YANEZ, AGUSTIN

born May 4, 1904, Guadalajara, Mex. died Jan. 17, 1980, Mexico City Mexican novelist and short-story writer and active political figure who held several government posts. Yez was a member of the Generation of 1924 group of writers and was active in the Banderas de Provincias group, which translated Franz Kafka and James Joyce. A lawyer by profession, he began to publish novels in the 1940s. The novel Al filo del agua (1947; To the Edge of the Water; Eng. trans. The Edge of the Storm), his masterpiece, presents life in a typical Mexican village just before the Mexican Revolution. Its use of stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and complex structure anticipates many traits of the Latin-American new novel of the 1950s and '60s. La creacin (1959; The Creation), a novel that has some of the same characters as Al filo del agua, is an attempt to define the new cultural climate that resulted from the revolution. La tierra prdiga (The Lavish Land) appeared in 1960. Las tierras flacas (1962; The Lean Lands) shows the effect of industrialization on a peasant society. Tres cuentos (1964; Three Stories) and Los sentidos del aire (1964; The Ways the Wind Blows), short-story collections, deal with man's attempt to come to grips with time and space. His Obras escogidas (Selected Works) were published in 1968. Yez was governor of the state of Jalisco (195359), subsecretary to the president of Mexico (196264), and secretary of education (196470). Most of his works are set in his native state, Jalisco. Genio y figuras de Guadalajara (1941; The Character and Personages of Guadalajara) recalls the men who developed the city. The essay collections Mitos indgenas (1942; Native Myths), El clima espiritual de Jalisco (1945; The Spiritual Climate of Jalisco), and Don Justo Sierra (1950) reveal a critical and sensitive mind.