Juan Rulfo

As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death.Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro P?ramo - lover, overlord, murderer. Rulfo?s extraordinary mix of sensory images, violent passions and unfathomable mysteries has been a profound influence on a whole generation of Latin American writers including Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. To read Pedro P?ramo today is as overwhelming an experience as when it was first published in Mexico nearly fifty years ago.

Pedro Páramo

Rulfo, Juan.

Pedro Páramo

Nica

I’m afraid to offend the people who provide for me. It’s true; I owe them my livelihood. I get nothing from the poor, and God knows prayers don’t fill a stomach. That’s how been up to now.

And we’re seeing the consequences. All my fault. I have betrayed those who love me and who have put their faith in me and come to me to intercede on their behalf of God.

What has their faith won them? Heaven? Or the purification of their souls? And why purify their souls anyway, when at last moment…

“He can afford to buy salvation. Only you know whether this is the price. As for me, Lord, I throw myself at your feet to ask for the justice or injustice that any of us may ask… For my part, I hope you damn him to hell.”

Outside in the patio, the footsteps, like people wandering in circles. Muted sounds. And inside, the woman standing in the doorway, her body impending the arrival of day: through her arms he glimpsed pieces of sky and beneath her feet, trickles of light. A damp light, as if the floor beneath the woman were flooded with tears. And then the sobbing. Again the soft but penetrating weeping, and the grief contorting her body with pain. 

There wasn’t much point in saying things he couldn’t hear, things that evaporated in the air, things he couldn’t get the taste of.

And though there were no children playing, no doves, no blue-shadowed roof tiles, I felt that the town was alive. And that if I heard only silence, it was because I was not yet accustomed to silence - maybe because my head was still filled with sounds and voices.

Yes, voices. And here, where the air was so rare, I heard them even stronger. They lay heavy inside me. I remembered what my mother had said: “You will hear me better there. I will be closer to you. You will hear the voice of my memories stronger than the voice of my death - that is, if death ever had a voice.” Mother … So alive.

How I wished she were here, so I could say, “You were mistaken about the house. You told me the wrong place. You sent me ‘south of nowhere,’ to an abandoned village. Looking for someone who’s no longer alive.”

Kat Albanese

There was no air; only the dead, still night fired by the dog days of August.

Not a breath. I had to suck in the same air I exhaled, cupping it in my hands before it escaped. I felt it, in and out, less each time until it was so thin it slipped through my fingers forever.

Green pastures. Watching the horizon rise and fall as the wind swirled through the wheat, an afternoon rippling with curling lines of rain. The color of the earth, the smell of alfalfa and bread. A town that smelled like spilled honey…

“This town is filled with echoes. It's like they were trapped behind the walls, or beneath the cobblestones. When you walk you feel like someone's behind you, stepping in your footsteps. You hear rustlings. And people laughing. Laughter that sounds used up.

And voices worn away by the years. Sounds like that. But I think the day will come when those sounds fade away."

"Yes," Damiana Cisneros repeated. "This town is filled with echoes. I'm not afraid anymore. I hear the dogs howling, and I let them howl. And on windy days I see the wind blowing leaves from the trees, when anyone can see that there aren't any trees here. There must have been once. Otherwise, where do the leaves come from?”

Then he heard the weeping. That was what woke him: a soft but penetrating weeping that because it was so delicate was able to slip through the mesh of sleep and reach the place where his fear lived.

The heat woke me just before midnight. And the sweat. The woman's body was made of earth, layered in crusts of earth; it was crumbling, melting into a pool of mud. I felt myself swimming in the sweat streaming from her body, and I couldn't get enough air to breathe. I got out of bed. She was sleeping. From her mouth bubbled a sound very like a death rattle.

"There was a time when night after night I could hear the sounds of a fiesta. I could hear the noise clear out at the Media Luna. I would walk into town to see what the uproar was about, and this is what I would see: just what we're seeing now. Nothing. No one. The streets as empty as they are now.

Then I didn't hear anything anymore. You know, you can get worn out celebrating. That's why I wasn't surprised when it ended.”

Nica Rhiana

I keep my grief hidden in a safe place. Don’t let your heart go out.

Julie <3

I saw that no one was there, even though I could still hear the murmuring of voices, like a crowd on market day. A steady sound with no words to it, like the sound of the wind through the branches of a tree at night when you can't see the tree or the branches but you hear the whispering. Like that. I couldn't take another step. I began to sense that whispering drawing nearer, circling around me, a constant buzzing like a swarm of bees, until finally I could hear the almost soundless words 'Pray tor us.' I could hear that's what they were saying to me. At that moment, my soul turned to ice. That's why you found me dead."

This town is filled with echoes. It's like they were trapped behind the walls, or beneath the cobblestones. When you walk you feel like someone's behind you, stepping in your footsteps. You hear rustlings. And people laughing. Laughter that sounds used up. And voices worn away by the years. Sounds like that. But I think the day will come when those sounds fade away…. And on windy days I see the wind blowing leaves from the trees, where anyone can see that there aren’t any trees here. There must have been once. Otherwise, where do the leaves come from? 

hallucinogenic fever dream of the dead. this one made my head spin a bit. the entire book felt exactly like the experience of dreaming, but with mexican heat and smells and superstitious spirituality.

sash.

