WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.319 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I want to start 00:00:02.319 --> 00:00:06.679 today with a bit of a challenge, a thought experiment. 00:00:06.960 --> 00:00:08.980 Okay, I'm ready. I want you to imagine you're 00:00:08.980 --> 00:00:11.880 a creative person, you know, a writer, a painter, 00:00:11.980 --> 00:00:14.580 maybe you're a programmer, whatever. How do you 00:00:14.580 --> 00:00:18.160 measure your worth? How do you measure success? 00:00:18.780 --> 00:00:20.460 Well, it's usually a numbers game, isn't it? 00:00:20.539 --> 00:00:23.440 We live in this era of content. Exactly. If you're 00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:26.190 a writer, we expect... Like a whole shelf full 00:00:26.190 --> 00:00:28.609 of your books. Yeah. An artist, a gallery full 00:00:28.609 --> 00:00:31.809 of canvases. Volume. We expect volume. We expect 00:00:31.809 --> 00:00:34.670 the library. If I tell you someone is a titan 00:00:34.670 --> 00:00:36.850 of literature, you're immediately picturing, 00:00:36.850 --> 00:00:38.810 I don't know, Charles Dickens, right? Or Stephen 00:00:38.810 --> 00:00:40.429 King. Someone who's written millions and millions 00:00:40.429 --> 00:00:42.969 of words. But today, I want to talk about the 00:00:42.969 --> 00:00:46.049 complete opposite of that. We're looking at what 00:00:46.049 --> 00:00:48.899 I'm calling the paradox of productivity. We are 00:00:48.899 --> 00:00:51.979 diving into an author who is universally considered 00:00:51.979 --> 00:00:55.039 a giant, a towering figure of the 20th century. 00:00:55.740 --> 00:00:59.320 Nobel Prize winners literally bow down to this 00:00:59.320 --> 00:01:02.079 guy. And yet, I'm looking at his bibliography 00:01:02.079 --> 00:01:03.579 here, and I have to be honest, I'm skeptical. 00:01:03.859 --> 00:01:06.480 If you take his entire life's work, you know, 00:01:06.500 --> 00:01:08.900 the stuff that really matters, and you stack 00:01:08.900 --> 00:01:11.900 it on a table, what's the size of a deck of cards? 00:01:12.120 --> 00:01:15.000 It's roughly 300 pages. Two books. That's it. 00:01:15.079 --> 00:01:20.019 Two books! 300 pages. I mean, come on. How does 00:01:20.019 --> 00:01:22.159 that even work? How can somebody be compared 00:01:22.159 --> 00:01:24.400 to Sophocles or Dante when they've written less 00:01:24.400 --> 00:01:26.959 than most people write in like a month of emails? 00:01:27.500 --> 00:01:30.959 Is this just, you know, literary critics loving 00:01:30.959 --> 00:01:32.879 a mystery or is there actually something real 00:01:32.879 --> 00:01:34.700 there? Oh, there is absolutely something there. 00:01:34.760 --> 00:01:36.799 This isn't a case of hype at all. This is a case 00:01:36.799 --> 00:01:39.480 of extreme density. We're talking about Juan 00:01:39.480 --> 00:01:42.359 Rulfo. Juan Rufo. And to understand Rufo, you 00:01:42.359 --> 00:01:45.340 have to completely throw out your normal metrics 00:01:45.340 --> 00:01:48.540 of productivity. He didn't just write stories. 00:01:48.560 --> 00:01:52.079 He distilled an entire country, an entire history 00:01:52.079 --> 00:01:57.939 of trauma into this pertinent, terrifying concentrate. 00:01:58.480 --> 00:02:00.140 Concentrate is a really good word for it. And 00:02:00.140 --> 00:02:03.519 he captured the soul of rural Mexico. But, and 00:02:03.519 --> 00:02:05.780 this is key, not the postcard version you see 00:02:05.780 --> 00:02:08.219 on vacation. He captured a landscape that is 00:02:08.219 --> 00:02:11.969 just... Harshly realistic, yet somehow completely 00:02:11.969 --> 00:02:14.789 mythological at the same time. He wrote about 00:02:14.789 --> 00:02:16.610 a world filled with ghosts with this crushing 00:02:16.610 --> 00:02:18.990 oppressive silence and a heat so intense it feels 00:02:18.990 --> 00:02:21.229 like it radiates off the page and burns your 00:02:21.229 --> 00:02:24.409 hands. OK, ghosts and heat. I'm intrigued, but 00:02:24.409 --> 00:02:26.930 I'm still stuck on the two books thing. So our 00:02:26.930 --> 00:02:29.289 mission today for this deep dive is to figure 00:02:29.289 --> 00:02:32.310 out how he did it. How did a guy who worked as 00:02:32.310 --> 00:02:35.020 a tire salesman. Which is a real detail, by the 00:02:35.020 --> 00:02:37.340 way. A tire salesman and an immigration clerk. 00:02:37.719 --> 00:02:40.840 How did he transform these regional Mexican stories 00:02:40.840 --> 00:02:43.680 into world -class universal art? And we should 00:02:43.680 --> 00:02:47.219 probably warn you, the listener, right now. This 00:02:47.219 --> 00:02:48.879 is not going to be a cozy deep dive. We're going 00:02:48.879 --> 00:02:51.439 to be talking about patricide, about cycles of 00:02:51.439 --> 00:02:54.159 violence, that blurry, blurry line between the 00:02:54.159 --> 00:02:56.340 living and the dead, and the absolute weight 00:02:56.340 --> 00:02:58.699 of silence. That sounds heavy. Rulfo's world 00:02:58.699 --> 00:03:01.620 is a graveyard. But it's a graveyard that refuses 00:03:01.620 --> 00:03:04.969 to stay quiet. It is heavy, but it's also strangely 00:03:04.969 --> 00:03:07.389 beautiful. All right, let's unpack this. Let's 00:03:07.389 --> 00:03:10.389 start with the man himself. Who is Juan Rulfo? 00:03:10.530 --> 00:03:13.009 Because even just looking at his basic bio, it 00:03:13.009 --> 00:03:14.530 feels like there's a bit of smoke and mirrors. 00:03:14.889 --> 00:03:17.150 There's always a bit of fog around Rulfo. Yeah. 00:03:17.330 --> 00:03:21.469 Even his birth is a subject of some debate. The 00:03:21.469 --> 00:03:24.110 official records, they say Juan Epomaceno Carlos 00:03:24.110 --> 00:03:27.310 Perez Rulfo Vizcaíno. What a name. Was born on 00:03:27.310 --> 00:03:30.949 May 16th, 1917. Okay, 1917. Straightforward enough. 