In Search of the Absent Father: Notes on an Early Autobiography by Carlos Monsiváis

Abstract

This essay is a study of an early book by Carlos Monsiváis, his autobiography, a book almost completely ignored by critics. I analyze and comment on this text in light of Salvador Novo’s memoires, a book published with an introduction by Monsiváis and an author with whom Monsiváis maintained a proble-matic relationship. Given the fact that the book serves to study the relationship between the two writers and to discover the roots of important ideas in Monviváis mature work, the essay pleas for the recovery and the reading of this forgotten autobiography.