THE SHORT NOVELS OF ONETTI, BY RICARDO PIGLIA: SECRET, MACGUFFIN AND NARRATIVE FRAME. NOTES TO THINK THE ARTIST-RESEARCHER

Abstract

We will seek to analyze in this article the role of researcher-artist of the Argentine writer Ricardo Piglia. For this, we will reconstruct the main arguments of Piglia present in his classes on the short novels of the Uruguayan writer Juan Carlos Onetti, dictated in 1996, but only published in 2019. The first topic that we are interested in highlighting is the articulation between the secret and the Macguffin in the construction of the mystery of the story. The second topic that concerns us is the fictional construction of the narrative framework, considering the narrator’s bias as part of the story. We are especially interested in Piglia’s compositional gaze in his reading of Onetti. Finally, we will analyze two works by Piglia to understand how the author applies the compositional principles of his fictional reading in his own works: Prison perpetua and El camino de Ida.