Pedro Paramo

I read Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo for the first time last night. I kept starting and stopping as I needed to go to bed. But, in the end I wound up staying up til 3 am to finish it. I have to read it again, and soon.

It is a crazy book. The surrealist aspects are grotesque, but not in the way that Bataille's The Story of the Eye is grotesque. Rulfo focuses on death in this book, not unseemly sexual encounters involving copious amounts of piss.

Juan Preciado is instructed by his dying mother to return to her hometown and take some sort of revenge on his father. The town of Comala is a ghost town in a more literal sense of the word. It is a quasi-purgatory where the disembodied souls of the townsfolk live in shame and fear of the dead Pedro Paramo. As I said earlier I have to read it again to grasp the fullness (or lack thereof) of the book. But, a couple things really struck me on this initial reading.

First, when Juan dies, or when he realizes he is dead - I am not sure if he was ever alive in the story or not, he is buried into a grave with Dorotea and the two begin to speak. That first encounter was fascinating. Dorotea takes over the narrative from this point, but her description of her death was truly incredible. She talks about her soul demanding that her body continue working, but the body is speaking to Juan inside their shared grave. The body tells him that she simply opened up her mouth and released the soul.

Second, when Juan encounters the burro driver you have no idea he's dead. Then he doesn't play much of a part for the whole book except to bring about what ever semblance of conclusion you can get. That was interesting too.

Third, and this might have been my favorite story arch within this multi-tiered story is that of Father Renteria. Father Renteria is a priest (whom we find out was killed by one of Pedro's many sons) that has been condemned to purgatory for putting up with Pedro and his horrible ways. Father Renteria even goes over into another town and finds another priest who refuses him absolution. It is a very intriguing story.

I'm finding that I enjoy some of the surrealist stories much better than others. I loved Queneau's Flight of Icarus and Rulfo's Pedro Paramo. I liked Nadja by Andre Breton. I hated The Story of the Eye. I don't think I can say that enough. I guess it's the same with all genres, but while Nadja and Icarus eventually wrapped up somewhat, Pedro and The Story of the Eye really offered no real ending per se. Yet of the four I would (at this moment) rank them my top and bottom of surrealist literature read so far. I guess the surrealist must have been on to something as style tends to outweigh substance in their genre.