# Pedro Paramo *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 12 Apr 2008* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Steven Hall *12 Apr 2008, 23:24* An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20080412/fbea9f8c/attachment.htm --- ### Gwern Branwen *13 Apr 2008, 05:34 · in reply to Steven Hall* On 2008.04.12 18:24:00 -0500, Steven Hall scribbled 2.2K characters: > I recently read a piece on Slate about Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo > (http://www.slate.com/id/2186109/). While reading about it, I couldn't help but notice > certain similarities to Peace. From the article: > > Peculiar things start to happen on the page, things I've never seen in a book. The tenses > switch back and forth, past to present and back again, sometime in the space of a single > paragraph, until time itself becomes senseless. The stories begin to refract, shatter, and > rebuild; pronouns multiply--I, he, she, you, stumbling over each other. Dialogue and > thoughts are left unattributed. The perspectives shift from internal to external and back > again, from Preciado to Paramo to Paramo's childhood love, Susana San Juan. "This town is > full of echoes," one character says. "It's like they were trapped behind the walls or > beneath the cobblestones. When you walk, you feel like someone's behind you, stepping in > your footsteps. You hear rustlings. And people laughing. Laughter that sounds used up. And > voices worn away by the years." And why? Because--the reader realizes this about the same > time Preciado does--all these people are dead. > > Is anyone familiar with this novel? Any idea if Wolfe may have read it? > > Thanks, > Steve It's at least chronologically possible. _Peace_ was 1975, and apparently the abridged English translation published by Grove Press appeared in 1959 (). But it strikes me as unlikely, because it was obscure for so long (and still isn't as famous as, say, _100 Years of Solitude_), and the 1959 translation is described as undistinguished. ``` gwern FALN Security M5 out Fortezza 03 Missiles FLiR FLETC bullion ``` ---