Pedro Paramo
by Juan Rulfo
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Book Summary Information
Author: Juan RulfoForeword: Susan Sontag
Translator: Margaret Sayers Peden
Edition: Paperback
Published: 1994-03-10
ISBN: 0802133908
Number of pages: 128
Publisher: Grove Press
Book Reviews of Pedro Paramo
Book Review: 5 for the story in the original, 3 for translating it
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a translation that some of us used in my senior year Survey of Latin American Literature class. Granted, as Spanish majors and minors, we should have been reading in the original. Where translations are most useful is getting around colloquial turns of phrase that leave practitioners of castellano a little dogged.
It is a good translation, mind you - Peden does an excellent job working out the phrases, something that is helpful in surrealistic prose. I just much much much prefer to read something in the original - you lose a great deal in the translation by putting up a barrier between the author's mind and your own.
The narrative can be confounding if you're expecting a straightforward plot - rather, there are two narratives, interwoven, and the order of the vignettes has more to do with character development than with chronology. One tale is of the son - and takes place somewhere between his quietly seething sense of abandonment and his abysmal personal hell. The other is of the father, and recounts his wicked life. A p?ramo is a local colloquialism for an empty, frozen mountaintop - a little symbolism that describes the inner life of the father quite well.
This is not a "what happens" book so much as an "about" book - and indeed the facts of the story are up to some speculation. It is up to the reader to determine whether the narrator, Juan, truly succumbs to the ceaseless dead around him and joins them, whether he is in his personal torment but remains alive, or whether he is already dead and returns to Comala, "a la mera boca del infierno" - at the very mouth of Hell. It is also up to the reader to determine whether Pedro's love for Dolores Preciado (literally "precious wounds" - oh, symbolism!) is more possession than passion.
The surrealism is one of the reasons this book remains on my shelf (supplanted by a Spanish-only edition), next to Borges and Vallejo.
Summary of Pedro Paramo
Desde su aparici?n en 1955, esta extraordinaria novela del mexicano Juan Rulfo se ha traducido a mas de treinta lenguas y ha dado lugar a multiples y permanentes reediciones en los pa?ses de la lengua hispana. Esta edici?n, ?nica revisada y autorizada por la Fundaci?n Juan Rulfo, debe ser considerada como su edicion definitiva.General Books
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