Onetti. Juan Carlos Onetti.

Bart L. Lewis

Throughout a closely-observed and honored writing career that began in 1933 (Onetti Goodbyes xvii), Uruguay's Juan Carlos Onetti (1909-1994) has hewed with unitary consistency to the belief that putting a tale down on paper is a troubled matter, loosening lives that are only virtual, possible deceits, scant sufferings, posed, languid beings. It is this attention to the making of the text itself that must surely lead the critic to see in Onetti not only the modernist reformer of the Latin American novel, but more significantly, the metafictionist theoretician who "explore[s] a theory of fiction through the practice of fiction" (Waugh 2).[1] Analysis of four exemplary works by Onetti along the trajectory of his stories and novels permits a clear, focused understanding of his use of the metafictional technique, grounded in the power of metonymy to realize the space of the text and to engender the communication of any messages concerning the fiction/reality dichotomy that the author may seek. "Un sueno realizado" (1941), Los adioses (1954), Dejemos hablar al viento (1979) and Cuando entonces (1987) distinguish the Onetti canon by the varied revelations of their creator's metafictional commitment.