a time. I've finally given up. I don't get it. Is there something beyond an obsessive/compulsive folie a deux that I am simply unable to comprehend? Someone please explain where I am going wrong.
Rating: really liked it
It was just about the stroke of dawn, lilacs started to bloom, the birds were singing along, the orchestra was about to embark on, I got up early and decided to plunge myself in books, I'd a few options-
The Tunnel, Beauty and Sadness, and Requiem: A hallucination, I chose
The Tunnel, for from excerpts of the book, it occurred to be an existential tale of an account of relationship of an artist-Juan Pablo Castel- with Maria Iribarne whom he murdered, I was listening to
Shine on your crazy Diamond by
Pink Floyd, the starting lines-
It should be sufficient to say that I am Juan Pablo Castel, the painter who killed Maria Iribarne. I imagine that the trial is still in everyone's mind and that no further information about myself is necessary with the music of
Pink Floyd were creating enthralling atmosphere which caught me off guard to observe that how effortlessly the author has used simplicity to convey the most profound and honest conviction by narrator, that was the very first glimpse of finesse, of the author, which only gets amplified in subsequent pages. It's about recollection of actions of Castel from a prison cell, however it's neither an apology for the actions which his insanity caused him to do, nor is it a rational explanation of them.
Juan Pablo Castel, the first person narrator of the book, paints
Motherhood which has a remote scene framed in a window in the upper let-corner of canvas: an empty beach and a solitary woman looking at the sea, gets preoccupied with a woman who seems to be interesting in this scene, of a window, which everyone ignores, the scene signifies absolute nostalgic loneliness, (which is profound than solitude, for solitude is often self- desired and rewarding at times as one gets chance to look aside form the distractions world offer us, to ponder upon your insignificant self and to nurture it with amusements you enjoy perhaps to refuel yourself, while the wistful loneliness is depressing as you feel isolated from the world and it seems to fall apart in front of your very eyes but all you could do is just to stare meekly at it) the narrator feels a profound bond with her, a woman who can see into his soul and capable of understanding the emotion behind his artistic creation, for she probably feels the same isolation from the world as the narrator does, since the people, who are waking by, seem to be non-existent to her; this realization thoroughly captures his mind and he becomes obsessed with her, the kind of realization which brings along a injuring fear and an anguish at the same time to feel that there are others like you as well- you're not absurd alone, a desire to meet those people and a trepidation to lose all your notions about your existence. The narrator stalks her and tries different probable combinations to bring his chances of meeting her from null to desirable outcome, he keeps on mediating about these combinations to insanity and always tries to comfort himself (when the fear of getting it altogether wrong strikes him) by carefully deliberating each of them.
It isn't that I don't reason things. Just the opposite my mind never stops. But think of a captain who is constantly charting its position, meticulously following a course towards an objective. But also imagine that he does not know why is sailing toward it. Sabato captures the intensity of passions run into uncharted passages where love promises not tranquillity but danger, Juan Pablo manages to meet Maria, their relationship starts to bloom but it is not usual fairy types of bonds, for it is one of those crippling one which eventually turns out to be obsession wherein jealously gradually takes over infatuation as is the fate of love generally, for the dangers it holds only permeate with time. The inability to control human passion, precisely bounded, here comes across not as melodrama but as icy documentary:
The more I thought about it, the more receptive I became to the idea of accepting her love without condition, and the more terrified I became of being left with nothing, absolutely nothing. From the terror was germinating and flowering the kind of humility possessed only by persons who have no choice. This narrative of the book is meticulously condensed as the book is divided into small chapters which contain sparse and succinct sentences which makes them easy to decipher, at the same time the narrative doesn't leave its profoundness to captivate the reader about obsessions and struggles of the narrator. The nightmares of Juan Pablo, in which he turns to a man-size bird, reflects the deep scuffles in consciousness to ascertain existence of a man. Sabato mocks about idiosyncrasies of life using satirical elements, the deadpan description of a cocktail party filled with psychoanalysts, the portrayal of life of elites wherein redundant conversations fill the intellectual circles, are absolutely bang on, his commentary over vanity is honest and chilling, for human nature is corrupted and man always delude himself:
I do not comment on vanity. As far as I know, no human is devoid of this formidable motivation for Human Progress. People make me laugh when they talk about the modesty of an Einstein, or someone of his kind. My answer to them is that it is easy to be modest when you are famous. That is appear to me modest. This compelling book drills deeper into the dark abyss of human soul like
The Outsider by
Albert Camus, the dark canvas of tortured human soul sketched by Sabato wherein the rules governing despair are so closely examined that the entire enterprise of living or thinking seems deeply absurd, wherein man constantly sees faults in the people he meets or observes walking along the streets of the city, whose distrust of human nature is evident in the jealousy and insecurity towards seemingly most profound relationships; according to Albert Camus, the only philosophical problem in the life was suicide, for its the greatest choice for a man in this absurd world, to choose whether or not life is worth living is to answer the very question of existence, Camus sees this question of suicide as a natural response to an underlying premise, namely that life is absurd in its very nature, for it's absurd to continually seek meaning in life when there is none; Sábato’s narrator faces the existential dilemma with similar existential choices at his disposal, we don't see any sign of regret in Castel over his act of murder as he reflects on his actions in prison which clearly shows influence of Dostoevsky and Kafka as their characters, who create havoc, who helped society see the soul of man who carried vengeance in his heart, yet maintained a love for mankind, (or probably anti-heroes) never show any sign of remorse over their deeds since their acts are existential choices at their disposal; one could easily decipher that Juan Pablo is already a prisoner well before he is being put in prison, for he is captive of his wistful loneliness, of his delusions and paranoia which eventually leads him to murder Maria, who he thinks understands him best, out of utter jealously, which is the outcome of his interminable existential struggle.
