On pataphysical minisoutos and other briefs: Fictional archipelagoes of José María Merino

Abstract

José María Merino excels in the practice of short short stories, in addition to other narrative genres. It includes mini-stories in each new installment of short stories, as it did in Aventuras e invenciones del profesor Souto (2017), volume object of our study. In "Nanophilology and literary theory", Ottmar Ette leans on some ideas of Levi-Strauss in El pensamiento salvaje to admit that "[...] the strength of the artistic conception grows [...] from resignation, from reduction; that is to say, from a modeling that is based on miniaturization and that bets on it ”(2015, 52). Without a doubt, they are the foundations of the mini-story, whose differential features, in our opinion, are ultra-brevity and condensation, never forgetting the essential narrative. Ette takes up Roland Barthes' concept of archipelago, of worlds-islands, to conclude that "[...] individual text-islands can be traversed and linked to one another through the most diverse paths, their corresponding meaning is produced precisely from the different sense of the reading (s) ”(2015: 62). It is an illuminating idea when studying the minifictions, since in this way a set of micro-stories can be seen in its entirety -the archipelago and its multiple relationships and connections- and also in its individuality -each minitext as an island.From this conceptualization, in this essay it will be verified how the different literary islands of the minisoutos have proposed reflections on our knowledge of the world and of today's society, crossing literary and thought boundaries.