The Old Gringo - Carlos Fuentes

The Old Gringo traveled to Mexico to die in the Revolution. In that, he was ultimately successful. The details are largely irrelevant to him. He'd like to serve under Pancho Villa, but if he could be killed by Villa, that's fine, too. He doesn't meet Villa, but one of his deaths is at Villa's hands, so perhaps he would approve.

There are ideas in The Old Gringo that I find interesting. How people in the U.S. view Mexico, how little they understand about it, or care to understand. How easily people can subvert a revolution for their own goals. The zero sum game men adopt in how they see women. How the attitudes of our parents shape our goals and directions, and how we can find ourselves bucking against it for the rest of our lives.

I hate the way Fuentes goes about presenting it. The primary problem is Fuentes loves to use these rambling monologues. They may appear at first to be internal, but at some point, the character may begin addressing another character, and you realize no, this a story one person is telling another. These can go on for seven, eight pages, and they're supposed to be deeply important sequences that highlight something about two character's relationships, or a particular character's perspective.

At a certain point, I want a break from this one character talking. Let the other person ask a question to create a pause, or to advance the story. Instead, they continue talking. The point they're making - or the one I'm taking from it - gets lost in the sheer amount of words. It makes a book just under 200 pages seem terribly long at times.

The best I can summarize my feelings towards the book is I like the content, but not the style. If you've read Fuentes before, and you like his style (or don't mind it), you'll probably enjoy the book more than I did. It's probably still worth a try even if you aren't familiar with him, just to see how the prose grabs you.