José Agustín

José Agustín Ramírez Gómez (19 August 1944 – 16 January 2024) was a Mexican novelist, short story writer, essayist and screenwriter. Publishing under the pen name José Agustín, he was considered one of the most influential and prolific Mexican writers of the second half of the 20th century.

José Agustín was born in Acapulco, Guerrero, on 19 August 1944. He studied classical literature at the School of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), film direction at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos (CUEC) and dramaturgy at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBA).

Agustín participated in Juan José Arreola's writers' workshop from 1962 to 1965, where he wrote his first novel, La tumba ("The Tomb"), when he was nineteen years old. The novel was the brief but provocative story of a Mexican upper-class teen, deemed indecent by the public but gathering praise from older writers. This and his most famous work, De perfil ("Profile View"), a fast and detailed view of three days in the main character's life, show stylistic similarities to James Joyce's work, especially A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Agustín was considered a member of the so-called Onda literature, onda (wave) being slang for current and fashionable views in the eyes of young people.

A common technique in his work is mixing a character's speech with narrative, without making any kind of distinction (free indirect discourse). Thus the reader finds a long dialogue written in a single sentence, and is expected to realize which character is speaking as he reads the words. He also made use of the stream of consciousness technique.

Agustín taught at the University of Denver, the University of California, Irvine, and the University of New Mexico.

Agustín died in Cuautla, Morelos, on 16 January 2024, at the age of 79.

The Mexican band Belafonte Sensacional wrote the song "Epic Aris" inspired by the literary works of José Agustín and Parménides García Saldaña, another writer who was considered a member of La Onda literature.[13]