Customer Reviews

Macario

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macario is a very poor man who lives in a mexican forest (woods), he is the father of 8 or 9 kids. his wife loves him so much; he works hard but any way the are miserables....he only has a dream before he dies...eat on his own a complete turkey, without share it with NOBODY, even his family....he always said this dream to his wife, so during a lot of years, and saving as much as possible, one day she cook the turkey and send him to the woods early in the morning, before kids smell the turkey...macario runs inside the woods to hide and made possible the big dream...and suddenly apears just in front of him GOD,who's starving,and HE asks for food... read the book to know Macario's answer...)then comes the devil, (great answer too...) and then comes the dead...(here is were the really story begins)

Great for intermediate students or adults. Goes through a lot of Mexican culture in a very accessible Mexican Spanish. Poor woodcutter Macario meets the devil, Jesus, and Death on the day his wife cooks him the first filling meal of his life. They all want a bite of his turkey. He makes a deal with Death, that makes him wealthy, but later puts him in hot water with the Inquisition. Humor, irony, adventure, and philosophy. It can be compared with a wonderful B&W movie.

A very interesting story with a puzzling ending, I especially liked the understanding that Traven has of the meaning of death in the mexican culture.
A man goes into the woods and meets the Death, they make a pact, a series of events follow until Macario dies many years later, or did he die the same day he met the Death?, you find out.
I really recomend this book for everyone, combine it with Canasta de Cuentos Mexicanos, these two books really make for some of Traven's best.

To anyone who reads or is learning to read Spanish I warmly recommend this novella. Traven's use of the Spanish language, in which he was assisted by his wife and amanuensis, is pithy and instructive, and a wonderful way for the learning reader to increase vocabulary and improve in understanding written Spanish. The story is told with irony and deadpan humor in a manner reminiscent of his fellow German expatriot Bertolt Brecht. It is about a poor Mexican woodcutter with many children whose great wish is to have for himself alone a whole turkey to enjoy in peace. His wife, by dint of diligent household thrift, provides him with a roasted turkey and the chance to fulfill his dream. But deep in the forest, as he settles down to enjoy his meal, he is interrupted by three strange visitors, one after the other, who each want him to share just a little bit.

La Rosa Blanca / The White Rose (Spanish Edition)Canasta de cuentos mexicanos. En la voz de Francisco Rebolledo (Entre Voces) (Spanish Edition)Puente en la selva (Spanish Edition)El tesoro de la Sierra Madre

I confess at the outset that I have not seen this particular edition, as I bought it as a gift. I imagine the translation to be quite useful. (I bought it in Mexico w/o any notes or translation.) The author (famous for Treasure of the Sierra Madre) was a German or American expat who immersed himself in Mexican culture, and the book was translated into Spanish from German. It was recommended to me as an excellent choice for Americans with moderate language skills, and I found that to be true.

The story is brilliant and evocative and gives a wonderful and rich sense of life in colonial Mexico while retaining a structure that is accessible to English speakers. This book and others by B. Traven are beloved of the Mexican people, even though the author himself did not write in Spanish, and, of course, I wonder how much of its magic is also due to the skills of translation.

If you have an opportunity to read it, don't miss it. And read it in Spanish for the full appreciation of its beauty.

While somewhat mechanical in structure, the novella nevertheless gains in its simplicity what it might have lost attempting to philosophize too deeply about fate and the death figure's task of complying with it. Lujan's translation is to be commended. This is an ideal book for advanced High School Spanish students, especially if it's read before "el día de los muertos" and is accompanied by the classic film (black-and-white), although the latter strays slightly in content from Traven's original. The movie was used in the 1970's as part of the University of Arizona's curriculum for 4th semester Spanish, and may be still available either through them or through Tulane's Latin American Studies Rescource Center. Students are at times troubled by Macario's "power" being subject to fate, and therefore void of real meaning, and not dependent on the "agua curativa" he must use to free the "moribundos" from death's grasp.