Pedro Páramo

I first learned of what is considered “one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century world literature” while reading Paul Theroux’s, “On the Plain of Snakes.” In his critique of Mexican literature, he mentions “Pedro Páramo” because, unlike many Mexico’s best-known authors, Rulfo wrote about rural Mexico. He mentions that the book was published in 1955 and was one of procurers of “magical realism”, which influenced many of Latin America’s best authors.When I told my Guatemalan wife about the book, she told me she “hated it.” Evidently, the Belgium nuns who ran her school in Guatemala made this obligatory reading in 6th grade! Oh well, obviously I got a late start to catching this great piece of literature, but was not disappointed one bit.According to Susan Sontag, an American writer, filmmaker, philosopher, teacher, and political activist described as "one of the most influential critics of her generation,” who wrote the foreword to the book, Garcia Marques said that “Pedro Páramo ” is a legendary book by a writer who became a legend.The story is about a dying mother beseeching her son to locate his father, Pedro Paramo, whom they fled from years ago With that, Juan Preciado sets out for Comala, a town alive with whispers and shadows - seemingly populated only by memories and hallucinations. Built on the tyranny of the Páramo family, its barren and broken-down streets echo the voices of tormented spirits sharing the secrets of the past.His only love, from a very young age, is that of Susana San Juan, a childhood friend who leaves Comala with her father at a young age. Pedro Páramo bases all of his decisions on, and puts all of his attention into trying to get Susana San Juan to return to Comala. When she finally does, Pedro makes her his, but she constantly mourns her dead husband Florencio and spends her time sleeping and dreaming about him. Pedro realizes that Susana San Juan belongs to a different world that he will never understand.When his only love, Susan San Juan, died, the church bells toll incessantly, provoking a fiesta in Comala. Pedro buries his only true love, and angry at the indifference of the town, swears vengeance. As the most politically and economically influential person in the town, Pedro crosses his arms and refuses to continue working, and the town dies of hunger. This is why in Juan's narration, we see a dead, dry Comala instead of the luscious place it was when Pedro Páramo was a boy.The local priest provides insights into the black cloud that seemed to hang over Pedro.“It had begun, he thought, when Pedro Páramo, from the low thing he was, made something of himself. He flourished like a weed. And the worst of it was that I made it all possible.” He tells of one of his parishioners confessing her sins, “I have sinned padre. I bore Pedro Páramo’s child…”The priest remembered the day he brought the child to Pedro Páramo, only hours old. He had said to him:Don Pedro, the mother died as she gave birth to this baby. She said that he’s yours. Here he is.Pedro Páramo never even blinked, he merely said:“Why don’t you keep him, Father? Make a priest out of him. With the blood he carries in his veins, I don’t want to take responsibility.”Father Rentería lived in hope that he would someday be able to fully fulfill his vows as a Catholic priest and tell Pedro that his son (Miguel, who was killed in a horse related accident) will not go to heaven, but instead, pardoned him for his sins in exchange for a lump of gold because he is too poor to survive otherwise.The author describes what Pedro’s son, Preciado, finds one evening in Comala,….Nights around here are filled with ghosts. You should see all the spirits walking through the streets. As soon as it’s dark they begin to come out. No one likes to see them. There’s so many of them and so few of us that we don’t even make the effort to pray for them anymore to help them out of their purgatory. We don’t have enough prayers to go around. Maybe a few words of the Lord’s Prayer for each one. But that’s not going to do them any good. Then there are our sins on top of theirs. None of us still living is in God’s grace….Sometimes the order and nature of events that occur in the work are not as they first seem. Midway through the book, the original chronology is subverted when the reader finds out that much of what has preceded was a flashback to an earlier time.Initially, the novel received a cold critical reception and only sold two thousand copies during its first four years until it was highly acclaimed as a key influence on Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Marquez claimed that after he discovered Pedro Páramo (with Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” the most influencing reading of his early writing years), he could recite from memory long passages, until eventually he knew the whole book by heart, so much did he admire it and want to be saturated by it.Marquez also revealed that he felt blocked as a novelist after writing his first four books and that it was only his life-changing discovery of Pedro Páramo in 1961 that opened his way to the composition of his masterpiece, “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Jorge Luis Borges considered “Pedro Páramo to be one of the greatest texts written in any language. Evidently, it has been translated into 30 different languages, and the English version has sold over one million copies in the U.S. According to “WorldCat” the World’s largest network of library content and services, his works have been published in 40 languages.Juan Rulfo was a Mexican novelist, short story writer, and also a photographer. He is acknowledged mainly for two books. One of which is El llano en llamas (1953), a collection of short stories. Fifteen of these stories have been translated into English and appeared in The Burning Plain and Other Stories, which also includes his much-famed tale, Diles que no me maten! (Tell Them Not to Kill Me!). The second book is the novel, Pedro Páramo (1955), after which Rulfo did not write another novel. His photography works are archived at the Juan Rulfo Foundation, which bears more than 6,000 negatives of his photographs.Everyone asked Rulfo why he did not publish another book, and according to Sontag, who wrote the foreword to the book, “…as if the point of a writer’s life is to go on writing and publishing. In fact, the point of a writer’s life is to produce a great book—that is a book which will last”---and this is what Rulfo did.

