It’s a bit of a mystery why Rulfo remains so unfamiliar in the United States compared with similarly popular Latin American authors who have managed to attract wide followings in English translation.
This past fall, critics and readers gathered in New York to honor the centennial of Rulfo’s birth in 1917 and, in the process, celebrated his achievements, debunked a few myths and pointed those who read in English toward the value of his work. Rulfo, who died in 1986 at the age of 69, is now considered one of the finest Latin American writers of the 20th century, even though only two works of fiction anchor his reputation, Pedro Páramo and his 1953 collection of short stories, El Llano en llamas (“The Burning Plain”). As the Mexican novelist and essayist Pedro Palou remarked last fall, “After such brutal reviews, I would have changed professions and become a street salesman.”īut Pedro Páramo and its author indeed gained wide acclaim throughout the Spanish-speaking world. The critics questioned its central premise, the story of a man who walks into a village populated by talking ghosts.
Originally published at Latin America News Dispatch.Ĭritics in Mexico had little use for Juan Rulfo’s novel when Pedro Páramo first appeared in 1955, and the slender volume that would become a national treasure sold poorly for its first four years.
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