Theory of intermezzo: In-between approaches for reading Material rodante by Gonzalo Maier

Abstract

Using the notions from the postcolonial and postmodern approaches, this work tries to perform a more precise reading of the novel Material rodante (Minúsula, 2015) by the Chilean writer Gonzalo Maier (Talcahuano, 1981), building a particular conceptualization for this: the theory of intermezzo (or in-between, or interstice) when this book presents some analogy with the dramatic structure. In Material rodante, this intermezzality crosses through the interrogative of identity (although paradoxically and finally discarded) the concept of space (traveling from Belgium to the Netherlands and back), and the argument itself. Even when it seems that it is a repetitive an insusbstantial trip, that emerges as an insignificant loop between the cities of Lovaina and Nijmejen, Maier does not only achieve a disgresive novel, as previous critics have pointed out, but a schematization of his own narrative forms, which had been articulating in some parts of Leyendo a Vila-Matas (2011) and will permeate, also, into his later work. That is why, at one point in the essay, the comparative analysis that we establish between Material rodante and certain areas of the work of the aforementioned Enrique Vila-Matas is important, since it will allow a better understanding of where the formal searches of Maier are germinating from and moving towards.