The first days of the death of a writer

Abstract

Juan Jose Saer’s writing performs an obvious and, at the same time, a secret alliance between life and writing. Within the framework of a lucid thought on the art of the narration, which somehow implies a theoretical criticism on realism and exploits some practices of the autobiographical genre, Saer constantly plays with the “real” referents of his fiction: the characters, objects, and places. This piece of work explores some aspects of this theory and of this game: the construction of a writer’s figure out of orality (interviews, documentaries, talks), and the integration of some anecdotes in the narration. The anecdote, the genre of brievity par excellence, halfway between the private and the public narrations, will emerge in this way in Saer’s work, and above all in the great narrative cycle composed by his novels, that is in a kind of original
microcosm.