00:03:31.169 --> 00:03:34.539 Well... Not quite. For a long, long time, his 00:03:34.539 --> 00:03:37.639 birth year was actually listed as 1918. And the 00:03:37.639 --> 00:03:39.520 reason isn't some grand literary conspiracy. 00:03:39.879 --> 00:03:43.639 It's actually hilariously practical. Oh, we love 00:03:43.639 --> 00:03:45.780 this! Fudge the numbers. But not for vanity. 00:03:45.800 --> 00:03:47.780 He wasn't trying to, you know, stay young for 00:03:47.780 --> 00:03:50.740 Hollywood or something. He wanted to get into 00:03:50.740 --> 00:03:53.560 a military academy. His uncle, David Perez Rolfo, 00:03:53.680 --> 00:03:56.599 was a colonel who ran the place. And Juan wanted 00:03:56.599 --> 00:03:58.819 in, but he didn't meet the age requirement, so 00:03:58.819 --> 00:04:01.680 he just... He erased a year. I love that. I really 00:04:01.680 --> 00:04:04.020 do. It's such a human detail. It reminds me of 00:04:04.020 --> 00:04:06.259 a teenager getting a fake ID, but in reverse, 00:04:06.520 --> 00:04:08.800 you know. It grounds him immediately. He's not 00:04:08.800 --> 00:04:11.419 this ethereal ghostwriter yet. He's just a kid 00:04:11.419 --> 00:04:14.780 trying to get into school. Precisely. And the 00:04:14.780 --> 00:04:17.579 location of his birth is disputed, too. Was it 00:04:17.579 --> 00:04:21.819 Apolco? Was it San Gabriel? Was it Ceula? But 00:04:21.819 --> 00:04:24.800 honestly, the coordinates on the map don't matter 00:04:24.800 --> 00:04:27.279 as much as the land itself. He was a child of 00:04:27.279 --> 00:04:30.209 Jalisco. Okay. And he was a child of Jalisco 00:04:30.209 --> 00:04:33.230 during one of the most violent, terrifying moments 00:04:33.230 --> 00:04:35.649 in all of Mexican history. This is the context 00:04:35.649 --> 00:04:37.629 I think we really need to dig into. Because when 00:04:37.629 --> 00:04:40.050 we say violent, I think a modern listener might 00:04:40.050 --> 00:04:42.310 imagine, I don't know, a high crime rate or something. 00:04:42.430 --> 00:04:45.790 But this was a different level. This was apocalyptic. 00:04:46.490 --> 00:04:49.329 Rulfo was born in 1917. The Mexican Revolution 00:04:49.329 --> 00:04:52.430 has technically just ended. But the country is 00:04:52.430 --> 00:04:54.250 absolutely shattered. And then when he's just 00:04:54.250 --> 00:04:56.569 a young boy, the Cristero War breaks out. The 00:04:56.569 --> 00:04:59.879 Cristero War. I feel like this is a massive blind 00:04:59.879 --> 00:05:02.220 spot for a lot of people outside of Mexico. Can 00:05:02.220 --> 00:05:04.160 you can you paint the picture for us? What is 00:05:04.160 --> 00:05:06.060 happening on the ground? Imagine a civil war, 00:05:06.180 --> 00:05:08.439 but it's fueled by intense religious fervor. 00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:11.459 The government at the time was fiercely secular, 00:05:11.699 --> 00:05:14.220 anti -clerical. They were seizing church property, 00:05:14.420 --> 00:05:16.740 banning public worship, things like that. The 00:05:16.740 --> 00:05:20.000 Cristeros were Catholic rebels, you know, peasants, 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:22.720 landowners, just faithful people who rose up 00:05:22.720 --> 00:05:24.860 to fight the government. Their battle cry was 00:05:24.860 --> 00:05:28.420 Viva Cristo Rey. Long lives Christ the King. 00:05:28.620 --> 00:05:30.540 And this wasn't just a political debate with 00:05:30.540 --> 00:05:33.180 signs and protests. This was actual bloodshed. 00:05:33.220 --> 00:05:35.720 It was horrific. You have to try and imagine 00:05:35.720 --> 00:05:38.399 the landscape that Rulfo's growing up in. We 00:05:38.399 --> 00:05:40.279 were talking about telephone poles lined with 00:05:40.279 --> 00:05:42.519 hanging bodies. We're talking about priests being 00:05:42.519 --> 00:05:45.139 hunted down and executed in the street. Entire 00:05:45.139 --> 00:05:47.819 villages burned to the ground. And Rulfo was 00:05:47.819 --> 00:05:50.339 a child. He's six, seven, eight years old. And 00:05:50.339 --> 00:05:52.300 this is the world he's watching. And his family 00:05:52.300 --> 00:05:54.160 was right in the middle of it. They were landowners. 00:05:54.800 --> 00:05:56.720 Which means they were the target demographic 00:05:56.720 --> 00:06:00.620 for tragedy. In 1923, when Juan is just six years 00:06:00.620 --> 00:06:03.699 old, his father is killed. Six years old. That's 00:06:03.699 --> 00:06:06.199 the age where you're just starting to form concrete 00:06:06.199 --> 00:06:08.899 memories. Exactly. And your father is supposed 00:06:08.899 --> 00:06:11.779 to be this invincible figure. Then, just four 00:06:11.779 --> 00:06:15.399 years later, in 1927, his mother dies. Oh, man. 00:06:15.620 --> 00:06:18.470 So by the time he is 10 years old. Juan Rulfo 00:06:18.470 --> 00:06:21.810 is an orphan. He has lost his parents, his family 00:06:21.810 --> 00:06:24.670 has lost their fortune, their land, and he gets 00:06:24.670 --> 00:06:26.689 sent to live with his grandmother in Guadalajara. 00:06:26.889 --> 00:06:29.029 That is, I mean, that's just an unbelievable 00:06:29.029 --> 00:06:32.610 amount of trauma to pack into a single decade 00:06:32.610 --> 00:06:35.410 of childhood. It's profound. And I want you to 00:06:35.410 --> 00:06:37.730 really sit with that sensation for a moment. 00:06:37.990 --> 00:06:40.310 You're a little boy. The people who are supposed 00:06:40.310 --> 00:06:43.009 to protect you, your father, your mother, they're 00:06:43.009 --> 00:06:46.439 gone. The institutions, the church, the government, 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:49.000 they're actively trying to kill each other. The 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:51.779 land itself, the haciendas that used to be symbols 00:06:51.779 --> 00:06:54.279 of power and stability, they're just crumbling 00:06:54.279 --> 00:06:56.160 ruins. It's total abandonment. It's like the 00:06:56.160 --> 00:06:58.040 whole world has just emptied out around you. 00:06:58.139 --> 00:07:00.879 Precisely. This is why solitude isn't just a 00:07:00.879 --> 00:07:03.740 literary theme for Wolfo. It was his lived reality. 