La saga/fuga de J,B. as (video)game

Abstract

Torrente Ballester's interest, even theoretical, in the game and its relationship with literary fiction is evident in the title of his well-known critical work on Don Quixote (Torrente Ballester, 1984), which we paraphrase here as applied to La saga/fuga de J. B. In the light of some previous works, this essay considers the possible pre-virtual allegorisation of the game in this work, for many, the summit of Torrente Ballester's novel. In a critical reading of this virtual video game, José Bastida – J. B., an allophonic transcript of G.T.B. – is the interactive narrator – or internarrator, in turn an imitation of the designer or game designer, as in The Beginner's Guide (Everything Unlimited, 2015) by Davey Wreden – who has created the world of Castroforte and the J. B.'s. But this, as it comes into existence and autonomy, behaves like an Artificial Intelligence that interacts with its design in a way that is open to multiple unpredictable combinations beyond its control: such is the saga... The fugue, for its part, now immediately becomes its emblematic symbol, when Bastida discovers it, and with it the possibility of being trapped within the story in the form of infinite variations and repetitions (a perfect metaphor for the videoludic medium and its mechanics, moreover), and the objective becomes to leave the virtual world he has created, as if it were an escape room or a video game of the escape genre.