José Agustín Ramírez Gómez (born 19 August 1944) is a Mexican

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while othe ...

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...

writer,

essayist An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal an ...

and

screenwriter A screenplay writer (also called screenwriter, scriptwriter, scribe or scenarist) is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs and video games, are based. ...

. He is considered as one of the most influential and prolific Mexican writers of the second half of the 20th century.

Career

José Agustín was born in

Acapulco Acapulco de Juárez (), commonly called Acapulco ( , also , nah, Acapolco), is a city and major seaport in the state of Guerrero on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, south of Mexico City. Acapulco is located on a deep, semicircular bay and has ...

, Mexico on 19 August 1944. He studied

Classical Literature Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

at the School of Philosophy and Letters of the

National Autonomous University of Mexico The National Autonomous University of Mexico ( es, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM) is a public research university in Mexico. It is consistently ranked as one of the best universities in Latin America, where it's also the bigge ...

, Film direction at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos and Dramaturgy at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura. Agustín participated in

Juan José Arreola Juan José Arreola Zúñiga (September 21, 1918 – December 3, 2001) was a Mexican writer, academic, and actor. He is considered Mexico's premier experimental short story writer of the 20th century. Arreola is recognized as one of the first Lat ...

's writers' workshop from 1962 to 1965, where he wrote his first novel, ''

La Tumba ''La Tumba'' (''The Grave'') is a 1964 novel written in Spanish by José Agustín. It is a short novel, originally written as a series of tales ("Tedium") in a literary workshop. Some people considered the novel controversial because it freely t ...

'' (The Tomb), when he was nineteen years old. The novel was the brief but provocative story of a Mexican upperclass teen, deemed indecent by the public but gathering praise from older writers. This and his most famous work, ''De Perfil'' (Profile view), a fast and detailed view of three days in the main character's life, show stylistic similarities to

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...

's work, especially '' A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man''. He was considered a member of the so-called ''Onda'' literature, ''onda'' (

wave In physics, mathematics, and related fields, a wave is a propagating dynamic disturbance (change from equilibrium) of one or more quantities. Waves can be periodic, in which case those quantities oscillate repeatedly about an equilibrium (r ...

) being

slang Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and usage (language), linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of p ...

for current and fashionable views in the eyes of young people. A common technique in his work is mixing character's speech with narrative, without making any kind of distinction (free indirect discourse). Thus the reader finds a long dialogue written in a single sentence, and is expected to realize which character is speaking as he reads the words. He also makes use of the

stream of consciousness In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver in 1840 in ''First L ...

technique. Agustin has taught at the

University of Denver The University of Denver (DU) is a private research university in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1864, it is the oldest independent private university in the Rocky Mountain Region of the United States. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Univ ...

, the

University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and p ...

and the

University of New Mexico The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25, ...

Awards

* 1977:

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

* 1993: Premio Nacional de Literatura Juan Ruiz de Alarcón * 2011: Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes

Bibliography

Novels

*''

'' (1964) *'' De Perfil'' (1966) *''Abolición de la propiedad'' (1969) *''Se está haciendo tarde'' (1973) *''El rey se acerca a su templo'' (1978) *'' Ciudades Desiertas'' (1982) *''Cerca del fuego'' (1986) *''La panza del Tepozteco'' (1992) *''Dos horas de sol'' (1994) *''Vida con mi viuda'' (2004) *''Armablanca'' (2006)

Short Stories

*''Inventando que sueño'' (1968) *''La mirada en el centro'' (1977) *''No hay censura'' (1988) *''No pases esta puerta'' (1992) *''La miel derramada'' (1992)

Plays

*''Círculo vicioso'' (1974)

Essays

*''La nueva música clásica'' (1968) *''Literature and censorship in Latin America Today: Dream within a dream'' (1978) *''Tragicomedia Mexicana: La vida en Mexico de 1940 a 1970. Tomo 1'' (1990) *''Tragicomedia Mexicana: La vida en Mexico de 1970 a 1982. Tomo 2'' (1992) *''Tragicomedia Mexicana: La vida en Mexico de 1982 a 1994. Tomo 3'' (2007) *''Camas de campo, campos de batalla'' (1994) *''La Contracultura en Mexico'' (1996) *''El hotel de los corazones solitarios'' (1996) *''Los grandes discos de rock 1951-1975'' (1996)

Chronicles

*''Contra la corriente'' (1991)

Autobiography

*''Quién soy, dónde estoy, qué me dieron'' (1966) *''El rock de la cárcel'' (1986) *''Diario de brigadista: Cuba 1961'' (2011)

Filmography

*'' 5 de chocolate y 1 de fresa'' (1968) *
Luz externa
' (1974) *'' El año de la peste'' (1979)

In popular culture

The Mexican band Belafonte Sensacional wrote the song "Epic Aris" inspired by the literary works of José Agustín and Parménides García Saldaña, another writer that was considered a member of La Onda literature.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Agustin, Jose 1944 births Living people Mexican male novelists Mexican male writers People from Acapulco