“The Moon in its Flight” by Gilbert Sorrentino and “Diario para un Cuento” by Julio Cortazar are both self- reflective fiction. There are two storylines in both stories. One is the romantic story, between Rebecca and a boy in Sorrentino’s narrative, and between a translator and Anabel in Cortazoar’s story. The second storyline is the narration of how to write the story. What makes the stories so interesting is that both depict the ardous efforts of a narrator- writer who is trying to tell an anecdote.

The two stories also depict narratives in which the happy ending, usual in romantic stories, is absent.What also makes the stories attracting is the intrusion of the narrator- writers which show a praticular way of writing. Seemingly, both stories depict a sense of failure when writing the story, arisen by different reasons. In “Diario para un Cuento”, the narrator- writer is the protagonist of the love story and of the story of telling a story. He is a middle-aged translator who belongs to the middle class. He has a conventional life and a girlfriend he can introduce to his friends.

A prostitute called Anabel usually visits him to have some letters translated.After some time passed he becomes one of her clients. He begins to like Anabel’s generosity, innocence and sincerity, and he even feels jealous of other men, William for instance, a seaman who is in love with Anabel. In one of the letters he translates Anabel so that she can send it to William, he adds an extra note to it in which he asks William to meet him as soon as he lands because he needed to warn him that if he did what one of the letters said, Anabel would be in danger. So William decides to do what is better for Anabel.However, after some weeks, the narrator- writer reads in a newspaper about the death of a prostitute, the same who was going to be the victim of Anabel’s attact in case William acceded to do what he had been asked to.

Apparently, when William got to know that the translator had an affair with Anabel, he decided to take revenge. The narrator- writer fells afraid of being accused of complicity, does not return to his office, moves to Europe and never meets Anabel again. “The Moon in its Flight” is about a summer romance which is narrated through a voice which is constantly coming between the reader and the writer.The story takes place in 1948, in a New Jersey summer cottage.

A young man and Rebecca, a Jewish fifteen years old girl, meet and fall in love. Love is the only thing that unites them: they belong to different social classes, and they both profess different religions. Rebecca’s parents do not like that kind of match. They are very concerned about him because he belongs to a poor family and he becomes an Irish Roman Catholic. Through out the novel, different circumstances prevent them from having sex.

Finally, they separate and they both get married.Ten years later, they meet again and at last they make love ‘without elaboration’. The encounter is necessary to exorcize the ghosts of the past, but they are different people now and are no longer in love. “The Moon in its Flight” and “Diario para un cuento” tell two stories: the anecdote and the story of writing. Both stories may be defined as those of failure too, and it is the context which brings about the failure of the love story in “The Moon in its Flight”.

Social differences separate Rebecca from the poor boy. As he is an Irish Roman Catholic and belongs to a low class, Rebecca’s parents would never accept him.Social circumstances prevent them from making love since in those days nobody would lend them an apartment because they were respectable people, and consequently, should never repress their instincts. In the 1950s women were not allowed to express their sexual desires and could only have sex after getting married.

This society which is very conservative and careful about women’s virtues is in fact hypocritical in its morals. This seemingly virtuous society, remarked the importance of marriage destroyed by the bombs of thousand of people in the Korean War.As it has already been pointed out, there is a second storyline. It is how the story gets narrated taking into account the difficulties of the narrator- writer to write the story as well as their intrusion while writing. There are many instances in which this last fact is clear: “Now I come to the literary part of this story, and the reader may prefer to let it go and watch her profile against the slick tiles of the IRT stairwell, since she has gone out of the reality of narrative, however splintered.

.. ( )..

. I grant you it will be unbelievable. In this quotation, we realize that Sorrntino intrudes in the narration of the story to make a comment in first person leaving, for a while, the story itself. Seemingly, in “Diario para un Cuento”, the narrator- writer makes some comments which scapes from what is the first story line: “..

. por que no la habre llamado Amalia o Berta. Problemas de escritura, no cualquier nombre se presta a...

(? vas a seguir? ). ” In this case, he is intruding within the story to make the reader know that he is being critical for having chosen the wrong name.The narrator writer in “The Moon in its Flight” fails to write the story he wants to tell. When he comes to the ‘literary part of the story’ he finds it is ‘unbelievable’, pure fabrication. A happy ending for the sentimental story would be unreal.

Gilbert Sorrentino agrees with the thought that ‘the function of the artist is to fail’. In “Diario para un Cuento”, the narrator- writer also fails in the struggle of writing. He confronts two main problems: his inability to keep distance from his characters and the frustration of trying to tell something that he does not know well enough.He knows he cannot write about Anabel because he does not really know much about her: “Se penosamente que jamas tendre acceso a Anabel como Anabel, y que escribir ahora un cuento sobre ella, un cuento de alguna manera de ella, es imposible” There are also some literary restrictions: the writer he admires would never write a story in the way he is writing this one.

