Thoughts on Pedro Páramo:

I liked it a lot. The narrative is non-linear which made it a challenging read in Spanish. I leaned heavily on plot summaries and occasional AI queries to make sure I wasn’t missing the thread. Will probably watch the Netflix adaptation this weekend while it’s still fresh on my mind and am curious about how they’ll handle some of the weirder stuff. I found myself reaching for the dictionary frequently, but rather than a Spanish-English dictionary, I’ve decided to switch a conventional dictionary (in Spanish). I used the online version of the DLE but have a hard-copy version on the way. It’s shipping from Germany, which I think is sort of funny, and will be here some time in March. Some of the scenes are just indelible in their weirdness, particularly the narrator’s meeting with the brother and sister about midway through. I won’t go into much more detail. If you know, you know.

I’ve started El llano en llamas (“The Burning Plain”), which is a collection of Rulfo’s short stories. I’m finding some of these even more challenging than the novella. I looked up one word in the dictionary and couldn’t find it, so I used Google and nearly all the hits were from people posting the text of the story. Back to context clues and educated guesses. The story was El hombre and the word was “engarruñándose,” in case you’re wondering.

I caught a reference in one of the short stories to Media Luna, which is an important locale in Pedro Páramo. I did some digging and, sure enough, Rulfo set his stories in a fictionalized version of his native Jalisco, along the lines of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha, thought without the persistent family stuff. I’ve written here before about fictional geographies and the weird itch that the tend to scratch for me, so it was gratifying to add another page to my mental atlas of “Places That Are Real But Also Not Real.”

I can also tell you that reading stories set in a place which is always warm - where the sun, shadows, and heat play a large part in the mood - as we stare down another cold snap with snow in the forecast has been just terrific for my general mood. And, you know, the pictures of Jalisco I’m seeing online are perfectly lovely…