Customer Reviews

And Let the Earth Tremble at Its Centers (Texas Pan American Literature in Translation)

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It's rather hard to know what to say about this Mexican novel, which was originally published in 1999. If you've got some interest in Mexico City, particularly the old "El Centro" area, you might well find it a fascinating ramble down faded streets. You'll have to bear in mind, however, that your tour guide (and it is certainly a tour) is a melancholy 50-something professor who gets progressively drunker as he walks, stumbles, and eventually staggers from bar to bar. There's even a handy map at the start, to help you follow in his footsteps. It's the book that's begging for some enterprising lit student to mash up with Google Earth to create some kind of new digital literature.

According to the insightful foreword by Ruben Gallo (which I only read after finishing the main text), this slim novel falls firmly in a tradition of literature about Mexico City that includes Salvador Novo's New Mexican Grandeur (1946), Carlos Monsivais' Mexican Postcards, and Carlos Fuentes' Where the Air Is Clear (1959). These books all capture the city at various points in its geographic and cultural development, and the professor's tour certainly does the same.

The premise for this solo walking tour is that the professor is supposed to be meeting some students to lead them on this trip into the history and soul of the city. However, they didn't show, so he decides to continue on his own, rather than return home and nurse his hangover. There's a definite whiff of nostalgia as he relates his anecdotes to the absent students and engages in numerous ruminations/flashbacks to defining moments in his life. It very quickly takes on the air of a farewell, and it's hard not to spot where the narrative is headed.

I guess it's kind of interesting as an example of literature taking on urban studies or something like that, but it never really connected with me. Perhaps if I had ever been to Mexico City, I would feel differently (and as I write this, it occurs to me that my grandparents lived there in the 1940s and might have found the book rather interesting), but since I haven't, I was left unmoved. And of course, since ten years have passed since its original publication, you could also say that the portrait it provides is outdated. Still, perhaps worth picking up if you're headed to Mexico City for a visit.