The Interrupted Literature: Towards a Fragmentary and Portable Concept of the Spanish Short Fiction in the 21th Century

Abstract

The most outstanding literary critics in the study of Spanish mutant literature have not hesitated to point out fragmentation, discontinuity or brevity as essential features of the 21^st century writing. But beyond the neo-avant-garde works by Agustín Fernández Mallo, Vicente Luis Mora, Manuel Vilas and Juan Francisco Ferré, or apart from the Spanish microfiction and the Twitterature, there have been no researches on whether poetic principles such as fragmentation or genre hybridization are also recurrent in those Spanish authors whose productions do not fit with the theoretical approaches on afterpop and pangeic literature, despite being considered post-literary works of the new century. So, taking into account Paraíso Alto by Julio José Ordovás as paradigm, we will try to analyse thoroughly the main post-literary features which define the Ordovás’ literary work to approach a fragmentary and portable concept of the short fiction in the 21^st century, in terms of a fragmentary and discontinuous discourse, a minimalist structure and development as narrative, in addition to a literary form that stands out for its portability, by adapting itself to different genres.