Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes Macías (; ; November 11, 1928 – May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist, essayist and ambassador to France. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz, Aura (1962), Terra Nostra (1975), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, The New York Times described Fuentes as "one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world" and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the "explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s", while The Guardian called him "Mexico's most celebrated novelist". He was often named as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won. where Carlos attended English-language school, eventually becoming fluent.

In 1957, Fuentes was named head of cultural relations at the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs. His friends included Luis Buñuel, William Styron, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Once good friends with Nobel-winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz, Fuentes became estranged from him in the 1980s in a disagreement over the Sandinistas, whom Fuentes supported.

Fuentes fathered three children, only one of whom survived him: Cecilia Fuentes Macedo, born in 1962.

Writing Carlos Fuentes has been called "the Balzac of Mexico". Fuentes himself cited Miguel de Cervantes, William Faulkner and Balzac as the most important writers to him. He also named Latin American writers such as Alejo Carpentier, Juan Carlos Onetti, Miguel Angel Asturias and Jorge Luis Borges. European modernists James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust have also been cited as important influences on his writing, with Fuentes applying the influence from them on his main theme, Mexican history and identity.

Early works Fuentes' first novel, Where the Air Is Clear (La región más transparente), was an immediate success upon its publication in 1958. The novel was celebrated not only for its prose, which made heavy use of interior monologue and explorations of the subconscious,

A year later, he followed with another novel, The Good Conscience (Las Buenas Conciencias), which depicted the privileged middle classes of a medium-sized town, probably modeled on Guanajuato. Described by a contemporary reviewer as "the classic Marxist novel", it tells the story of a privileged young man whose impulses toward social equality are suffocated by his family's materialism.

Latin American boom Fuentes was regarded as a leading figure of the Latin American boom in the 1960s and 1970s along with Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortázar. The novel explores the corrupting effects of power and criticizes the distortion of the revolutionaries' original aims through "class domination, Americanization, financial corruption, and failure of land reform".

A prolific writer, Fuentes' subsequent work in the 1960s include the novel Aura (1962), the short story collection Cantar de Ciego (1966), the novella Zona Sagrada (1967) and A Change of Skin (1967), an ambitious novel that attempts to define a collective Mexican consciousness by exploring and reinterpreting the country's myths.

Fuentes' 1975 Terra Nostra, perhaps his most ambitious novel, is described as a "massive, Byzantine work" that tells the story of all Hispanic civilization.

Later works Fuentes' 1985 novel The Old Gringo (Gringo viejo), loosely based on American author Ambrose Bierce's disappearance during the Mexican Revolution, The novel tells the story of Harriet Winslow, a young American woman who travels to Mexico, and finds herself in the company of an aging American journalist (called only "the old gringo") and Tomás Arroyo, a revolutionary general. Like many of Fuentes' works, it explores the way in which revolutionary ideals become corrupted, as Arroyo chooses to pursue the deed to an estate where he once worked as a servant rather than follow the goals of the revolution. In 1989, the novel was adapted into the U.S. film Old Gringo starring Gregory Peck, Jane Fonda, and Jimmy Smits.

In the mid-1980s, Fuentes began to conceptualize his total fiction, past and future, in fourteen cycles called "La Edad del Tiempo", explaining that his total work was a lengthy reflection on time. The plan for the cycle first appeared as a page in the Spanish edition of his satirical novel Christopher Unborn in 1987, and as a page in his subsequent books with minor revisions to the original plan.

In 1992, Fuentes published The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World, an historical essay that attempts to cover the entire cultural history of Spain and Latin America. The book was a complement to a Discovery Channel and BBC television series by the same name. Fuentes work of nonfiction also include La nueva novela hispanoamericana (1969; “The New Hispano-American Novel”), which is his chief work of literary criticism, and Cervantes; o, la critica de la lectura (1976; “Cervantes; or, The Critique of Reading”), an homage to the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes.

His later novels include Inez (2001), The Eagle's Throne (2002) and Destiny and Desire (2008). His writing also include several collections of stories, essays and plays.

Mexican historian Enrique Krauze was a vigorous critic of Fuentes and his fiction, dubbing him a "guerrilla dandy" in a 1988 article for the perceived gap between his Marxist politics and his personal lifestyle. Krauze accused Fuentes of selling out to the PRI government and being "out of touch with Mexico", exaggerating its people to appeal to foreign audiences: "There is the suspicion in Mexico that Fuentes merely uses Mexico as a theme, distorting it for a North American public, claiming credentials that he does not have." The essay, published in Octavio Paz's magazine Vuelta, began a feud between Paz and Fuentes that lasted until Paz's death.

Political views The Los Angeles Times described Fuentes' politics as "moderate liberal", noting that he criticized "the excesses of both the left and the right".

Carlos Fuentes was one of several prominent writers who were denied entry to the United States under the McCarran–Walter Act. Others included Gabriel García Márquez, Czesław Miłosz, Arthur Miller, Graham Greene, Michel Foucault, and Pablo Neruda.