00:07:04.079 --> 00:07:06.139 He grew up in a world that had been hollowed 00:07:06.139 --> 00:07:08.779 out. If you wonder why his later writing feels 00:07:08.779 --> 00:07:11.220 so desolate, why his characters seem to be wandering 00:07:11.220 --> 00:07:13.519 through a wasteland, it's because he watched 00:07:13.519 --> 00:07:15.720 his own world turn into a wasteland before he 00:07:15.720 --> 00:07:18.500 even hit puberty. So he's an orphan, he's traumatized, 00:07:18.519 --> 00:07:21.100 and he gets sent away to school, the Louis Silva 00:07:21.100 --> 00:07:23.319 School. Which was essentially a boarding school, 00:07:23.519 --> 00:07:26.699 and by all accounts, a pretty grim place. He 00:07:26.699 --> 00:07:28.360 actually likened it to a correctional facility. 00:07:28.720 --> 00:07:32.519 Really? Yeah. He spent years there, just internalizing 00:07:32.519 --> 00:07:35.500 that discipline and that loneliness. And he graduated 00:07:35.500 --> 00:07:38.420 as a bookkeeper. A bookkeeper that seems so, 00:07:38.439 --> 00:07:41.220 I don't know, so dry, so practical. It's incredibly 00:07:41.220 --> 00:07:43.579 grounded, isn't it? Yeah. He never actually practiced, 00:07:43.800 --> 00:07:46.579 but it shows you the path he was on. He wasn't 00:07:46.579 --> 00:07:48.819 being groomed to be a poet or a great novelist. 00:07:48.879 --> 00:07:51.279 He was being groomed to survive. And he tries 00:07:51.279 --> 00:07:53.459 to keep going with education, right? He tries 00:07:53.459 --> 00:07:55.740 for university. He does. He tried to go to the 00:07:55.740 --> 00:07:58.579 University of Guadalajara, but again, the chaos 00:07:58.579 --> 00:08:01.029 of the times just stopped him. There was a huge 00:08:01.029 --> 00:08:03.629 strike. The university was closed down. And besides 00:08:03.629 --> 00:08:05.910 that, he hadn't even taken the right prep courses. 00:08:06.129 --> 00:08:08.350 The door was slammed in his face. So what does 00:08:08.350 --> 00:08:11.930 he do? He moves to Mexico City. And this is where 00:08:11.930 --> 00:08:14.029 his resume gets really, really interesting to 00:08:14.029 --> 00:08:16.110 me. Because he doesn't just, you know, go sit 00:08:16.110 --> 00:08:18.509 in a cafe and write poetry and starve. He gets 00:08:18.509 --> 00:08:21.230 a job. He becomes an immigration file clerk. 00:08:21.370 --> 00:08:23.529 An immigration clerk. A job he got through his 00:08:23.529 --> 00:08:26.519 uncle. So he's dealing with paperwork. He's dealing 00:08:26.519 --> 00:08:29.459 with the bureaucracy of movement, of people trying 00:08:29.459 --> 00:08:32.299 to find a place to belong. It's quite fitting 00:08:32.299 --> 00:08:34.860 in a way. But the job that really, really sticks 00:08:34.860 --> 00:08:38.059 out to me is the tire factory. Juan Rulfo, one 00:08:38.059 --> 00:08:39.779 of the greatest writers of the 20th century, 00:08:39.940 --> 00:08:43.960 was a foreman for Goodrich's Cottey. He was overseeing 00:08:43.960 --> 00:08:46.899 tire production. It is a marvelous incongruity, 00:08:46.899 --> 00:08:49.970 isn't it? You have this quiet... introspective, 00:08:49.970 --> 00:08:52.330 deeply sensitive man who's obsessed with ghosts 00:08:52.330 --> 00:08:54.929 and history in the past. Right. And he's standing 00:08:54.929 --> 00:08:57.029 on a factory floor, probably trying to shout 00:08:57.029 --> 00:08:59.389 over the roar of heavy machinery. And he wasn't 00:08:59.389 --> 00:09:02.190 exactly a corporate shark from the sound of it. 00:09:02.230 --> 00:09:04.970 There's this one anecdote about why he got fired 00:09:04.970 --> 00:09:07.129 that I just love. It's the radio incident. Juckles. 00:09:07.269 --> 00:09:11.350 Yes. In 1952, he was fired. And the official 00:09:11.350 --> 00:09:13.950 reason given, he asked the company to install 00:09:13.950 --> 00:09:16.990 a radio in his company car. A radio. He just 00:09:16.990 --> 00:09:19.200 wanted some tunes for his commute. He just wanted 00:09:19.200 --> 00:09:21.480 some music. He wanted a voice to keep him company 00:09:21.480 --> 00:09:23.919 while he was driving around for work. And the 00:09:23.919 --> 00:09:26.200 company, in their infinite corporate wisdom, 00:09:26.460 --> 00:09:29.799 they saw this as, I don't know, a frivolous expense, 00:09:30.100 --> 00:09:32.919 a distraction, maybe a sign that he wasn't serious 00:09:32.919 --> 00:09:35.679 enough about tires. It's so petty, but it tells 00:09:35.679 --> 00:09:38.539 you so much about him as a person. He's seeking 00:09:38.539 --> 00:09:41.159 connection. He's seeking something, anything 00:09:41.159 --> 00:09:44.179 to fill the silence. And the corporate world 00:09:44.179 --> 00:09:46.799 just spits him out for it. But here's the thing. 00:09:47.179 --> 00:09:49.740 Getting fired from the tire factory was the catalyst. 00:09:50.019 --> 00:09:51.399 It was the best thing that could have happened 00:09:51.399 --> 00:09:54.279 to him. Because what did he do next? He became 00:09:54.279 --> 00:09:57.539 a traveling sales agent. Which, on paper, sounds 00:09:57.539 --> 00:10:00.419 like a demotion. But for a writer, that was pure 00:10:00.419 --> 00:10:02.480 gold. It was absolutely essential. As a sales 00:10:02.480 --> 00:10:04.919 agent, he had to travel. He had to go back to 00:10:04.919 --> 00:10:06.940 the south of Mexico. He had to drive through 00:10:06.940 --> 00:10:09.419 all those dusty towns in Jalisco and Oaxaca. 00:10:09.620 --> 00:10:12.039 He was forced back into the very landscape of 00:10:12.039 --> 00:10:14.299 his childhood. So he's windshield deep in the 00:10:14.299 --> 00:10:16.750 world that he's about to write about. He's seeing 00:10:16.750 --> 00:10:19.269 the abandoned villages firsthand. He's hearing 00:10:19.269 --> 00:10:21.889 the specific way the people speak. That incredible 00:10:21.889 --> 00:10:25.029 mix of like ancient formality and rural roughness. 