30 Facts About Mircea Nedelciu

The final years of Mircea Nedelciu's life witnessed his publicized struggle with Hodgkin's lymphoma, which shaped the themes in his unfinished novel, Zodia Scafandrului.

Mircea Nedelciu was born in the semi-urban locality of Fundulea, Calarasi County, where his parents, Stefan and Maria, worked in agriculture.

Mircea Nedelciu attended primary school in his native town and high school in Branesti, and afterward left for the national capital of Bucharest, in order to complete his studies.

Mircea Nedelciu was especially close to his colleague and campus roommate Gheorghe Craciun and to painter Ion Dumitriu, and vacationed in Craciun's native Brasov County.

Mircea Nedelciu was however able to publish his first literary piece, the short story Un purtator de cuvant, hosted by a Luceafarul magazine issue of 1977.

Mircea Nedelciu ultimately found stable employment soon after his release, when he began working as a librarian on the staff of Cartea Romaneasca publishing house.

Also according to Cordos, Mircea Nedelciu was still being subject to political pressures for his family connections and his refusal to join the Romanian Communist Party.

Mircea Nedelciu was by then affiliated with Junimea, a workshop and literary society named after its 19th-century predecessor and hosted by the influential critic Ovid Crohmalniceanu.

Mircea Nedelciu followed up on his writing with the short story volumes Effectul de ecou controlat of 1981 and Amendament la instinctul proprietatii of 1983.

From this moment on until his death, Mircea Nedelciu was at the forefront of debates opposing the Optzecisti to their older colleagues, and stood among those members of his generation who willingly accepted to be called "Postmodernists".

In 1996, Mircea Nedelciu was involved in the open debate organized by the Writers' Union magazine Romania Literara and critic Nicolae Manolescu, whose purposes were defining the nature and expectations of Romanian Postmodernism and allowing its representatives a reply to criticism.

The final decade of Mircea Nedelciu's life witnessed his struggle with Hodgkin's disease, a rare type of lymphoma with which he was diagnosed in 1988, and which severely impaired his motor skills.

Mircea Nedelciu's treatment involved difficult surgery, performed with French assistance; in 1995, he was subject to a bone marrow autograft, carried out in Romania with additional help from Marseille's Paoli-Calmettes Institute.

Mircea Nedelciu briefly served as editor of Contrapunct, a magazine launched by the Optzecisti, and, after accusing the Writers' Union of "Stalinism", joined other disgruntled authors in creating the Association of Professional Writers.

Mircea Nedelciu's output was much reduced and his ability to write altogether threatened, but he was still working on Zodia Scafandrului, his final contribution to literature.

Mircea Nedelciu's efforts were supported by the literary community, who organized a series of fundraisers, the collection being supplemented by government authorities.

In late 1997, Mircea Nedelciu applied for a visa in order to get treatment in France, but it was not granted.

Mircea Nedelciu died on July 12,1999, and was buried at Bellu Cemetery two days later.

Mircea Nedelciu's narratives were overall significantly indebted to American fiction, and in particular to JD Salinger, in whose Catcher in the Rye he reportedly found the first model for his own autofictional style.

Mircea Nedelciu is known to have reworked and blended into his own texts various themes borrowed from Ernest Hemingway.

The English-speaking world became the Romanian author's primary cultural reference, and, according to researcher Caius Dobrescu, Mircea Nedelciu was one of those "fascinated" with the ideas of Canadian essayist Northrop Frye on "the constant degeneration of the character" in Western literature.

Mircea Nedelciu equaled his integration into the Desant '83 group with an affiliation to Postmodernism, an interpretation of positioning which came to divide the Optzecisti camp.

Mircea Nedelciu knew how to defend the mysteries of his prose, taking shelter behind textualist explanations on 'text generation'.

Together with Cartarescu and other figures in the Postmodernist group, Mircea Nedelciu was a target for criticism, both individual and collective.

Mircea Nedelciu argued that the group's identification with Postmodernist theses prevented others from doing the same, and that the approximation implied by this process rendered the Postmodern label meaningless.

In 1995, answering to unfavorable comparisons made between the palpable interactivity of electronic literature on one hand and the theoretical interactivity of pre-1989 prose on the other, Mircea Nedelciu accused his rival Ion Manolescu of having created, "out a cocktail of confusions, a thesis supported only by [his] inexplicable enthusiasm".

Mircea Nedelciu's stance was retrospectively criticized by as illusory, particularly since, even if it allowed the Optzecisti to penetrate the market, it did not prevent the censorship apparatus from viewing Mircea Nedelciu personally with suspicion.

Mircea Nedelciu has been voted among Romania's most important novelists in 2001, following a poll by Observator Cultural review: out of 150 novels, Femeia in rosu was voted 23rd-best, with Tratament fabulatoriu at 28 and Zmeura de cimpie at 139.

Mircea Nedelciu's reworking of Povestea povestilor, alongside Creanga's original and similar texts, was transformed into an eponymous fringe theater show, directed by actor Gheorghe Hibovski and premiered in spring 2009.

However, Daniel Cristea-Enache claimed, Mircea Nedelciu has become a victim of lack of interest, or "our lack of critical memory", after 1999, a phenomenon which he contrasts with the "almost always positive old critical references".