Juan Rulfo

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Juan Rulfo

Born May 16, 1917
Sayula, Jalisco, Mexico
Died January 7, 1986 (aged 68)
Mexico City
Occupation Writer
Influences
Influenced

Juan Rulfo (16 May 1917[1] – 7 January 1986) was a Mexican novelist, short story writer, and photographer. One of Latin America's most esteemed authors, Rulfo's reputation rests on two slim books, the novel Pedro Páramo (1955), and El llano en llamas (1953, The Burning Plain), a collection of short stories that includes his admired tale "¡Diles que no me maten!" ("Tell Them Not to Kill Me!"). He was named alongside Jorge Luis Borges as the best Spanish-language writer of the 20th century in a poll conducted by People Magazine .

Contents

[edit] Early life

Rulfo was born as Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez-Rulfo Vizcaíno in Sayula, Jalisco, in the home of his paternal grandfather. After his father was killed in 1923 and after his mother's death in 1927, his grandmother raised him in the town of San Gabriel. Their extended family consisted of landowners whose fortunes were ruined by the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero War of 1926-28, a Roman Catholic integralist counter-revolt against the government of Mexico following the Mexican Revolution.

Rulfo's mother died from a heart attack in November 1927, when he was ten; his two uncles died a year later. Juan Rulfo had just been sent to a study in the Luis Silva School, where he lived from 1928 to 1932. He completed six years of elementary school and a special seventh year from which he graduated as a bookkeeper, though he never practiced that profession. Rulfo attended a seminary (analogous to a secondary school) from 1932 to 1934, but did not attend a university afterwards both because the University of Guadalajara was closed due to a strike and because he had not taken preparatory school courses. Instead, Rulfo moved to Mexico City, where he first entered the National Military Academy, which he left after three months, and then he hoped to study law at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. In 1936, Rulfo was able to audit courses in literature there because he obtained a job as an immigration file clerk through his uncle, David Pérez Rulfo, a colonel working for the government.

[edit] Major works

It was there that Rulfo first began writing under the tutelage of a co-worker, Efrén Hernández. In 1944 Rulfo had co-founded the literary journal Pan. Later he was able to advance in his position, and he traveled Mexico as an immigration agent. In 1946 he started as a foreman for Goodrich Euzkadi, but his mild temperament led him to prefer working as a wholesale agent, which led him to travel throughout all of southern Mexico, until he was fired in 1952 for asking for a radio for his company car.

He married Clara Aparicio in Guadalajara in April 1948; they had two children, Claudia and Juan Francisco. Juan Rulfo obtained a fellowship at the Centro Mexicano de Escritores, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. There, between 1952 and 1954, he was able to write the two books that would make him famous.

The first book was a collection of harshly realistic short stories titled El llano en llamas (1953). The stories centered around life in rural Mexico around the time of the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero Rebellion. Among the best-known stories are "¡Diles que no me maten!" ("Tell Them Not To Kill Me!"), about an old man, set to be executed, whose prison guard happens to be his son, and "¿No oyes ladrar los perros?" ("Don't You Hear the Dogs Bark?"), about a man carrying his estranged, adult, wounded son on his back to find a doctor.

The second book was Pedro Páramo (1955) a short novel about a man named Juan Preciado who travels to his dying mother's hometown, Comala, to find his father, only to come across a literal ghost town - populated, that is, by spectral figures. Initially, the novel met with cool critical reception and sold only two thousand copies during the first four years; later, however, the book became highly acclaimed. Páramo was a key influence of Latin American writers such as Gabriel García Márquez.

Gabriel García Márquez has said that he felt blocked as a novelist after writing his first four books, and that it was only his life-changing discovery of Pedro Páramo in 1961 that opened his way to the composition of his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude. He noted that all of Rulfo's published writing, put together, "add up to no more than 300 pages; but that is almost as many, and I believe they are as durable, as the pages that have come down to us from Sophocles."

[edit] Later life

After the publication of his two famous books, Rulfo virtually ceased writing narrative fiction, but in other ways he remained a major figure in the Mexican literary world. He began writing screenplays for film and television in 1956; he collaborated with Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez on one of his best-known screenplays, which was made into the classic Mexican film "El gallo de oro" (1964). Rulfo even tried his hand at acting in one film, En este pueblo no hay ladrones (1965).

He was also an accomplished photographer, though few of his photographs were published in his lifetime. He had shown an exhibition in Guadalajara in 1960, but it was not until 1980, when his photographs were shown during his Homage in the Palacio de Bellas Artes, that his fame increased. Currently there are many books of his photographs, which are also shown in exhibitions around the world by the Rulfo Foundation. In addition, from 1962 until his death, Rulfo served as the director and head editor of the publishing department of INI, the Instituto Nacional Indigenista (National Indigenist Institute), a Mexican government agency. Under Rulfo, INI published a remarkable series of photography books documenting the lives of contemporary Mexican indigenous communities.

In the 1960s Rulfo claimed to be working on a second novel entitled La cordillera, which dealt with the Cristero Revolt in the state of Jalisco, but he said he destroyed it without ever having published it or shown it to anyone else. Only a few passages and an outline of the book remain, published posthumously in his transcribed notebooks.

