The Death of Artemio Cruz: A Novel (FSG Classics)

The book was beautifully written, the plot was interesting, and the character development went above and beyond most books.

So why is there such controversy over this book? Well it is easy to say, this is not your cruise vacation book to read while laying by the beach. The first chapter will have you kicking and screaming for anything tangible to grab onto. The only person in this book you have to guide you is Artemio Cruz, who is sharing with you his memories. However, he isn't always the most stable guide. Half the book he is on his deathbed rambling, switching tenses and narratives.

So that is the first warning. However if you are willing to invest some time, you can find an entire new meaning to life within this book. If you can't invest the time, go out and rent Citizen Kane, you'll get the gist in about two hours, rather then the month minimum you'll need to get this book. Even after rereading it, the book leaves dozens of pieces in the book isolated and unconnected. (In fact we never how Artemio gets from being 13 to 23, and if you read the book you'll know why this is important and frustrating).

So what does this book have to offer besides several headaches and why in the world did I give it five stars? Well I could throw a lot of pretty adjectives out at you, but I won't. I will tell it to you simply. This book makes you think. And not in the painful way. If you fight this book, you will never get it. If you embrace it, even in it's most challenging passages, you will be opened to a whole new world of ideas. Ideas about memory, desire, life, death, and our place within society are embedded in this story.

Bottom line: This story is like an excavation site waiting to be dug up, hidden with endless treasures. If you are willing to put in the time, you won't be disappointed. If that sounds like too much work, move right along then.

The violent society of Mexico in the 19th century produced a bloody revolution that laid the foundations for a new Mexico after 1920. The revolution devoured its dreamers and hopers, as revolutions tend to do, so that it was co-opted by the most violent, least idealistic types, who arranged Mexican society to their benefit, even if the common man ultimately did derive some advantages too. For the winners, especially as the century wore on, it seemed as if goose neck stuffed with pork-liver paté, or perhaps the damask armchairs by a fireplace in the huge living room loomed far larger than social justice. For them, the ruthless grab for power turned out to be a successful gambit. Artemio Cruz is such a successful individual, determined to let nothing stop his rise to the top, taking advantage of every chance brought to him by the tides of war and political intrigue.

The backward-forward nature of the narrative, the wordy lyricism interspersed with terse action sequences, and the dwelling upon illness, decay, and death locate this novel on the absolute opposite end of the literary continuum from say, the quiet, spare prose of Japanese author Kawabata Yasunari. This is a novel of bright colors, of deep, intense feelings, a novel in which the author thrives on vocabulary and the effect of the words themselves, a novel of ultimately surprising revelations that do not stop until the very last pages. Artemio Cruz desires power for its own sake, he will stoop to any deed to acquire it. Fuentes scrapes back layer upon layer of the character, digging deep into his psyche to tell why.

THE DEATH OF ARTEMIO CRUZ is a highly intellectual, cleverly-constructed novel that is not easy to read. It encapsulates a most turbulent 70 years of Mexican history, from 1889 to 1959, and at the same time, is a poetical, psychological study of an individual that can have few peers in the realm of modern literature. Fuentes opens everything subtly, gradually. You meet a dying man on his last day and through flashbacks come to understand who he is---cruel, cynical, lucky, devastated---and how he destroyed everyone around him, yet kept them loyal through money and power. If basically an unattractive personality, Artemio Cruz is not a monster; he bears considerable similarity to people you know, maybe to yourself, but the times made him what he was. Fuentes has written a masterpiece: one of the great novels of the 20th century, certainly. If what I have written intrigues you, be sure to read it.

Artemio Cruz owns a vast empire in Mexico, encompassing newspapers, land, construction and more. He has a beautiful wife and daughter, both of whom he cannot stand, nor they him. His aide, Padilla, a man he trusts with his empire, and one he has grown to love as the son he lost so many years ago. He is so important, so respected, so necessary to the Mexican country that the President tries to impress him, rather than the other way around. But Artemio Cruz is dying, painfully and slowly, and it is while dying that he has a chance to evaluate his life, to take a good look at himself and what he has achieved.

Cruz is a complicated man. As a youth, he fought in the various, chaotic revolutions and counter-revolutions that periodically caused Mexico to cease functioning as a nation, becoming little more than a series of loosely connected fiefdoms. Using his intelligence and daring, he was able to secure a command in the fight against Pancho Villa, but more importantly, he also knew when to leave the life of a soldier for a more solid existence. As a young man, he met Regina, the woman he was to love until his dying day.

As an older man, he is respected and influential, but also cold and distant. Gone are the passionate, poorly thought-out heroics of his early adulthood. He no longer loves like it doesn't matter, or cares much for the reality of another person. At his annual New Year's party, Cruz retires early to a comfortable leather chair positioned so he can watch everyone else have fun. The unspoken rules of the party forbids guests to talk to him at all, other than to pay their respects. His wife lives in another city, and a prostitute shares his bed this night, as she has every other night for the past eight years.

The three technique Fuentes uses in painting Cruz's life are quite interesting. In the present of the novel, when Cruz is dying, the narration is first person, disjointed, and very, very personal. No physical details are omitted, no matter how disgusting. Thoughts are fragmented, jumping from place to place, from time to time. The first few instances of this are difficult to follow, because we do not yet know Cruz's life, but as the novel progresses, the chaotic mental ramblings of the present become clearer, if not for Cruz but for us.

