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Pedro Paramo

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Steven Hall12 Apr 2008, 23:24as archived
Pedro Paramo
Gwern Branwen13 Apr 2008, 05:34as archived
↳ in reply to Steven Hall
On 2008.04.12 18:24:00 -0500, Steven Hall <sghall at comcast.net> scribbled 2.2K characters:
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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 (<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEFD71030F935A3575BC0A963958260>). 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.
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