Grove Press
Grove Press
Grove Press
SOON TO BE A NETFLIX FILM • The highly influential masterpiece of Latin American literature, soon to be a Netflix film, now published in a new, authoritative translation, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez
Soon To Be a Netflix Film
A masterpiece of the surreal that influenced a generation of writers in Latin America, Pedro Páramo is the otherworldly tale of one man’s quest for his lost father. That man swears to his dying mother that he will find the father he has never met—Pedro Páramo—but when he reaches the town of Comala, he finds it haunted by memories and hallucinations. There emerges the tragic tale of Páramo himself, and the town whose every corner holds the taint of his rotten soul. Although initially published to a quiet reception, Pedro Páramo was soon recognized as a major novel that has served as a touchstone text for writers including Mario Vargas Llosa and José Donoso. Now published in a new translation from the definitive Spanish edition by celebrated Rulfo scholar Douglas J. Weatherford, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez, this new edition of the novel cements its place as one of the seminal literary texts of the twentieth century.
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
A New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Selection
“[Pedro Páramo] shows its readers how to read all over again, the same way The Waste Land or Ulysses does, by bending the rules of literature so skillfully, so freely, that the rules must change thereafter . . . It is a story of all revolutions: the landless against the landlords, the dispossessed against the powerful. It is a story of usurpation, extraction and sexual violence. Of stealing land, settling it and exploiting it and its people. In other words, it is a story of nation-building in the Americas . . . It makes more sense to map Rulfo within a constellation of writers like T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, and Franz Kafka, who wrote in a kind of ‘foreign’ tongue, in that they allowed strangeness to seep into the familiar and turn the everyday into the uncanny . . . I began reading this third edition, [translated] by [Douglas J.] Weatherford, with skepticism. But I grew more and more enthusiastic as I went along. His translation is, by far, the best of Rulfo in English.”—Valeria Luiselli, New York Times Book Review
“A work of pitched contradiction . . . This magnificent language achieves the apocalyptic dread of the original . . . Weatherford’s translation captures the primeval struggle at its core . . . I think the new translation is worth all the effort that has gone into producing it. It moves the story forward, so to speak, amidst the wider tale of literature. And it is a gorgeously engaging read at that.”—Nick Hilden, The Millions
“For readers of Latin American fiction, Pedro Páramo is a founding text . . . Douglas J. Weatherford’s [translation] moves Rulfo’s lyricism into a melodic, recognizably American voice . . . Rulfo forged a new language for sadness that is uniquely Latin American.”—Miranda France, Times Literary Supplement
“Among contemporary writers in Mexico today Juan Rulfo is expected to rank among the immortals.”—Selden Rodman, New York Times Book Review
“A strange, brooding novel . . . Great immediacy, power, and beauty.”—Washington Post
“The essential Mexican novel, unsurpassed and unsurpassable . . . Extraordinary.”—Carlos Fuentes
“Pedro Páramo is not only one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century world literature but one of the most influential of the century’s books.”—Susan Sontag
“That night I didn’t sleep until I’d read it twice; not since I had read Kafka’s Metamorphosis in a dingy boarding house in Bogotá, almost ten years earlier, had I been so overcome.”—Gabriel García Márquez
“A simplicity and profundity worthy of Greek tragedy . . . Wuthering Heights located in Mexico and written by Kafka.”—Guardian
“The silences yawn in Rulfo’s writing. Its rhythms seem to slow time, and reality’s edges fray into a strange gulf . . . Pedro Páramo is like hunting for a key in a building that is collapsing around you . . . One of the more remarkable journeys in literature.”—Chris Power
“Juan Rulfo’s novel defies logic. It is out to evade readers, to tease them for their attempts at understanding. Uncertainties, red herrings, and anxieties abound, all of which give Pedro Páramo its particular flavour.”—Full Stop
“This is the third time Pedro Páramo has been translated into English . . . and I can only celebrate that someone has tried so hard to preserve the author’s unique voice. An outstanding edition and a game-changing translation.”—London Magazine
“A founding text for literature in Central and Latin America, revered by Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa, this short novel is full of miraculous features.”—Bookmunch
Excerpted from Pedro Páramo © 1955 by Juan Rulfo and Heirs of Juan Rulfo. English translation © 2023 by Douglas J. Weatherford. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Press an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved.
I CAME TO COMALA because I was told my father lived here, a man named Pedro Páramo. That’s what my mother told me. And I promised her I’d come see him as soon as she died. I squeezed her hands as a sign I would. After all, she was near death, and I was of a mind to promise her anything. “Don’t fail to visit him —she urged—. Some call him one thing, some another. I’m sure he’d love to meet you.” That’s why I couldn’t refuse her, and after agreeing so many times I just kept at it until I had to struggle to free my hands from hers, which were now without life.
Before this she had told me:
—Don’t ask him for anything. Just insist on what’s ours. What he was obligated to give me but never did . . . Make him pay dearly, my son, for the indifference he showed toward us.
—I will, Mother.
