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adyleneba's review against another edition
3.0
"Primero tuvo que dejar de odiar a Tomás Arroyo por enseñarle lo que pudo ser y luego prohibirle que jamás fuese lo que ella pudo ser."
", había dicho la gringa tocándose la cabeza.
"Ah, nuestro rencor y nuestra memoria van juntos."
"La tentación era necesaria para enseñarle a esta gente que la propiedad privada debe ser respetada y que saber esto es tan importante como saber leer."
"El temor se convirtió en un placer solo por haberlo pensado."
"Entiendo y siento algunas cosas muy hondo, gringuita, muy hondo, porque si no las siento, no tengo manera de entender nada. "
"Dijo que en cambio Arroyo era un hombre desnudo, hasta cuando andaba vestido. Era un hombre callado, hasta cuando hablaba."
"...para los mexicanos, la única causa de guerra eran siempre los gringos."
", había dicho la gringa tocándose la cabeza.
"Ah, nuestro rencor y nuestra memoria van juntos."
"La tentación era necesaria para enseñarle a esta gente que la propiedad privada debe ser respetada y que saber esto es tan importante como saber leer."
"El temor se convirtió en un placer solo por haberlo pensado."
"Entiendo y siento algunas cosas muy hondo, gringuita, muy hondo, porque si no las siento, no tengo manera de entender nada. "
"Dijo que en cambio Arroyo era un hombre desnudo, hasta cuando andaba vestido. Era un hombre callado, hasta cuando hablaba."
"...para los mexicanos, la única causa de guerra eran siempre los gringos."
maddiemmn's review against another edition
3.0
Probably didn't read this deeply enough to have an honest opinion about it, but I had trouble getting there. One of those books where I could appreciate the craft hence the rating, but really slogged through it as someone who enjoys fast-paced plots.
hannahlamond's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
watchingpreacher's review against another edition
3.0
Rough start on this, but I enjoyed it more and more as it went along. The themes (death, fathers and sons, the souls of Mexico and America) and characters were interesting, but Fuentes' prose was not my cup of tea at all. At times it came off as hilariously melodramatic, other times incredibly confusing, a bit of it tipping over from poetic to pretentious (and I usually try to stay away from that word). Still, the thematic substance is interesting, and the latter half (especially the last fifty pages) held my attention.
I wouldn't recommend it though, and if it hadn't been a part of my Magical Realism-course, I would not have finished it.
I wouldn't recommend it though, and if it hadn't been a part of my Magical Realism-course, I would not have finished it.
blackoxford's review against another edition
5.0
“No More West, Boys”
Like most who know of Ambrose Bierce, his Devil’s Dictionary was the sum of what I knew about him. That and his disappearance in the deserts of Chihuahua in 1913. His book became a companion of my young adulthood, confirming my own less than positive attitude about things as diverse as military life, patriotism, and so-called family values in America. I suppose the mystery of his final months provided an excuse to consider him as ‘taken up’ rather than dead, a sort of literary Elijah whose prophecies were being fulfilled. I think Carlos Fuentes may have had similar feelings when he wrote this fictional ending to Bierce’s life.
That life spanned a crucial transition in American culture. Not only did Bierce experience the horror of the Civil War, he also watched as the country subsequently was transformed into a dominantly corporate society controlled by men like Leland Stamford and Randolph Hearst, that is to say by finance and information (Bierce had investigated the former on behalf of the latter). Bierce knew both intimately and hated that he had worked in and for the system that fostered them and the other corporate robber barons who ran the country for their benefit (and largely still do). His frequent journalistic sarcasm was self-directed as much as it was comment on American society.
Manifest Destiny, the idea that white Northern Europeans were entitled to expand across the North American continent to the Pacific, was the prevailing policy of the American government during all of Bierce’s life. And the policy-objective had been achieved by the end of the 19th century. There was no more Western frontier. The American Dream had been realised: “In his own lifetime, the old gringo... had seen an entire nation move from New York to Ohio to the battlegrounds of Georgia and the Carolinas and then to California, where the continent, sometimes even destiny, ended.” What had been produced was not the predicted utopia of Calvinist pre-destination but a cultural cesspit. “My country 'tis of thee, Sweet land of felony...,” Bierce sings. His mere presence in Mexico as an escapee from his own country is a mockery of “God, his Homeland, Money.”
Like the Dutch building dikes, perhaps, America doesn’t know how to stop its successful expansionism. Among other things, it invades Cuba on a pretext, sends troops into Mexico to fight ‘bandits,’ and shells the port of Veracruz for ‘insulting the flag of the United States.’ The cultural imperialism and racism of America cannot contain itself. “We are caught in the business of forever killing people whose skin is of a different color,” the old gringo muses. And, of course he is right. The momentum of American hatred for what is ‘other’ continues unabated more than a century after Bierce’s self-exile.
