Call Number:

C1283

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 23 boxes
• 9.8 linear feet

Language:

Spanish; Castilian

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Sergio Pitol Papers, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1951-2011 (inclusive)

Creator:

Moura, Beatriz de and Pitol, Sergio (1933-2018)

Form:

Correspondence -- 20th century, Diaries. -- 20th century, Interviews. -- 20th century, Journals (accounts). -- 20th century, and Notebooks -- 20th century

Abstract:

Consists of the personal and literary papers of Mexican writer, translator, and diplomat Sergio Pitol.

Sergio Pitol Deméneghi was born in Puebla, Mexico, on March 18, 1933. He studied law at the Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City. In 1960, he became a member of the Mexican Foreign Service and served over a number of years as cultural attaché in Paris, Warsaw, Budapest, Moscow. In the 1980s he served as Mexico's ambassador to Czechoslovakia. Pitol's trips also include periods of study and work in Rome, Beijing, and Barcelona. Since 1993 he has lived in Xalapa, capital of the Mexican state of Veracruz.

Pitol's publications as translator include literary works by such authors as Jerzy Andrzejewski, Jane Austen, Giorgio Bassani, Kazimierz Brandys, Anton Chekhov, Joseph Conrad, Witold Gombrowicz, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. He also served as a professor at the UNAM, at the Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa, and at the University of Bristol, England.

In 2005, Pitol received the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world. Other major awards include the Premio Juan Rulfo (1999), Premio Herralde de Novela (1984), and the Premio Xavier Villaurrutia (1981). Pitol died on April 12, 2018.

Major published works:

José Donoso, born in Santiago de Chile, October 5, 1924, completed high school at The Grange English preparatory school and studied liberal arts at the Instituto Pedagógico of the University of Chile. He attended Princeton University, majoring in English, and received his A.B. degree in 1951. Upon returning to Chile he taught English Literature for several years at the Universidad Católica and in private schools in Santiago. Later he joined the staff of the weekly magazine Ercilla to write several sections including Literature, Theatre, and Painting. He stayed with Ercilla for six years. Meanwhile he received an appointment as Professor of Creative Writing in the School of Journalism of the University of Chile and later received the Chile-Italia prize for Journalism, which brought him to Italy for about six months as a guest of the Ente Turismo. From 1965-67 he was Visiting Professor at the Writers Workshop, University of Iowa, Iowa City, teaching Creative Writing under Paul Engle. In 1967, he left the United States for Spain, where he resided until his return to Santiago, Chile in 1980. In 1969, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, followed by a second in 1974. In 1975 he taught Creative Writing for one semester at Princeton and another semester at Dartmouth. He died of cancer in Santiago, Chile, December 7, 1996.

Major Published Works

Coronación (Santiago de Chile, Zig-Zag, 1957)

Coronation, translated by Jocasta Goodwin (New York, Knopf, 1965)

Este domingo (Santiago de Chile, Zig-Zag, 1965)

This Sunday, translated by Lorraine Freeman (New York, Knopf, 1967)

El lugar sin límites (Mexico, Joaquín Mortiz, 1966)

Hell Has No Limits in Triple Cross, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Hallie D. Taylor (New York, Dutton, 1972)

Los mejores cuentos de José Donoso, Introducción y nota bibliográfica de Luis Domínguez (Santiago de Chile, Zig-Zag, 1965-1966)

El obsceno pájaro de la noche (Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1970)

The Obscene Bird of Night, translated by Hardie St. Martin and Leonard Mades (New York, Knopf, 1973)

Tres novelitas burguesas (Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1973)

Sacred Families, Three Novellas, translated by Andrée Conrad (New York, Knopf, 1977)

El Charleston, Cuentos (Santiago de Chile, Nascimento, 1977)

Charleston and Other Stories, translated by Andrée Conrad (Boston, D. R. Godine, 1977)

Historia personal del "boom" (Barcelona, Anagrama, 1972)

The Boom in Spanish American Literature, A Personal History, translated by Gregory Kolovakos (New York, Columbia University Press in association with the Center for Inter-American Relations, 1977)

