Autorrepresentación autorial de un escritor casi invisible

Abstract

Con el objetivo de reconstruir la autorrepresentación autorial como novelista de Carlos Pujol, se compara su posicionamiento público mediante gestos y entrevistas aparecidas entre 1981 y 1998 con la autoimagen que forja en Novelas contadas, breves memorias escritas en 1998 (publicadas póstumamente) donde el escritor barcelonés hace balance de esos años. En una primera época, mientras compone las seis primeras novelas, su discurso está focalizado en la explicitación de su poética. A partir de 1987, construye una imagen de autor alejado de las modas literarias, del sistema editorial y de la vida pública, mientras también cultiva el arquetipo de sabio con una mirada escéptica e irónica, heredero de una tradición literaria cosmopolita y del cine de barrio. En sus memorias, se posiciona además como escritor vocacional y novelista que aspira a pervivir. La pobre recepción de su narrativa y su relativa invisibilidad como autor no son ajenas a este perfil de escritor y novelista solitario, a contracorriente y reacio a la vida literaria para reivindicar unos valores antagónicos a los de la literatura de consumo. With the aim of reconstructing Carlos Pujol’s authorial self-representation as a novelist, this article compares his public positioning in interviews and gestures from 1981 to 1998, with the self-image that he forges in Novelas contadas (1998), a posthumously published brief memoir in which the writer from Barcelona takes stock of those years. In the first period of Pujol’s literary production, while he is writing his first six novels, his discourse focuses on the explication of his poetics. From 1987 onward, he constructs an image of an author far removed from literary trends, from the publishing system, and from public life, while he also cultivates the archetype of a sage with a skeptical and ironic outlook, heir to a cosmopolitan literary tradition and to the milieu of the neighborhood cinema. In his memoirs, he also positions himself as a vocational writer and novelist who aspires to live on in the future. The meager critical reception of his narrative works and his relative invisibility as an author are not unrelated to his profile as a writer and a solitary novelist, a figure moving against prevailing trends and averse to literary life, seeking to reclaim a set of values antagonistic to those of consumer literature.