In this 1955 Mexican novella, a young man, Juan Preciado, promises his dying mother that he will find his father, the Pedro Páramo of the title, and claim his birthright. Juan has no independent memories of his father. His mother fled her abusive and loveless marriage shortly after Juan's birth and raised him by herself in a city far away from his father's ranch.After burying his mother, Juan sets off for Comalá where his father's ranch is located. When he reaches his destination, he finds an eerie, nightmarish town, inhabited entirely by ghosts. Comalá is a veritable graveyard where the dead relive their intolerable memories. All of those memories revolve around Pedro Páramo, the corrupt local boss, who turned Comalá into a hell on earth.Juan Rulfo's writing is surreal and dreamlike. This novel reads as if the main character is experiencing a nightmare. The narrative contains many abrupt shifts in time and frame of reference. These rapid shifts are disorienting, and greatly enhance the novel's disturbing effect. There is one memorable passage, where Juan is wandering the deserted streets and houses of Comalá, when suddenly the whole town fills up with water and Juan experiences the sensations of drowning. I could swear that passage is right out of one of my own nightmares.This book is far more than a ghost story. Like Toni Morrison's Beloved, Pedro Páramo is a social allegory in the form of a ghost story. The novel is filled with symbols and double-meanings. For example, Páramo means wasteland in Spanish (in fact, the Mexican edition of T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland is titled El Páramo). Juan Preciado is on a quest for his legacy. Instead, he finds a hellish wasteland, populated by ghosts. The novel is a social allegory of mid-twentieth century Mexico. From 1910 through the 1940s, Mexican society endured civil unrest, a revolutionary war, the anti-clerical purges of the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship and increased urbanization. An urban Mexican,seeking his roots, finds a bleak legacy of war, rampant poverty, destroyed haciendas and disbanded monasteries. Author Juan Rulfo was born to an upper class Mexican family. By the end of the Mexican Revolution, Rulfo's parents were dead and Rulfo himself was in an orphanage. Rulfo experienced firsthand the losses symbolically portrayed in his only novel, Pedro Páramo.Although this short novel is difficult to follow, it contains some of the most surreal and imaginative writing I've ever read. Margaret Sayers Peden's English translation keeps all of the beauty, imagery, symbolism and wordplay intact. The book is both remarkably beautiful and remarkably disturbing. I recommend reading it through once and then skimming through it a second time in order to put it into context and perspective. This novel is particularly worthwhile for readers with a Spanish language background and an interest in Latin America.

This is an excellent book, it is great piece of mexican literature. The format could be better.

I re-read this bookin Spanish in March 2012, almost a year later and loved this book. The tone is one of a mystery: mother dies and tells her son to return to their home town, Comala, Mexico and find his father, Pedro Paramo. The town is a ghost-town and we are never sure of the people he meets, are they alive or ghosts? Plus most of the time it rains setting up an eery mood. Through these random discourses with the townspeople, the tale unravels about his father, the women he has had and the last wife leads us to the father. I also liked the fact that as the stories are uncovered, the son as narator begins to fade away, becoming part of the ghost town. This book written in 1950, according to the cover notes was key to the Magic Realism movement of Latin America, influencing Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Mexican author Carlos Fuentes. A difficult book (see my review below) but on a second read I see the patterns, the issues and the greatness of this little book. What was I thinking when I first read it?Original reviewI have to admit that the book confused me when the main subject, who went looking for his father, Pedro Paramo suddenly disappears? Becomes his father? Dies? It was an unsettling feeling. Having said this, I loved the idea that everyone he meets is dead or about to die in the empty town of Comala. The eeriness and almost magical feeling certainly predates any of the magic realists and yet the story unravels nicely (despite my confusion).

This copy is an English translation from the original Spanish. It is a complicated story, with a confusing plot but if you are able to open your mind to the magical surealism you will really enjoy this. The concepts can be difficult to grasp for someone who is used to more traditional types of literature, but I would recommend not trying too hard to understand what is happening. I studied Hispanic Studies at University and found this was one of the books that made the most impact and it's one that I wanted to come back to afterwards, especially as my interest for Mexican culture grew. For anyone who understands Spanish and would like to read the original, I would recommend the Catedra Letras Hispanicas edition, which has very useful appendices. Enjoy!

A good seller who delivered on time. A slim volume that I started on a friends copy and had to have for myself.Really requires a 2nd attempt but as a fan of S. American lit I wouldn't be without it

Lecture d'un écrivain méxicain