Rating: really liked it
If you want to foreground a sociopath-misogynist-stalker's sense of urban isolation and alienation against a woman's prolonged emotional and physical abuse at the hands of the same person and call it existentialist literature, your choice. Just don't expect me to appreciate it.
Rating: really liked it
You know I was going to review this book but then it occurred to me that I would never know if you have read my review. I mean yes, I do get likes but suppose people are liking them without reading them. Of course, why would anyone do that? Two possibilities seem to suggest themselves – either they want to make a fool of me by making me keep writing reviews that no one reads or to distract me from something. Of course, that in itself calls for a mass conspiracy because so many people from so many countries will be liking my reviews – unless of course, it is one person with many fake accounts. Now that I think about it the possibility seems very real…
…. The above is how our protagonist might have started a review. But now to proper review:
I don’t know if it can be defined that way but all art – whether it be painting, writing, singing etc, all art forms seems to be tools, of communication – of communicating in superior ways. It is like that teenager boy writing poems to his sweat-heart sort of thing – or making albums, quoting great poets when one doesn’t feel gifted oneself – because our normal everyday language isn’t enough to express what we feel.
But what about artists? What yearnings must they have in themselves to make it their profession to develop those tools; to be on constant look out, at just the right word, phrase, color etc? Why should MB write, leave alone his manuscript of Master and Margarita’ leave alone keep them knowing that they are as good as their death warrant? ‘Manuscripts don’t burn’ one hears in the answer but why don’t they? Is it that they live in constant fear of being misunderstood like Kafka was?
Perhaps getting the message right in itself not enough, there must also need be the person who can understand the message. And thus, Nabokov’s irritation at wrong interpretations of his works and Van Gogh’s sorrow, who though created most beautiful paintings, never found a pair of eyes in which that beauty is reflected. Perhaps that is why artists seek posterity and immortality – to carry to their death bed the hope that what they have to say will be one day be heard in just the way they wanted. The protagonist in the ‘Invitation to a Beheading’ by Nabokov gives his writings to his executioners in desperation and asks them not to destroy them as long as he is alive so that he could at least have a theoretical chance of finding a reader.
So, is it for that theoretical chance of finding someone who will understand him that keeps the artist going? It seems to be true in the case of Juan Pablo, our protagonist here, for whom the whole life was like a dark tunnel (yes that explains the title) where he lived in solitude because, as he puts it, ‘no one understood him’.
The trouble begins when he finds a woman does understand him. And he discovers that he has a lot more to say than that single painting. She wants that too – because the need for understanding is mutual. It doesn’t matter who paints and who reflects. Only our guy can’t have enough – his overt-thinking, over-analytical, pathological brain can’t believe his good fortune. Like Anna Karenina, he needs constant assurances of her fidelity – as is often the case of those who fell in love when they had long given up on any chance of finding it. Like her, he too dwells over suicide but rather prefers killing his girlfriend.
Camus commissioned its publishing – and the narrator here too finds himself a stranger in his world but his solitude because he is a nihilist but rather because of his misanthropy. It also shows similarity to ‘Lolita’ in that Juan Pable might be putting his own version and suppressing the voice of his victim.
Rating: really liked it
"All our life would it be a succession of anonymous cries in a desert of indifferent stars?"
