Profiles: Alberto Fuguet
Alberto Fuguet scandalized Chilean society in 1989 with a novel that marked a milestone in Latin American literature: Mala onda (Bad Vibes). According to some critics, it’s “a book filled with adolescent rage, expulsions, drugs and hysteria.” A novel that entrenched the perceptions of young Latin Americans who didn’t understand Macondo (the literary genre of magical realism made famous by Latin American authors such as Gabriel García Márquez), but were more familiar with McDonald’s and for whom the only recognized revolution was Blockbuster: movies at home.
Fuguet is the honorary leader of the McOndo (the new Latin American genre that shunned magical realism and focused on the universe of pop culture and mass media) generation, who impregnated his literature with the dizzying lingo of a youth without creeds, saturated with sex and politics and only faithful to their passions: movies and rock. Even though he’s never tried drugs himself, ever since the stories of Sobredosis (Overdose) appeared, he became the enfant terrible of that literature that was born out of pop, and whose rhythm is only understood submerged in the zapping of the TV.
But Fuguet is no longer, as The New York Times called him, “ the Chilean Eminem.” He’s now well into his 40s and above all, has dared to “stop being so much Fuguet … and distance himself from the stereotype of Fuguet.” The old champion of that fast-paced literature, who was proud of its “transnational” character, is now determined to consciously construct his city in his writings.
He admits that it was against his will that as a teen he was made to return to Santiago de Chile, “a gray and imprisoned city,” after leaving California. He then saw himself “thrown” into a family nucleus with a grandmother who defended Pinochet’s principles and a cousin who was taken out by the dictator’s henchmen. But if that divided Chile was first an imposition, he later chose to remain in Santiago, a city that since 1990 has become less gray. And it’s there where he now does what he always dreamt of doing: make movies.
This new Fuguet has shaken off the accusation that had dogged him for years: “Your name isn’t Latin American enough.” And with the freedom of a true iconoclast, he confronts the paradox that he defended his writing from a transnational perspective in McOndo, and he now emphasizes his loyalty to his native land: “Not only do I live in my country but also, in what I have always written and what I film today, Santiago is always present.”
He likes to think that just as Cabrera Infante immortalized the Havana nightlife and Vargas Llosa gave Lima a place in literature, he is constructing Santiago de Chile. “Here, there’s much to be done. I like the idea of constructing my city through literature, movies and music.”
Se arrienda (For Rent), his first film, tells the story of a film musician who lives in Santiago and tries to survive with his art, but doesn’t earn enough and is faced with the dilemma of having to “sell himself” and work in a profession foreign to his dreams. It’s a fate Fuguet’s talent spared him from. Lucky for him ... not to mention for Santiago de Chile and modern Latin American literature.
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