Camilo Jose Cela Trulock

Camilo Jose Cela Trulock
(1916)

Spanish writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1989. He is perhaps best known for his novel La familia de Pascual Duarte (1942; The Family of Pascual Duarte) and is considered to have given new life to Spanish literature. His literary production--primarily novels, short narratives, and travel diaries--is characterized by experimentation and innovation in form and content. Cela is also credited by some critics with having established the narrative style known as tremendismo, a tendency to emphasize violence and grotesque imagery.
Cela attended the University of Madrid before and after the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), during which he served with Franco's army. His first novel, Pascual Duarte, established his European reputation. Traditional in form, it was both a popular and a critical success. His second novel, La colmena (1951; The Hive), with its fragmented chronology and large cast of characters, is an innovative and perceptive story of postwar Madrid. It solidified Cela's critical and popular reputation. Another of his better-known avant-garde novels, San Camilo, 1936 (1969), is one continuous stream of consciousness.

Cela's acute powers of observation and skill in colourful description also are apparent in his travel books, based on his trips through rural Spain and his visits to Latin-American countries. The most noted of these are Viaje a la Alcarria (1948; Journey to the Alcarria), Del Mino al Bidasoa (1952; "From the Mino to the Bidasoa"), and Judios, moros y cristianos (1956; "Jews, Moors, and Christians"). Among his numerous short narratives are Esas nubes que pasan (1945; "The Passing Clouds") and the four works included in the collection El molino de viento, y otras novelas cortas (1956; "The Windmill and Other Short Fiction"). Cela also wrote essays, poetry, and memoirs and in his later years made frequent television appearances.

In 1955 he settled in Majorca, where he founded a well-respected literary review, Papeles de Son Armadans (1956-79), and published books in fine editions. He began in 1968 to publish his multivolume Diccionario secreto (vol. 11 was published in 1972), a compilation of "unprintable" but well-known words and phrases. He became a member of the Spanish Academy in 1957.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Robert Kirsner, The Novels and Travels of Camilo Jose Cela (1963); and D.W. McPheeters, Camilo Jose Cela (1969), discuss both the life and the literary output of the writer.