Yanez, Agustin

Austin. 1971. University Of Texas Press. Pan American Paperback Edition. Very Good in Wrappers. 0292701314. Illustrated by Julio Prieto. Translated from the Spanish by Ethel Brinton. TEXAS PAN AMERICAN SERIES. 332 pages. paperback. Cover art by Julio Prieto. keywords: Literature Translated Mexico Latin America . FROM THE PUBLISHER - TIME: The eighteen-month period immediately preceding the Mexican Revolution of 1910. PLACE: A remote Mexican village in the Archdiocese of Guadalajara. SETTING: A village where one's whole existence is a never-ending Lent, where to feel a sense of happiness is to feel a sense of guilt, where the only outlets for old and young, men and women, are the pious societies - most important of which are the Association of the Good Death and the Daughters of Mary, whose black-robed young women exercise a rigid discipline over dress, movements, speech, thought, and feeling. Rich and poor alike lead the same humdrum lives, sternly ruled over by Father Martinez, the parish priest - and by the monotonous ringing of his church bells. Of such has Agustin Yánez fashioned a great novel, one that exposes the struggle between human desire and paralyzing fear - fear of man, fear of nature, fear of the wrath of God. It tells of a way of life different from any most persons are likely to know; but Yánez, by probing the actions of people caught in life's currents, holds his reader with mounting dramatic tension as he shows that no power known to man can forge saints from the human masses, that any attempt to do so, in fact, often has an opposite result. Life triumphs with the coming of the Revolution. The Parish Priest sees his world collapse - some from his own village, reacting to the stark way of life he has imposed upon them, erupt in violence directly traceable to his stern measures. As the storm breaks over the head of the unhappy shepherd, as he sees his flock storm out of the fold, he falls to his knees reciting the psalms of desolation, finally convinced that untempered severity defeats its own ends. inventory #2447 ISBN: 0292701314.