Customer Reviews

The Old Gringo

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed Fuentes' The Old Gringo. It constitutes everything a novel should be: love, death, war, sex, etc. It includes themes of brotherhood, colonialism, relations between the US and Mexico, freedom, love across national boundaries, and what it is to die. I found Fuentes' prose to be beautiful and diverse; an intersubjective consciousness flows through the characters, revealing as well that we are all only readers, and we will never know the real story. Beacuse of his style, Fuentes enriches the text, makes it stand out and vibrate with life. It's tactile. His characters are complex and story line great.

For anyone interested in Latin-American works, I would highly recommend this one. It takes the revolution and gives it the colors we would never see as outsiders.

An absolute gem of a book. Fuentes manages to transcribe the imagined fate of a renowned American writer in the vast and culturally distant Mexican desert into a tale of breathtaking astuteness and insight. By concentrating on the inner struggle faced by three characters all at vastly different stages of turmoil and decay in their respective soulful ventures. Fuentes manages to incorporate the wide ranging animosity and ignorance with which the Gringos and the Mexicans view each other. Acutely emotive without being overly indulgent he takes us to the dark recesses of the multi faceted characters dreams and memories. Far from being two dimensional pawns in his pocket as the unobservant Jim Carr believes, the three main characters inculcate and yet struggle to expand on the learned views they have been disposed to concerning at differing times their comrade, lover and enemy. There is no fanciful happy ending, nor is there unnecessary despondency. Instead Fuentes makes the reader question his or hers own view concerning death, travel and ones place in a world seemingly full of contradictions. An absolute must read for anyone striving to understand ones quest for glory and also what is is like to be bound by ones innate duty.

Goodbye, if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico--ah, that is euthanasia! -Ambrose Bierce in a letter to a friend

In 1914, the great American journalist and short story writer Ambrose Bierce, age 71, traveled to a Mexico that was in the midst of Revolution and promptly disappeared. He thereby fulfilled the dark prediction above and provided one of the great literary mysteries of the 20th Century.

In The Old Gringo, Carlos Fuentes offers his take on Bierce's fate. An "Old Gringo", carrying just a couple of his own books, a copy of Don Quixote, a clean shirt and a Colt .44, joins a group of Mexican rebels under General Tomas Arroyo. In turn, they meet up with a young American school teacher named Harriet Winslow, who was supposed to tutor the children of the wealthy landowner who illegally holds Arroyo's family property. The three become enmeshed in an unlikely romantic triangle, which necessarily ends in tragedy.

Fuentes uses the story to explore a plethora of themes, some of which I followed and some of which I could not. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is the degree to which it reflects Latin American obsession with the United States, an obsession which it must be admitted is met by only a fleeting interest on our part. Fuentes and the tragic chorus of Mexican characters elevate the tale of the Old Gringo to the status of myth; ironic, since Bierce is barely remembered here, but then one of his themes is that we are a people without memory, while the very soil of Mexico carries memories.

It all adds up to a diverting speculation about an interesting historical puzzle, but I'm not sure that the story will bear all of the psychological and political weight that Fuentes loads upon it.

GRADE: C+

Though this novel has all the hallmarks of a recognized classic, it is, surprisingly, only twenty-five years old. Set during Mexico's civil war in 1914, the author shows Mexico determined to be independent and true to its own history, while the US wants to create outcomes there which coincide with US goals and political agendas here. For more than forty years, Fuentes has also been fascinated with the story of American author/journalist Ambrose Bierce, who is believed to have vanished in Mexico during that war, and he exploits this long interest by making Bierce the "Old Gringo" of the title.

Bierce, age seventy-one at the time of his disappearance, had traveled the world and had already written most of what he felt he had to say. Drawn to Mexico, where a popular revolution was threatening to change the country's history, Bierce is thought to have gone there to join up with Pancho Villa and his men, who were fighting the federales and the government of President Victoriano Huerta, known as "the Jackal." Bierce never returned, his fate unknown.

On the level of plot, this is a story told by Harriet Winslow, a thirty-one-year-old American from Washington, D.C., who has been hired as a teacher by the wealthy Miranda family. Fuentes uses flashbacks to reveal Harriet's background and that of the Old Gringo, who has just arrived in these lands. Harriet regards the Old Gringo as a father figure, understanding that he has come to Mexico to die, while he in turn sees her as his final temptation before death. Harriet has had a brief but passionate relationship with Tomas Arroyo, the general who has driven out the Miranda family and hanged many of the federales protecting the property, and she is tormented by that relationship.

Fuentes clearly admires the Old Gringo, but he also shows him to be human, a man grappling with his future, even as he believes that he has no future. The sense of each person's connection to the past through family permeates the novel, and as the characters separately try to make their own lives worth living, they parallel the goals of the rebels who, as hard-working poor, are determined to protect their own past and their country's history. The novel's outcome--the Old Gringo's death--looms over all the action from the outset, which begins with a grim scene of his exhumation, but the novel is not just a story on one level. It is also a story illustrating the political differences between Mexico and the US, between a country with a long and complex cultural history and one that is not even two hundred years old, and between the poor and helpless victims of economic and political aggression and their exploitation by wealthy autocrats.

