The Doorman: A Novel [Paperback]

Reinaldo Arenas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 6, 1994

Arenas’s first work set in the United States breaks new ground with the story of a young Cuban refugee who becomes a doorman at a luxury apartment building. Oddly alienated from the tenants, he is seduced by their pets, who are determined to revolt against humans and human society.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Cuban novelist Arenas's ( Old Rosa ) exquisitely wrought surreal fantasy is a sardonic Swiftian parable on human cruelty and the impulse to flee from freedom. Juan, a Cuban refugee and overzealous doorman at a Manhattan luxury building, wants to help each tenant open the "door to true happiness." But the tenants resist enlightenment. Among them are an oddball pastor who touches or caresses everyone he meets; the inventor of the neon clothespin and the totally prosthetic body; a miserly retired actress who walks a stuffed dog every evening; two nearly identical gay lovers; and a suicidal woman whose fiance Juan pretends to be. All of the tenants have pets--dogs, cats, a rattlesnake, an orangutang, parrots, turtles, a trained bear, etc.--which mirror their personal foibles. As the animals warily befriend Juan and air their views on the dangerous human species, his conversations with the menagerie get him committed to a mental hospital. A fabulist of elegant invention, Arenas, who died last December, delivers a ferocious indictment of the human race.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

A young refugee from Cuba who is the doorman for a New York City luxury apartment feels a calling to show everyone in his building a wider mystical door to true happiness. The residents of Juan's building are all laughable parodies: the Hispanic pastor who preaches salvation through physical brotherly love, the professor of political science who tries with her militant and hypnotic stare to reconvert Juan to the Marxism of his abandoned Cuba. Failing to interest them in his search for the true door, Juan is recruited by the various outlandish pets belonging to the residents in their own plan for liberation. The plural narrating voice debates aloud how to make this unusual story more believable, and although they consider assigning the job to Arenas, they discard the idea because they feel that the author's blatant homosexuality would cloud the objectivity of their message. This imaginative allegory of surreal humans and their surreal pets was written five years before the authors' death from AIDS in 1990.
- Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 204 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1st Pbk. Ed edition (September 6, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080213405X
• ISBN-13: 978-0802134059
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,081,810 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Doors of Perception, March 22, 2001

By 

Gremulak (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Doorman: A Novel (Paperback)

I admit it, I did not pay attention to Reynaldo Arenas' work until the release of the film version of "Before Night Falls." I'm happy that so much attention has been paid to such a great writer, but the irony, like that permeating his writing, is that the world is shown this great artist only a decade after his death.

Of course "Before Night Falls" his memoir, is pivotal, but I was interested in "The Doorman" because I wanted to see what Arenas' friend, Lazaro, inspired him to write, or co-write, as was referenced in the film. Also, imagining the handsome actor Olivier Martinez (who played Lazaro, who actually was a doorman) being Juan the doorman in the book, made it special and sexy.

But the book! A wonderful, brief, concise and utterly charming allegory of suffering, immigration, and the absurdities of metropolitan life. I think the animals are meant to represent the various factions of oppressed people under Cuban communism, who cannot agree on how to escape. By limiting his setting to mostly the building where he works, Arenas provides a microcosm of human idiocy and animal desperation.

This is a must-have for all new Reynaldo Arenas fans. Thanks to his friend Lazaro for inspiring this soulful jewel.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A most wonderful book!!, March 15, 2001

By 

JackOfMostTrades "Jack" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Doorman: A Novel (Paperback)

Parable, fantasy, allegory,this is the story of a modern saint naive, surrounded by his wards who co-exist in a high rise Manhattan apartment building where he caters to their quotidian and existential needs; each tenant having his/her own bizarre, laughable, but ultimitely tragic life. As many Manhattanites do, this ensemble of characters has a pet and lives in a quirky, unsettling symbiotic relationship with the animals, be they cats, dogs, orangutangs, or bears. Arenas paints a broad mindscape clearly, coherently, imaginatively, wildly. The doorman himself--a displaced Cuban--displays passion, sympathy, perpexity toward this odd array of tenants, but it is they who are ultimately displaced--from their humanity. "Our fault lies in our partialities" Tennessee Williams once wrote, and in their futile attempts at finding coherence and meaning through the most bizarre behaviors, the denizens who inhabit our doorman's building never attain or fulfill their dreams. Rather, they merely embroil their innocent pets in their own morass. And when the pets rebel, the doorman becomes their champion. This is truly a spiritual novel that is wonderful to read. There are reminders of Vonnegut, Orwell, Kafka, "magical realism" in here, but Arenas is truly a unique voice whose work nearly transcends literature, taking (at least myself) into an altered state of consciousness. Arenas, whose life most would not consider "saintly," has written a book that addresses the pressing "life issues" of many of us. This book is vividly and comfortably translated into English by D. Koch, whose contribution to delivering the thoughts of the author should not be overlooked. I think you can tell I loved this book.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing triumph from a giant of Cuban literature, February 28, 2001

By 

Michael J. Mazza - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Doorman: A Novel (Paperback)

"The Doorman," by Reinaldo Arenas, is a marvelous novel by one of Cuba's literary greats. The book has been translated into English by Dolores M. Koch. In "The Doorman" Arenas tells the story of Juan, a Cuban refugee who takes a job as a doorman in a New York City apartment building. Arenas deftly blends elements of satire, science fiction, fantasy, fable, eroticism, and absurdism as he narrates Juan's remarkable relationships with the building's tenants and their pets.

Nothing is off limits in this bizarre comic odyssey. Religious fanaticism, bestiality, political dogmatism, cybernetic reconstruction, and impotence are just a few of the topics skewered by Arenas' savage, yet playful, imagination. In its social scope and satiric incisiveness, the novel is comparable to Ralph Ellison's classic "Invisible Man." Arenas' strange narrator, who frequently comments on the process of writing, reminds me of the narrator of "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas," the great novel by Brazilian author Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. And other aspects of the novel read like a warped blending of Dr. Seuss, "Charlotte's Web," and Franz Kafka. But make no mistake: Arenas is a wholly original talent, and "The Doorman" is a unique literary treasure.