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Summary
Author Notes
Carlos Fuentes was born in Panama on November 11, 1928. He studied law at the National University of Mexico and did graduate work at the Institute des Hautes Etudes in Switzerland. He entered Mexico's diplomatic service and wrote in his spare time. His first novel, Where the Air Is Clear, was published in 1958. His other works include The Death of Artemio Cruz, Destiny and Desire, and Vlad. The Old Gringo was later adapted as a film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda in 1989. He won numerous awards including the Fuentes the Romulo Gallegos Prize in Venezuela for Terra Nostra, the National Order of Merit in France, the Cervantes Prize in 1987, and Spain's Prince of Asturias Award for literature in 1994.
He also wrote essays, short stories, screenplays, and political nonfiction. In addition to writing, he taught at numerous universities, including Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Brown. He served as the ambassador of Mexico to France. He died on May 15, 2012 at the age of 83.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The premise of this fine, short novel is that Ambrose Biercethe American journalist and writer (The Devil's Dictionary who disappeared in Mexico in 1914, did indeed join revolutionary Pancho Villa's forces, as is generally believed. PW noted that creating the story of Bierce's end enables Fuentes to examine ``the borders between men and women, dreams and reality, Mexico and the U.S.'' (September) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
For Mexican novelist Fuentes, the real events and personalities of Pancho Villa's revolution reflect more immediate attitudes toward Mexico's history and U.S. imperialism. (N 1 85)
Choice Review
Carlos Fuentes, contemporary Mexico's brightest literary luminary and international spokesman for Latin America's ``Boom'' novelists, has again brought before the reading public his career-long concerns with time and identity in his newest novel. Fuentes fictionalizes the last days of the life of American journalist and author Ambrose Bierce, involving a mythic figure to the Mexican revolutionaries with whom Bierce fights and representing Bierce of the novel as an implanted, recurrent memory for the young American schoolteacher who witnesses his final passages through time. The novel's translator, Margaret Sayers Peden, along with Gregory Rabassa, has been a primary force in making the new Latin American novel available to an English-speaking audience, and this translation in its clarity and fluidity assures her continued importance in the vital communication between Hispanic writers and North American readers. This most recent prose work by Fuentes is recommended reading for all students of literature, those interested in US-Mexican relations (a fine fictional companion to Alan Riding's Distant Neighbors, 1985), specialists in Hispanic literature, and all curious observers of life and art beyond our southern border. The Old Gringo goes further than any book in recent memory in defining literarily the cultural differences between Mexico and the US and is a highly recommended book by Mexico's most distinguished novelist.-B.L. Lewis, Texas A & M University
Library Journal Review
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 (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.