SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BOOKS

Mexican author Ignacio Padilla creates characters who move like pawns, as if they were pieces in the chess games which are at the heart of the action here–they are often being overtaken by events and supplanted by other men as part of the grand, overall “game” of life. Padilla raises thought-provoking questions about the nature of selfhood here, as men appropriate each other’s names, accept or reject the past which is connected with those names, and hope, ultimately, to change their destinies by living someone else’s life. The reader must constantly question whether each character is who he says he is, and whether he really is who we think he is. The tight story line maintains its tension, and the author’s ingenuity in manipulating characters and historical events provides constant surprises. The novel is very much an intellectual chess match between author and reader, and in this case, both turn out to be winners.

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Graham Greene’s most elaborate and personal examination of the good life–and the role of the Catholic church in teaching what the good life is–revolves around an unnamed “whiskey priest” in Mexico in the 1930s. Religious persecution is rife as secular rulers, wanting to bring about social change, blame the church for the country’s ills. When the novel opens, the church, its priests, and all its symbols have been banned for the past eight years from a state near Veracruz. Priests have been expelled, murdered, or forced to renounce their callings. The whiskey priest, however, has stayed, bringing whatever solace he can to the poor who need him, while at the same time finding solace himself in the bottle. Pursued by a police lieutenant who believes that justice for all can only occur if the church is destroyed, and by a mestizo, who is seeking the substantial reward for turning him in, the desperate priest finally decides to escape to a nearby state. (To read the full review, click on the title of this excerpt.)

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Geoffrey Firmin, the former British consul to Mexico, is a prisoner of alcoholism. A victim of the shakes, he hears voices, talks to people who are not there, and hallucinates, though he is often able to hide the extent of his drinking. “True, he might lie down in the street, but he would never reel.” On The Day of the Dead in 1938, his recently divorced wife Yvonne returns to Quauhnahuac, over which two smoking volcanoes loom, to try to persuade him to reconcile. Despite the depressing subject matter and a frustrating main character who cannot or will not help himself during the novel’s four hundred pages, the novel is breath-taking–elegant both in language and construction. Carefully plotted, filled with unique imagery, and enhanced by symbolism which brings it alive on new levels, it overwhelms the reader with its impact, and approaches classical tragedy as the inevitable, doom-filled events play out. (To see the full review, click on the title of this excerpt.)

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Though this novel has all the hallmarks of a recognized classic, it is, surprisingly, only twenty-five years old, a book first translated into English in 1985. Carlos Fuentes, the author, brought up by his diplomat parents in the US and throughout Latin America, has always been particularly aware of differences in cultures, and in this novel he elaborates on the differences between the US and Mexico, sensing more than most other writers the inherent, conflicting goals of the two countries. Through the action, set during Mexico’s civil war in 1914, the author shows Mexico determined to be independent in its own right and true to its own history, while the US wants to create outcomes there which coincide with US goals and political agendas here. For more than forty years, Fuentes has also been fascinated with the story of American author/journalist Ambrose Bierce, who is believed to have vanished in Mexico during that war, and he exploits this long interest by making Bierce the “Old Gringo” of the title. (Click on the title to see full review.)

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