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Before Night Falls: A Memoir

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"Before Night Falls," the autobiography of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, is an astonishing book. Arenas notes that he dictated part of the book into a tape recorder, and it was later transcribed by a friend. This format probably accounts for the book's intimate tone; I could imagine Arenas sitting in front of me and telling the whole story over coffee. The book has been translated into a forthright English by Dolores M. Koch.

"Before Night Falls" begins with Arenas' childhood in rural Cuba. It details his life as a writer, his many sexual exploits as a gay man, and his sufferings under the regime of Fidel Castro. It is amazing to read how Arenas had to struggle to exist as a writer in a police state; he tells how he was forced to hide manuscripts and how friends smuggled his writings out of Cuba for publication in foreign countries.

The book contains many shocking and painful episodes, such as his accounts of his own imprisonment and exile. But his life story also contains moments of humor and hope. Particularly interesting are Arenas' accounts of his friendships with other gay Cuban writers, such as Virgilio Pinera and Jose Lezama Lima. Overall, the tone of the book reflects Arenas' many moods: sensuous, angry, joyful, outraged, wry, melancholy, and--above all--defiant. His writing is rich in colorful personalities and fascinating anecdotes.

An interesting companion volume to Arenas' autobiography would be the book "Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me," by gay Colombian-born writer Jaime Manrique. Manrique knew Arenas personally, and "Eminent Maricones" contains an account of Arenas' last days as he worked to complete "Before Night Falls" while dying of AIDS-related complications. Having read that book made me appreciate Arenas' achievement even more.

At one point Arenas recalls advice given to him by Jose Lezama Lima: "Remember that our only salvation lies in words: write!" Reading this book, I get the sense that Arenas achieved his own personal "salvation" through his literature, and in particular, through this autobiography. "Before Night Falls" is an amazing human testament that moved me deeply. If you are interested in Latin American literature, gay studies, the art of autobiography, or human rights issues, I strongly recommend this book to you.

It is most reassuring to see that a film based on Arenas' extraordinary book "Before Night Falls" is gaining the kudos and exposure this underrated (in this country at least)author deserves. I first read this book when it was translated and released in 1993 and seeing the film only made me hasten to return to the original book. Time has aged the eloquence of this memoir but has not marred the impact of the brilliance of the writing. Arenas wrote with a degree of truth and keen observation that makes his moments of antics with his characters like comic relief in a Shakespearean play. For obvious reasons the film (brilliantly directed by Julian Schnabel and acted by Javier Bardem as Arenas) could not dwell on some of the elements that make the book so unique: the extended description of life in Cuban prisons is only touched on. But the single most significant rediscovery in reading "Before Night Falls" again is Arenas' poetry. He had a gift of distilling Magical Realism, transforming even the radical ugliness of Castro's Cuba into the topical paradise so beloved by Cubans everywhere. See the film, but let that experience introduce you to the rich literary output of one of the most exciting writers of the last century.

Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls (Penguin, 1993)

Arenas' memoir of life in Cuba has recently been made into one of the finest films extant by Julian Schnabel. Schnabel did an excellent job with the book; while his interpretation of the text was loose in places, he managed to capture in images the style of Arenas' writing.

In other words, if you saw the movie before reading the book, you're going to be somewhat surprised. Some of Schnabel's more memorable scenes are mentioned in passing (if at all) in the book, and one of the film's central sequences, the balloon escape, gets one sentence. Where Arenas and Schnabel intersect is in the lushness, the ability to find celebration and remarkable beauty inside the ugliness of the Castro regime (and, for a few years' worth, the Batista regime before it).

Arenas' memoir is also likely to shock more than a few in its sexual explicitness (another aspect Schnabel rather shied away from, which I found a tad surprising while reading the book), but so be it. There is nothing gratuitous about either Arenas' promiscuity or his literary descriptions of it; it's no different than using the language of excess to describe the beastliness of a life that involves hand-to-mouth poverty and political censure. And throughout, more than anything (and perhaps this is what makes the book so powerful), Before Night Falls is a celebration, both of Arenas' life and the lives of many other Cuban writers persecuted as dissidents in the latter half of the twentieth century. **** 1/2

