Biographies of the living: narrative reconfigurations of biographical writing

Abstract

As a continuation of the PhD research, we present in this paper some of our advances about the reconfigured biography -which has as a character a person still alive- as a symptom of the current society. Thus, we will make some explanations and reflections on these narratives of living characters, which were not very common until very recently. These journalistic biographies -because they are written mainly by journalists- break with aesthetic and conceptual patterns, outlining trajectories of famous and notorious people still alive and some of them, even writing in partnership with a journalist who does not appear in the narrative, such as, for example, the biography of the writer and presenter of a famous journalist who is still alive, the biography of the writer and presenter Jô Soares (best seller in 2016 and 2017) and of the religious Bispo Edir Macedo - in addition to the biography about the life of the writer Paulo Coelho, written by the biographer and journalist Fernando Morais - The Magician (2008) - which had a circulation of 100 thousand copies in the first week of its release. Thus, with a trajectory of these characters still in progress, a new paradigm is established when there is a break with existing methodologies. Having said that, what we will try to do is a kind of analysis by means of a seminal table - with categories, which in truth will serve us as a form of approach - therefore, never as a form of crystallization, but as a means to reorganize those classifications that encompass the biography and to verify that there are deeper layers of classification.