In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • En pos de Juan Rulfo by Pol Popovic Karic
  • Douglas J. Weatherford
Popovic Karic, Pol. En pos de Juan Rulfo. Monterrey/México DF: Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey/Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2015. Pp. 268. ISBN 978-6-07401-983-4.

On the centennial of Juan Rulfo's birth in 1917, Pol Popovic Karic's En pos de Juan Rulfo is one of many publications that can be expected on the Jalisco native's creative canon. Popovic Karic envisions his efforts in personal terms and begins with a letter to the iconic author "para cumplir, en cierta medida, con mi frustrado deseo de comunicarme con él" (11). En pos de Juan Rulfo is, nonetheless, a fairly standard anthology of twelve independent essays whose organizational glue is an exegesis of the narrative of one of Latin America's most significant writers.

The anthology deals almost exclusively with Rulfo's two canonical works, dedicating about the same amount of space to an analysis of Pedro Páramo as to selected stories from El Llano en llamas, including "La herencia de Matilde Arcángel," "El día del derrumbe," "Nos han dado la tierra," "La Cuesta de las Comadres," "El hombre," "Es que somos muy pobres," "En la madrugada," "Talpa," and "Macario." Popovic Karic discusses Rulfo's second novel, El gallo de oro, only briefly in the first chapter, he does not mention Rulfo's photographic or filmic production, and he steers clear of the author's biography. The critic explores Rulfo's first published novel in chapters titled "Las mentiras en Pedro Páramo," "Los embaucadores enredados en Pedro Páramo," "El momento inicial de Pedro Páramo," "La fragmentación y la continuidad en Pedro Páramo," and "Los caminos hacia Pedro Páramo." Rulfo's collection of short stories is the focus of essays titled "El cartesianismo en 'El día del derrumbe,'" "La ingenuidad en El Llano en llamas," "La sensibilidad y la sensualidad: 'En la madrugada,'" "El calor y el agua [End Page 695] en El Llano en llamas," and "Las voces en 'Macario.'" Two additional chapters, "La ironía en la obra de Juan Rulfo" and "Los hijos en la obra de Juan Rulfo," examine both books of fiction.

Although En pos de Juan Rulfo is less than groundbreaking, it is still an enjoyable exploration of one critic's distinctive journey through Rulfo's literary canon, with insights that make it worth the effort for Rulfo specialists and aficionados. Popovic Karic typically grounds each essay in a critical or theoretical concept (e.g. irony, otherness, Cartesianism, fragmentation, among others) while limiting each bibliography to a small handful of readings. Although such an approach is likely to please some readers, the anthology could benefit from a more proper acknowledgement of and dialogue with other critics who have considered similar issues in published research.

Enthusiasts of Rulfo's literature will find that Popovic Karic often challenges and enlarges our understanding of Pedro Páramo and El Llano en llamas and will appreciate the new insights gained by reading his work. And yet there are moments when one might question the author's interpretation of the world that Rulfo fictionalized. In his examination of the sons of Pedro Páramo, for example, Popovic Karic suggests that "Pedro se apropia de su destino desde la temprana edad . . ." (66). Another reading of the novel might envision Rulfo's youthful Pedro as a still vulnerable individual who has yet to be converted by anger and loss into the "rencor vivo" that Abundio Martínez describes. To be sure, the ambiguity of these classics of Mexican literature allows each reader a certain freedom of analysis and it is Popovic Karic's ability to question our understanding of those texts that this review has already praised. It is likely, however, that readers of En pos de Juan Rulfo will find other interpretations with which they simply will not agree. One perplexing example is found in "Las mentiras en Pedro Páramo" where the author identifies "una confusion topográfica relacionada con la inclinación del camino" (42) as one of the novel's untruths. The narrator of Pedro...

pdf

Share