The film version of "Before Night Falls" doesn't contain a fraction of the incident in Reinaldo Arenas' actual book. Most filmgoers will be grateful for this, for most of what happened to Arenas would be unbearable to watch on film. Here was a man--a courageous man, a true artist and a genius--who NEVER got a break in life, from the poverty of his birth to his persecution as a young man to the horrible illness that cut him down at 47. Even now, people find it hard to fit Arenas into their comfortable little molds. He was a total maverick who insisted on the utter freedom of the individual, to a point even Ayn Rand might have considered excessive. Arenas was just as appalled by the avarice masquerading as virtue that occurs so often in capitalism as he was by the bloodthirstiness masquerading as virtue which has typified Castro's Cuba and other Communist dictatorships. The tale of his sufferings in Castro's prisons is horrifying, and it is scarcely less appalling to learn that the Western publishers who grew rich from his novels refused to pay him royalties after he had escaped to America. He was only happy when seeking out sexual partners--which eventually he had in the thousands--and that automatically made him unacceptable to many who otherwise would have claimed him as a brother in ideology. Readers of "Before Night Falls" are as likely to be outraged by Arenas' own actions as by what was done to Arenas; and yet they will finish the book filled with admiration, love, and pity for a man who was, in every way that counts, a true hero. I was one of those who believed that the embargo of Cuba wasn't working, and should be abandoned; after reading Reinaldo Arenas' story, however, I'm not so smugly certain about that any more.

Arenas is neither a fan of capitalism nor communism, but don't let his political views temper your reading of this amazing memoir. Beginning in Cuba when he was just a child who licked dirt, this story takes us on a ride from the downfall of Batista to the rise of Castro, and the oppression suffered by gays, artists, women and all those who did not fit into Castro's Cuba. Arenas' tale is a powerful one, and not for the faint of heart. I am not referring here to the homosexuality in the book, I am referring to the graphic descriptions of life in prison that Arenas underwent. That alone is enough to make one put down the book for a while, and take a stroll. In the end, this book is a wonderful, untempered look at rebellion, and escape. Arenas is not the sad, gentle soul telling a tale. rather, this book is full of fire and anger, and makes it that much more satisfying. I highly recommend this book to anybody who has taken freedom for granted (and that includes me).

Reinaldo Arenas's account of his life in Cuba - spanning thedictatorships of both Batista and Castro - is one of the most movingand horrifying testaments to courage I have ever read. Writing thismemoir while he is dying of AIDS as an exile in New York, Arenasdemonstrates how as a young man growing up without freedom underextreme poverty, violence, and oppression he dreamed of moving to the"North" where he envisioned a world of opportunity and thefreedom to pursue creativity and eroticism without fear of judgementor betrayal...

The courage of this man is as amazing as hisextraordinary will to survive. I think the most fascinating sectionof this book is when he recounts his attempts at escape from theIsland and his subsequent "Kafkaesque" imprisonment. I keptturning the pages in nervous and somewhat astonished anticipationwanting to know what happens next.

This book is also very eroticallycharged. Whole sections are devoted to a cataloging of Arenas'svarious homosexual liaisons, sparing no graphic detail. By thisaccount, Cuba in the 60s and 70s would seem a gay man's paradise untilyou take into consideration that much of his activity was from adesperate need to find beauty and fulfillment in a world that hadlittle time or room for either.

Certainly not for the faint ofheart, Before Night Falls is a remarkable odyssey and not one anyreader is likely to forget.

It's always interesting to check out a book *after* you've seen the movie. And Arenas' book feels like a completely different experience than Julian Schnaebel's equally fine film. The film takes some of the most colorful episodes of the book - however brief they may be (some worth no more than one paragraph of Arenas' time) - and stitches them together to form a pastiche of Arenas' life.

The book is even more powerful because of its intense and lengthy passages detailing Arenas' *very* humble beginnings, his struggles to evade capture by the secret police, and his physically and mentally debilitating lengthy stay in just about the most vile prison setting you could ever imagine.

There's an obvious urgency in this book. Arenas is dying of AIDS at the time, and the book is the result of a lot of sessions of him speaking his recollections into a tape recorder. And the book, even in this English translation, maintains that informal, conversational, "pull closer, friend" type of feel.

Another noted difference between screen and paper versions: while the movie certainly does not hide Arenas' lifestyle choices and his noted promiscuity, the book is on a different level entirely. He leaves no stone unturned in describing a no-holds-barred personal sexual history replete with lovers, animals, cousins, friends, enemies, prisoners, transvestites, government officials, informants, army recruits, teenage ruffians, hired help, etc. It's jaw-dropping. Arenas lived life with the same urgency that comes through in his writing.