Of all the Hispanic fiction I've read, I'm quite certain this is the only one that has ever left me as puzzled, confused and at a loss. This is one of those books that cannot just be devoured all in one go. It has to be stripped away in layers until you get to the heart of it and that's what I think I'll do with this one. A very beautifully written book. 

I solidly believe that as far far as writing style goes, nothing beats the Latin Americans. Rulfo, Borges, Allende, Garcia Marquez and more- they are all MASTERS at this story-telling bit. One could wish that they could completely turn story-telling upside down the way these people have and Rulfo, make no mistake, is definitely one of the most underrated Hispanic writers. 

I ended up reading this-let me stress it- only because of my 20th Century Spanish-American Narrative class at uni and I really hope to be able to have time to read it again.

The language was beautifully, the characters dark and gloomy and entirely too reminiscent of my own country. At the core of this story is Mexican mythology at its finest, the heart of Mexicanidad and the stark truth of caciquismo.

It's a beautifully told story, at times very difficult to swallow because of the vivid images of suffering, oppression and the ever pervasive death. Of course, if you know anything about Mexico, you know that death is an entirely different ideology and something of a cult. You get to see that part of the culture in the book and it's extremely fantastic.

Magical realism at one of its best. It took me a LONG time to read this simply because life happens and I wanted to absorb as much of this book as possible.

Well worth the read.

Cody Degen

can't really beat the review I read calling this One Hundred Years of Solitude if Macondo was in Michael Jackson's Thriller so I'll just go with that. Surreal/confusing, would like to reread sometime as I think I'd like it more a second time around (just like OHYoS I guess)

Santi

Un laberinto de espejos dentro de otro laberinto. Entiendo que le preguntasen a Rulfo por qué no "escribía más", pero creo que tras algo así es difícil añadir mucho más. Lo leí en la adolescencia, ahora me supo distinto. Rulfo dice que hacen falta tres lecturas para entenderla bien, así que hasta pronto.

Aixa Azul

"Hay pueblos que saben a desdicha. Se les conoce con sorber un poco de aire viejo y entumido, pobre y flaco como todo lo viejo. Éste es uno de esos pueblos, Susana."

Swearing to his dying mother that he'll find the father he has never met, a certain Pedro Páramo, Juan Preciado sets out across the barren plains of Mexico for Comala, the hallucinatory ghost town his father presided over like a feudal lord. Between the realms of the living and the dead, in fragments of dreams and the nightly whispers of Comala's ghosts, there emerges the tragic tale of Pedro Páramo and the town whose every corner holds the taint of his rotten soul.

Maytal

I think if I gave this another go at a later date I'd get more out of it.

Deserted villages of rural Mexico, where images and memories of the past linger like unquiet ghosts, haunted the imaginations of the author. In one such village of the mind, Comala, he set his classic novel Pedro Páramo, a dream-like tale that intertwines a man's quest to find his lost father and reclaim his patrimony with the father's obsessive love for a woman who will not be possessed, Susana San Juan.

Iliana Elizabeth 

Bueno, arranco esta reseña sumándole una estrella a este libro que no disfruté y no me gustó. Pero, le sumo la estrella porque puedo entender de dónde vienen todas las altas valoraciones. Si lo situamos en el contexto adecuado, como el año y época en que se escribió, la idea es muy original y hasta está bien planteada.
 Por eso le doy una estrella más, ya lejos del enojo que me generó leerlo. Porque no maldigo las lecturas obligadas, pero para una materia tuve que leerlo y mientras lo leía no podía menos que pensar "habiendo tantos libros, TANTOS que se disfruten al leer, por qué me encuentro leyendo esto". 
 Como ya dije, la historia está bien, y hasta podría decirse que está bien planteada, pero el ritmo es muy lento, carece totalmente de dinamismo. Eso y el poco atractivo en el estilo narrativo del autor, o por lo menos yo no lo encontré. 
 Repito, entiendo por qué a tanta gente le parece magistral esta obra, pero no puedo compartir, porque no veía la hora de terminarlo, para poder pasar a otra cosa más placentera.
 Como dije antes, tuve que leerlo para una materia, estilística, por lo que mientras leía tenía que analizar varios elementos, y eso se lo reconozco, es un libro muy complejo con muchísimas cosas para hacer foco y analizar, pero en este caso la complejidad sólo lo hizo un libro con mucho material de análisis para mí.
 Puede sonar contradictorio, pero aunque le haya dado dos estrellas, lo recomiendo porque creo que otros podrían disfrutarlo como yo no pude.

kira black 

me costó demasiado ir entendiendo y cuando creí que al fin lo lograba pasaba algo que volvía a confundirme, pero quizás por eso y su forma de narración hizo que de todas maneras me gustara el libro, porque en definitiva Rulfo es ingenioso al momento de escribir

Gary Homewood

A fractured, hallucinogenic death-themed magic realist narrative. Probably better on a second read.

Pedro Páramo

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