"In(ter)ventions of the Self is both an insightful theoretical intervention in critical discussions of the autobiographical genre and a highly original analysis of the autobiographies of five giants of Latin American literature. This study challenges many prevailing notions of the genre while expounding on autobiography’s discursive possibilities and broader social implications. Most meaningfully, Sergio Franco teaches us to read autobiography in new and productive ways, through identifying moments of narrative discord or disruption that reveal the full complexities of the texts he examines, thus providing a valuable framework for future studies." —Anne Lambright, Department Head and Professor of Hispanic Studies, Carnegie Mellon University

"Lucid, illuminating, exemplary, invaluable. Sergio Ramírez Franco has not only read everything important both about theories of autobiography and about his five shrewdly chosen and convincingly representative authors; in this brilliant, magisterial book, he has also meshed theory with critical practice in a way that few academic critics could hope to match. In doing so he shows how a hitherto peripheral area of interest can become crucially relevant to literary studies as a whole. Readers will emerge from their engagement with this dazzling work with new insights about the lives of the writers studied, the nature of their works, the theory and practice of autobiography in general, the history of Latin American literature, and indeed the history of Latin America itself." —Gerald Martin, Professor Emeritus, Hispanic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh

”This is an excellent and exciting book. It makes a significant contribution to the field, and its analytical turns are tied together by engaging storytelling. It is at once a significant deconstructive critique of the autobiographical genre in Latin American writing, and also a useful history of the signature modern era of that body of work, the so-called ‘Boom’ generation.” —Joshua Lund, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Notre Dame

Sergio R. Franco is an associate professor of contemporary Latin American Literature at Temple University. He holds a PhD from University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Franco’s previous publications include Autobiographical Writing in Latin America, A favor de la esfinge: la novelística de Jorge Eduardo Eielson and In(ter)venciones del yo: Escritura y sujeto autobiográfico en la literatura hispanoamericana (1974–2002). He has published in several journals such as Revista Iberoamericana and Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana. Dr. Franco has also edited José María Arguedas: hacia una poética migrante.

Introduction

Chapter 1. History and Nature in Confieso que he vivido by Pablo Neruda

Chapter 2. Ruin, Repetition, and Synechdoce in Las genealogías of Margo Glantz

Chapter 3. Infancy Re-covered: Punishment and the Mercantilism of the Skin in Mario Vargas Llosa’s El pez en el agua

Chapter 4. Mystic and Machine in the “Autorretratos” of Severo Sarduy

Chapter 5. Carnival and Document in Vivir para contarla by Gabriel García Márquez

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index