I saw this Associated Press obit of Camilo Jose Cela today.
I'd never heard of him, but he sounds interesting. Has he
been translated into English?
The description of his big book sounds like it could be
related to hardboiled. It also brings to my mind comparisons
with Isaac Babel. Is either of these assumptions even
close?
MADRID -- Camilo Jose Cela, 85, a flamboyant novelist from
Spain who won the 1989 Nobel Prize in literature with his
crude, straightforward writing style, died of a heart ailment
Jan. 17 at a hospital here.
"We have lost probably the most universal writer Spain had in
the second half of the 20th century," Spanish Culture
Minister Pilar del Castillo told national radio. With his
first novel, "The Family of Pascual Duarte," Mr. Cela became
the leader of an uncommonly straightforward style of writing
called
"tremendismo" that clashed with the lyricism of previous
Spanish writers. A bon vivant known in Spain for his
flamboyant lifestyle, he tended to show a darker side of life
in his writings. He drew from his experiences in the Spanish
Civil War for many of his stories, which were often violent
and gruesome. He was recruited as a private to fight on the
side of the right-wing rebel forces led by the future
dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco, but he was released after
suffering serious wounds. He later published an anti-fascist
magazine that became a forum for opposition to the 36-year
Franco dictatorship. Mr. Cela's breakthrough 1942 novel, "The
Family of Pascual Duarte," was first published in Argentina
because it was deemed too violent and crude for Spain at the
time. It tells the story in the language of a rural,
uneducated man who commits a series of brutal murders without
really knowing why and ends up being executed. It often is
credited with creating a sort of literary vanguard in the
years immediately after the 1936-39 Civil War, both in Spain
and Latin America. Another well-known work, "The Hive,"
published in 1951, takes place in the cold, depressing
postwar years and depicts starving writers who would sit for
hours during the winter in Madrid's literary cafes. When Mr.
Cela was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1989, the
Swedish Academy cited him for "rich and intensive prose,
which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision
of man's vulnerability." It said "The Family of Pascual
Duarte" was the most popular work of fiction in Spanish since
Miguel de Cervantes' masterpiece "Don Quixote" was published
nearly 400 years ago. Mr. Cela greeted the honor with aplomb,
saying it could just as easily have gone to many other
Spanish writers. "Life is like a game of tennis," he told
reporters, "and this time I won." He also spoke of what the
prize might mean for his legacy and how he'd like to be
remembered. Using the crude language common to his fiction,
Mr. Cela said he would like this epitaph: "Here lies someone
who tried to screw his fellow man as little as possible." Mr.
Cela, the son of a Spanish father and English mother, was
born in comfortable surroundings in the town of Iria de
Flavia in the northwestern region of Galicia. He went on to
produce more than 70 works, including essays, poems and
travel books and 10 novels. But at home, he was better known
for his love of food, travel and women. He enjoyed touring
his country in a Rolls-Royce and sometimes reminisced about
fellow writer Ernest Hemingway.
"We went to a lot of bullfights together. He was a great
author and a great friend," Mr. Cela said in Stockholm in
1989. At his death, Mr. Cela was involved in an unresolved
court battle with an obscure Spanish writer, Carmen Formoso
Lapido, who accused him of plagiarism. She said a novel she
wrote in the early 1990s served as the basis for Mr. Cela's
book, "La Cruz de San Andres," which won Spain's prestigious
Planeta Award in 1994. Mr. Cela's survivors include his wife,
Marina Castano, who was his literary aide and whom he called
his muse.
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