"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.


Going back   January 2, 2001
 47 out of 48 found this review helpful

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.


Different than, but equally as good as, the film   May 17, 2001
 19 out of 20 found this review helpful

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 moving story of a courageous, blighted life.   April 15, 2001
 16 out of 16 found this review helpful

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.


"Transcending The Particularities of Sexual Orientation"   June 29, 2005
 16 out of 16 found this review helpful

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.