Autobiographical Writing in Latin America: Folds of the Self by Sergio Franco

Abstract

Reviewed by: Autobiographical Writing in Latin America: Folds of the Self by Sergio Franco Rafael Saumell Franco, Sergio. Autobiographical Writing in Latin America: Folds of the Self. Translated by Andrew Ascherl, Cambria, 2017. Pp. 286. ISBN 978-1-60497-979-4. Autobiographical Writing in Latin America: Folds of the Self is a superb collection of essays on the topic of autobiography. Originally, it was published in Spanish under the following title: Pliegues del yo: Cuatro estudios sobre escritura autobiográfica en Hispanoamérica (Cuarto Propio, 2015). The book has an Introduction, four subsequent chapters, a bibliography, and an index. The subjects discussed are “The Emergence of Autobiographical Discourse in Spanish America,” “Visual Culture and Autobiographical Writing in Latin America,” “Precocious Autobiographies,” and “Julio Ramón Ribeyro’s La tentación del fracaso.” From the onset, Franco clarifies what “autobiographical” means for the purpose of his thesis: “a zone of expression that includes not only autobiography in the strict sense but also causeries, diaries, memoirs, and reminiscences of various kinds” (ix). Immediately after establishing the definition, he goes into documenting the genre’s historical precedents, and the theoretical frame he has adopted, citing scholars such as Philippe Lejeune, Leigh Gilmore, and Jean Starobinski among others. In chapter 1, the author dedicates his inquiries to the topic of autobiography in the twentieth century in Latin America. In this case, it is commendable that Franco devotes critical attention to authors from different periods, literary schools, and political engagements. He supports this approach by stating that during the century, “autobiographical writing and memoirs emerged as a significant part of Spanish American literature, both for the quantity of texts and for reasons of aesthetic relevance” (3). It is important to notice that Franco pays attention to what is known as literary testimonios, particularly relevant according to him because they articulate “their own difference (of ethnicity, sexual orientation, race),” and political discourse as well (9–10). Chapter 2 is unique because it takes the reader to a critical dialogue between writing and photography. Franco presents here three important premises: “1) photography as supplement of writing; 2) photography incorporated into the diegetic text; and 3) autobiography as . . . a comparison between the photographic act and the act of writing” (26). The chapter’s subtitle is “Three uses of the Photographic.” Three works are studied here: Gabriel García Márquez’s Vivir para contarla (2002), Augusto Monterroso’s Los buscadores de oro (1993), and Mario Vargas Llosa’s El pez en el agua (1993). Chapter 3, subtitled “Nuevos escritores mexicanos presentados por sí mismos,” is centered on the autobiographies of a few young Mexican writers whose first works were published in the sixties. As Franco rightly observes, “critics at the time did not seem to notice the homosocial character of the group, which was completely devoid of women” (77). His main argument consists in expressing that “this generation was oriented toward the formal renovation of the arts, intimacy, aesthetic cosmopolitanism, the expression of new urban environments, suspicion toward nationalism, and denunciation of the unkept promises of the Mexican Revolution” (91). Finally, chapter 4 is the only one dedicated to a single author: Julio Ribeyro’s La tentación del fracaso (1992). In fact, as Franco points out, this is a collection of diaries whose first volume was printed in the year previously mentioned. In addition, he stresses, “the diary is an ideal space to examine the different tropological combinations whose repetition, combination, and recombination create the effect of a unified life through metonymic contiguity” (180). Of importance is the analysis that Franco makes of a very significant topic in diaries, autobiographies, and memoirs: “the body and its illnesses” (189). Here Franco makes a remarkable contribution to the examination of diseases in Spanish American Literature, a subject that to this moment has not been sufficiently investigated by scholars of the field. One can think of few relevant examples, such as Jorge Luis Borges’s blindness, Frida Kahlo’s physical sufferings, etc., but the fact is that there are not many titles on this matter. [End Page 134] For its variety of authors and types of autobiographical writing, its theoretical rigor and methodological approaches, and its impressive bibliography, this is...