“The Big Read” is a program of the National Endowment for
the Arts and offers grants to support community reading programs designed
around a single book. With over 1,250 programs being funded to date and more
than $17 million handed out in grants there have been more than 4.2 million
Americans attending a program. The events last approximately one month, include
a kick-off event and other major events devoted specifically to the book, for
example author readings and panel discussions.
With a listing of thirty four titles recommended by The Big
Read, the majority being well known American texts, it is refreshing to see a
translated text on the listing, as well as an acknowledgement that the
understanding of their southern neighbours culture is a step forward. Books by
writers such as Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Harper Lee, Ernest Hemmingway, Jack
London, Emily Dickinson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dashiell Hammett and Edgar Allan
Poe feature on their listing, so to have Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Juan
Rulfo and Rosaio Castellanos alongside the giants of American literature is
hopefully an opening that broadens the readership of Mexican fiction. The “marketing
description” of the collection;
Mexico and the United
States share a long border and a common history. Although our two nations
remain separate and independent, they are also deeply interrelated not only
through economic ties, political cooperation, and cultural exchange but also by
flesh and blood through the many millions of Mexican-Americans who personally
embody the intermingling of our two great and complex countries.
There is perhaps no
better way for two nations to learn about one another than through sharing
their stories. Sun, Stone, and Shadows presents a superb selection of the finest
Mexican short stories of the twentieth century. No one can read this arresting
volume without experiencing the wonder and surprise of discovery.
As the cover suggests this collection is made up of twenty
short stories, which have been chosen using the following criteria; Born in
Mexico and before 1939 and published in the first half of the twentieth
century. As per most translated fiction it is, yet again, disappointing that
the female representation is low, with only three stories of the twenty being
written by women, this collection even falls below the 30% average for women in
translation!!! On the positive side, however, is the fact that promotion of
translated fiction is happening via such a large program. Of course this may result
in a homogeneous collection, something that has all the “name” players, and
stories chosen to meet a teaching curriculum not representative of a national
literature canon. Although bottom line is awareness of a nation’s literature,
written in a different language, has to be a step in the right direction.
The collection opens with Nobel Laureate, poet and iconic
figure Octavio Paz and an example of one of his examples of prose poetry. A
story where our narrator falls in love with a wave and takes it home to live
with him. In his Nobel lecture Octavio Paz said, “We pursue modernity in her
incessant metamorphoses yet we never manage to trap her. She always escapes:
each encounter ends in flight. We embrace her and she disappears immediately:
it was just a little air.” For a full translation of his Nobel lecture go here
(it is worth the read).
Interestingly this quote has been used in “teacher’s notes”
for this collection of short stories, as a hint as to how to interpret the
story. Another connection, also worth reading, this one being a brief read,
would be Paz’s Nobel acceptance speech – Yet
we can be certain of one thing: life on our planet is endangered. Our
unthinking cult of progress together with the very advances in our struggle to
exploit nature have turned into a suicidal race. Just as we are beginning to
unravel the secrets of the galaxies and the atomic particle, as we explore the
enigmas of molecular biology and the origins of life, we have wounded the very
heart of nature. This is why the most immediate and most urgent question is the
survival of the environment, regardless of whatever forms of social and
political organization nations may choose. The defence of nature is the defence
of mankind. (The full speech can be found here)
Personally highlighting the surrealist link, man’s abuse of
nature, is attempting to quantify the beauty and passion in Paz’s words. There
is the potential for a different interpretation, a parallel theme. The “teacher
notes” also refers to the original publication of this story in a collection
called “Águila o sol” (Eagle or Sun), a collection of prose poems dealing with
the creative process. Is the wave simply Paz’s muse? Elusive, tempestuous,
demanding? And is the title of this collection a veiled reference to Octavio
Paz’s 584 line poem “Sun Stone”, representing the five hundred and eighty-four
day cycle of the plant Venus?
Apologies for the long ramblings for a single story, but I
think the depth of this whole collection can be explained by simply looking at
the opening story. For each inclusion in the book you can spend hours on researching
the writer, where did was the story originally published, given these are stories
published decades ago there are also published reviews, interpretations and in
a number of cases reflection from the writer themselves. All of this extra
curricula reading could take place for every single story.