The second stylistic method used are the second person sections. These are generally short, but are the harshest and most self-critical. It is as though Cruz has stepped back from himself, created a 'you' for him to pour forth his bile, resentment, anger and also satisfaction about himself and his own life. These sections are just as personal as the first-person chapters, but in an emotional sense. He probes at the reasons he did this, or why he would think that. These sections are almost entirely devoid of other characters, it is simply Cruz with himself, condemning and praising, remembering and trying to forget.

The third - and most plentiful - type of chapters are in third person, dated, and taken from various times throughout his life. It is here we learn of Regina, here we learn why the phrase, 'We crossed the river on horseback' is so important, why his wife hates him, and more. In these sections, we are almost never shown his thoughts, nor those of anybody else. They are very detached, expositionary scenes, helping to explain the intimate thoughts and ramblings of the second- and first-person chapters.

Towards the end of the narrative, as Artemio Cruz approaches his death, the 'you' and the 'I' narratives start to merge, fuzzing and growing indistinct. He rails against himself, then defends his decisions over the years, then praises himself for the love he has, even now, for Regina. The sections - interspersing the 'you' and 'I' and even 'he' of Cruz within the space of four sentences - could be confusing if done earlier, but because we are familiar with his life and thoughts, they make sense. There are pages long sequences of broken thoughts, flitting between time and place without warning or explanation, and surprisingly, these are effective and do not come across at all as a gimmick. Rather, it is the character of Cruz - presented elsewhere as so strong and stable when old, so mercurial and romantic when young - breaking apart, unable to accept his death, unwilling to leave his life, even if it will mean re-uniting with Regina.

In the end, what we have is a character study. The setting - early 20th century Mexico - is rich and colourful, although at times, it does fade into the background as Artemio Cruz's character takes over. This is by no means a negative, as Cruz is a wonderful diverse man. He has weaknesses and strengths, and the novel spends as much time of his flaws as it does on his achievements. It is a credit to Fuentes that the vibrancy of Mexico shines through in what is, primarily, a journey through the mind of a proud man, a lonely man, a dying man: Artemio Cruz.

In what is agruably one of Carlos Fuentes's best books(not my particular fave) he creates a story that is put together in such a fashion that it demands the readers full attention . At times it is difficult to follow the time period jumping by the narrator, Artemio , as he reflects on his long life and the twists and turns the events of his times have had on his own life. The narration allows Fuentes to give his jaded view of a corrupt Mexico and the power that it yields individuals. The author is never one to sugar coat his own personal views on Mexico, its culture, traditions and ultimately history. Fuentes focuses in and out of different time periods, at times in rapid freeze frames, like a camera run amok capturing the highlights of a journey, Artemio Cruz is forced to examine his own mortality and the terms of his own integrity. The book is a brillinat piece of literature that deserves more than one read. Like the character in the book , whose life has changed through the years, I decided to read this again and see if it was as powerful as the first time I read it some twenty years ago. For me the book is even better now, the translation is excellent and the book resonates with brilliant imagery and the importance of time and it's overall effect. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the literature of Mexico and would be an excellent choice for secondary educators teaching a course at the advanced literature level. This is a book that can be examined closely for it's allegorical substance as well as literally for it's historical commentary.

They say The death of Artemio Cruz is the last novel about the Mexican revolution. For me this novel uses the anecdote of the revolution as a pretext to make a vast reflexion about old age, disease, love, freedom and our uncontrollable passage through the world as human beings; it's a grief for youth. The revolution becomes an instrument to set up the doubt about how much History is our history and how our life is determined depending on the position from which we are able to play. In The death of Artemio Cruz Carlos Fuentes portrays his character from three angles that refer both to space and time. In this geometry resides the esencial conflict of being: the relations me-myself, me-the others and me-my past. By the first person narrative in present tense we find the most terrible reality: the need to face death and putrefaction of one's own body from where the soul can't get away; the inevitably slow road that lets the ego take complete conscience of its decay and its imminent end. It's a slow road and, at the same time, it's a lone instant related in detail through thousands of words. It's the instant of death that can only be one, but at the same time, is eternal in the delirium. By speaking to himself as you, the character is getting a call of his conscience; he speaks to himself in future tense so to make clear the road he travelled all his life to get to be what he's now was and is an unavoidable fate; the cycle would be identical, no matter how many times it repeats. The second person in future tense is a reconciliation with himself, it's the way of adjudging the drive of destiny as his own-"God... He... I carried him inside me and he's going to die with me." The third person is the one that completes the story, the one that presents the facts to fill the holes and justify the existance; he's the seemingly alien and impersonal narrator telling a story. Here there's no reflexion; there is a simple relation of facts; there's no questioning, but just events describing the tangible contents of the triangle that is the person of Artemio Cruz. The death of Artemio Cruz is, first of all, a universal and existencial novel of this century. Artemio Cruz could perfectly be inserted in one of the world wars without being much different of what he is. The mark he leaves on us as readers touches much deeper our existencial threads than the national ones.