The modern novel has undergone three major developments in the concept of plot structure: "total plot," "loose-ends plot," and pattern as a substitution for plot. Although the so-called "new" French novel—the third of these developments—has been principally a French phenomenon, it is possible to point to a few writers outside of France who have availed themselves of this form of the novel. In Spain, it is Camilo José Cela whose work best represcents the concept of pattern in the novel. Camilo José Cela (1916–) has become the undisputed leader of the Post-Civil War novel in Spain with a series of audacious works beginning in 1942 with the publication of La familia de Pascual Duarte, the most widely read and discussed Spanish novel of its generation. Cela is a prolific writer whose works dominate the Spanish literary scene—even more so since his induction into the Spanish Royal Academy in 1957. It is possible to see the beginning of his interest in the new novel as early as La colmena (1951), the work generally considered to be his masterpiece. His subsequent works, Mrs. Caldwell habla con su hijo (1953), La catira (1955), Tobogán de hambrientos (1962), Garito de hospicianos (1963), La familia del héroe (1965), demonstrate in some ways the use of the major techniques of the new novel. Although Mrs. Caldwell habla con su hijo is apparently the first consistent example of the new novel in Spain, Cela's Tobogán de hambrientos and La familia del héroe will be concerned in the present discussion of Cela's reliance on pattern as a substitution for plot in the novel.

La familia del héroe represents Cela's use of what one may refer to as extrinsic pattern. In the novel, Evangelino Gadoupa Faquitrós, grandson of the hero, don Samuel Faquitrós, relates to a group of contertulianos the history of his illustrious family. The novel is divided into nine sections, each one occasioned by the vermouth which don Evangelino has ordered in the preceding chapter: "Primer vermú, Segundo vermú … Noveno y último vermú." Don Evangelino describes the grotesque descendants of his heroic grandfather in the form of a monologue which forms the bulk of the text. In terms of pattern, it is significant that Cela interrupts to describe don Evangelino in "Quinto vermú," the central segment of the work.

Cela adheres to another technique of the new novel, the eschewing of interiorization and the restriction of the subject matter to phenomena and reality which can be observed "objectively." When a listener interrupts the speaker to offer a possible explanation for the behavior of the latter's relatives, he is told: "Pues, mire usted, yo no le digo ni que sí ni que no: yo me limito a contarles a ustedes las cosas, tal como fueron." In another instance: "… les estoy contando a ustedes la historia de mi familia. El conjunto de las historias de todas las familias españolas, es la historia de España, la historia de la patria de nuestros mayores. La objectividad más absoluta es el mejor adorno del historiador."

It seems that Cela draws no relationship between the content of the novel and the formal expression which it assumes, given both the theme of his novel—the absurdity of the pretenses of civilized man—and its structure as outlined above. The pattern of the novel stands out as a separable structure, a framework or a design around which the slight narrative clings. Indeed, it would be possible to view the extrinsic pattern of La familia del héroe as the only basis available to us for discussing the unity of the novel, a novel which, without the pattern, would be even more amorphous than it is. Cela's novel succeeds in advancing a particular vision of mankind that is given coherency and organization by means of the unity of the time and place of Gadoupa Faquitrós' story. This unity is substantiated or reinforced by the extrinsic pattern of the succession of the nine vermouths.

Tobogán de hambrientos, an earlier novel also dealing with the moral and original sin of mankind, likewise makes use of a formal pattern for purposes of esthetic unity. However, in this case it is possible to speak of a formal pattern which is in some intrinsic way related to the narrative theme as a whole.

Tobogán de hambrientos consists of two parts. Each part is divided into 100 numbered narrative units, each with a short identifying title. Part one (Primer Tiempo) is subtitled "Uno, Dos, Tres, Cuatro, Cinco …" Part Two (Segundo Tiempo) is called "Cinco, Cuatro, Tres, Dos, Uno." The first 100 narrative units characterize the personalities of a group of closely interrelated people who are presented in the order 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,… 100. There is no prescribed plan for progression from one individual to another. Everyone knows or is related to someone else, and the discussion of one person leads naturally into the discussion of another: his brother, his friend, his sweetheart, his father, his neighbor, all of whom in turn are linked to other members of the human complex. Following closely the new novel procedure of substituting pattern for plot, Cela's work is reminiscent of the conversation of a backward gossip who effortlessly moves from one person to another.

