Moix, Terenci

b. 1942, Barcelona

   Writer

   The emergence of Terenci Moix in the Catalan literary scene of the 1960s is widely regarded as little short of a Copernican revolution: while his contemporaries were still coming to terms with the consequences of Francoism for Catalan culture, he introduced radically new themes and attitudes, such as an interest in perverse sexuality (he was in fact the first ever openly gay author in Catalan literature), a taste for mass and pop culture, and a cosmopolitan outlook. His popularity, however, vividly contrasts with the critical neglect of which he has been the object.

   A self-taught man, winner of important literary prizes, and media personality, Moix is the author of many novels as well as journalism, theatre plays, books on film and comics, and travel literature. Moix's narrative works use two distinct registers. In novels like El dia que va morir Marilyn (The Day Marilyn Died) (1969), voted best Catalan novel of the period 1964– 70, or La increada consciència de la raça (The Uncreated Conscience of the Race) (1974), Moix adopts a realist style to narrate provocative stories that bring together the bourgeois family, Catalonia's history and identity, and homosexual desire. In other books, such as the collections of short stories La tone dels vicis capitals (The Tower of Capital Vices) (1968) and La caiguda de l'imperi sodomita (The Fall of the Sodomite Empire) (1974) and the novel Món Mascle (Macho World) (1971), he combines, in a distinctively postmodern fashion, a camp sensibility with an interest in fantasies derived from mass culture and in the myths of pop culture.

   In 1983, Moix decided to write in Spanish only and became Spain's best-selling author. In his novels of this period he pursues to a large extent the camp penchant he had explored in Catalan, either in historical melodramas set in a Holly-woodesque Egypt, like No digas que fue un sueño (Don't Say it was a Dream) (1986), which was awarded the Planeta Prize in 1986 and sold over a million copies, or in a high camp parody of lesbian life, Garras de astracán (Astrakhan Claws) (1991). In 1990 he started the publication of his autobiography El peso de la paja (The Burden of Masturbation) (1989), and in 1992 returned to the Catalan language with his highly praised novel El sexe dels àngels (The Sex of the Angels).

   See also: gay culture; gay writing; language and national identity

   Further reading

   - Bou, E. (1988) "La literature actual", in M. de Riquer, A.Comas and J.Molas, Història de la literatura catalana: Part moderna, vol. 11, Barcelona: Ariel (contains a section on Moix's writing in Catalan).

   - Fernández, J.A. (1998) "Perverting the Canon: Terenci Moix's La caiguda de l'imperisodmita", Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 4: 67–76.

   - Forrest, G.S. (1977) "El mundo antagónico de Terenci Moix", Hispania 60: 927–35 (a dated but useful account of Moix's writing of the 1960s and 1970s).

   - Smith, P.J. (1992) Laws of Desire: Questions of Homosexuality in Spanish Writing and Film 1960-1990, Oxford: Clarendon (chapter 1 includes an excellent section on Moix's autobiography).

   JOSEP-ANTON FERNÁNDEZ