He feels incapable of writing the anecdote in the way Bioy Casares would have done it: “…quisiera ser Bioy Casares sino porque me gustaria tanto poder escribir sobre Anabel como lo hubiera hecho el si la hubiera conocido y si hubiera escrito un cuento sobre ella.En ese caso Bioy hubiera hablado de Anabel como yo sere incapaz de hacerlo, mostrandola desde cerca y hondo y a la vez guardando esa distancia…” The narrator writer concludes that he could not write a story about Anabel because to write about her would be to write about himself. He only has a diary, a sketch, but he feels he has not yet began to write the story: “…me gustaria tanto escribir ese cuento sobre Anabel y al final es una pagina mas en el cuaderno, un dia mas sin empezar el cuento.Lo malo es que no termino de convencerme de que nunca podre hacerlo porque entre otras cosas no soy capaz de escribir sobre Anabel, no me vale de nada ir juntando pedazos, que en definitiva no son de Anabel sino de mi, casi como si Anabel estuviera queriendo escribir un cuento y se acordara de mi, de como no la lleve nunca a mi casa, de los dos meses en que el panico me saco de su vida, de todo eso que ahora vuelve, aunque seguramente a Anabel le importe muy poco y solamente yo me acuerdo de algo que es tan poco pero que vuelve y vuelve desde alla”.

In the two stories literature becomes the ‘subject matter’ of the narrative. This turn inward reminds the readers that they are reading fiction. From the very beginning the narrator of ‘The Moon in its Flight’ explains that this story sketches are total fabrication. We are reading symbols, not facts, because “whatever comes into fiction becomes fictional”. For the post-realistic objective, representation of reality is impossible. Gilbert Sorrentino explains very well that: “fiction should not take the place of reality.

Both narrators conclude the same: ‘Art cannot rescue anybody from anything; true art cannot solve social problems. While fake-art provides the reader with absurd happy endings, good literary stories describe what makes us unhappy, about the inanities of life. This kind of fiction is framed by social, historical, political and religious circumstances. As the possibilities of art are restricted by so many external factors, authors are not conceived as God-like creators.

Their real world, the real context shapes the narrative world.Unlike romance stories, which appeal to our feelings, real art is true to life. Romance provokes emotional reactions in us, outward expressions such as laughter and tears. Sorrentino believes that authors should avoid sentimentality: they should not appeal to the reader’s emotions. Both authors have a critical attitude question: the beliefs attitudes and values of their societies. This critical attitude is typical of post-war generations in which the old beliefs, attitudes and values of former generations were wrong and new ones had to be discovered to substitute them.

Both stories take place in the 1940s. More presicely, “The Moon in its Flight” takes place in 1948 in New Yersey. At that time, American society was undergoing a period of prosperity, without high unemployment rates. The story depicts a certain type of society .

It limits the possibilities of the young couple; that is why the setting is so important. In the story, the narrator- writer provides us with many elements which help us analyse the period. The narrative names the president Truman: “ The country bowled and spoke of Truman’s grit and spunk. Morover, there is referenceto the kind of music of that time: “ One of the songs that summer was ‘ For Heaven’s Sake’. Another, ‘ It’s Magic’. Who remembers the clarity of Claude Thornhill and Sarah Vaughan, their exquisite irrelevance? ” American society at that period was full of prejudices and was very conservative.

It oppressed women, they were not allowed to express their sexual desires , especiallly before marriage. Julio Cortazar’s story takes place in in the late 1940s, in Argentina.There is also, as there is in “The Moon in its Flight”, a mentioning of the president governing at that time in Argentina: “Esos tiempos: el peronismo ensordeciendome a puro altoparlante en el centro, el gallego portero llegando a mi oficina con una foto de Evita y pidiendome de manera nada amable que tuviera la amabilidad de fijarla en la pared...

” This quotation reveals the narrator- writer attitude towards politics and what he felt as regards the demonstrations in the streets with loudspeakers, directed specially to workers.Similarly, as it is in Sorrentino’s story, there is prejudice which again provokes the failure of the love story. Not only the society itself is prejudicial towards Anabel and her profession, but also the narrator- writer himself. He feels he does not know much about Anabel since he has depribed himself from knowing someone from a different social background so he is to be blamed for not being able to write about Anabel. Moreover, he realizes thet it is not well seen for a respectable man to be woth a woman like Anabel, adding to this the fact that he already had a fiance called Susan.This is also represented by Fermin, the doorman of his flat: “Me acuerdo (increible que me acuerde de cosas asi) que sal citarme con ella estuve tentado de decirle que mejor viniera a mi bulin donde tendriamos wisky bien helado y una cama como a mi me gustan, y que me contuvo la idea de que Fermin el portero con mas ojos que Argos la viera entrar o salir del ascensor y mi credito con el se viniese abajo, el que saludaba casi conmovido a Susana cuando nos veia salir o llegar juntos, e que sabia distinguir en materia de maquillajes, tacos de zapatos y carteras” After this analysis, we realize about how similarly both stories are dealt with and how much both narrator- writers have in common.

Similarly, they both show how difficult it becomes for them to narrate the story. Moreover, we get to know that though both stories do not have happy endings, we realize that this is thanks to the society that influences the mind of the writers at the moment of narrating the story.