00:10:25.049 --> 00:10:27.149 He's just soaking it all in. If he had stayed 00:10:27.149 --> 00:10:29.649 in that office at the tire plant, Pedro Paramo 00:10:29.649 --> 00:10:32.950 never happens. He needed the road. So he's gathering 00:10:32.950 --> 00:10:35.149 all this material. He's got the trauma from his 00:10:35.149 --> 00:10:37.370 childhood, the visuals from this road trip of 00:10:37.370 --> 00:10:41.779 a job. And then finally, he gets a break. A fellowship. 00:10:42.059 --> 00:10:45.500 The Centro Mexicano de Escritores. Right. And 00:10:45.500 --> 00:10:47.139 it was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, 00:10:47.279 --> 00:10:50.080 which was huge. Right. This gave him financial 00:10:50.080 --> 00:10:54.580 stability for two years, from 1952 to 1954. It 00:10:54.580 --> 00:10:56.879 bought him time. It bought him the freedom to 00:10:56.879 --> 00:10:59.139 just sit down and write. And he uses that time 00:10:59.139 --> 00:11:02.279 to drop his first bomb, El Llano on Llamas. The 00:11:02.279 --> 00:11:05.759 Burning Plain, published in 1953. Now, I want 00:11:05.759 --> 00:11:07.320 to challenge the idea that these are just short 00:11:07.320 --> 00:11:09.220 stories, because when I was reading the summaries, 00:11:09.220 --> 00:11:11.820 they feel more like, I don't know, like nightmares 00:11:11.820 --> 00:11:14.259 captured on paper. They're stark. They're these 00:11:14.259 --> 00:11:16.940 little vignettes of survival. The style is often 00:11:16.940 --> 00:11:19.759 called harsh realism. What does that mean exactly? 00:11:20.039 --> 00:11:22.200 Harsh realism. How is that different from just 00:11:22.200 --> 00:11:24.460 regular realism? Well, think about how rural 00:11:24.460 --> 00:11:26.500 life was often portrayed in literature at the 00:11:26.500 --> 00:11:28.580 time. There was a lot of what they called folklore. 00:11:28.840 --> 00:11:30.700 You know, happy peasants, colorful traditions, 00:11:30.960 --> 00:11:33.700 the noble savage trope. Romanticized poverty, 00:11:33.919 --> 00:11:36.419 basically. Exactly. Rufo stripped all of that 00:11:36.419 --> 00:11:40.279 color out. Mexico is gray, it's dry, and it's 00:11:40.279 --> 00:11:43.899 bloody. There is absolutely no romanticism here. 00:11:44.059 --> 00:11:47.139 The land doesn't give you bountiful fruit. It 00:11:47.139 --> 00:11:50.559 gives you dust and rocks. Let's look at a specific 00:11:50.559 --> 00:11:55.440 one. Tell them not to kill me. Because this story, 00:11:55.500 --> 00:11:57.539 and it stressed me out just reading the plot 00:11:57.539 --> 00:11:59.759 summary. It is a masterclass in building tension. 00:11:59.919 --> 00:12:02.519 A perfect story. So set the scene for us. We 00:12:02.519 --> 00:12:04.980 open on an old man. His name is Jovencio Nava. 00:12:05.360 --> 00:12:07.679 He's tied up. He's been captured. And he's pleading, 00:12:07.720 --> 00:12:10.100 just desperately pleading with his son, Justin. 00:12:10.279 --> 00:12:12.559 He's begging him, go back. Tell them not to kill 00:12:12.559 --> 00:12:14.379 me. Tell them I'm just an old man. I'm not worth 00:12:14.379 --> 00:12:16.480 the trouble. The desperation is just palpable. 00:12:16.600 --> 00:12:18.779 He's absolutely terrified. He's pathetic, really. 00:12:18.820 --> 00:12:21.039 He's crying. But then we learn why he's about 00:12:21.039 --> 00:12:23.259 to be executed. And it's not some random mistake. 00:12:23.960 --> 00:12:27.639 40 years ago, four decades, Juvencio killed a 00:12:27.639 --> 00:12:30.059 man. And it was over a dispute about livestock, 00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:32.399 right? Something about grazing land. A classic 00:12:32.399 --> 00:12:35.899 land dispute. Juvencio killed his neighbor, a 00:12:35.899 --> 00:12:39.259 man named Don Lupe. And for 40 years, Juvencio 00:12:39.259 --> 00:12:41.259 has been on the run. He's been hiding. He has 00:12:41.259 --> 00:12:44.080 spent his entire adult life looking over his 00:12:44.080 --> 00:12:46.240 shoulder. Yeah. He thought he'd made it. He thought, 00:12:46.299 --> 00:12:50.600 I'm an old man now who even cares about a murder 00:12:50.600 --> 00:12:54.559 from 40 years ago. Someone care. Oh, yeah. The 00:12:54.559 --> 00:12:57.899 colonel who ordered his capture. And the twist, 00:12:57.980 --> 00:13:01.019 and it's a genuine gut punch, is that the colonel. 00:13:01.649 --> 00:13:04.450 is Don Lupe's son. The orphan. The orphan who 00:13:04.450 --> 00:13:06.409 grew up without a father because of what Evencio 00:13:06.409 --> 00:13:09.309 did. It's this perfect, inescapable, biblical 00:13:09.309 --> 00:13:12.149 cycle of violence. It's Cain and Abel played 00:13:12.149 --> 00:13:14.889 out in the Mexican desert. Wow. It's the idea 00:13:14.889 --> 00:13:16.509 that you can run to the ends of the earth, you 00:13:16.509 --> 00:13:18.409 can age, you can wither away, but the blood you 00:13:18.409 --> 00:13:20.929 spilled is still fresh somewhere. The past is 00:13:20.929 --> 00:13:23.169 never, ever past. And the colonel doesn't even 00:13:23.169 --> 00:13:25.309 want to look at him, right, in the story. No. 00:13:25.629 --> 00:13:28.070 He orders the execution without even facing him. 00:13:28.129 --> 00:13:30.899 It's so cold. It implies that in Rulfo's world, 00:13:30.980 --> 00:13:32.659 there is no forgiveness, there is no redemption, 00:13:32.879 --> 00:13:34.879 there is only the debt, and eventually the debt 00:13:34.879 --> 00:13:39.019 gets paid. Then there's noise. Do you hear the 00:13:39.019 --> 00:13:43.419 dogs barking? This one. The central visual is 00:13:43.419 --> 00:13:46.580 just seared into my brain. It's iconic. An old 00:13:46.580 --> 00:13:49.179 father carrying his adult son on his back. Just 00:13:49.179 --> 00:13:51.299 physically stop and think about that for a second. 