Ruben Romero and the Novel of the Mexican Revolution

Abstract

Jos6 Rub6n Romero is a novelist in name only.* His novels, even when compared with those of contemporary European and American writers, appear as unorthodox, informal ramblings of a raconteur. An English translation of the title of his first prose work, Jottings of a Villager, is particularly appropriate in revealing the informal frame and substance that characterize all his later works. The anecdote-authentic, altered or invented-is the main vehicle of his prose. With an informal gathering of his fellow villagers as his audience, Romero evokes the interesting incidents of his life and transmits them orally to his listeners. The unschooled nature of his written work clearly points to its oral quality; the egocentric orientation of the typical Hispanic conversationalist is always visible. Whether he is the manifest protagonist (Apuntes de un lugaref o, Desbandada, Anticipacidn a la muerte, Una ez fui rico), the person on whom the protagonist is modelled (El pueblo inocente, Mi caballo, mi perro y mi rifle), or whether he shares the spotlight with another character (La vida inditil de Pito Pdrez, Rosenda), Romero is always writing of himself and, more than most writers, to please himself. This frankly egocentric approach is characteristic of all his novels and explains the most important facets of his literary style. The characters in Romero's novels-there are more than two hundred in his eight novels-are, for the most part, actual people he has known. His characterizations, therefore, are not character creations in the literary sense. They are, rather, evocations of people he has encountered in his own real life and whom, with a varyingly small amount of retouching and polishing, he introduces in his novels. This being so, it is not surprising to find that a few of Romero's character evocations appear in more than one work.