The second 100 narrative units present approximately the same group of individuals in reverse order, 100 … 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Although a given individual may figure in several narrative units, two corresponding units in the two parts serve as a point of departure for tracing the complex relationship that an individual has with the rest of mankind. There is no time sequence in either part and no temporal relationship between the two separate parts. While incidents of cause-and-effect may be cited, the novel presents two separate and not necessarily related moments in the state of affairs of a given set of human correspondences. In this respect, Tobogán de hambrientos is similar in form to La familia del héroe. In La familia del héroe, however, the web of human relationships is not a consideration, and the formal elements are mechanistic and quite apparent. In Tobogán de hambrientos the multiplicity of individuals and the complexity of their mutual relations diminish the obviousness of the author's symmetrical pattern. There is no predicting the shape which a particular set of relationships will take even from one part to the next, and the formal structure of the novel functions as one means for defining the extent of the narrative. Since the novel ends with the same individual with whom it began. Tobogán de hambrientos constitutes a circular narrative. Cela's novel achieves the delineation of a segment of society which, if it were not for the external imposition of the form, would have an infinite extension. Cela justifies the formal elements of Tobogán de hambrientos on the following grounds:

En estas páginas de hoy, el esqueleto que las sustenta es de culebra. No es mía la culpa de la afición que tengo (y que sí reconozco como mía) a coleccionar esqueletos dispares. Este Tobogán de hambrientos quizás no sea una novela para los legalistas de la preceptiva, aquellos que sueñan con matar a la literatura para ver si se está quieta de una buena vez y se deja estudiar con sosiego. A ellos quisiera rogar que inventaran un nuevo género (o una denominación, que lo anterior sería demasiado pedir) o que, alternativamente, se decidieran a sentenciar que este libro mío no tiene nada que ver con la literatura, supuesto tampoco probable.

Tobogán de hambrientos pudiera clasificarse como cuento larguísimo, si admitiéramos que el substantivo y el adjectivo no se destruyen y neutralizan recíprocamente. La idea inicial de estas páginas brotó de mi pensamiento de que en esta vida todo está ligado y concatenado de forma que no queda jamás ni una sola pieza suelto; todas las cosas tienen un número—dijo, hace ya la mar de años, Filolao. El ejemplo de las cerezas es muy socorrido aunque, de paso, quizás ahora nos resulte también insuficiente: los hombres y sus acaeceres están mucho más ligados entre sí que las rabilargas y arracimadas cerezas del frutero.

The reader finds it difficult to keep in mind the 100 sets of intimate and intricate relationships of the characters. It is unnecessary that he do so, for little would be gained in the way of insight into the personalities of the characters and their doings. Rather, that the novel has any structure at all corresponds to what Cela feels to be the natural pattern of life. The elaborate structure of the novel is one reasonable way of reflecting the elaborate structure of the human relationships. As is true for the majority of the technical innovations in the novel, the presence of pattern corresponds, as Le Sage has pointed out in the study cited previously, to a particular metaphysical concept concerning the nature of reality and the novelist's means of knowing and portraying that reality. The meeting between the metaphysical concept and the actual elaboration of the work of art—the artist's attempt to give the illusion of truth to his concept of reality and his vision of mankind—results in the particular structural format which the critic describes. Pattern as a substitute for plot mirrors the novelist's conviction that life is not plot, not adventure in the storyteller's sense of the word, but that it is, precisely, pattern. In addition to being a contrivance for purely esthetic purposes, pattern may then also become the novelist's means for coherent unity in the presence of chaotic life, or it may be his artistic attempt to reflect a particular pattern of existence of which his novel is a unique manifestation. And it is precisely Cela's novels which are excellent examples not only of art as pattern, but as well of the techniques of extrinsic and intrinsic pattern in so far as pattern reflects a particular segment of the theme. In addition, Cela's importance in the development of the contemporary Spanish novel derives in great part from his experimentation with the techniques of the new novel and from his commitment in his most recent works to that highly innovative mode of fiction.