00:13:51.460 --> 00:13:54.340 The sheer weight of carrying a grown man. Through 00:13:54.340 --> 00:13:59.110 the dark. Over this rough, rocky terrain. The 00:13:59.110 --> 00:14:02.330 son, his name is Ignacio, is wounded. He's dying. 00:14:02.490 --> 00:14:04.570 And the father is trying to get him to a doctor 00:14:04.570 --> 00:14:06.250 in the next town over, a place called Tenaya. 00:14:06.409 --> 00:14:08.750 And the conversation they have while he's carrying 00:14:08.750 --> 00:14:12.070 him, it's not a warm father -son bonding moment. 00:14:12.230 --> 00:14:14.309 It is absolutely brutal. The father is literally 00:14:14.309 --> 00:14:16.570 carrying the physical weight of his son, but 00:14:16.570 --> 00:14:19.730 verbally he is just destroying him. He's telling 00:14:19.730 --> 00:14:22.210 him, you are trash. You're a bandit. You killed 00:14:22.210 --> 00:14:24.350 innocent people. You even killed your own godfather. 00:14:24.779 --> 00:14:27.000 He says, I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing 00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:28.519 it for your dead mother. She would have wanted 00:14:28.519 --> 00:14:30.899 this. He's cursing him while he's saving his 00:14:30.899 --> 00:14:33.620 life. Exactly. It captures the complexity of 00:14:33.620 --> 00:14:35.779 family duty in that culture. You cannot abandon 00:14:35.779 --> 00:14:38.600 your blood, your own son, even if your blood 00:14:38.600 --> 00:14:41.860 is rotten. The obligation is absolute. And the 00:14:41.860 --> 00:14:44.519 title. Do you hear the dogs barking? Where does 00:14:44.519 --> 00:14:46.720 that come in? The father can't see well in the 00:14:46.720 --> 00:14:49.940 dark. and his ears are covered by the son's legs, 00:14:50.039 --> 00:14:52.159 which are wrapped around his neck. So he keeps 00:14:52.159 --> 00:14:54.159 asking, Ignacio, can you hear anything? Tell 00:14:54.159 --> 00:14:57.379 me if you hear the dogs. Because dogs barking 00:14:57.379 --> 00:14:59.940 means they're close to a town. It means civilization. 00:14:59.980 --> 00:15:02.700 It means help. And the son, what does he say? 00:15:02.879 --> 00:15:05.080 The son just mumbles. He says he doesn't hear 00:15:05.080 --> 00:15:08.200 anything. And eventually, he stops answering 00:15:08.200 --> 00:15:10.860 altogether. The father just keeps walking, keeps 00:15:10.860 --> 00:15:13.419 scolding him, keeps asking about the dogs. When 00:15:13.419 --> 00:15:15.440 they finally reach the town and the father puts 00:15:15.440 --> 00:15:18.129 him down, Ignacio's limp. He's likely been dead 00:15:18.129 --> 00:15:20.490 for a while. And the father realizes the dogs 00:15:20.490 --> 00:15:22.409 were barking the whole time. So the son either 00:15:22.409 --> 00:15:24.470 didn't tell him or he just couldn't tell him. 00:15:24.750 --> 00:15:27.549 That's the awful ambiguity of it. Did the son 00:15:27.549 --> 00:15:31.330 just die silently on his back? Or did he purposefully 00:15:31.330 --> 00:15:33.450 withhold that little bit of hope from his father 00:15:33.450 --> 00:15:36.809 as one final act of cruelty? Or was the father 00:15:36.809 --> 00:15:39.210 just deaf to the world because of his own grief 00:15:39.210 --> 00:15:42.509 and his own burden? It's a story about the absolute 00:15:42.509 --> 00:15:45.129 tragic failure of communication between generations. 00:15:45.470 --> 00:15:49.519 That is so bleak, but it feels. Universal. You 00:15:49.519 --> 00:15:51.039 know what I mean? Like you don't need to be a 00:15:51.039 --> 00:15:53.279 Mexican peasant from the 1920s to understand 00:15:53.279 --> 00:15:56.179 the weight of a disappointing child or a judgmental 00:15:56.179 --> 00:15:58.940 parent. And that is the universal leap that Rulfo 00:15:58.940 --> 00:16:02.340 made. He took these very specific local characters, 00:16:02.460 --> 00:16:05.759 people with ponchos and machetes and very regional 00:16:05.759 --> 00:16:08.240 problems, and he gave them the existential weight 00:16:08.240 --> 00:16:10.539 of a Greek tragedy. He showed that a poor farmer 00:16:10.539 --> 00:16:13.039 in Jalisco has the same internal complexity as 00:16:13.039 --> 00:16:15.259 Hamlet. So the burning plane establishes him. 00:16:15.320 --> 00:16:17.620 He's a master of the short story. But then comes 00:16:17.620 --> 00:16:20.840 the big one, the novel, Pedro Paramo. 1955. This 00:16:20.840 --> 00:16:22.539 is the book that changed everything for Latin 00:16:22.539 --> 00:16:24.580 American literature. But reading about it, it 00:16:24.580 --> 00:16:26.659 sounds like a puzzle box. It sounds intentionally 00:16:26.659 --> 00:16:29.779 confusing. It is notoriously difficult. Yeah. 00:16:29.860 --> 00:16:32.340 If you pick up Pedro Paramo expecting a normal 00:16:32.340 --> 00:16:35.139 story with a clear beginning, middle, and end, 00:16:35.399 --> 00:16:38.720 you are going to be incredibly frustrated. The 00:16:38.720 --> 00:16:41.240 premise starts simple enough, though. A quest. 00:16:41.600 --> 00:16:43.759 The first line is one of the most famous in Spanish 00:16:43.759 --> 00:16:47.539 literature. I came to Comala because I was told 00:16:47.539 --> 00:16:50.379 that my father, a man named Pedro Paramo, lived 00:16:50.379 --> 00:16:53.120 here. Okay, simple. The narrator, Juan Preciado, 00:16:53.299 --> 00:16:56.139 promises his dying mother that he will go find 00:16:56.139 --> 00:16:59.000 the father he's never met. So he travels to his 00:16:59.000 --> 00:17:02.460 mother's hometown, Comala. And Comala is hot. 00:17:02.559 --> 00:17:05.640 It's suffocating. Rolfo describes the heat as 00:17:05.640 --> 00:17:08.779 if there's no air, only fire. He says it's the 00:17:08.779 --> 00:17:11.660 very mouth of hell. And the town is empty. It's 00:17:11.660 --> 00:17:13.900 completely abandoned. But he meets people. He 00:17:13.900 --> 00:17:16.000 has conversations. He does. He hears voices. 