The Old Gringo: A Novel [Paperback]

Carlos Fuentes (Author), Margaret Sayers Peden (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 1997

The celebrated American writer and journalist Ambrose Bierce mysteriously disapeared in Mexico during its civil war. In this brilliant novel, Carlos Fuentes imagines the fate of Bierce among Pancho Villa's troops and dramatizes the conflict of North America's two cultures locked in deadly embrace.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fuentes, Mexico's leading novelist (author of Terra Nostra), invents here a lyrical and philosophical tale about the times of Pancho Villa and the Revolution in Mexico. The old gringo of the title is Ambrose Bierce, the Ameican journalist and writer who disappeared in the Mexican dust. Bierce went to Mexico to die, Fuentes speculates, because he could not bear to reflect on the pain and sacrifices his sanctimonious moral rectitude had caused his family. He joins the troops of the young revolutionary Tomas Arroyo, one of Villa's generals, who, as a "child of misfortune" ("bastard" in the servant quarters) was trapped in the hacienda and is now trapped by the revolution. Both the old gringo and the young revolutionary fall in love with Harriet Winslow, an American who had come to Mexico as teacher for the children on a hacienda which no longer exists, having been burned by the revolutionaries. Fuentes examines the borders between men and women, dreams and reality, Mexico and the U.S. ("a scar" rather than a border). Doomed never to understand each other, the two men inevitably die as they cross the frontier of their differences: the old gringo killed by Arroyo (whom he provoked by burning the papers of the history of Mexico) and Arroyo, in his turn, shot by Villa for overstepping his boundaries of power. In this fine short novel, Fuentes remains, as usual, wisely suspicious of both American politics and those of the Revolution. The problem here is that the author's posturing, his dramatic flourishes, never let us forget that this is all fakean invention, a meditation. November
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Clues scattered through this brief but intense novel gradually reveal the identity of the title character, an aging American writer who disappeared in revolutionary Mexico in 1913. Fuentes has made clever fictional use of an actual literary mystery, but his more remarkable achievement here is the portrait of the writer as a father figure to an American governess and to a general in Pancho Villa's army, each of whom has been betrayed by a real father. The tempestuous intimacy between governess and general and the complex relationship each has with the old gringo reflect the links and contradictions between Mexican and American cultures. This is a novel to be savored; it deserves more than a single reading. L.M. Lewis, Social Science Dept., Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 199 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (October 31, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374525226
• ISBN-13: 978-0374525224
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #824,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this novel., September 24, 2005

By 

hdoolittle "hdoolittle" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Old Gringo: A Novel (Paperback)

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.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gringo Viejo- Carlos Fuentes, June 6, 2000

By 

"dano75" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Old Gringo: A Novel (Paperback)

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.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars diverting speculation, October 13, 2000

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Old Gringo: A Novel (Paperback)

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+