Fuentes spends much time describing the characters' philosophical quandaries (some of them repetitious), but he also suggests Mexican myths related to the sun, moon, and stars. Nature comes to life here, and symbols abound--the desert being the ultimate image of war. These images contrast with artificial excesses of church décor and, on a smaller scale, with the Miranda hacienda and its elaborate mirrored ballroom, in which many soldiers see their full images for the first time. The contrasts between real life and its artificial reflections, between the realities of war and the perhaps unrealistic dreams of its participants, and between remembered history and its loss, add significance and thematic richness to the author's seemingly simple story. Mary Whipple

Judging by previous comments on The Old Gringo, many readers are perusing the novel for the content relating to the fate of American writer Ambrose Bierce. To read Fuentes' novel for that purpose is to miss the fine points of the novelist's craft. Or, perhaps, The Old Gringo has simply gotten better since it was first published in 1985. It seems to me that the main premise of The Old Gringo is that Mexico and the United States should get to know each other, become less of a mystery to each other. This premise has become more true over the past two decades--particularly as the immigration debate heats up. Near the end of the novel, the revolutionary fighter Inocencio Mansalvo, looks from "What a shame. They're right when they say this isn't a border. It's a scar." To understand that view, the reader has to have read the previous 185 pages.

As a reader, I feel I ought to offer a compelling reason for others to seriously pick up this book--something more substantial than simply to read how Fuentes fictionalizes Bierce, a real person with a well-documented life. What I find so wonderful here is that Fuentes manages to teach me about Mexico and the United States without preaching, without stopping the flow of the story. First of all, the key to how Fuentes constructed the plot is that he knew enough about American life--he spent much of his youth in Washington, D.C.--that he could see very clear reasons how an American journalist like Ambrose Bierce would purposefully go to Mexico in the 1910s. The conjunction of actual, historical events gave Fuentes the main structure: the Mexican revolution coming as Bierce was aging, feeling bitter about his broken family, regretting that he had written lies for a William Randolph Hearst newspaper. It's believable that Bierce desired to escape his own life but didn't want to commit suicide.

The author's masterstroke was to invent the main character, Harriet Winslow. Fuentes was confident enough as a writer that Miss Winslow is entirely believable. Harriet's interior monologue, the thoughts that come from her deep consciousness, are real enough--physical enough--to carry the responsibility of serving as the frame for the novel. Harriet is back in Washington, D.C. remembering the old gringo and General Tomás Arroyo, the "moon-faced" woman, and the other Mexican people she knew. Fuentes provides the music of the text: the careful detail, the balance between spoken dialogue and interior monologue, the Mexican characters' exact reasons for needing a revolution against the oppressive hacienda system. The Mexican characters are very clear about what they hoped for: freedom of movement in their own nation without fear of the wealthy land owners, freedom to choose whom they could love and marry--basic civil liberties. But there is something more. Fuentes makes clear that the human mind has very deep places: if the reader thinks that Americans and Mexican are all surface with no consciousness, read again.

The Old Gringo is also an existentialist novel, intensely philosophic, an argument for a profoundly nuanced politics: "And the frontier in here?" the North American woman had asked, tapping her forehead. "And the frontier in here?" General Arroyo had responded, touching his heart. "There's one frontier we only dare to cross at night," the old gringo said. "The frontier of our differences with others, of our battles with ourselves."

If we read enough about Mexico and American relations, perhaps we can find healing for the wound, for the scar that is the border. Read. Enjoy. Be intrigued.

It's like Fuentes wrote "The Old Gringo" in his sleep. Or maybe something was lost in the translation. But I couldn't think of a worse way to commemorate the memory of Ambrose Bierce than this book.

Bierce was the proud and cantankerous alcoholic Civil War writer, famous to his contemporaries as the author of the "Devil's Dictionary." More famous to us as the author of "Incident at Owl Creek Bridge." By any standards, Bierce is a cynic and hard-nosed realist. Here, for example, is the "Devil's Dictionary" entry for "Laughter":

"An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable."

In "The Old Gringo," Fuentes imagines what happened to Bierce when he disappeared in Mexico during the revolution around the turn of the 20th century. In the book, Bierce is an old tough guy who can shoot pesos in midair, and who seeks his death at the hands of Pancho Villa, the infamous Mexican bandit. In addition, there's a young American schoolteacher to woo, an angry young rebel general, and lots of booze and spicy food. And lots of Freudian sex (as the schoolteacher pretends her lover is her father). And the whole thing is written in poor stream-of-consciousness style.

Bierce must be writhing in his grave.

