Rediscovered works from a Mexican masterIn the Mexican literary scene, it is a general consensus that Juan Rulfo is that nation’s greatest author. In fact, Rulfo is widely respected throughout Latin America, and is often credited as being the precursor and inspiration to the Latin American Boom that took place in world literature in the 1960s and ‘70s, in which such writers as Gabriel García Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, and Jorge Luis Borges rose to prominence. What Rulfo achieved in impact makes up for what he lacked in prolificacy. As far as most readers know, he only published one novel, Pedro Páramo, and one volume of stories, El Llano en Llamas (The Burning Plain). Editor and translator Douglas J. Weatherford, however, brings our attention to the fact that Rulfo did write another short novel, El Gallo de Oro (The Golden Cockerel), which was published in 1980 after having been adapted into film in 1964. The Golden Cockerel and Other Writings, published in 2017, presents Weatherford’s English translation of this “lost” novel by Rulfo, along with several short pieces by Rulfo that were published after his death in various Mexican publications.
The Golden Cockerel tells the tale of Dionisio Pinzón, a dirt-poor resident of the town of San Miguel del Milagro. Hampered by a lame arm, he can’t even perform manual labor, so as an act of charity he is granted the job of town crier. Among his duties is serving as announcer at the local cockfights. One evening, after a fight, the owner of the defeated bird is just about to put his wounded animal out of its misery, when Dionisio Pinzón steps in and asks him to reconsider. The man gives his unwanted bird to Dionisio Pinzón, who takes the golden rooster home and nurses it back to health. From that moment, Dionisio Pinzón’s life changes for the better, in luck and in love. He travels from town to town with his golden cockerel, raking in riches from the fighting prowess of his beloved bird. He also wins the heart of a beautiful cabaret singer. With his newfound riches, however, Dionisio Pinzón undergoes a change from simple, likable peasant to a man consumed by greed.
Unlike the more blatantly modernist style of Pedro Páramo and The Burning Plain, the writing of The Golden Cockerel is not overtly experimental or surrealist in its structure and storytelling. Rulfo relates the story in straightforward language, but with his own unique voice and humor. The plot has the quality of a folktale or fable, like a modern Mexican version of some semi-supernatural cautionary tale of Balzac’s, such as The Magic Skin. The most enjoyable quality of the novel is the blunt naturalism and gallows humor with which Rulfo depicts his native land. He doesn’t romanticize Mexican culture but certainly displays an affection for it that is contagious. Rulfo gets the reader to care about this time and place, these people, in a way similar to how García Marquez brings rural Colombia to vivid life in One Hundred Years of Solitude.
The “Other Writings” in this volume are a mixed bag of short-shorts, including a poem (“The Secret Formula”), correspondence with a loved one (“A Letter to Clara”), an autobiographical piece (“My Father”), and a bit of travel writing (“The Castillo de Teayo”). A couple of the short stories bear a warmth and humor similar to The Golden Cockerel (“A Piece of the Night” and “The Discoverer”) while a few others have a dark, spaghetti-western atmosphere that would have been right at home in The Burning Plain (“He Was on the Run and Hurting” and “Ángel Pinzón Paused”). A few of the pieces are too brief to really amount to much. In all cases, however, Rulfo’s stellar literary talent shines. The Golden Cockerel isn’t quite as impressive as Rulfo’s two better-known books, but it’s still worthy of this highly esteemed Mexican master. Rulfo fans lamenting his paltry output will be delighted by the long lost writings in this volume.
Stories in this collection
The Golden Cockerel
The Secret Formula
Life Doesn’t Take Itself Very Seriously
A Piece of the Night
A Letter to Clara
Castillo de Teayo
After Death
My Aunt Cecilia
Cleotilde
My Father
Same as Yesterday
Susana Foster
He Was on the Run and Hurting
Ángel Pinzón Paused
The Discoverer
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A master of words AND pictures
Mexican writer Juan Rulfo was the author of Pedro Páramo--a book that many consider to be the best Latin American novel ever written--and The Burning Plain, an excellent collection of short stories. In addition to being a Nobel-caliber novelist, Rulfo was a world-class photographer. His pictures expertly capture the landscape, architecture, and indigenous culture of Mexico. Juan Rulfo’s Mexico was published in 2002 by the Smithsonian Institution Press. It is a translation of a Spanish-language edition published the same year by Lunwerg Editores in Barcelona. This 11.5 x 11.5" coffee table book contains 175 exceptional photographs by Rulfo, all of which are beautifully reproduced. I didn’t care much for the accompanying essays, however, which are heavy on the type of psychobabble and postmodern philosophy only an art historian could love.