With this intense novel of loneliness and incommunicability, Ernesto Sabato projects his reader into the tunnel of the frightening thoughts of his narrator, Juan Pablo Castel, which is not easy! One sinks into this story of a stormy love affair, to the rhythm of love/hate oscillations (the half-measure, in Castel, it does not exist), in the throes of an infernal, devouring, destructive jealousy.
The narrator is in jail, but that's nothing compared to the morbid confinement in the ceaseless activity of reasoning, interpretation, the scaffolding of assumptions made by his mind, seizing the slightest pause or of a "vestige of a smile" to feed his suspicions, entangled in a delirious logic that distances him from the only person who, according to him, could understand it: "I finally came to formulate my idea in this terrible but indisputable form: Maria and the prostitute have a similar expression; the prostitute simulated pleasure; Maria simulated pleasure; Maria is a prostitute."
The reader finds himself in a particular position, not necessarily very comfortable. He invited one to enter the maze of this mad narrative of the narrator. Enticing by his energy, touched by the feeling that Juan has to live his life in a dark and lonely tunnel far from the "hectic life that these people who live in outside, this curious and absurd life where there are balls, and feasts, and joy, and frivolity."
But we must avoid this proximity and distance when the signs of slippage and paranoia become too obvious.
Rating: really liked it
What I learned from this novel is that if you look intensely and soulfully at a painting in a gallery and the artist himself happens to see you doing it and conceives the notion that you and only you alone have perceived the true great meaning of this work you might find yourself cajoled, inveigled, drawn in, stalked obsessively, obsessed over night and day, belittled, berated, bewildered, bamboozled, brutalised and finally stabbed and killed in a blizzard of male rage in just exactly the same way these ghastly things are done in any old vulgar sex crime you might see on Forensic Files or in the pages of your local tabloid, and so the moral is clear : if out of the corner of your eye you do see the famous artist looking at you looking, you should beat it out of there as fast as your little feet can carry you and don’t look back until you’re back behind double-locked doors, because he might, just might, be the protagonist of an existential novel from the 1940s.
Rating: really liked it
The Tunnel by Sabato, inspired by Dostoevsky and Kafka, is not just an intriguing novel but also an important existential classic. It cannot be totally denied that there are some similarities between Castel of this novel and Meursault from The Stranger but Castel is not too nihilistic in his views. The heart of Castel might have been frozen, but there was a drop or two of love - just enough to feed the birds.
Solitude is often thought of as something self-warranted. Sometimes, even a man who built his own fortress of solitude from which he can watch and sneer at others, waits eagerly for someone to breach the wall that confines him. God or Man – Solitude is not indestructible.
Castel doesn’t want to be judged; but to be understood. That’s why Castel, having ended up in the prison cell, narrates the events that changed his life. He was oblivious of all human sorrows in his
tunnel of solitude. There were no intruders. His journey inside his tunnel has always been unobtrusive, with occasional, suspicious sneaks from the outside and a faint hope of meeting someone inside from the outside. Slowly, the walls keep narrowing in; Darkness keeps creeping in. Such was the life of Castel.
“Usually that feeling of being alone in the world is accompanied by a condescending sense of superiority. I scorn all humankind; people around me seem vile, sordid, stupid, greedy, gross, niggardly. I do not fear solitude; it is almost Olympian.”
He was free but incomplete and waiting anxiously for someone or a guiding light. Along came a lovely being, ravaging his solitude and denting his vanity. After gazing from the outside for a while at the tunnel wall of painting(María viewing Castel’s painting of Motherhood as shown below), María left without a word. There was a strange, distant, silent sea which beckoned to them and which would sweep him away in the name of love.
Here is Castel, reflecting on his past and a love affair which otherwise would have lasted, had he not
killed the only person who would understand him. What went wrong? Who wronged their love which could have otherwise been beautiful, and maybe, everlasting?
“It also happens that when we have reached the limits of despair that precede suicide, when we have exhausted the inventory of every evil and reached the point where evil is invincible, then any sign of goodness, however infinitesimal, becomes momentous, and we grasp for it as we would claw for a tree root to keep from hurtling into an abyss.”
But soon, the goodness seemed not enough. His perverse predictions deceived him. His syllogisms had become sinful delusions. His absurd questions made him confront his love. His fractured love metamorphosed him into a heartless murderer. It is not solitude anymore but
“a sordid museum of shame”. Here is he,
“animated by the faint hope that someone will understand him– even if it is only one person”, giving an impartial account of the events which ensued from his love affair.
