Benedetti is venerated as one of the finest Uruguayan writers. He used to drink coffee in Cafe Brasileiro, one block away from where I live. At one table would be Galeano scribbling away, in another Benedetti. Many years ago I read some of his short stories and enjoyed them. Therefore La Tregua, his most famous novel, came as something of a shock, in terms of its banality, its petty sexist viewpoint, its dogged one-dimensionality. The novel is presented as a diary, kept by the narrator, Martín Santomé, as he approaches retirement, aged 50. The narrator’s wife died many years ago, he has patchy relationships with his three children, and he’s scared of growing old. Then he falls in love and begins an affair with Laura Avellaneda, a winsome underling in the office. She’s half his age, and at first he comments that he doesn’t find her terribly attractive, but gradually love finds a way and Santomé starts to dream of a contented retirement, pottering around going for coffee and the cinema, with Laura by his side. The only thing that disturbs this reverie is the occasional bout of jealousy brought on by Santomé’s awareness of the age gap, and the news the his youngest son is gay, something that fills him with disgust. One searches for moments when the voice of the narrator and the voice of the author might diverge, suggesting a sly commentary on the author’s part regarding his protagonist’s staid, questionable attitudes, but increasingly it feels as though this search is in vain. In the end it feels as though La Tregua merely captures the most mundane, grey uninspiring aspects of Uruguayan culture, a land of the prematurely aged, the quietly lascivious, the European rump ensconced in a strange unwieldy continent whose origins provoke little curiosity, whose blessings mostly revolve around coffee.
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