Content area
Full text
La recepción inicial de Pedro Páramo (1955-1963) (The Initial Reception of Pedro Páramo), by Jorge Zepeda. 378 pages. México: Fundación Juán Rulfo/Editorial RM, marzo de 2005. ISBN 968-5208-44-1 Editorial RM; ISBN 84-933036-7-4 RM Verlag. $25.00 hardcover.
Writers spend a lot of time wringing their hands, wondering if what they have written is what they have wanted to voice as definitive of their work. Whether right or wrong, critics and reviewers can make or break literary careers. A writer's escape and refuge is to just keep writing, holding the critics and reviewers at bay with greater and greater expectations. It is a way to hedge the edge of failure. Keep the horizon of success in the future.
Author Juán Rulfo (1917-1986), from a small village in the state of Jalisco, México, is an exception. A fellow paisano (countryman), as he once called me, Rulfo wrote two books, El llano en llamas (1953), a collection of short stories; and Pedro Páramo (1955), a short novel. Both became seminal works and forerunners of Latin America's "Boom Generation." The fact is, Rulfo never had to prove himself beyond these two works, especially his novel, Pedro Páramo -...