Enrique Lafourcade
Encyclopedia
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an writer, critic and journalist who was born in Santiago, Chile
Santiago, Chile
Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...
, on October 14, 1927.
Brief Biography
Representative of the so-called "Generation of the 50s", a term suggested by Lafourcade himself in 1954 to describe authors born between 1920 and 1934 who began to flourish in the 1950s and broke apart in content and style from the previous regional style known as "CriollismoCriollismo
Criollismo is a literary movement, also called costumbrismo, that took place between the end of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century in Latin America, and is considered equivalent to regionalism in the USA literature. It is based on realism to describe the scenes, customs and...
"; and more widely within the "boom generation" in Latin America, also known as Latin American Boom
Latin American Boom
The Latin American Boom was a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s when the work of a group of relatively young Latin American novelists became widely circulated in Europe and throughout the world...
, a generation of writers who produced an explosion of works in the mid 20th century and decades that followed, which included four Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
winners Miguel Ángel Asturias
Miguel Ángel Asturias
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales was a Nobel Prize–winning Guatemalan poet, novelist, playwright, journalist and diplomat...
(Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
) in 1967, Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
(Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
) in 1971, Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
(Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
) in 1982, and Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
(Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
) in 1990, and several other influential intellectual authors such as Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
and Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...
in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
and Mario Vargas Llosa
Mario Vargas Llosa
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation...
in Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
.
Lafourcade the Writer
As a writer, Lafourcade has published at least 24 novels (over 30 by some accounts) and over a dozen anthologies and collections of short stories and essays. His novel Palomita BlancaPalomita Blanca
Palomita Blanca is a 1971 novel written by Enrique Lafourcade. More than fifty editions have been published, making the novel the most widely sold novel in the history of Chilean literature, with more than a million copies sold...
(1971) sold over a million copies, making it one of the all time best sellers in Chile. This novel was translated to several languages and brought to the screen by Chilean-French director Raúl Ruiz. Lafourcade's latest novel, El Inesperado
El Inesperado
“El Inesperado” is a novel by Enrique Lafourcade, contemporary Chilean author, critic and journalist; published by LOM Ediciones, Santiago, Chile, in 2004, in Spanish...
(2004), imagines the life of French poet Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
in Africa, and though a work of fiction, it is inspired by the letters of the poet and three years of additional research. The novel was launched on October 20, 2004, matching the 150th anniversary of the birth the poet.
Other titles include (not an exhaustive list): Pena de Muerte (1952), Para Subir al Cielo (1959), la Fiesta del Rey Acab (1959), El principe y las Ovejas (1961), Invencion a Dos Voces (1963), Novela de Navidad (1965), Pronombres Personales (1967), Frecuencia Modulada (1968), En el Fondo (1973), Salvador Allende (1973), Variaciones sobre el tema de Nastasia Filippovna y el Principe Mishkin (1974), Tres Terroristas (1977), Buddha y los Chocolates Envenenados (1977), Adios al Führer (1982), El Gran Taimado (1984), Los Hijos del Arco Iris (1985), Las Senales van Hacia el Sur (1988), Pepita de Oro (1989), Hoy Esta Solo mi Corazon (1990), Mano Bendita (1993), Cristianas Viejas y Limpias (1997).
Lafourcade has been the recipient of various literary awards in his country, such as the prestigious Municipal Prize, the Gabriela Mistral Prize and the Maria Luisa Bombal Prize, awarded to the best novel of the year.
Lafourcade the Journalist
Self-described as "a sentimental anarchist and catholic in a state of wilderness", it is as a journalist and critic that Lafourcade is best known. For years he has written an editorial for the newspaper El MercurioEl Mercurio
El Mercurio is a conservative Chilean newspaper with editions in Valparaíso and Santiago. Its Santiago edition is considered the country's paper-of-record and its Valparaíso edition is the oldest daily in the Spanish language currently in circulation. El Mercurio is owned by El Mercurio S.A.P...
(the largest in the country), focusing on literature but with incursions into politics, cultural issues and subjects of impact upon the nation. Some of his most critical articles, written in an often mordant style, have produced the ire of dictators and politicians in Chile and other Latin American countries and occasionally generated diplomatic apologies.
He has appeared in numerous television programs, both as guest and as part of recurring panels of cultural critics. His ironic and often sarcastic style as well as his impudent way of offering opinions on just about everything and everybody has more than once produced a commotion in the country, making "Lafourcade" a household name in Chile. Numerous anecdotes surround his name, including engaging in a fist fight with another journalist during a live television program. For some time he wrote a gastronomic review under the name of "Conde de Lafourchette" ("fourchette" meaning "fork" in French) in the journal El Mercurio, where he gave his uncensored opinion about restaurants and their food, reason for which he is feared by restaurant owners across the country. Allegedly, waiters are instructed to call upon the owner or general manager as soon as they see Lafourcade walking in. In 1997 he published the book "La cocina erótica del conde Lafourchette (The Erotic Cuisine of Count Lafourchette)".
He has publicly declared himself an "unrelenting enemy of ignorance and incompetence." He is believed to have just as many enemies as he has friends, to the point that for years rumors circulated of a group of people gathering signatures to "expel Lafourcade from Chile".
Lafourcade the Family Man
According to public records, Enrique Lafourcade was married three times: with Chilean-born Canadian artist Maria Luisa Segnoret; with Chilean writer and journalist Marcela Godoy Divin; and recently with Chilean painter Rossana Pizarro Garcia, with whom allegedly has lived for nearly 20 years now. He also had a long relationship with Chilean writer and journalist Marta Blanco, with whom he lived together for seven years and were assumed to be married.He is the father of three children, Dominique, Octavio and Nicole.
He is followed, ostensibly, by a family of writers and musicians, where his cultural influence is undeniable. Octavio is a classical musician (lute and guitar), member of the group of ancient Spanish music "Capella de Ministrers". His daughter Nicole is a poet and literary translator, member of Café Literarte. His brother Gaston Lafourcade is a musician (harpsichord) and instructor at the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico; and his niece, Natalia Lafourcade
Natalia Lafourcade
Natalia Lafourcade is a Mexican pop-rock singer and songwriter. Her band's name is Natalia y La Forquetina.-Biography:...
(Gaston's daughter), born in Mexico, has become a famous rock pop star.
Additional Sources
- "Memoria Chilena: Portal de la Cultura de Chile"
- Archivos del diario El Mercurio (paper form) plus El Mercurio
- Letralia
- Escritores y Poetas en Español (e.g., Letras)
Plus numerous other sources.