00:17:16.119 --> 00:17:19.720 He talks to a woman here, a man over there. But 00:17:19.720 --> 00:17:21.799 slowly, and this is the creeping horror of the 00:17:21.799 --> 00:17:24.920 book, the reader starts to realize that something 00:17:24.920 --> 00:17:27.240 is fundamentally wrong. The timeline doesn't 00:17:27.240 --> 00:17:29.079 match up. The people he's talking to, they talk 00:17:29.079 --> 00:17:30.720 about things that happened years and years ago 00:17:30.720 --> 00:17:32.579 as if they're happening right now. And I'm going 00:17:32.579 --> 00:17:34.700 to spoil it because the book is almost 70 years 00:17:34.700 --> 00:17:38.170 old. They're ghosts. They are all dead. Juan 00:17:38.170 --> 00:17:40.410 Preciado has walked into a town populated entirely 00:17:40.410 --> 00:17:44.349 by ghosts. But they aren't, you know, Casper 00:17:44.349 --> 00:17:46.769 the Friendly Ghosts. They aren't floating sheets. 00:17:46.990 --> 00:17:49.569 They are echoes. They are memories, trapped in 00:17:49.569 --> 00:17:52.069 the dust, replaying their traumas over and over 00:17:52.069 --> 00:17:54.470 again for eternity. I saw a comparison to video 00:17:54.470 --> 00:17:56.369 games, actually, which I thought was brilliant, 00:17:56.529 --> 00:17:58.769 like Dark Souls or Elden Ring. Oh, that's good. 00:17:59.109 --> 00:18:01.549 You walk into this ruined world and you have 00:18:01.549 --> 00:18:04.430 to piece together the story by reading item descriptions 00:18:04.430 --> 00:18:07.029 and listening to these cryptic NPCs who might 00:18:07.029 --> 00:18:10.430 be dead or insane or both. You, the player or 00:18:10.430 --> 00:18:12.369 the reader, have to do the work of assembly. 00:18:12.730 --> 00:18:15.809 That is a perfect analogy. Pedro Paramo is not 00:18:15.809 --> 00:18:18.589 a movie you watch. It's a ruin you explore. The 00:18:18.589 --> 00:18:21.589 narrative is deliberately shattered. One paragraph, 00:18:21.910 --> 00:18:23.789 you're with Juan Preciado in the present. And 00:18:23.789 --> 00:18:26.329 the very next paragraph, you are 30 years in 00:18:26.329 --> 00:18:29.630 the past watching Pedro Paramo. The father, the 00:18:29.630 --> 00:18:32.430 villain of the story, rise to power. Let's talk 00:18:32.430 --> 00:18:34.750 about Pedro Paramo, the man, because he's the 00:18:34.750 --> 00:18:37.190 center of gravity for this whole dead town. He 00:18:37.190 --> 00:18:40.970 is the cacique, the local boss. The strong man. 00:18:41.089 --> 00:18:43.789 He owns the land. He owns the law. He sleeps 00:18:43.789 --> 00:18:46.390 with every woman he wants. Fathers dozens of 00:18:46.390 --> 00:18:48.630 illegitimate children and abandons them all. 00:18:48.750 --> 00:18:51.549 He's the source of all the rot. Kamala is dead 00:18:51.549 --> 00:18:54.150 because Pedro Paramo squeezed every last drop 00:18:54.150 --> 00:18:56.589 of life out of it for his own selfish reasons. 00:18:56.849 --> 00:18:59.829 So that search for the father quest. Yeah. Usually 00:18:59.829 --> 00:19:02.009 in literature, that's a noble thing. You find 00:19:02.009 --> 00:19:04.170 your dad. You learn who you are. You have a moment 00:19:04.170 --> 00:19:06.109 of connection. Rulfo subverts that completely. 00:19:06.779 --> 00:19:08.740 In his world, you find your father and you realize 00:19:08.740 --> 00:19:11.039 he's a monster. You realize your very roots are 00:19:11.039 --> 00:19:14.779 poisoned. It's a devastating critique of patriarchy, 00:19:14.799 --> 00:19:17.779 of that strongman figure that dominated so much 00:19:17.779 --> 00:19:20.319 of Mexican history. And Rulfo, he really struggled 00:19:20.319 --> 00:19:21.920 to write this, right? It wasn't like he just 00:19:21.920 --> 00:19:23.579 sat down and channeled it in a weekend. Oh, no. 00:19:23.720 --> 00:19:26.500 He wrote letters to his fiancée, Clara, talking 00:19:26.500 --> 00:19:28.900 about his deep anxiety over it. He kept changing 00:19:28.900 --> 00:19:31.019 the title. For a while, he was going to call 00:19:31.019 --> 00:19:34.759 it Una Estrella Junto a la Luna, a Star Next 00:19:34.759 --> 00:19:36.930 to the Moon. Which sounds like a romance novel. 00:19:37.049 --> 00:19:40.190 Totally the wrong vibe. Way too soft. Then he 00:19:40.190 --> 00:19:43.329 called it Los Murmullos, The Murmurs. I actually 00:19:43.329 --> 00:19:46.089 really like that one, The Murmurs. It perfectly 00:19:46.089 --> 00:19:48.349 captures the sound of the book, all those ghostly 00:19:48.349 --> 00:19:49.970 whispers. It does. It captures the atmosphere. 00:19:50.250 --> 00:19:52.890 Yeah. But he eventually settled on Pedro Paramo. 00:19:53.349 --> 00:19:55.369 And I think that was the absolute right choice, 00:19:55.529 --> 00:19:58.549 because ultimately the book isn't about the whispers. 00:19:58.569 --> 00:20:01.990 It's about the man who caused them. It anchors 00:20:01.990 --> 00:20:05.309 the ghost story in a concrete reality of power, 00:20:05.450 --> 00:20:09.369 greed and corruption. So he releases this experimental, 00:20:09.430 --> 00:20:13.359 fragmented. Ghost -filled masterpiece in 1955. 00:20:14.079 --> 00:20:16.740 And the world goes crazy for it, right? Bestseller 00:20:16.740 --> 00:20:18.980 lists, parades, the whole thing. Complete and 00:20:18.980 --> 00:20:21.079 utter silence. It was a massive flop. I still 00:20:21.079 --> 00:20:23.480 can't get over this part of the story. How did 00:20:23.480 --> 00:20:26.140 nobody see what this was? It sold 2 ,000 copies 00:20:26.140 --> 00:20:28.599 in the first four years. That is nothing. That's 00:20:28.599 --> 00:20:31.420 GarageBand demo tape numbers. So why didn't people 00:20:31.420 --> 00:20:34.079 get it? Was it just too weird? It was too weird. 00:20:34.579 --> 00:20:38.170 You have to remember the context. In the 1950s, 00:20:38.170 --> 00:20:40.329 Mexican literature was still fairly traditional. 