ABSTRACT
In 2008, the Chilean novelist Patricio Jara wrote an article for the El Sábado insert of El Mercurio titled "Freak Power" in which he introduced Chile to a group of writers whose first novels challenged the traditional themes and strategies of Chilean literature. The marketing of the novel in 2011 further situated the reading of the novel within a Chilean context as Alfaguara harnessed the boom in tattoos Santiago has experienced in recent years. Publicity photos included the author in front of the tattoo parlors found in the caracol ¬shopping centers in Providencia. The body transformations and mystical tattoo of the novel serve as further mirrors of contemporary Chilean culture even as it sets its action in the US. That is, with both pieces appearing at the height of the Nueva Narrativa Weird phenomenon in Chilean literature, Wilson and Bisama are not only providing narratives of characters who construct identity through an engagement with varieties of popular culture.
