The Art of Conversation

This paper analyses Montserrat Roig’s three volumes of Retrats paral·lels (Parallel portraits; 1975, 1976 and 1978) as outstanding biographical interviews that reflect some of the characteristics of New Biography and move beyond the realms of fiction and historiography to create a new literary formula: dialogic literary portraits. In these works Roig is searching for models to follow in her incipient literary and journalistic career, but she above all aims to provide the reader with a symbolic map of the Catalan intellectual universe of the seventies, drawing special attention to the idea of nation and to those engaged in building its collective imagination, namely writers such as Mercè Rodoreda or Josep Pla.