Queer Places:
Princeton University (Ivy League), 110 West College, Princeton, NJ 08544
Cementerio del Balneario del Zapallar
Zapallar, Provincia de Petorca, Valparaíso, Chile
José Manuel Donoso Yáñez (5 October 1924 – 7 December 1996), known as José Donoso, was a Chilean writer, journalist and professor. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States and Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death.
After his death, his personal papers at the University of Iowa revealed his
homosexuality; a revelation that caused a certain controversy in Chile. Donoso is the author of a number of short stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. His best known works include the novels Coronación (Coronation), El lugar sin límites (Hell Has No Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality, the duplicity of identity, psychology, and a sense of dark humor.
Donoso was born in Santiago to the physician José Donoso Donoso and Alicia Yáñez (Eliodoro Yáñez's niece). He studied in The Grange School, where he was classmates with Luis Alberto Heiremans and Carlos Fuentes, and in Liceo José Victorino Lastarria (José Victorino Lastarria High School). Coming from a comfortable family, during his childhood he worked as a juggler and an office worker, much before he developed as a writer and teacher.[citation needed]
In 1945 he traveled to the southernmost part of Chile and Argentina, where he worked on sheep farms in the province of Magallanes. Two years later, he finished high school and signed up to study English in the Institute of Teaching in the Universidad de Chile (University of Chile). In 1949, thanks to a scholarship from the Doherty Foundation, he changed to studying English literature at Princeton University, where he studied under such professors as R. P. Blackmur, Lawrence Thompson and Allan Tate. The Princeton magazine, MSS, published his first two stories, both written in English: "The Blue Woman" (1950) and "The Poisoned Pastries" (1951).[1] Donoso graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English from Princeton in 1951 after completing a senior thesis titled "The Elegance of Mind of Jane Austen. An Interpretation of Her Novels Through the Attitudes of Heroines."[2]
In 1951, he traveled to Mexico and Central America. He then returned to Chile and in 1954 started teaching English at the Universidad Católica (Catholic University) and in the Kent School.
His first book, Veraneo y otros cuentos (Summer Vacation and Other Stories), was published in 1955 and won the Premio Municipal de Santiago (Municipal Prize of Santiago) the following year. In 1957, while he lived with a family of fishermen in the Isla Negra, he published his first novel, Coronación (Coronation), in which he described the high Santiaguina classes and their decadence. Eight years later, it was translated and published in the United States by Alfred A Knopf and in England by The Bodley Head.
In 1958, he left Chile for Buenos Aires, returning to Chile in 1960.[3]
He started writing for the magazine Revista Ercilla in 1959 when he found himself traveling through Europe, from where he sent his reports. He continued as an editor and literary critic of that publication until 1964. He was also a co-editor of the Mexican journal Siempre.[4][5]
In 1961, he married the painter, writer and translator María del Pilar Serrano (1925–1997), also known as María Esther Serrano Mendieta, daughter of Juan Enrique Serrano Pellé from Chile and Graciela Mendieta Alvarez from Bolivia. Donoso had previously met her in Buenos Aires.[3]
They left Chile again in 1965 for Mexico and later Donoso was a writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa from 1965 to 1967, when he moved with his wife to Spain.[3][1] In 1968, the couple adopted a three-month-old girl from Madrid, whom they named María del Pilar Donoso Serrano, best known as Pilar Donoso.[6]
In 1981, after his return to Chile, he conducted a literature workshop in the which, during the first period, many writers like Roberto Brodsky, Marco Antonio de la Parra, Carlos Franz, Carlos Iturra, Eduardo Llanos, Marcelo Maturana, Sonia Montecino Aguirre, Darío Oses, Roberto Rivera and, very fleetingly, Jaime Collyer, Gonzalo Contreras, and Jorge Marchant Lazcano, among others. Later, Arturo Fontaine Talavera, Alberto Fuguet and Ágata Gligo attended, among others.
At the same time, he continued publishing novels, even though they didn't receive the same repercussions as preceding works:[citation needed] La desesperanza (Curfew), the novellas Taratuta and Naturaleza muerta con cachimba (Still Life with Pipe) and Donde van a morir los elefantes (1995). El mocho (1997) and Lagartija sin cola (The Lizard's Tale) were published posthumously.
José Donoso died of liver cancer in his house in Santiago, 7 December 1996 at the age of 72.[7] On his deathbed, according to popular belief, he asked that they read him the poems of Altazor of Vicente Huidobro. His remains were buried in the cemetery of a spa located in the province of Petorca, 80 kilometers from Valparaíso.[8]
In 2009, his daughter, Pilar Donoso, published a biography of her father titled Correr el tupido velo (Drawing the Veil), based on her father's private diaries, notes and letters, as well as Pilar's own memories.[9]
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