Rulfo was not just a writer who happened to take a few pictures in his spare time. He may be one of the best photographers in the history of Mexico. His pictures bear some stylistic similarity to those of his country’s most renowned photographer, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, and may remind American audiences of the work of Edward Weston. These photographs, taken from about 1945 to 1955, capture rural Mexico at a turning point. Rulfo depicts indigenous cultures engaged in traditions, customs, and lifestyles that have been in existence for centuries, yet are gradually disappearing with the encroachment of modernity. His photographs are not merely sociological studies, however, but artistic portraits imbued with visual poetry and quiet dignity. His images straddle the line between romance and realism, on the one hand evoking the timeless mystery and myth of Mexico, while on the other hand documenting the gritty reality of rural Mexican life. Architecture, a particular fascination of Rulfo’s, is represented by pre-Columbian temples, Spanish colonial churches, the dwellings of Indian villagers, and the skyscrapers of Mexico City. His stunning landscapes of rugged mountains, barren deserts, cascading waterfalls, fertile farmlands, and lush forests call to mind the rich, silvery tonal values of Ansel Adams. There are also a number of photos taken during the production of a film called La Escondida, which appears to be a story of the Revolution, but about which the text offers no information.
The book contains six brief essays by six different authors, the only really recognizable name among them being the Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes. In an essay by Jorge Alberto Lozoya, the author states, “In an age that confuses chatter with the deeper meaning of existence, Rulfo’s work is resplendent, presaging the dawn of a new era.” Though he may be right about Rulfo, these six essays unfortunately fall into the chatter category. Mostly the authors offer their lofty opinions of Pedro Páramo, expressed in the obscure jargon of art theory, while failing to address the photography altogether. Only the last two essays, by Victor Jiménez and Erika Billeter, offer some useful biographical information on Rulfo and his photographic art, hidden amid the references to Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes.
Juan Rulfo’s Mexico provides a beautiful collection of Rulfo’s photographic work in a well-designed package. Fans of Rulfo’s writings will be fascinated by the correspondence between his photographic imagery and the verbal imagery in his stories. Any enthusiast of Mexican culture, history, and art should not be without it. If the writing were worthy of the master himself, this would be a five-star book.
Juan Rulfo, Acceso a un atrio
Juan Rulfo, Indígena de Ayutla, Mixes, Oaxaca
Juan Rulfo, Actor de La Escondida entre magueyes
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One of the best short story collections of the 20th century
The Burning Plain is a collection of fifteen short stories by Mexican author Juan Rulfo, originally published in 1953 under the Spanish title of El Llano en llamas. Rulfo is widely considered by his countrymen to be Mexico’s greatest author, even though he only published two books of fiction during his lifetime, this collection of stories and the novel Pedro Páramo.
The stories in The Burning Plain take place in rural Mexico, around the time of the Revolution of 1910, and often focus on the harsh aspects of peasant life. While some of the stories are very specifically Mexican, others are so stark and devoid of detail that their time and place are indeterminate. Common to all is a harsh, desolate landscape whose inhabitants struggle to eke out a living, some by coaxing a meagre crop from the arid soil, others by violently wielding a gun or machete. Poverty and murder permeate these stories, and death is a ubiquitous presence that Rulfo treats with an alternatingly bleak and comic fatalism.