After seeing the movie, I was interested in reading the book to get a feel for the writers voice. I'm so glad I did. Written in almost a stream of consciousness, Arenas's telling of a gay writers life under Fidel Castro is far more harrowing that could be depicted on screen. But it's also such a testament to the human spirit, and the quest to break the confines of imprisonment physically as well as artistically and sexually. He relays his story with an unapologetic frankness in regards to his various sexual expolits as well as his bitterness towards Castro. I'm amazed that people manage to survive against so much adversity. After his suicide, we as readers are fortunate there's a body of work that exits, and after reading this biography,the books should be considered all the more precious for the risks it took to get them published.

Despite coming from a poor rural background, Reinaldo Arenas [1943-1990] was successful in having studied at Universidad de La Habana and later worked in the prestigious Biblioteca Nacional [National Library]. At bitter, even dangerous odds with the Revolutionary regime in Cuba both politically and on account of his open homosexuality, Arenas was expelled from Cuba in 1980 [during the Muriel Exodus] and lived in New York City, with AIDS, until his suicide in 1990. Shamefully underrated in this country, Arenas published more than a dozen remarkable works, many of which are now available in English translation.

Arenas's highly acclaimed autobiography, BEFORE NIGHT FALLS, adapted to the large screen with the brilliant Spanish actor Javier Bardem in the title role, is a work that has all the resonance of true art and thus transcends the particularities of the artist's sexual orientation. What we have instead is a painfully honest portrait of intimacy and the insights its gives the reader are into the universal human condition. Arenas has the stunning ability [as seen in his fictional novel FAREWELL TO THE SEA, 1982] to reach out for the deepest frequencies of the heart, for those elusive qualities of the spirit... if you will. Arenas is exhilarated by life's realities and is excited by merely being alive. A large measure of that exhilaration, I'm convinced from a careful reading of his short stories and poetry, emanates from the thinking life, the life of reveries and of intimate reflection. As much drama takes place in the writer's mind as in his external life. Thinking and reflecting are keenly stimulating for this extraordinarily beleaguered artist. This autobiography is shocking and agonizing, but also vibrant and insightful, jubilant and witty ... and perhaps most reflective of the writer's multiplicity of moods, consistently rebellious to the core.

Arenas's language is poetically eloquent. His is an art structured from and upon his own honesty and his unusual experiences ... not from clever word play or verbal pyrotechnics. Arenas deals in reality-facing and he addresses this reality with a special rhetoric of a kind of spiritual sensibility and a unique voice [rather bold for Latin American literature], thus transforming the real into a vision of what's true and honest, what's possible, what's beautiful. But of course, he committed suicide to end it, didn't he? In every sense of the term, Arenas's expressed passions are a humanist's vision that is earned and authenticated in his writing, one that all readers can feel and experience. I agree with reviewer Grady Harp, himself an outstanding poet, when he stated some time ago that Arenas wrote with a depth of "truth and observation that exudes Magical Realism." It was L. Frank Baum [THE WIZARD OF OZ] who remarked, "There ARE strange creatures in this forest. But are they ALL wild?" Arenas is highly recommended reading!

Alan Cambeira
author of Azucar's Sweet Hope...Her Story Continues.

Early in his memoir Arenas tells the story of reciting a story for a local library competition. Arenas writes of the judges, "They were impressed, not by my skill in telling the story but by the story itself." To some extent, that stands as a pretty fair assessment of my own reaction to BEFORE NIGHT FALLS. The story of Arenas's life is remarkably astonishing: born into abject poverty, he experienced the tremendous horrors of life in castro's Cuba as a dissident writer, was enslaved by the state in order to work in sugar plantations, jailed for his writings and sexual behavior, and then managed to escape to the USA as a Marielito where he remained in relative poverty and was ultimately struck down by AIDS.

While the story itself is absolutely spellbinding, the telling of it is not. Arenas's persona comes across at times as spectacularly grandiose, and the litany of the prizes he won for his writing (or of those he lost only because of the judges' political biases) gets a bit wearisome. So too does his recounting of his erotic adventures, which are often quite funny but become so prodigious and repetitive they eventually become tedious. And his insights into sexual mores and political realities seem very blinkered and Manichaean: there's very little nuance to be had in Arenas's vision of the world.

Nevertheless, I would recommend this book just for the glimpse it offers of an operatically intense life experienced under tremendous hardships and injustices.