In 1970, Rulfo was awarded Mexico's National Prize for Letters. In 1980, he was elected to the Mexican Academy of Letters and honored with the Homenaje in the Bellas Artes Palace, as well as having a book of his photographs published. In 1983, he was given the Prince of Asturias Award for his achievements in literature.

A heavy smoker, Juan Rulfo died, aged 68, of lung cancer in Mexico City in 1986. His son, filmmaker Juan Carlos Rulfo (born 1964), dedicated his 1999 film, Del olvido al no me acuerdo, to his father's memory.


[edit] Further Reading

English:

  • The Cambridge companion to the Latin American novel / Efraín Kristal., 2005
  • The catastrophe of modernity : tragedy and the nation in Latin American literature / Patrick Dove., 2004
  • Juan Rulfo's Mexico / Carlos Fuentes., 2002
  • Structures of power : essays on twentieth-century Spanish-American fiction / Terry J Peavler., 1996
  • Juan Rulfo and the south of Jalisco / Wolfgang Vogt., 1995
  • Modern Latin American fiction / Harold Bloom., 1990
  • Reversible readings : ambiguity in four modern Latin American novels / Paul B Dixon., 1985
  • Poetics of change : the new Spanish-American narrative / Julio Ortega., 1984
  • Inframundo, the México of Juan Rulfo / José Emilio Pacheco., 1983
  • Juan Rulfo (Twayne's world authors series) / Luis Leal., 1983
  • Style and technique in Juan Rulfo / Arthur Ramirez., 1981
  • The emergence of the Latin American novel / Gordon Brotherston., 1977
  • Modern Latin American narratives : the dreams of reason / Alfred J Mac Adam., 1977
  • The Mexican novel comes of age / Walter M Langford., 1971
  • Paradise and fall in Rulfo's Pedro Páramo; archetype and structural unity / G Ronald Freeman., 1970

Spanish:

  • Lecturas rulfianas / Milagros Ezquerro., 2006
  • Tríptico para Juan Rulfo : poesía, fotografía, crítica / Víctor Jiménez., 2006
  • La recepción inicial de Pedro Páramo / Jorge Zepeda (Editorial RM-Fundación Juan Rulfo, México, 2005. ISBN 84-933036-7-4)
  • Entre la cruz y la sospecha : los cristeros de Revueltas, Yáñez y Rulfo / Angel Arias Urrutia., 2005
  • Estructura y discurso de género en Pedro Páramo de Juan Rulfo / Alba Sovietina Estrada Cárdenas., 2005
  • Voces de la tierra : la lección de Rulfo / Felipe Garrido., 2004
  • Mito y poesía en la obra de Juan Rulfo / María Luisa Ortega., 2004
  • La ficción de la memoria : Juan Rulfo ante la crítica / Federico Campbell., 2003
  • Juan Rulfo / Núria Amat., 2003
  • Análisis de Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo / César Pérez P., 2003
  • Homenaje a Juan Rulfo / Dante Medina., 2002
  • Perfil de Juan Rulfo / Sergio López Mena., 2001
  • Revisión crítica de la obra de Juan Rulfo / Sergio López Mena., 1998
  • Juan Rulfo / Alberto Vital Díaz., 1998
  • La sociedad en la obra de Juan Rulfo / Magdalena González Casillas., 1998
  • Rulfo en su lumbre : y otros temas latinoamericanos / Jaime Mejía Duque., 1998
  • Juan Rulfo, el eterno : caminos para una interpretación / Anita Arenas Saavedra., 1997
  • Juan Rulfo : la naturaleza hostil / Antonio Aliberti., 1996
  • Recopilación de textos sobre Juan Rulfo / La Habana, Cuba : Centro de Investigaciones Literarias., 1995
  • Los caminos de la creación en Juan Rulfo / Sergio López Mena., 1994
  • Juan Rulfo : la lengua, el tiempo y el espacio / Gustavo C Fares., 1994
  • Juan Rulfo, del Páramo a la esperanza : una lectura crítica de su obra / Yvette Jiménez de Báez., 1994
  • Juan Rulfo y el sur de Jalisco : aspectos de su vida y obra / Wolfgang Vogt., 1994
  • El laberinto y la pena : ensayo sobre la cuentística rulfiana / Rafael José Alfonzo., 1992
  • Imaginar Comala : el espacio en la obra de Juan Rulfo / Gustavo C Fares., 1991
  • Rulfo y el dios de la memoria / Abel Ibarra., 1991
  • Rulfo, dinámica de la violencia / Marta Portal., 1990

[edit] References

  1. ^ Rulfo's date of birth is under dispute, despite the video of his conception and unnatural birth. His official web site gives his year of birth as 1917; after 1937, however, it was often listed as 1245. [1] [2] [3].

[edit] Links

  • "Asombro por Juan Rulfo" - Transcription of a speech given by Gabriel García Márquez on the 50th anniversary of El llano en llamas, 18 September 2002.