Casa de campo (Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1978)

A House in the Country, translated by David Pritchard and Suzanne Jill Levine (London, Allen Lane, 1984)

La misteriosa desaparición de la Marquesita de Loria (Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1980)

El jardín de al lado (Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1981)

Poemas de un novelista (Santiago de Chile, Ganymedes, 1981)

Cuatro para Delfina (Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1982)

La desesperanza (Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1986)

Curfew, translated by Alfred MacAdam (New York, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988)

Taratuta. Naturaleza muerta con cachimba (Santiago de Chile, Grijalbo, 1990)

Lagartija sin cola (Santiago de Chile, Aguilar Chilena de Ediciones S.A., 2007)

Carlos Fuentes was born in Panama City, Panama, on November 11, 1928, the son of Berta Macías Rivas and Rafael Fuentes Boettiger. At the time of his birth, Carlos Fuentes' father was serving as Mexico's ambassador to Panama. Growing up with a father who was a career diplomat, Carlos Fuentes lived and was educated in many cities in Latin America. During the years, 1934-1939, he lived in Washington, D.C. where his father served as first secretary of Mexico's foreign service delegation to the U.S. He attended primary and secondary schools in Washington, D.C., Mexico City, Mexico, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Santiago, Chile, and pursued postsecondary studies in Mexico City and Geneva, Switzerland. He received his bachelor's degree from Colegio México and his law degree from the law school of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), both in Mexico City. Fuentes pursued graduate study at the Institut de Hautes Études Internationales in Geneva in 1950-1951, and also served in the Mexican delegation of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Geneva, in 1951.

In 1953, Fuentes won First Prize in an essay contest sponsored by the law school of UNAM, on the occasion of its Fourth Centenary. In the same year, he collaborated with other young Mexican writers, such as Marco Antonio Montes de Oca, José Emilio Pacheco, and Carlos Monsiváis in publishing the magazine Medio Siglo in Mexico City. In 1955, he collaborated with Jaime García Terrés in editing the publication Universidad de México; and throughout the 1950s, Fuentes wrote articles on literature, film, and politics which were published in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines. In 1956, he co-founded and edited the journal Revista Mexicana de Literatura with Mexican writer Emmanuel Carballo. He worked in several positions in the Secretary of Foreign Relations of the Mexican government during the 1950s.

In 1958, Fuentes' first novel, La región más transparente, was published by Fondo de Cultura Económica in Mexico. The first English translation of this novel was published in 1960. In 1962, Carlos Fuentes became an outspoken opponent of American foreign policy in Latin America, when he was invited by Richard N. Goodwin, U.S. assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, to participate in a debate on the Alliance for Progress program. Despite the invitation by Goodwin, he was denied a visa by the U.S. government because of his political views. Two years later, in 1964, the Attorney General granted a temporary waiver of his immigration status, and he was able to enter the U.S. Througout the '60s and '70s, Fuentes worked with lawyers to combat his U.S. immigration classification as "undesirable." In particular, he worked with lawyer William D. Rogers, Jr., of the firm Arnold & Porter, and by the 1980s, he had far less trouble obtaining a visa.

In 1962, Fuentes' novels La muerte de Artemio Cruz and Aura were published in Mexico. The first English translations of these novels were published as The Death of Artemio Cruz (translated by Sam Hileman) and Aura (translated by Lysander Kemp) by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1964 and 1965, respectively.

In 1965, Fuentes served as Mexico's ambassador to Italy, and he lived in Rome. He moved to Paris in 1966, and befriended artists and writers such as the painters Alberto Gironella, Pierre Alechinsky, and Valerio Adami, and novelist Julio Cortázar. In 1968, Fuentes traveled to Prague with writers Cortázar and Gabriel García Márquez to aid the writers and artists of Czechoslovakia, and he met Milan Kundera for the first time. Fuentes' plays Todos los gatos son pardos and El tuerto es rey were first published in 1970, and in the same year El tuerto es rey was produced at the Theater an der Wien of Vienna and the Festival of Avignon (France).

