Alberto Fuguet, un (in)digno descendiente de una buena tradición

Abstract

Mala onda (1993) forms part of a corpus of Chilean novels of learning (bildungsroman) and of the formation of the hero. Within this group novels like Martin Rivas (1861) by Blest Gana and Hijo de ladrón (1951) by Manuel Rojas stand out, due to their creation of paradigmatic and exemplary tales and characters. The interrogatory character, the constant irony, the selected model of agency, the structure and contents of the story, and the forms of discourse of Fuguet’s novel subvert the above mentioned models, historicizing a myth of the Chilean novel, parodying canonical discourse and problematizing the drawing room or salon, a privileged space in previous novels already subverted by Donoso and Eltit, and
desacralizing the scheme of the canonical family novel, positively and negatively, but always in a univocal form, with the power, the knowledge and the figure of the father.