SOURCE: Franz, Thomas R. “Cela's La familia del héroe, the nouveau roman, and the Creative Act.” MLN 88, no. 2 (March 1973): 375-77.

In the following essay, Franz challenges the perception of La familia del héroe as objective or neutral.

In his study, Forms of the Novel in the Work of Camilo José Cela, David W. Foster points out many ways in which Cela's La familia del héroe appears to embody techniques employed in the French “new novel.”¹ Among these are the substitution of pattern for plot, the denial of character “depth,” the restriction of subject matter to observable phenomena, and an “objective” presentation of these observed “facts.” In support of his statement, Foster cites principally the division of the book into nine vermús and the various places where the raconteur, don Evangelino Gadoupa Faquitrós, rejects his listeners' urgings that he form value judgments about the...