Fuentes's nonfiction essays and articles of the 1960s and early 1970s were published in two anthologies, Casa con dos puertas (1970) and Tiempo mexicano (1971). In 1972, Fuentes was elected to permanent membership in El Colegio Nacional, México. In 1974, Fuentes held a visiting fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.During the period 1971-1974, Fuentes began writing the novel Terra Nostra, and he wrote the essay Cervantes o la crítica de la lectura as an outgrowth of his research for the novel. Terra Nostra was first published in Mexico in 1975, and the English translation by Margaret Sayers Peden, was published under the same title by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1976.

Carlos Fuentes served as Mexico's ambassador to France from 1975 to 1977. In 1977, he began a series of teaching and creative writing posts at American universities. He taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, and in the fall of 1979, at Princeton. He taught at Dartmouth College in 1980-1981 and at Harvard University from 1983 to 1985. In 1986-1987, he held the Simón Bolivar Chair at Cambridge University (England), and in the fall of 1987 he returned to Harvard to inaugurate the Robert F. Kennedy Professorship in Latin American Studies, which he held until July 1988.

In 1985, Fuentes' novel Gringo Viejo and the English translation (by Margaret Sayers Peden and the author) were published. The movie Old Gringo which is based on the novel, was produced by Jane Fonda, filmed in 1988, and released in 1989.

Fuentes moved to London, England in 1990 to collaborate with Malone Gill Productions in the making of the television series The Buried Mirror and the Spanish language version El espejo enterrado. Fuentes served as both principal writer and onscreen host of five television programs which explore the history of Spain and Latin America in light of the quincentenary of Christopher Columbus's landing on the island of San Salvador in 1492.

Some of Fuentes' writings in English were published in Myself with Others: Selected Essays in 1988; other literary essays are compiled in Geografía de la novela (1990) and Valiente Mundo Nuevo: Épica, utopía y mito en la novela hispanoamericana (1993). In recent years, he has published several books of fiction, a revised version of the play Todos los gatos son pardos (published as Ceremonias del alba), and the nonfiction work, Nuevo tiempo mexicano (1995).

Throughout his career, Carlos Fuentes has received many literary prizes, including the following: Biblioteca Breve Prize from Editorial Seix Barral (Barcelona, 1967) for Cambio de piel, Premio Internacional de Novela "Rómulo Gallegos" (Caracas, 1977), Premio Internacional "Alfonso Reyes" (Mexico, 1979), Premio Nacional de Lingüística y Literatura (Mexico, 1984), Premio Miguel de Cervantes (Spain, 1987), and Premio Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (Spain, 1992). He has received honorary doctorates from Harvard, Georgetown, UCLA, and Washington University of St. Louis, Mo., and from many colleges, including Dartmouth and Bard, and Cambridge and Essex Universities in England.

From 1957 to 1969, Carlos Fuentes was married to Rita Macedo, a Mexican film actress. In 1973, he married Sylvia Lemus, a television and newspaper journalist. From his first marriage, he has a daughter, Cecilia (b. 1962), and with Sylvia Fuentes de Lemus he has two children, Rafael (b. 1973) and Natasha (b. 1974). He died on May 15, 2012 in Mexico City, Mexico.

Juan García Ponce was a Mexican novelist, dramatist, short story writer, and critic. Born in Mérida, Yucatán, in 1932, García Ponce later moved to Mexico City, where he studied drama at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras and the Centro Mexicano de Escritores. After completing his studies in 1958, he worked as an editor and art and literary critic for a number of periodicals, including Vuelta and Universidad de México. García Ponce also directed the Revista Mexicana de Literatura.

García Ponce was best known for his novels, including Crónica de la Intervención and La casa en la playa, and his critical essays, collected in volumes such as El reino milenario and Imágenes y visiones. His plays, such as Doce y una, trece, were also celebrated, and several of his works were adapted as films, Tajimara (adapted as Los bienamados) being the most notable example. He received many prestigious awards during his lifetime, including the Medalla Eligio Ancona in 1996 and the Premio Juan Rulfo in 2001. After battling multiple sclerosis for many years, García Ponce died in Mexico City on December 27, 2003.