Read "The Death of Artemio Cruz" for Fuentes' work of genius. "The Old Gringo" misses its mark.

Usually things I read don't bother me, no matter how absurd or disgusting they are. I'm an English major, and I've read enough to not be shocked by much. But then there comes The Old Gringo.

What shocked me about The Old Gringo weren't really the events of the plot. As far as a story goes, this is just pretty dull and wouldn't offend. The writing, however, is shockingly bad sometimes. My classmates and I all speculated that it might be the result of a bad translation, but however it came about, there are some really absurd images in here. For instance, there was a sentence describing Arroyo's "hard long testicles like a pair of furry avocados swinging..." Furry avocados? That are long? Really? And that's an image that supposed to be read with a straight face (it is). If that were all, it wouldn't be a problem, but that sort of off-key image permeates the book, especially in the ubiquitous sex scenes. The sex scenes are hilarious. All of the sex scenes either feel cliched or just as laughable as the avocado one.

Anyway, I'm giving this book two stars because, even though the writing made me cringe when I read it, it makes me laugh now. There are probably a few things in the book worth thinking about, but it's not a well-written, fully-realized novel, at least not in English translation.

I've heard it more than once, living in New Mexico, from my Hispanic brethren, that "I didn't cross the border, the border crossed me," a not so subtle reference to the enlargement of the United States following the war with Mexico in 1848. Clearly the destinies of these two countries are intertwined, and at one time it was primarily an issue for the Southwestern US, but in the last 30 years, most of the US is involved. A prime, even essential reason to try to understand our relationship from a Mexican perspective, and there is no finer Mexican writer than Carlos Fuentes.

I just re-read this excellent novel, and consider it, along with "The Death of Artemio Cruz," to be his best works, and most accessible. His erudition, and his literary style dazzles. And his anger at power relationships, including those with his northern neighbor, burns white hot. He chose an interesting mix of major and minor characters to tell his story. The "Old Gringo" is revealed at the end of the book to be Ambrose Pierce, who in real life was a sardonic, cynical satirist famous for writing "The Devil's Dictionary," and who disappeared in old age, in Mexico, at the time of the revolt led by Pancho Villa. The two other principal characters are Harriet Winslow, a teacher fleeing an unhappy family situation in Washington, DC, including the ghost of her father who disappeared in Cuba, during the Spanish-American War in 1898. The third is the illiterate General Arroyo, on the side of Pancho Villa, and who possesses the papers that proves he is the true owner to the hacienda that his troops burn. The minor characters are equally fascinating, including La Luna, (she of the moon face), La Garduna, various troops fighting the war, and the "ghosts" of all the principal's fathers.

In regards to the Mexican-American relationship, consider: "Haven't you ever thought, you gringos, that all this land was one ours? Ah, our resentment and our memory go hand in hand." In real life Bierce worked for a period for the king of the "Yellow Press," William Randolph Hearst, a precursor to "Fox News," and Fuentes provides scathing critiques: "he had attacked it by orders of his boss Hearst, who had enormous investments in ranches and other property and feared the Revolution; but as he couldn't say, Go protect my property, he had to say, Go protest our lives, there are North American citizens in danger, intervene!" and Bierce reflected on his own role: "...wary of his journalist's tendency to form the instant stereotype that enabled the stupid masses to understand in a flash and feel flattered for it; a tag for everything, that was the Bible of his boss, Mr. Hearst." Towards the end, a reporter, shades of our recent adventure in Iraq, asks: "Don't you want us to save Mexico for democracy and progress, Miss Winslow?" Fuentes also tells the "best history," the history that we did not know, and forced me to consult Wikipedia concerning the American invasion of Vera Cruz in 1914.

But the book is so much more than about political or power relations. It really is about the changes that events unforeseen force on the characters. How they react to events. And Fuentes style of foreshadowing, and backing and filling, like pixels in a picture is impressive. For example, on the first page you learn that a female character might have given her child the name of "Tom Brook," but it is more than half way through the novel that you learn why, under Fuentes wry guidance.

The book is also very much about what passes for love; and this includes a particular passage of eroticism, both in terms of the physical and physiological, that could rival any in literature. "No, I had him." The frontiers are more than that formed by a river, called the Grande in the North- they are also about crossing our internal ones.

Overall, a superlative read, richer the second time around, and an essential read for all Americans. `Tis a pity that the book has a low Amazon rating, due to its assignment to students who would have learned far more picking grapes for a month with our friends from the South.

A wise and insightful book on the age-old attraction to Mexico for Gringos from the United States. Carlos is a super-smart writer, and for the smart reader, this book is required reading.

I ENJOYED THE BOOK, THE AUTHOR CARLOS FUENTES, DECRIBES THE TIME & THE PEOPLE OF THAT ERA EXACTLY AS MY FATHER TOLD IT TO ME.
I HAVE ALWAYS ENJOYED READING ABOUT THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION, AND THIS BOOK DOES JUST THAT.