But what I write has nothing to do with what Arlt does: Onetti's fiction

Abstract

Onetti, in his 1971 prologue to Arlt's Los siete locos acknowledges his great debt to Arlt. However, it also contains an anecdote in which Onetti, in 1934, shows Arlt his recently-completed first novel Tiempo de abrazar, states that his work "has nothing to do with what Arlt writes" and declares that his novel was lost later. In 1974, however, it was published; the prologue is therefore the beginning of the process of its recovery. Surprisingly, the only major work of Arlt's which Onetti does not say he has read is El amor brujo (1932). Important relationships are discovered between the two novels, thus recovering an important aspect of Onetti's early novelistic art. Secondly, I make observations about Onetti's exploitation of the theme of the recovery (or invention) of the "lost" text.