Margo Glantz is a Mexican novelist, essayist, and literary scholar. She was born in Mexico City on January 28, 1930, to Jacobo Glantz and Elizabeth Shapiro, Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine. She earned a Masters in Modern Letters at UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) in 1953, and completed a doctorate in Hispanic Literature at the Sorbonne. After her return to Mexico, she joined the UNAM faculty in 1959, where she spent most of her career. She taught for four years at Montclair State University (1970-1974) and was appointed the Mexican Cultural Attaché in London (1986-1988). From 1982 to 1983, she served as the Director of Publications and Libraries in the Mexican Department of Education and as the Director of Literature at the National Institute of Fine Arts (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes) from 1983 to 1986. Her literary criticism brought international attention to the poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Her most well-known work, Las genealogías (1981), explores her family history, beginning in early twentieth-century Ukraine and culminating in Mexico in the 1980s.

Augusto Monterroso was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on December 21, 1921. An autodidact from the age of eleven, he spent his adolescence in Guatemala City, Guatemala, where he worked clandestinely against the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico and co-founded the newspaper El Espectador. His political activities led to his detainment and exile to Mexico City in 1944. Later that year, when Jacobo Arbenz became president of Guatemala, Monterroso was appointed to a position in the Guatemalan embassy in Mexico. In 1953, he was named Guatemalan consul to Bolivia and moved briefly to La Paz before relocating to Santiago, Chile, upon Arbenz's fall from power. In 1956, Monterroso returned to Mexico City, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Monterroso's first stories were published in 1941, in the periodicals Acento and El Imparcial. The short story remained his primary form, and his first book, Obras completas (y otros cuentos), includes what is widely regarded as the world's shortest story, "El dinosaurio," comprised of a single seven-word sentence. Other published works include La oveja negra y demás fabulas; La letra e; Monterroso's only novel, Lo demás es silencio; and his memoirs, Los buscadores de oro. In addition to his writing career, Monterroso taught at la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Stanford University and held a variety of editorial positions.

Awards received by Monterroso during his lifetime include the Premio Javier Villaurrutia (1975), Premio Juan Rulfo (1996), Quetzal de Jade Maya (1996), Guatemala's Premio Nacional de Literatura (1997), and Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras (2000). Additionally, la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala awarded Monterroso an honorary doctorate in 1996. Monterroso died in Mexico City in 2003.

José Emilio Pacheco was a poet, essayist, novelist and short story writer. He was born in Mexico City on June 30, 1939. Pacheco attended the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he studied law and literature and worked for literary publications but did not earn a degree. He later taught at various universities in Mexico, United States, Canada, and England, including the University of Maryland at College Park, and the University of Essex, England. Pacheco also worked as director and editor of various journals and cultural supplements. He was given various awards during his lifetime, including the Premio Reina Sofía de Poesía Iberoamericana, and the Premio Miguel de Cervantes, both in 2009. He died in Mexico City on January 26, 2014.

The papers consist of Sergio Pitol's diaries, journals, notebooks, handwritten, typescript, and print out manuscripts of literary works, correspondence, personal documents, and papers of others about Pitol. There are manuscripts of unpublished works such as "Conversaciones con Sergio Pitol" (unpublished); and published manuscripts El desfile del amor, Domar a la divina garza, El viaje, and La vida conyugal. Correspondence includes letters from friends, writers, artists, literary critics, agents, and publishers such as Rosario Castellanos, José Donoso, Carlos Fuentes, Witold Gombrowicz, María Luisa Mendoza (la China), Carlos Monsivaís, Augusto Monterroso, José Emilio Pacheco, Octavio Paz, Elena Poniatowska, Manuel Puig, Juan Soriano, and Juan Villoro among others.

The papers are arranged in the following way: Series 1: Diaries and Journals, Series 2: Notebooks, Series 3: Writings, Series 4: Correspondence, Series 5: Personal Documents, and Series 6: About Pitol.