SOURCE: "Plan de evasión: The Loss of Referentiality," in Hispanic Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1, Fall, 1982, pp. 105-11.

In the following essay, Tamargo contends that A Plan for Escape evades interpretation by withholding the evidence necessary for a single, definitive reading.

Developing in a tradition in which the very activity of writing is posed as a problem, the contemporary novel offers interesting possibilities regarding the relationship between the text and the reality it describes. The discourse in these texts is not constructed on the appropriation of a referent outside itself; instead it presents itself as the production of its possibilities, limits and forms of articulation. This is what Stephen Heath, in his book on the "nouveau roman," defines as "a shift of emphasis in the novel from a monologistic 'realism' to … the practice of writing." Heath later explains the "practice of writing" in this way:

Its foundation is a...