One of Carlos Fuentes's greatest works, The Old Gringo tells the story of Ambrose Bierce, the American writer, soldier, and journalist, and of his last mysterious days in Mexico living among Pancho Villa's soldiers, particularly his encounter with General Tomas Arroyo. In the end, the incompatibility of the two countries (or, paradoxically, their intimacy) claims both men, in a novel that is, most of all, about the tragic history of two cultures in conflict.
The Old Gringo: A Novel
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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.
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.
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
By hdoolittle
Format: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.
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.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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
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
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
"What a shame. They're right when they say this isn't a border. It's a scar."
July 2, 2009
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
copy was fine.
I got this book for my book club. I personally had a very hard time getting through it and was bored to tears. Read more
Published 2 months ago by camera-shy in CA
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best book to enter the world of Carlos Fuentes
This is a magnificent book, and the most accessible entry into the world of Carlos Fuentes.
It is mythic in spirit, and resembles the work of William Faulkner in many ways. Read more
It is mythic in spirit, and resembles the work of William Faulkner in many ways. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Joseph Lakewood
5.0 out of 5 stars
one of carlos fuentes best novel
received product quickly and described. great read. on par with dostoyevsky and fitzgerald. recommend for any age. thanks for the book.
Published 5 months ago by Theodore L. Stern
4.0 out of 5 stars
Difficult symbolic reading, but worth it!
The Old Gringo is a biographical novel about the alleged disappearance of Ambrose Bierce in Mexico during the revolution. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Rachel
4.0 out of 5 stars
THE OLD GRINGO
I ENJOYED THE BOOK, THE AUTHOR CARLOS FUENTES, DECRIBES THE TIME & THE PEOPLE OF THAT ERA EXACTLY AS MY FATHER TOLD IT TO ME. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Raymond V. Magallanes
2.0 out of 5 stars
I'll Never Eat Guacamole Again.
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. Read more
Published 24 months ago by Comma Splice
5.0 out of 5 stars
Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes
This book, written in such simple though eloquent translation, had amazing depth and personal meaning for me. Read more
Published on March 18, 2010 by William O. Player
3.0 out of 5 stars
There had to be a new violence to end the old one
Carlos Fuentes's book is an ambitious project: the disappearance of the great American writer Ambrose Bierce and his fictional confrontation with Pancho Villa and his army in... Read more
Published on May 18, 2009 by Luc REYNAERT
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Old Gringo
I have recently finished The book titled, The Old Gringo. To be honest, it wasn't really a very appealing book to me. Read more
Published on January 8, 2009 by Diane L. Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars
Healing the frontiers of the heart and mind
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. Read more
Published on May 20, 2007 by T. M. Teale
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