Rating: really liked it
Really wanted to nail this in one sitting, but still managed it in two, wow!, this still retains it's power to shock all these years later, disturbing and even funny, Sabato features possibly the most chilling ending I have come across to date. Narrated by an artist in jail (that being Juan Pablo Castel)
who practically goes about stalking a woman named Maria after he spots her eying one of his canvases in a gallery. From this moment on he forces his way into her life, learning she has a blind husband, and ex-lovers drives him deranged with jealous envy. A perverse effect of the candour in Castel's retrospective account is that it almost makes you forget he's a murderer, believing this is an ordinary man, just telling a story. It wasn't always uncomfortable, and has some darkly humorous moments throughout. The lurking horror of his crime is all the more gross for its subtlety, that's what makes 'El Túnel' so darn chilling. A fantastic psychological short novel. Missing out on top marks though because I still felt it's story somehow seemed unbalanced.
Rating: really liked it
Dark book. Inside the mind of a derranged obsessed man. Not a pleasant read but well written.
Rating: really liked it
It should be sufficient to say that I am Juan Pablo Castel, the painter who killed María Iribarne.That is how the story unfolded itself. It began with that one sentence - a simple, staightforward confession.
After I finished the novella, it felt like waking up from a dream. Not just a normal dream but a nightmarish one. The kind that leaves you dazed as its after effect.
There was one person who could have understood me. But she was the very person I killed.
It's no secret that Castel was the one who killed María Iribarne. This is a book about his coming out with the truth behind his terrible actions
but that was it. He made no mentions of justifying his deeds nor does he shows much remorse over the dead woman he loved.
It was... disturbing.
But then again, everything about this painter is. It's horrifying to read through what goes on in this madman's mind. He had this hatred toward humanity boiling inside him and he purged it out heatedly in his words. In his eyes, all human beings are assholes. He even view them (us) as hypocritical, ass-kissing bastards. The way he wrote it, you can almost feel this hate-passion of his in your heart.
I scorn all humankind; people around me are vile, sordid, stupid, greedy, gross, niggardly. I do not fear solitude; it is almost Olympian
Then he'd go deep on the subject that makes you ponder -
really ponder over the meaning of it all. It's infectious and... wonderful.
On a tiny planet that has been racing toward oblivion for millions of years, we are born amid sorrow; we grow, we struggle, we grow ill, we suffer, we make others suffer, we cry out, we die, others die, and new beings are born to begin the senseless comedy all over again.
. . .
Was our life nothing more than a sequence of anonymous screams in a desert of indifferent stars?
It is his total cynicism toward man that draws me in to him. I confess, I agreed to some of his opinions. Hell, I could even find myself relating to him and for that I am deeply disturbed...
When he got obsessed with María and started to stalk her everywhere at anytime. I was way more than disturbed. I was fucking terrified. When he gets passionate over someone or something, he fully dedicate himself to it - to the point of nearly reaching the brink of madness, and when he finally broke, the outcome was terrible.
The relationship portrayed was very abusive, very cruel... I nearly couldn't stomach it and wanted to stop but this book would never let me. Besides.. How can I stop when I'm addicted to what Castel has to say? How can I leave this book when I can clearly see that he is getting sicker in his head and madder in his actions? The answer is simple -
I simply can't.This book isn't for everyone, I can guarantee that. You'll be sickened and haunted by it and perhaps, you may even find yourself in Juan Pablo Castel. Maybe that will make you hate the book for it but in my case, I am awed.
In the end, it all comes down to the questions. Did he killed María Iribarne out of love or hate? Was María really what he perceived her to be? The Tunnel is open to your own suggestions.
Pre-review What a
psychotic book this was. It feels like waking up from a terrible nightmare. So crazy, it's good.
See more reviews on books of all kinds of genres at... 
Rating: really liked it
Hell with it; I'm giving everything five stars. I just finished reading this short novel by the Argentine, Ernesto Sábato. How can you not read a book that begins with this line:
Bastará decir que soy Juan Pablo Castel, el pintor que mató a María Iribarne; supongo que el proceso está en el recuerdo de todos y que no se necesitan mayores explicaciones sobre mi persona.(Suffice it to say that I am Juan Pablo Castel, the painter who killed Maria Iribarne; I suppose that the trial is still in everyone’s memory and I need no further introduction.)
I think that is what you would call an arresting opening. Heavily influenced by the existentialists (I would imagine) Sabato’s protagonist struggles with obsession like no one you’ve ever known. Some of the scenes are almost comically pathetic in showing the neurosis of Juan Pablo Castel and his obsession for Maria. I especially liked the part when he hastily wrote her a letter, mailed it, thought better of it, and then tried to get the letter back from the rather Stalinist postal employee. In fact, I think that I could easily turn this novel of obsession into a romantic comedy, but I think that Woody Allen has already made a career of it.