00:20:40.910 --> 00:20:43.630 Narrative had rules. Time moved forward in a 00:20:43.630 --> 00:20:46.509 straight line. Rulfo didn't just bend the rules, 00:20:46.609 --> 00:20:48.920 he broke them. He smashed the clock. He blurred 00:20:48.920 --> 00:20:51.099 the line between life and death without ever 00:20:51.099 --> 00:20:53.420 stopping to explain it. Most critics look at 00:20:53.420 --> 00:20:55.799 it and just said, this is a mess. It's confusing. 00:20:55.920 --> 00:20:57.819 It's a failed experiment. They thought the shattered 00:20:57.819 --> 00:20:59.940 structure was a bug, but it was the main feature. 00:21:00.059 --> 00:21:02.440 Exactly. It took years for readers and other 00:21:02.440 --> 00:21:04.319 writers to catch up. It took a whole new generation 00:21:04.319 --> 00:21:06.420 to look at it and say, wait a minute, this isn't 00:21:06.420 --> 00:21:09.039 a mess. This is a labyrinth. And it's brilliant. 00:21:09.240 --> 00:21:11.380 And speaking of that new generation, we have 00:21:11.380 --> 00:21:14.519 to talk about the big aha moment, the Gabriel 00:21:14.519 --> 00:21:17.250 Garcia Marquez connection. Because this part 00:21:17.250 --> 00:21:19.789 of the story is the stuff of literary legend. 00:21:20.029 --> 00:21:23.230 It really is. I want you to picture Gabriel Garcia 00:21:23.230 --> 00:21:26.750 Marquez in the early 1960s. He's living in Mexico 00:21:26.750 --> 00:21:29.170 City. He's already written four books. But nobody 00:21:29.170 --> 00:21:31.829 really cares about them. He's frustrated. He 00:21:31.829 --> 00:21:34.289 feels completely blocked as a writer. He's got 00:21:34.289 --> 00:21:37.309 this idea for a big family saga, what would become 00:21:37.309 --> 00:21:39.829 100 Years of Solitude. But he can't find the 00:21:39.829 --> 00:21:42.170 key, right? He can't figure out the tone. Exactly. 00:21:43.339 --> 00:21:46.039 He knows he wants to write about his grandmother's 00:21:46.039 --> 00:21:49.359 stories, these amazing stories where magic and 00:21:49.359 --> 00:21:52.759 reality just coexisted. But he doesn't know how 00:21:52.759 --> 00:21:54.839 to write it. Does he make it a fairy tale? Does 00:21:54.839 --> 00:21:58.440 he make it a joke? He's stuck. And then a friend 00:21:58.440 --> 00:22:00.940 hands him a slim little book. His friend, another 00:22:00.940 --> 00:22:04.279 writer named Alvaro Mutis, literally throws Pedro 00:22:04.279 --> 00:22:06.700 Paramo at him and says, read this, damn it, so 00:22:06.700 --> 00:22:09.259 you can learn. And Gabo reads it. He reads it 00:22:09.259 --> 00:22:12.220 twice in one night. He enters a state of absolute 00:22:12.220 --> 00:22:15.109 shock. He later said he was so stunned by it 00:22:15.109 --> 00:22:17.049 that he could recite the entire book from memory 00:22:17.049 --> 00:22:19.170 forwards and backwards. Because Rulfo showed 00:22:19.170 --> 00:22:21.009 him the trick. He showed him that you can write 00:22:21.009 --> 00:22:23.029 about ghosts and magic with a completely straight 00:22:23.029 --> 00:22:25.470 face. You don't have to explain it. You don't 00:22:25.470 --> 00:22:27.890 have to justify it. You just state it as a fact. 00:22:28.250 --> 00:22:31.809 The dead man walked into the room. Period. That 00:22:31.809 --> 00:22:34.329 flat, deadpan -accepting tome became the absolute 00:22:34.329 --> 00:22:37.289 foundation of magical realism. So, no Rulfo. 00:22:37.289 --> 00:22:39.890 No Macondo. No 100 years of solitude as we know 00:22:39.890 --> 00:22:42.400 it. Almost certainly not. Garcia Marquez himself 00:22:42.400 --> 00:22:45.519 said that Rulfo's 300 pages are, and this is 00:22:45.519 --> 00:22:48.180 a direct quote, as durable as the pages that 00:22:48.180 --> 00:22:50.940 have come down to us from Sophocles. Wow. He 00:22:50.940 --> 00:22:53.619 basically admitted that Juan Rulfo provided the 00:22:53.619 --> 00:22:56.039 blueprint for the entire Latin American boom 00:22:56.039 --> 00:22:59.940 of the 60s and 70s. So Rulfo is finally validated. 00:23:00.099 --> 00:23:02.440 He's a genius. He's the godfather of a global 00:23:02.440 --> 00:23:05.220 literary movement. And now everyone is waiting 00:23:05.220 --> 00:23:08.369 for the next book, the third book. The follow 00:23:08.369 --> 00:23:11.269 -up masterpiece. And they waited. And they waited. 00:23:11.430 --> 00:23:13.869 And they kept on waiting. A great silence. From 00:23:13.869 --> 00:23:17.670 1955 until his death in 1986, Juan Rulfo published 00:23:17.670 --> 00:23:20.849 no more major works of fiction. 30 years. A 30 00:23:20.849 --> 00:23:23.769 -year silence. Three decades. Why? This is the 00:23:23.769 --> 00:23:25.730 million -dollar question for me. Why would you 00:23:25.730 --> 00:23:28.269 stop when you've just... fundamentally changed 00:23:28.269 --> 00:23:30.289 the world of literature. There are so many theories. 00:23:30.490 --> 00:23:33.069 Rulfo himself liked to joke about it. He had 00:23:33.069 --> 00:23:34.769 this line he would use in interviews. He'd say, 00:23:34.849 --> 00:23:36.809 well, my uncle Celerino, who was the one who 00:23:36.809 --> 00:23:39.630 told me all the stories, he died. So I have nothing 00:23:39.630 --> 00:23:41.829 left to tell. That's cheeky. Blame it on the 00:23:41.829 --> 00:23:44.369 dead, uncle. I like it. But the truth is probably 00:23:44.369 --> 00:23:47.589 a lot more complicated and a lot more painful. 00:23:47.960 --> 00:23:50.500 I mean, imagine the pressure. You have written 00:23:50.500 --> 00:23:53.539 a book that Gabriel Garcia Marquez compares to 00:23:53.539 --> 00:23:56.240 the ancient Greeks. How do you possibly write 00:23:56.240 --> 00:23:58.900 a follow up to that? Yeah. Every single sentence 00:23:58.900 --> 00:24:01.920 you write from that point on is going to be measured 00:24:01.920 --> 00:24:05.279 against Pedro Paramo. That is a paralyzing amount 00:24:05.279 --> 00:24:07.680 of pressure. It's the ultimate sophomore slump 00:24:07.680 --> 00:24:10.480 fear, but on a global scale. And then there's 00:24:10.480 --> 00:24:13.029 also the story of the destroyed novel. He told 00:24:13.029 --> 00:24:14.690 several interviewers that he was working on a 00:24:14.690 --> 00:24:16.990 book set in Mexico City, an urban novel called 00:24:16.990 --> 00:24:19.250 La Cordillera. And he destroyed it. He threw 00:24:19.250 --> 00:24:21.089 it away. He claims he threw it in the trash. 