Nuestros amigos los biógrafos Una genealogía de amores literarios

Abstract

My aim, in this paper, is to think about an emergent tradition of literary biographies in Latin America: biographies written by contemporary writers (1985 - 2016) about other writers´ lives (the biographical production of seven novelists: Osvaldo Baigorria, Ricardo Strafacce, Fernando Vallejo, Carlos Maria Dominguez, Jorge Edwards, Santiago Roncagliolo y Rafael Gumucio). Specifically, this essay proposes to analyze the construction process of this tradition in regard to the emotional bonds that link certain writers with others and provide reasons to tell the life of others. The relationship between biographer and biographed shows a contiguity line founded in literary respect whose effects are contamination, transference and infection. Two lives are tensioned in the writing and formulate an imaginary and loving space where practices and mechanisms are put into place in order to appropriate someone else’s memories.