The Mexican writer José Agustín, in a file image. ANTONIO NAVA (DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE)
A song by Los Teen Tops that was widely danced among the Mexican youth of the sixties says: “everyone talking about famous men and nobody ever talks about Elvis Presley”.
With that phrase one of the main reasons why a generation of Mexican writers, influenced by the cultural and political color of that decade in the world, decided to radically change the literary canon then established could be summarized.
José Agustín, the greatest icon of that generation, has made his public comeback this weekend at the Abraham Rivera Sandoval Library, located in the last corner of Cuautla, a city in the State of Morelos.
That is where people go to be close to a mythical man.
And by the way ask for an autograph.
José Agustín (Guerrero, 78 years old) had stopped giving interviews, conferences and seminars after suffering an accident in April 2009 that almost killed him.
It was precisely during a book signing at the Teatro de la Ciudad de Puebla: readers and supporters of the event inadvertently pushed him to the end of the auditorium stage that he fell headfirst into the theater pit.
He was—is—a rockstar of Mexican literature.
The last appearance of the writer was in the homage he received in the Patios del Tren Interoceánico in Morelos, an entity where he has lived since 1975.
Today he reappears in connection with the presentation of a new edition of his work, produced by the Penguin Random House publishing house.
It is a collection of 17 volumes —the almost complete work of José Agustín— that summons in its prologues the pens of prominent writers, including Julián Herbert, Carlos Velázquez, Susana Iglesias and Juan Villoro.
The first installment of this edition consisted of books such as
El rock de la cárcel
(1986),
Vida con mi viuda
(2004),
Cuentos completos
(2001),
Ciudades desiertas
(1988) and
De perfil
(1966), to which they have gone adding
La tumba
(1964), the three volumes of
Tragicomedia mexicana
, and
The belly of Tepozteco
(1992).
The latter has illustrations by José Agustín “Tino” Ramírez, son of the author.
Other titles are expected to be added in the coming months.
Another peculiarity of this novel reprint is the uniformity in the design of the covers, the work of the artist Pedro Friedeberg, who illustrates the covers of each story with minutiae, achieving a visual idea of the texts.
The presentation at the Abraham Rivera Sandoval Library was carried out with the participation of the narrator Enrique Serna, the poet Elsa Cross and the author's sons, Andrés and "Tino" Ramírez.
The Mexican writer José Agustín, in the city of Cuautla, in the State of Morelos, this Sunday. José Carlos Oliva
The youngest son of a middle-class family, the writer from Guerrero was the
beginning
of a list of iconoclastic writers, convinced of the need to ignore the great literary schools left behind by the Mexican Revolution;
the armed movement had ended decades ago and with it the preferred prose theme.
Under the tutelage of the writer and editor Juan José Arreola, when he was very young, he published the novel
La tumba
(1964), a debut work that was announced only as the spearhead of a vast list of titles, such as
Inventando que sueño
(1968),
It's Getting Late (Lagoon Finale)
(1973),
The King Approaches His Temple
(1977),
Near the Fire
(1987),
Two hours of sun
(1994), etc.
“My case in Mexico is very, very atypical: I published my first book [
La tumba
] at 19 years of age, and it was republished when I was 24 in a big house, with a strong promotion… It is a conjunction of elements of fortune very peculiar that do not occur so easily”, declared the author in an interview for the French publication
Caravelle
, in 1993.
Elsa Cross remembers her visit to Juan José Arreola's workshop, at Casa del Lago, where she met José Agustín.
She was surprised by how young he was, how talented he was, and the fact that by then the future writer had already been married twice.
"How many barbarities you say, but they are very well written," Cross quotes Arreola, when he had the manuscript of
La tumba in his hands.
, which the experienced workshop owner would have to edit knowing, perhaps, of the myth that was about to be formed.
José Agustín is relevant for importing narrative styles and techniques from writers such as JD Salinger, Nabokov, Tom Wolfe and Malcolm Lowry, as well as the casual content of Anglo-Saxon rock —his father was an aviator pilot who constantly traveled to the United States and returned with records, magazines and books in English, commissioned by his son.
His prose also appropriates a speech that denies what is solemn and politically correct, and revitalizes the popular voice of the time;
it invariably caused discomfort in the consecrated leadership of the republic of letters.
Along with writers such as René Avilés Fabila, Gustavo Sáinz and Parménides García Saldaña, José Agustín was accused of being a “gringuista” for being “too denationalized”.
He suffered - he assured in an interview for national television - the stigma of being a rebel without a cause.
Later, the critic and academic Margo Glantz would coin the nickname “la Onda” for the literature of these new writers, due to the abuse of the “wave” crutch in the dialogues of her narrative (“what a cool vibe”, “to be in wave”, “what a wave we caught”, etc.).
This situation bothered not only Agustín, but his peers.
“We never articulate collective expressions, nor did we give ourselves the appearance of a group, far from it.
That is also why we were very surprised that we were arbitrarily grouped together as if we had been," the author mentioned in
Caravelle
.
José Agustín signs copies of his books this Sunday in Cuautla. José Carlos Oliva
"The reissue of these books is a very important event for Mexican literature," says writer Enrique Serna.
José Agustín learned to know himself, exploited what he was knowing about himself, knew how to make fun of and laugh at what was internal and external.
"This writer is hyper-aware of the language that touched him and looks in the mirror for parodic purposes."
The double meaning and pun he uses was part of the irreverence that separated the author from the canon.
Some titles that make up the reissue are more than 50 years old since they were published.
They have reached golden weddings with some validity and there is no lack of respect for them among the youngest readers.
"Perhaps, yes, in half a century another edition of the work of José Agustín with footnotes will be necessary for the understanding of those generations," Serna mentions.
The public is repeatedly asked, this time, not to ask the author for signatures or photos.
A near-death record justifies such a request.
But the event ends and it is Mexico.
There are the people, lined up, waiting to approach the totem, shake its hand and ask, even with the opposite invitation, for the long-awaited dedication.
Readers are wise, they look for first editions, rare books by the author.
His wife, Margarita Bermúdez, approaches him and tells him: “when you feel tired, we'll stop”.
José Agustín denies.
He's happy.
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