Pedro Páramo
Pedro Páramo
By Juan Rulfo, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, with a new introduction by Alfred Mac Adam, and prints by Enrique Chagoya, signed by the artist, September 2016. $850.00
Publication 107
ADD TO CARTJuan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo is a monument of Mexican literature and one of the most influential novels of the 20th century.
Juan Rulfo was a photographer and a fiction writer known for his two books, El Llano en Llamas, a collection of short stories published in 1953, and the 1955 novel Pedro Páramo.
He was born in Apulco, in the Mexican state of Jalisco, in 1918 and died in Mexico City in 1986. Gabriel García Márquez said he felt blocked as a novelist after his first four books and that it was only his life-changing discovery of Pedro Páramo in 1961 that allowed the composition of his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Marquez 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”.
Enrique Chagoya is a painter, printmaker, and Professor of Art at Stanford University. Drawing from his experience living on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border in the 1970s and in Europe in the 1990s, Chagoya juxtaposes popular and religious imagery to address the cultural strains between the United States, Latin America, and other parts of the world. Born in Mexico City, Chagoya received a MFA from the University of California, Berkeley in 1997 and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Academy of Arts and Letters.
Enrique Chagoya has made ten color prints for the book. They are highly unusual in that they are printed on both sides of thin, translucent handmade Japanese paper of a tan-brown color. On the front (recto) are portraits of Mexicans from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, printed in a dark blue, with background imagery printed in green on the other side. As Chagoya has written in his artist statement for the book, “The drawings are not an illustration of Pedro Páramo because the story does not need illustrations. It is more like a visual duet, and instrument playing a counterpoint parallel to the novel.”
FORMAT
12 by 8-1/4 inches, 152 numbered pages (by coincidence the same number of pages as the first edition) for the text and ten unnumbered signatures for the prints, consisting of a sheet folded at the fore-edge, with die-cut windows and a folded tab to tip into the sewing section and an inserted sheet of Japanese handmade paper, making three leaves, which adds six “pages” for a total of 212 pages. The paper is Italian mouldmade Magnani Ingres laid. The Japanese paper for the prints is handmade Arokaji koso washi. The type, printed by letterpress, is Kennerley Old Style, designed by Frederic W. Goudy, composed and cast in Monotype, with handset type for display. The binding is Smyth-sewn with handsewn silk endbands, with a three-piece cloth cover, green on the sides and blue on the spine, foil stamped on the sides with roundels designed by Enrique Chagoya and stamped on the spine with titling. The book is presented in a slipcase, in an edition of 300 copies for sale. Each book is signed by the artist.
Book with Extra Print: The extra print is entitled "Nahvi Olin", the name of the Mexican painter and poet whose head is depicted in the print. The paper is handmade Japanese Yamekoozo Hadaura It is a nine-color relief print, printed from photopolymer plates in black, blue, green, and white inks. The image size is 20-1/2 by 14 inches; the sheet size is 24 by 18 inches. Each print is signed by the artist. This edition, with the extra print, was issued in an edition of thirty copies, sold with the book, at a total price of $3,250. Click here to order Book with Extra Print.
POSTAGE: Additional postage may apply; please inquire for details.
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