On writing and its materialization: Augusto Baptista

Abstract

The writing of Augusto Baptista (b. 1946) has developed itself around an uncertain terrain of legitimation in which one finds the short story, the micronarrative and other micro-compositions in interrogative form called «enigmas» – alongside texts from the field of the newspaper report, published in magazines and sometimes illustrated with photographs taken by the author, himself a professional photojournalist for years. Peculiar are also the editorial means of circulation of some of these writings – those which are intended as literary – in editions of a careful paratextuality, almost entirely conceived, finished off and disseminated by their author. Cartoonist and maker of tangram books (one of his literary books is printed in a tangram alphabet), Baptista proves to be a many-sided artist, and a visual one too, sometimes under the tutelary figure of another creator at the margins of the literary, Mário-Henrique Leiria. He thus navigates the waters of a black humour, which does not abdicate from denouncing a certain absurdity and nonsense of human existence. In the case of this artist, it is also important to consider the material means that his highly elliptical writing found in order to reach its restricted audience.