SOURCE: Eller, Kenneth G. “Cela's ‘Anti-Novelette’: Café de artistas.” Hispanofila 97 (September 1989): 23-31.

In the following essay, Eller regards Café de artistas as an “anti-novelette” and argues that the narrative technique, thematic concerns, and structure of this short novel complement each other.

When Camilo José Cela was beginning his literary career in the early forties right after the Spanish Civil War, creative activity in Spain was in a paralyzed state. Oppressed by extensive governmental censorship, the few novelists who had not already left the country had little incentive and virtually no inspiration to produce anything of merit. Castellet described the situation as “átono” and “vulgar” (125). Reacting against these stagnant conditions, Cela soon began to reject the traditional styles and techniques utilized by his predecessors.¹ His novels became increasingly experimental in form. In Foster's view Cela was attempting to rearrange reality in order to portray human behavior and experience in...