Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo, 1955

[These lines are in English. Not perfect but if this is your language and wanna write for D in D, about the books you want, the way you want, that's fine by us. contact: disciplineindisorder@gmail.com]


Quelques mots de plus sur Pedro.


Pages must have been written on Pedro Paramo, even shooting stars are well observed these days. Some of these pages probably by those wishing it to be a lost masterpiece (now what a story that would make...), those who would not swallow the worm at the bottom of the bottle. Not to say that I did, but I also tried to stay away from these pages. Just to say: If one needs to get lost, one does not look for a map.

Here I am, tackling a Mexican masterpiece, a blur of sweaty dreams, from much colder and dryer shores, words coming a bit too easily when you do not want to indicate. This is a book to be passed on whole, un novelito de la perdicion, of time and family disintegration, Life and Muerte, outside/inside, small by size, infinite by, justement, its chemical effect. If Fresan's Mantra is full-on lysergic, P.P. is too me, scarier: like a trip that only you think is not working (it is) or the parano (n not m) paradigm shift induced by out of date mescaline. The paper proof that days are hot in the desert but you will shiver at night.

There is not much point trying to sum up those 100 and something pages. No point at all actually. But they triggered a few associations you may judge too personal. Not references, but a broken kaleidoscope, notes on a town that never was, for a movie that will hopefully never be:
Abismos de Pasion, Bunuel's Mexican Wuthering Heights ; les 'non-duppes errent' in Minnelli (Home from The Hill, Undercurrent may be ), Jim Dodge's Not Fade Away, another ghost hunt: Antonioni's Passenger, another ghost hunt; Carnival of Souls, Night Tide, Citizen Kane or even Walsh' s Pursued if you ask me.

Hard to focus with this one, that's what it darn does. I'm afraid the confusion would have been as... hmmmm... yes, vivid in French. This is a poison sans frontiere and some kind of 'once in a lifetime'. Juan Rulfo never finished his second novel, Cordillera (It is generally accepted that he destroyed the manuscript sometimes between the mid-sixties and his death in 1986- did someone at the back of the room asked for another good story?). Evidently a great loss, but I'm not sure I could cope with another so pure yet so intoxicating book.

Ps:I've just heard about the loss of someone I knew. I'll now drink hard, with or without Juan Preciado, to the reality of fantasmas and their Langage International des Morts.

''And your soul? Where do you think it's gone?'
"It's probably wandering about like so many others, looking for living people to pray for it. Maybe it hates me for the way I treat it, but I don't worry about it anymore. And now I don't have to listen to its whining about remorse. Because of it, the little I ate turned bitter in my mouth; it haunted my nights with black thoughts of the damned. When I sat down to die, my soul prayed for me to get up and drag on with my life, as if it still expected some miracle to cleanse me of my sins. I didn't even try. 'This is the end of the road,' I told it. 'I don't have the strength to go on.' And I opened my mouth to let it escape. And it went. I knew when I felt the little thread of blood that bound it to my heart drip into my hands.' ....p.65

Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo, Serpent's Tail, 1987 for this edition. With an introduction by Susan Sontag. Translation seems good to me.