00:24:21.269 --> 00:24:23.710 He said it was bad. But you have to wonder, was 00:24:23.710 --> 00:24:26.490 it actually bad? Or was it just a different? 00:24:26.829 --> 00:24:28.990 Rulfo was the undisputed master of the rural, 00:24:29.109 --> 00:24:31.509 the master of the dust and the heat. Maybe he 00:24:31.509 --> 00:24:33.150 felt he couldn't capture the concrete and the 00:24:33.150 --> 00:24:36.130 steel of the city in the same haunting way. Or 00:24:36.130 --> 00:24:38.650 maybe he realized that the city just didn't have 00:24:38.650 --> 00:24:41.450 the same kinds of dosts. That is just tragic 00:24:41.450 --> 00:24:44.069 to me. The idea that another potential masterpiece 00:24:44.069 --> 00:24:46.410 might have ended up in a landfill somewhere because 00:24:46.410 --> 00:24:49.430 of his own self -doubt. Or, and this is another 00:24:49.430 --> 00:24:52.170 way to look at it, perhaps it was an incredible 00:24:52.170 --> 00:24:55.430 act of artistic integrity. Maybe he realized 00:24:55.430 --> 00:24:57.569 he had said everything he truly needed to say. 00:24:58.089 --> 00:25:00.470 He didn't want to become a content factory. He 00:25:00.470 --> 00:25:03.609 didn't want to dilute his perfect tiny legacy 00:25:03.609 --> 00:25:06.819 with mediocre books. just to keep his name on 00:25:06.819 --> 00:25:08.759 the shelves. There's a real dignity in that, 00:25:08.799 --> 00:25:11.200 isn't there? I said what I had to say, and then 00:25:11.200 --> 00:25:13.259 I stopped. And he didn't stop creating. This 00:25:13.259 --> 00:25:14.819 is the part that people often forget. He just 00:25:14.819 --> 00:25:17.160 changed his medium. He picked up a camera. The 00:25:17.160 --> 00:25:19.180 photography. I was looking at these images in 00:25:19.180 --> 00:25:21.599 our source material. They are absolutely stunning. 00:25:21.799 --> 00:25:23.619 They're so stark. They're all black and white, 00:25:23.680 --> 00:25:26.539 very high contrast. And they look exactly like 00:25:26.539 --> 00:25:28.819 his stories feel. Yeah, they do. Pictures of 00:25:28.819 --> 00:25:31.079 crumbling ruins, of indigenous women wrapped 00:25:31.079 --> 00:25:33.920 in rebozos with their faces in shadow, of a single 00:25:33.920 --> 00:25:37.660 cactus standing against a harsh, empty sky. He 00:25:37.660 --> 00:25:41.240 took over 6 ,000 photos. The Juan Rulfo Foundation 00:25:41.240 --> 00:25:43.460 has all the negatives. He was a visual poet. 00:25:43.640 --> 00:25:45.680 So he just changed his tools. He went from writing 00:25:45.680 --> 00:25:48.420 ghosts to photographing them. And he went back 00:25:48.420 --> 00:25:52.190 to work. A real steady job. For the last 20 years 00:25:52.190 --> 00:25:55.549 of his life, from 1962 until his death, he worked 00:25:55.549 --> 00:25:57.470 at the National Institute for Indigenous People. 00:25:57.650 --> 00:26:00.349 Doing what? He was an editor. He worked on anthropology 00:26:00.349 --> 00:26:03.109 texts and publications about indigenous cultures. 00:26:03.369 --> 00:26:06.490 So he was preserving the very culture that inspired 00:26:06.490 --> 00:26:08.809 his work in the first place. Exactly. He wasn't 00:26:08.809 --> 00:26:10.970 out there chasing celebrity or trying to force 00:26:10.970 --> 00:26:14.250 another book. He was quietly serving the communities 00:26:14.250 --> 00:26:16.990 that gave him his stories. He was a humble man 00:26:16.990 --> 00:26:20.950 right up until the end. He died in 1986. Lung 00:26:20.950 --> 00:26:23.710 cancer. Leaving behind just those two thin little 00:26:23.710 --> 00:26:26.250 books. But they're two books that weigh more 00:26:26.250 --> 00:26:28.789 than entire libraries. It really makes you rethink 00:26:28.789 --> 00:26:31.990 the whole hustle culture mindset, doesn't it? 00:26:32.029 --> 00:26:34.390 The constant pressure to produce, to publish, 00:26:34.589 --> 00:26:37.490 to post. It absolutely does. Yeah. Rolfo is the 00:26:37.490 --> 00:26:39.430 ultimate proof that you don't need to be loud 00:26:39.430 --> 00:26:41.809 to be heard. You don't need to post every day. 00:26:41.869 --> 00:26:43.609 You don't need to flood the market with content. 00:26:43.789 --> 00:26:46.769 You just need to be true. If you write one true 00:26:46.769 --> 00:26:49.789 sentence, it will outlast a million hollow ones. 00:26:49.930 --> 00:26:52.470 One true sentence. That's the goal, isn't it? 00:26:52.529 --> 00:26:55.230 That is the lesson of Juan Rulfo. Well, we've 00:26:55.230 --> 00:26:56.970 reached the end of our journey through the ghost 00:26:56.970 --> 00:26:59.150 town of Kamala. If you haven't read The Burning 00:26:59.150 --> 00:27:01.430 Plain or Pedro Paramo, you have to. They are 00:27:01.430 --> 00:27:03.430 so short. You can read them both in a weekend. 00:27:03.690 --> 00:27:06.750 But I promise you, they will haunt you for a 00:27:06.750 --> 00:27:09.849 lifetime. Just, uh, maybe don't read them alone 00:27:09.849 --> 00:27:14.460 in the dark. Chuckles. Solid advice. Now, before 00:27:14.460 --> 00:27:17.539 we sign off, as always, I want to leave you with 00:27:17.539 --> 00:27:20.400 a provocative thought to chew on. We talked about 00:27:20.400 --> 00:27:23.359 that destroyed novel, The City Book, that Rolfo 00:27:23.359 --> 00:27:26.119 threw away, maybe because it didn't fit his rural 00:27:26.119 --> 00:27:29.359 master image. The lost possibility. My question 00:27:29.359 --> 00:27:32.819 to you is this. What masterpiece are you destroying 00:27:32.819 --> 00:27:45.890 right now? What idea? What project? That is a 00:27:45.890 --> 00:27:48.529 terrifying question. Think about it. Thanks for 00:27:48.529 --> 00:27:50.230 listening to The Deep Dive. We'll see you next 00:27:50.230 --> 00:27:50.470 time.