A couple of other stories that I’d like to comment on; Inés
Arredondo’s “The Shunammite” (translated by Alberto Manguel) is narrated by a
woman and tells the tale of an uncle on his deathbed wanting to marry our
narrator (his niece) so she can inherit his estate. Coming after the section “The
Tangible Past”, where the brutality, slaughter, self-administered justice,
corrupt political systems are the norm this stood out as a sparkling gem of
another kind of male brutality, domestic violence, manipulation, sexual abuse,
“ownership” all captured in twelve pages. It is a pity there aren’t more
examples of female writing here. Personally I have found a copy of Inés
Arredondo’s “Underground River and Other Stories” (translated by Cynthia
Steele) published twenty years ago by The University of Nebraska Press, to
continue reading her works.
Another story written by a female writer is Rosario
Castellanos’ “Cooking Lesson”, a brilliant portrayal of the role of women in
Mexico, through the lens of a recently married woman who is cooking a meal for
her new husband (literally or metaphorically is not important):
I’ll ruminate my resentment in
silence. All the responsibilities and duties of a servant are assigned to me
for everything. I’m supposed to keep the house impeccable, the clothes ready,
mealtimes exact. But I’m not paid any salary; I don’t get one day a week off; I
can’t change masters. On the other hand, I’m supposed to contribute to the
support of the household and I’m expected to efficiently carry out a job where
the boss is demanding, my colleagues conspire, and my subordinates hate me. In
my free time I transform myself into a society matron who gives luncheons and
dinners for her husband’s friends, attends meetings, subscribes to the opera
season, watches her weight, renews her wardrobe, cares for her skin, keeps
herself attractive, keeps up on all the gossip, stays up late and gets up
early, runs the monthly risk of maternity, has no suspicions about the evening
executive meetings, the business trips and the arrival of unexpected clients; who
suffers from olfactory hallucinations when she catches a whiff of French
perfume (different to the one she uses) on her husband’s shirts and
handkerchiefs and on lonely nights refuses to think why or what so much fuss is
all about and fixes herself a stiff drink and reads a detective story with the
fragile mood of a convalescent.
I have more works from Rosario Castellanos on backorder so I
am hoping to feature more of her brutal honesty reviewed here over the coming
months.
Juan De La Cabada, in “The Mist” manages to bring the issue
of discrimination, treatment of local Indians and privilege to the fore in a
short noir story where the narrator, on a dark misty rainy night, picks up four
Indians, who have waived him down, in his car. “The Mist” not only being the
incessant mist like rain…
With stories by Carlos Fuentes (a Chac-Mool sculpture that
comes to life), Salvador Elizondo (a surreal tale on existence), Octavio Paz, Francisco
Rojas González (icons being made to stop a storm), Juan Rulfo (a past finally
catching up), Rosario Castellanos, Alfonso Reyes (a mysterious dinner), Juan
José Arreola, José Emilio Pacheco, Jorge Ibarüengoitia, José Revueltas
(hunting), Elena Garro, Martín Luis Guzmán (brutal revolutionary story),
Edmundo Valadés (a corrupt local official), Sergio Pitol, Juan García Ponce,
Juan de la Cabada, Efrén Hernández and Francisco Tario, this collection covers
some heavy hitters of Mexican literature in the 1900’s. A decent grounding to
understand some of the works the new faces of Mexican writing would have been reading
in their youth.
I really enjoyed reading this collection, a flash back to
the past, a collection of writing from decades ago and a useful reminder of the
“roots” of some of the more recent Mexican writing successes. Reading this
collection has resulted in me not only searching out more short works by a few
writers (especially the underrepresented female writers), it has also added to
my future reading pile as I sourced a number of other short stories from the region
(not just Mexican writers) that were read many many years ago and were
gathering dust on my shelves. I may “review” a few of these in the coming
weeks, I may simply re-read and enjoy. Time will tell.
For those interested in the “Teacher’s Notes” for this
collection, they are available here.
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