I never thought I’d keep my promise. Until recently when I began to imagine all kinds of possibilities and allowed my fantasies to run free. And that’s how a whole new world started swirling around in my head, a world built on expectations I had for that man named Pedro Páramo, my mother’s husband. That’s why I came to Comala.
IT WAS DURING the dog days of summer, when the August winds blow hot, tainted by the rotting smell of saponaria flowers. The road rose and fell: “It rises or falls according to whether one’s going or coming. For the person who’s leaving, it rises; for the one who’s coming, it falls.”
—What did you say was the name of that town down there?
—Comala, señor.
—You sure we’ve already made it to Comala?
—I’m sure, señor.
—And why does it look so sad?
—It’s the times, señor.
I had imagined I’d see the place of my mother’s memories, of her nostalgia, a nostalgia of tattered sighs. She was always sighing, mourning the loss of Comala, hoping to return. But she never came back. Now I’ve come in her place. And I come bearing the same eyes with which she saw these things, because she gave me her eyes to see: “There, just beyond Los Colimotes pass, you’ll find a beautiful view of a green plain, with a bit of yellow from the ripening corn. From that spot you’ll see Comala, turning the land white, lighting it up at night.” And her voice was secretive, almost without sound, as if she were speaking to herself . . . My mother.
—And why are you headed to Comala, if I might ask? —I heard someone say.
—I’m going to see my father —I answered.
—Ah! —he said.
And we returned to our silence.
We walked downhill, listening to the cadent trotting of the burros. Our eyes swelling with fatigue in the intense August heat.
—He’s gonna throw you quite the party —I heard again from the voice of the man walking alongside me—. He’ll be glad to see someone after so many years with no one passing through.
Later he added:
—Whoever you are, he’ll be happy to see you.
The plain resembled a translucent pool in the pulsing heat of the sun, dissipating in the distance where a gray horizon took shape. And beyond that, a line of mountains. And even farther still, a never-ending distance.
—And what’s your father like, if I might ask?
—I don’t know him —I said—. I just know his name is Pedro Páramo.
—Ah! You don’t say.
—That’s the name I was given.
I again heard the “ah!” of the muleteer.
I had met up with him at Los Encuentros, where several roads came together. I was there waiting, until finally this guy showed up.
—Where you headed? —I asked.
—Down that way, señor.
—You familiar with a place called Comala?
—That’s where I’m going.
So I followed him. I walked behind trying to match his pace, until he seemed to notice I was following and slowed his stride. After that we walked side by side so close together our shoulders were almost touching.
—I’m also one of Pedro Páramo’s sons —he told me.
A flock of crows passed overhead through an empty sky, crying caw, caw, caw.
After dropping down out of the hills, we descended even farther. We had left the hot air above and were now sinking into a pure heat that had no air. Everything seemed to be waiting for something.
—It’s hot here —I said.
—It is, but this is nothing —responded the other guy—. Try to relax. You’ll feel it worse when we get to Comala. That place sits on the burning embers of the earth, at the very mouth of
Hell. They say many of those who die there and go to Hell come back to fetch their blankets.
—Do you know Pedro Páramo? —I asked.
I dared pose the question because I saw a hint of understanding in his eyes.
—Who is he? —I inquired again.
—Bitterness incarnate —he answered.
He took a swat at the burros, without any need to do so, since they were well ahead of us and focused on the descent.
I felt my mother’s portrait tucked away in my shirt pocket, keeping my heart warm, as if she too were sweating. It was an old photograph, worn along the edges; but it was the only one I’d ever seen of her. I had found it in the kitchen cabinet, in a clay pot full of herbs: lemon balm leaves, castilla blossoms, twigs of rue. I’ve kept it ever since. It was the only one. My mother was always opposed to being photographed. She said portraits were a form of witchcraft. And it seemed she was right, because hers was full of holes, like pinpricks, with one large enough to fit your middle finger through located right where her heart should be.
It’s the same photograph I have with me here, hoping it might help my father recognize me.
—Look at this —the muleteer says as he comes to a halt—. See that hill over there, the one that looks like a pig’s bladder? Well, just beyond that is the Media Luna. Now turn that way. You see the top of that hill? Look at it. Now turn and look this way. See that other hilltop you can barely make out for being so far away? Well, that’s the Media Luna from one end to the other. As they say, every bit of land as far as the eye can see. And all that ground is his. The thing is, our mothers pushed us into this miserable world laid out on the ground on petates even though we were sons of Pedro Páramo. And the funniest part is he’s the one who took us to be baptized. That’s got to be what happened to you too, right?
—I don’t recall.
—The hell you say!
—What’s that?
—I said we’re almost there, señor.
—I can see that. But what came through here?
—A roadrunner, señor. That’s what they call those birds.
—No, I was asking about the town. It seems so alone, as if abandoned. As if no one were living here.
—It doesn’t just seem that way. That’s how it is. Nobody lives here.
—And Pedro Páramo?
—Pedro Páramo died years ago.
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