Intro, López-Gay. Ficciones de verdad [True Fictions] (Iberoamericana, 2020) (original) (raw)

2020, Iberoamericana / Vervuert

[English below] Ficciones de verdad: Archivo y narrativas de vida. En la zona dilatada donde confluyen narrativas disímiles de vida despuntan hoy las ficciones de verdad. Las autoficciones son al mismo tiempo “verdaderas ficciones” y “ficciones verdaderas”, escrituras autobiográficas anfibias que se novelizan reactualizando la antigua indistinción cervantina entre la literatura y la vida. El autor que urde narrativas de vida a partir de rastros inciertos de lo real opera bajo el efecto de la fiebre de archivo. Su ímpetu de (re)organización de documentos, archivos históricos o personales, citas propias y ajenas, reflexiones personales o recuerdos, es sintomático de un apego a la bios que rebasa la vida propia. Tras una serie de reflexiones panorámicas, en diálogo intermitente con el arte visual, Ficciones de verdad se enfoca en la producción de Jorge Semprún, Enrique Vila-Matas, Marta Sanz y Javier Marías. En la era del retoque digital, sus autoficciones dislocan el pensamiento de archivo probatorio que se irradiaría, a partir de la invención de la fotografía, más allá de las artes. Rompen el sueño del realismo, “congelar” instantes de vida de modo exacto, detallado. Desde distintos ángulos, con diversas intensidades, las autoficciones cumplen la función de despertar al lector, atizar su sospecha sobre lo real en un presente compartido de presunta posverdad. ***** True Fictions from Spain. Life-Writing and the Archive [in Spanish, Ficciones de verdad] considers the work of contemporary Spanish authors who are driven by an uncontainable desire to write and rewrite life. In this book I use the expression “archive fever,” an eloquent English mistranslation of the title Jacques Derrida gave to his well-known work, Mal d’archive. It refers to these authors’ urge to create a sui generis mode of life-narration through old or new media, photographs, documents, historical and literary records, personal reflections, and memories. By interweaving opaque fragments of the real, they generate autofictional narratives. Simultaneously “truthful fictions ”and “fictional truths,” autofictions occupy a transgeneric category that is irreducible to that of autobiography or the novel. The life-writing borne of the fertile cross between autofiction and the new passion for the archive demands urgent critical examination— it is charged with questions surrounding the ever-mutating relationships between life and the text; the narrator and the author; the literary and the historical; the self and the place it negotiates in the world. After a series of critical reflections, placed in intermittent dialogue with the visual arts, True Fictions brings into focus the autofictional work of Jorge Semprún, Enrique Vila-Matas, Marta Sanz and Javier Marías. Writers who produce autofiction from Spain seem to share a distinctive will to convey the life traces they archive in an inconclusive manner, rather to do so in a totalizing fashion. In the age of digital production, when everything can potentially be “retouched,” autofiction undermines the modern paradigm of the archive which, since the advent of analogue photography, has propagated far beyond the domain of the arts. These amphibious writings break with the photographic dream that was soon appropriated by realist literature, “freezing” instants of life. From distinct angles and with variable degrees of intensity, contemporary authors of autofiction cast epistemological doubt on the traces they archive. In times of proclaimed post-truth, they awaken the reader from their slumber, rekindling a critical sentiment of suspicion towards that which is presented as real. Colección: Ediciones de Iberoamericana, 116 Año: 2020 Páginas: 246 pages Formato: 22 cm. Encuadernación: Rústica /Disponible en e-book ISBN: 978-84-9192-158-5