Rulfo’s writing style is as sparse and severe as the land he depicts. No one can say as much with as few words as Juan Rulfo. His characters are often just the faint outline of human beings, his stages set with but a few rocks and trees, yet from these paltry ingredients he manages to craft complex narratives that vividly capture the drama of human existence. His prose is terse and stark, almost crude in its poetic simplicity, yet he also uses modernistic literary devices such as switching from first to third person in mid-story or alternating simultaneous stream-of-consciousness narratives. When Rulfo employs such techniques, it never feels gratuitous or forced, but always effortless and vital to the tale being told. The plots often start out deliberately obscure, sometimes frustratingly so, then slowly coalesce and develop like a figure emerging from a fog.
Reading this collection is like strolling through a gallery of masterpieces. The stories are consistently excellent throughout. In the bluntly titled “We’re very poor,” a flood inundates a rural village, washing away a cow belonging to the narrator’s sister. Without that cow for her dowry, her family fears she will become a “bad woman” like her sisters. In “Tell them not to kill me!”, an elderly man awaits his impending execution, grasping for a shred of hope, as he recalls his past 40 years as a fugitive and the murder that led to his downfall. In the bleak but powerful “No dogs bark,” an old man, carrying his grown son on his back, stumbles through darkness in search of medical attention, lamenting the trouble brought about by his son’s evil ways. “Remember” starts out as a folksy anecdote, with the narrator detailing the personality quirks of his home village’s inhabitants. It then slowly and unexpectedly escalates into an account of a brutal killing. If there’s one brilliant gem to be singled out from this treasure chest it would probably be “Talpa.” Tamilo, whose body is covered in mysterious, disgusting sores, convinces his wife and his brother (or sister, perhaps; I don’t believe Rulfo ever specifies) to take him on a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Talpa, little knowing that the two are carrying on an affair behind his back.
The Burning Plain is a landmark work, not only of Latin-American literature but of literature in general. I can’t think of a better collection of short stories overall. Even for those who have absolutely no interest in Mexico, its history or its culture, Rulfo’s stories transcend their setting to offer profound and unblinking insight into the universal human condition.
Stories in this collection
Macario
They gave us the land
The Hill of the Comrades
We’re very poor
The man
At daybreak
Talpa
The burning plain
Tell them not to kill me!
Luvina
The night they left him alone
Remember
No dogs bark
Paso del Norte
Anacleto Morones
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The Mexican Masterpiece
Pedro Páramo is the quintessential Mexican novel, and possibly the greatest work of Latin-American literature since the Popol Vuh. It was the only novel ever written by Juan Rulfo, who also published one excellent collection of short stories, The Burning Plain (El Llano en Llamas).
After his mother dies, Juan Preciado travels to the village of Comala to find his father, Pedro Páramo, whom he has never known. Upon arriving, he finds Comala to be a ghost town inhabited by wandering spirits and faded memories. From this eerie background gradually emerges the story of Pedro Páramo, a powerful and unscrupulous land baron driven by greed, lust, and a lifelong unrequited love.
This novel is not divided into chapters, but rather into short passages. Each new passage brings a feeling of disorientation as the reader tries to get his bearings. Rulfo switches back and forth between first to third person narration, with different characters acting as narrator. It is often difficult to tell whether what you’re reading belongs to the realm of dreaming or waking, of the past or the present, of the living or the dead. It’s like a surrealist painting in which forms emerge haphazardly: some concrete, some ethereal; some beautiful, some horrific. The passages interconnect like an intricate puzzle, albeit a puzzle with missing pieces, spaces deliberately left empty, like rests in a symphony.
When modernism came along, it promised us that experimentation in language and form would yield works of literature more profound and more evocative than the traditional narrative styles of romanticism and naturalism. For the most part that was an empty promise, and instead of better books what we got was decades of verbal gymnastics and mental masturbation. Not so with Pedro Páramo. There is nothing flashy or gratuitous about Rulfo’s prose. His style is stark and spare, with every word carefully chosen and perfectly placed. No other writer can say so much with so few words as Juan Rulfo. In a scant 120 pages, he gives us a novel so rich in imagery it could serve as a scaffold upon which 100 novels could be built. Pedro Páramo was first published in 1955. I don't think a better novel has been written since.
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