The anti-referential novel: Ana Maria Moix and the gauche divine

Ana Maria Moix wrote Julia and Walter, ¿por que te fuiste? between 1968 and 1973, a unique historical period which gave rise to the unique cultural circle of Barcelona's gauche divine. The gauche divine's influence on Moix, and Moix's role of little sister in the group, inform the study of Moix's early novels. Additionally, members of the gauche divine served as a clear readership for Moix's first two novels. The aesthetic influence of the gauche divine contributed to Moix's ability to write a novel that broke clearly with the referent-oriented literature of her predecessors.; A reading of Julia informed by the context of the gauche divine illuminates possible messages about intellectual freedom and recognizes a reality that many would rather have kept silent---rape, infidelity, and child neglect in Franco's Spain. Moix also poignantly portrays the extreme loss that a girl trying to come of age has faced, and she asks how many losses one can endure. She suggests that these lessons, literal and figural, are often multiple. Given her innovative approach to female themes, Julia serves as a transitional novel between the novels of Carmen Laforet, Ana Maria Matute, Carmen Martin Gaite, and Merce Rodoreda on the one hand, and Esther Tusquets and Montserrat Roig on the other.; Walter, while formally more connected to Tusquets's works and other postmodern novels than to the earlier writers, also plays a transitional role. The metafictional quality of the narration in Walter constitutes one factor that differentiates this novel from other Spanish post-war novels such as Tiempo de Silencio and Senas de Identidad. Moix examines the relativity of the differences between male and female, reality and fiction, and life and death, and argues that both the male and female characters in the novel are phantom-like. As with Julia, loss permeates Walter, which is a precursor to Tusquets's El mismo mar de todos los veranos and holds an important place among other novels of its time. Walter is ahead of its time thematically and formally. By eliminating the referent, Moix comes closest to accomplishing a formal renovation that others had talked about.