The U.S. State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) closely monitored Fuentes during the 1960s, purposefully delaying — and often denying — the author's visa applications. Fuentes' FBI file, released on June 20, 2013, reveals that the FBI's upper echelons were interested in Fuentes' movements, because of the writer's suspected communist-leanings and criticism of the Vietnam War.

In 1963, after being denied permission to travel to a book release party in New York City, he responded: "The real bombs are my books, not me".

Initially a supporter of Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, Fuentes turned against Castro after being branded a "traitor" to Cuba in 1965 for attending a New York conference The Guardian described him as accomplishing "the rare feat for a leftwing Latin American intellectual of adopting a critical attitude towards Fidel Castro's Cuba without being dismissed as a pawn of Washington."

Death On May 15, 2012, Fuentes died in Angeles del Pedregal hospital in southern Mexico City from a massive hemorrhage. He had been brought there after his doctor had found him collapsed in his Mexico City home. Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa stated, "with him, we lose a writer whose work and whose presence left a deep imprint".

List of works

Novels La región más transparente (Where the Air Is Clear) (1958) Las buenas conciencias (The Good Conscience) (1961) Aura (1962) La muerte de Artemio Cruz (The Death of Artemio Cruz) (1962) Cambio de piel (A Change of Skin) (1967) Zona sagrada (Holy Place) (1967) Cumpleaños (Birthday) (1969) Terra Nostra (1975) La cabeza de la hidra (The Hydra Head) (1978) Una familia lejana (Distant Relations) (1980) Gringo viejo (The Old Gringo) (1985) Cristóbal Nonato (Christopher Unborn) (1987) Ceremonias del alba (1991) La campaña (The Campaign) (1992) Diana o la cazadora solitaria (Diana: the Goddess Who Hunts Alone) (1995) La frontera de cristal (The Crystal Frontier: A Novel of Nine Stories) (1996) Los años con Laura Díaz (The Years With Laura Diaz) (1999) Instinto de Inez (Inez) (2001) La silla del águila (The Eagle's Throne) (2002) Todas las familias felices (Happy Families) (2006), La voluntad y la fortuna (Destiny and Desire) (2008), Adán en Edén (2009) Vlad (2010) Federico en su Balcón (2012) (posthumous) Aquiles o el guerrillero y el asesino (2016) (posthumous)

Short stories Los días enmascarados (1954) Cantar de ciegos (1964) Chac Mool y otros cuentos (1973) Agua quemada (Burnt Water) (1983) Constancia and other Stories For Virgins (1990) Dos educaciones (1991) El naranjo (The Orange Tree) (1994) Inquieta compañía (2004) Happy Families (2008) Las dos Elenas (1964) El hijo de Andrés Aparicio

Essays La nueva novela hispanoamericana (1969) El mundo de José Luis Cuevas (1969) Casa con dos puertas (1970) Tiempo mexicano (1971) Miguel de Cervantes o la crítica de la lectura (1976) Myself With Others (1988) El Espejo Enterrado (The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World) (1992) Geografía de la novela (1993) Tres discursos para dos aldeas Nuevo tiempo mexicano (A New Time for Mexico) (1995) Retratos en el tiempo, with Carlos Fuentes Lemus (2000) Los cinco soles de México: memoria de un milenio (2000) En esto creo (2002) Contra Bush (2004) Los 68 (2005) Personas (2012)

Theater Todos los gatos son pardos (1970) El tuerto es rey (1970). Los reinos originarios: teatro hispano-mexicano (1971) Orquídeas a la luz de la luna. Comedia mexicana. (1982) Ceremonias del alba (1990)

Screenplays ¿No oyes ladrar los perros? (1974) Pedro Páramo (1967) (1966) Un alma pura (1965) (segment in ) Tiempo de morir (1965) (written in collaboration with Gabriel García Márquez) Las dos Elenas (1964) (1964) (written in collaboration with Gabriel García Márquez and Roberto Gavaldón, from a short story by Juan Rulfo)

Reviews McCabe, Brian (1981), review of Burnt Water, in Cencrastus No. 6, Autumn 1981, p. 42

Awards and recognition 1967 Biblioteca Breve Award for A Change of Skin 1972 Mazatlán Literature Prize for Tiempo mexicano (Fuentes refused the award in protest against the policies of the government of the state of Sinaloa against the student movement at the State University of Sinaloa) 1976 Xavier Villaurrutia Award for Terra Nostra 1977 Rómulo Gallegos Prize for Terra Nostra 1984 Mexican National Prize for Arts and Sciences 1984 Massey Lecture 1987 Miguel de Cervantes Prize 1989 Istituto Italo-Latino Americano Award for The Old Gringo 1992 National Order of Merit of France 1993 Commander of the Order of Merit of Chile 1994 Grinzane Cavour Prize 2001 Honorary Member of the Mexican Academy of Language 2004 Prize of the Real Academia Española for En esto creo 2005 Premio Galileo 2000 Prize 2006 Four Freedoms Award for Freedom of Speech and Expression 2006 Huizinga Lecture 2006 American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award 2008 Internacional don Quijote de la Mancha Prize