The Mexicans know why Bierce has come: “The old gringo came to Mexico to die... He wanted us to kill him, us Mexicans.” A running theme throughout the story is the mirrored ballroom of a hacienda captured by Pancho Villa’s troops. The locals had never seen a mirror before and don’t know what to make of the images; but the gringo (and a rather stupid gringa who could well be the United States in a skirt), see themselves as never before. The vision in the mirrors is disconcerting and it changes the self-images of the Americans. They recognise that “each of us carries the real frontier inside.” The dream had been a delusion. To recognise the inherent inferiority of this delusion is why “to be a gringo in Mexico is one way of dying”
Like most who know of Ambrose Bierce, his Devil’s Dictionary was the sum of what I knew about him. That and his disappearance in the deserts of Chihuahua in 1913. His book became a companion of my young adulthood, confirming my own less than positive attitude about things as diverse as military life, patriotism, and so-called family values in America. I suppose the mystery of his final months provided an excuse to consider him as ‘taken up’ rather than dead, a sort of literary Elijah whose prophecies were being fulfilled. I think Carlos Fuentes may have had similar feelings when he wrote this fictional ending to Bierce’s life.
That life spanned a crucial transition in American culture. Not only did Bierce experience the horror of the Civil War, he also watched as the country subsequently was transformed into a dominantly corporate society controlled by men like Leland Stamford and Randolph Hearst, that is to say by finance and information (Bierce had investigated the former on behalf of the latter). Bierce knew both intimately and hated that he had worked in and for the system that fostered them and the other corporate robber barons who ran the country for their benefit (and largely still do). His frequent journalistic sarcasm was self-directed as much as it was comment on American society.
Manifest Destiny, the idea that white Northern Europeans were entitled to expand across the North American continent to the Pacific, was the prevailing policy of the American government during all of Bierce’s life. And the policy-objective had been achieved by the end of the 19th century. There was no more Western frontier. The American Dream had been realised: “In his own lifetime, the old gringo... had seen an entire nation move from New York to Ohio to the battlegrounds of Georgia and the Carolinas and then to California, where the continent, sometimes even destiny, ended.” What had been produced was not the predicted utopia of Calvinist pre-destination but a cultural cesspit. “My country 'tis of thee, Sweet land of felony...,” Bierce sings. His mere presence in Mexico as an escapee from his own country is a mockery of “God, his Homeland, Money.”
Like the Dutch building dikes, perhaps, America doesn’t know how to stop its successful expansionism. Among other things, it invades Cuba on a pretext, sends troops into Mexico to fight ‘bandits,’ and shells the port of Veracruz for ‘insulting the flag of the United States.’ The cultural imperialism and racism of America cannot contain itself. “We are caught in the business of forever killing people whose skin is of a different color,” the old gringo muses. And, of course he is right. The momentum of American hatred for what is ‘other’ continues unabated more than a century after Bierce’s self-exile.
The Mexicans know why Bierce has come: “The old gringo came to Mexico to die... He wanted us to kill him, us Mexicans.” A running theme throughout the story is the mirrored ballroom of a hacienda captured by Pancho Villa’s troops. The locals had never seen a mirror before and don’t know what to make of the images; but the gringo (and a rather stupid gringa who could well be the United States in a skirt), see themselves as never before. The vision in the mirrors is disconcerting and it changes the self-images of the Americans. They recognise that “each of us carries the real frontier inside.” The dream had been a delusion. To recognise the inherent inferiority of this delusion is why “to be a gringo in Mexico is one way of dying”
debnanceatreaderbuzz's review against another edition
3.0
Old Gringo was agony for me to read. Carlos Fuentes came to Houston a few weeks back and I drove in to see him. He was pretty much as I'd expected. An achingly handsome eighty-year-old man who writes poetic novels. And who sees life as experienced mainly through his manly body parts. This may work for his male readers. This may work for the parts of Old Gringo told from the point of view of his male characters like Pancho Villa and one of Villa's generals and even Ambrose Bierce. But it did not work for me when it came to reading the parts of the story told from the point of view of Harriet Winslow, a starting-to-age American school marm who takes up with Bierce and the Villa general. Agony to read.
I'd planned to read Old Gringo, the book I'd bought at the reading, and then watch the video. I fought my way to the end of the novel, loathing every page. And then went hopefully to the video. When I took the DVD from its envelope, I discovered the DVD had been snapped in half. (Could it be that the video was as horrifying as the novel and the previous viewer lost it?)
I'd planned to read Old Gringo, the book I'd bought at the reading, and then watch the video. I fought my way to the end of the novel, loathing every page. And then went hopefully to the video. When I took the DVD from its envelope, I discovered the DVD had been snapped in half. (Could it be that the video was as horrifying as the novel and the previous viewer lost it?)
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