s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]'s Reviews > Pedro Páramo

It has been a few years since I first encountered Pedro Páramo from Juan Rulfo but my joy over the novel and its first sting of brilliance have never faded. It’s a novel I am frequently reminded of, not only due to it being alluded to in many other works I’ve read but also its ghostly vibes of rot and decay are the first to come to mind when encountering dark and decaying towns in any form of media. Not only is this retranslation an excellent update on the language, one Valeria Luiselli (who’s novel Faces in the Crowd—a favorite I highly recommend—leans heavily into homage to Rulfo’s work) refers to as ‘by far, the best of Rulfo in English,’ but also just a great excuse to reread the book. Rulfo himself once said in an interview that Pedro Páramo was intended to be read at least three times before it could be truly understood. Though another reason this is worth reading is for the introduction by the late, great Gabriel García Márquez.

Marquez writes that reading Rulfo for the first time ‘will without doubt be an essential chapter in my memoirs,’ an experience on par with his first experience with Franz Kafka. It is a interesting little tale, where Marquez was handed a copy by friend Álvaro Mutis and told ‘read this and learn.’ He did, and fell in love with it. How could you not. ‘They number scarcely more than three hundred pages,’ he writes of these marvelous pages of literature, ‘but they are as great—and, I believe, as enduring—as those of Sophocles.’ Coming from Marquez, that’s about as great an endorsement as one can get, though for those still curious I’ve left my original review intact below.

‘The sun was tumbling over things, giving them form once again. The ruined, sterile earth lay before him.’

There are passages of Juan Rulfo’s exquisite ‘Pedro Páramo’ that I want to cut out and hang upon my walls like a valuable painting. Because that is what this novel is, a purely beautiful surrealistic painting of a hellish Mexico where words are the brushstrokes and the ghastly, ghostly tone is the color palate. Rulfo’s short tale is an utter masterpiece, and the forerunner of magical realism¹—a dark swirling fog of surrealism and horror that is both simple and weightless, yet weighs heavy like an unpardonable sin upon the readers heart and soul.

Nights around here are filled with ghosts. You should see all the spirits walking through the streets. As soon as it is 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…Then there are our sins on top of theirs. None of us still living is in God’s grace. We can’t lift up our eyes, because they’re filled with shame.

When Juan Preciado visit’s his mother’s home of Comala to his father, the long deceased and ‘pure bile’ of a man, Pedro Páramo, he finds a town of rot and decay filled with ghosts, both figuratively and literally. This is a place of utter damnation, where the sins of a family are so strong that their bloodstained hands have tainted and tarnished the immortal souls of all they come in contact with, leaving in their wake a trail of withered, writhing spirits condemned to forever inhabit their hellish homes. There is nothing pleasant—aside from the intense, striking poetry of Rulfo’s words—to be found in the history of Comala, a town burdened by a list of sins so long and dark that even the preacher’s soul cannot escape from the vile vortex.

Life is hard as it is. The only thing that keeps you going is the hope that when you die you’ll be lifted off this mortal coil; but when they close one door to you and the only one left open is the door to Hell, you’re better off not being born…

This violent, vitriolic landscape forges an unforgettable portrait of Rulfo’s Mexico, eternally encapsulating his vision into the glorious dimensions of myth. The small novel reads like a bedtime story meant to instill good morality in children through fear, while still enchanting their mind’s eye with a disintegrating stage furnished by crumbling, cadaverous buildings and populated by doomed phantoms. His style is phenomenal, effortlessly swapping between past and present, character to character, all in order to build a montage of madness and damnation.

Rulfo’s book is easily digested in a sitting or two, yet will nourish (or cling like a parasite to) your literary soul for an eternity. A dazzling surrealism coupled with a simple, yet potent prose make this an unforgettable classic, and one that has inspired many great authors since its first printing. A hellish portrait of society, brilliantly incorporating political events to help illustrate an abominable image of the dark side of Mexican history, Rulfo immortalizes himself and his homeland into myth and legend. A must read that will haunt you like the pale specters whose voices echo forever in the streets of Comala.
4.5/5

‘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.’

¹ Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, who once said of Rulfo’s novel ‘I could recite the whole book, forwards and backwards,’ (Rediscovering Pedro Páramo), credits the book as playing a major chord of inspiration in his brand of ‘magical realism’.