Torrente Ballester's novel La saga/fuga de J.B. as a rehabilitation of imaginative prose

When the novel La saga/fuga de J.B. (The Saga/Fugue of J.B.) came out in 1972, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester (1910-1999) had a long and extensive literary career behind him, but one which was marked by failures and the indifference of readers and critics. This novel, however, caused a sensation and was highlighted as Spain's answer to the Latin American "boom", as a proof that resourcefulness and unfettered imagination have their place in the Old World too… So although this was the author's magnum opus, which has naturally been the subject of a wide variety of studies and analyses, I think it has not been completely exhausted as a theme. In my work I attempt to perceive it not as a unique work of artistic creation by the author but also as the logical outcome of previous writing - it is this perception that I find lacking in the literature available on the novel and its author. For La Saga/fuga de J.B. contains constants in it which appear in a different form in Torrente Ballester's work from 1943, when he made his debut as a novelist with his book Javier Mario.Historia de una conversión/Javier Mario. The story of a conversion. And it also represents not only the result of many years of practical experience in writing novels but also the product of deep theoretical reflection on the genre. Torrente combines in..