Ricardo Piglia (November 24, 1941 in Adrogué, Argentina – January 6, 2017 in Buenos Aires) was an

Argentine Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish (masculine) or (feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Argentines, s ...

author, critic, and scholar best known for introducing hard-boiled fiction to the Argentine public.

Biography

Born in

Adrogué Adrogué () is a city in Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina, located 23 km south of Buenos Aires. It is the administrative headquarters for Almirante Brown Partido (county). At slightly more than 30,000 inhabitants, it is a prominent residenti ...

, Piglia was raised in

Mar del Plata Mar del Plata is a city on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It is the seat of General Pueyrredón district. Mar del Plata is the second largest city in Buenos Aires Province. The name "Mar del Plata" is a s ...

. He studied history in 1961-1962 at the

National University of La Plata The La Plata National University ( es, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, UNLP) is one of the most important Argentine national universities and the biggest one situated in the city of La Plata, capital of Buenos Aires Province. It has over 90 ...

. Ricardo Piglia published his first collection of fiction in 1967, ''La invasión''. He worked in various publishing houses in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

and was in charge of the Serie Negra which published well-known authors of

crime fiction Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, ...

including

Dashiell Hammett Samuel Dashiell Hammett (; May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade ('' ...

, Raymond Chandler,

David Goodis David Loeb Goodis (March 2, 1917 – January 7, 1967) was an American writer of crime fiction noted for his output of short stories and novels in the noir fiction genre. Born in Philadelphia, Goodis alternately resided there and in New York Cit ...

and

Horace McCoy Horace Stanley McCoy (April 14, 1897 – December 15, 1955) was an American writer whose mostly hardboiled stories took place during the Great Depression. His best-known novel is '' They Shoot Horses, Don't They?'' (1935), which was made into ...

. A fan of

American literature American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition thus is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also inc ...

, he was also influenced by

F. Scott Fitzgerald Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularize ...

and

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of ...

, as well as by European authors

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

and Robert Musil. Piglia's fiction includes several collections of short stories as well as highly allusive crime novels, among them ''Respiración artificial'' (1980, trans. ''Artificial Respiration''), ''La ciudad ausente'' (1992, trans. ''The Absent City''), and ''Blanco nocturno'' (2010, trans. ''Nocturnal Target''). His criticism has been collected in ''Criticism and Fiction'' (1986), ''Brief Forms'' (1999) and ''The Last Reader'' (2005). Piglia resided for a number of years in the United States. He taught

Latin American literature Latin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and the indigenous languages of the Americas. It rose to particular prominence globally during the ...

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

as well as

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, where he was Walter S. Carpenter Professor of Language, Literature, and Civilization of Spain from 2001 to 2011. After retirement he returned with his wife to Argentina. In 2013 he was diagnosed with

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that results in the progressive loss of motor neurons that control voluntary muscles. ALS is the most comm ...

; he died of the disease on January 6, 2017, in

, Argentina.

Awards and honors

During his lifetime Piglia received a number of awards, including the Premio internacional de novela Rómulo Gallegos (2011), Premio Iberoamericano de las Letras (2005),

Premio Planeta The Premio Planeta de Novela is a Spanish literary prize, awarded since 1952 by the Spanish publisher Grupo Planeta to an original unpublished novel written in Spanish. It is one of about 16 literary prizes given by Planeta. Financially, it is the ...

(1997), and the

Casa de las Américas Prize The Casa de las Américas Prize (''Premio Literario Casa de las Américas'') is a literary award given by the Cuban Casa de las Américas. Established in 1959, it is one of Latin America’s oldest and most prestigious literary prizes. The award ...

(1967). In 2013 he won Chile's

Manuel Rojas Ibero-American Narrative Award The Manuel Rojas Ibero-American Narrative Award ( es, Premio Iberoamericano de Narrativa Manuel Rojas, links=no) is an annual award given in honor of the author of ''Hijo de ladrón'' by the National Council of Culture and the Arts of Chile. It ...

, and in 2014 he won the Diamond

Konex Award Konex Foundation Awards, or simply Konex Awards, are cultural awards from the Konex Foundation honouring Argentine cultural personalities. History and purpose Konex Awards are granted by the Konex Foundation, created in 1980 in Argentina. The pur ...

as the best writer of the decade in Argentina. On January 4, 2018, his memory was honored in New York City at "Modos infinitos de narrar: Homenaje a Ricardo Piglia," an event at which academics discussed the impact of his work on Latin American literature and intellectual history and his legacy as a literary critic and scholar.''PMLA'', Vol. 132, No. 4 (September 2017), 836.

Works

Essays *1986 ''Criticism and Fiction'' ("Crítica y ficción") *1993 ''Argentina in Pieces'' ("La Argentina en pedazos") *1999 ''Brief Forms'' ("Formas breves") *2000 ''Dictionary of the Novel of Macedonio Fernández'' ("Diccionario de la novela de Macedonio Fernández") *2005 ''The Last Reader'' ("El último lector") Novels *1980 '' Artificial Respiration'' ("Respiración artificial") *1992 ''The Absent City'' ("La ciudad ausente") *1997 ''Burnt Money'' ("Plata Quemada") *2010 ''Nocturnal Target'' ("Blanco nocturno") *2013 ''The Way Out'' ("El Camino de Ida") Short story collections *1967 ''The Invasion'' ("La Invasión") *1975 ''Assumed Name'' ("Nombre Falso") *1988 ''Perpetual Prison'' ("Prisión perpetua") *1995 ''Moral Tales'' ("Cuentos morales") Others *2015 ''The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: The Formative Years'' *2016 ''The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: The Happy Years'' *2017 ''The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: A Day in the Life''

Bibliography

* Roberto Echavarren. "La literariedad: Respiración artificial, de Ricardo Piglia", ''Revista Iberoamericana'',

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

, U.S.A., vol. XLIX, October–December 1983, No. 125, pp. 997–1008.

References

External links

* *
Listing at literature dot org
* Review of Piglia's Rómulo Gallegos prize winning nove
Target in the Night
{{DEFAULTSORT:Piglia, Ricardo 1941 births 2017 deaths Argentine screenwriters Male screenwriters Argentine male writers Argentine diarists Latin Americanists People from Adrogué People from Mar del Plata Princeton University faculty Prix Roger Caillois recipients Argentine people of Italian descent Neurological disease deaths in Argentina Deaths from motor neuron disease Burials at La Chacarita Cemetery