Mariano Azuela Gonz谩lez was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He wrote novels, works for theatre and literary criticism.
The narrator of The Flies hovers around a group of characters as they muddle through a chaotic day of the Mexican Revolution. Combatants themselves are scarcely treated and always in conflict with these main characters the narrator observes. Azuela seems to be showing us 鈥榯he flies鈥� that swirl around any event, however grave or sacred -- and his tone is decidedly snide. These are the privileged and entitled. We witness their detached armchair strategizing about the revolution, their irrelevant infatuations, their cynical opportunism, and their insistence on having a new pair of shoes. They include even an army general who cares more about the fashion of his sycophants than the jeopardy of his soldiers. It鈥檚 clear from Azuela鈥檚 portrayal of these folks that he really hates their guts. No matter the situation, it appears, these flies are always going to be circling and spoiling the truth of things.
Azuela is one of the preeminent chroniclers of the Mexican Revolution in fiction. I found this novella more accessible than the other things I鈥檝e read by him; mostly because usually he treats men in the ranks through a dialogue-heavy prose that documents their uncultivated Spanish. Strangely, I feel more sympathy with those 鈥榰nderdogs鈥� of his other books even though I cannot fully understand them. These elites, who I detest just as much as he does, I understand just fine. An unsettling irony for me.
If you are reading this review, written in English, you have likely not read Mariano Azuela, an author almost unknown outside of Spanish-language literature. Save for one of his novels, The Underdogs, his works have rarely reached English audiences, and I was lucky to discover this collection at a used book sale. In fact, the brevity of these texts and the multiplicity of characters within them reminded me of the two Spanish picaresque novels I picked up at the same sale, Lazarillo de Tormes and The Swindler. Indeed, Azuela has the social consciousness of the former and the adroit penmanship of the latter. However, as the 鈥渨riter of the Mexican Revolution,鈥� his plots spring from his politics instead of his imagination, so that they lose their appeal after the point has been established.
The Flies is the story of a motley crew of refugees escaping the fall of Mexico City to revolutionary forces. If the title represents anything about the narrative, then it is the frantic swarms of human life that pack the streets and train cars from beginning to end. Azuela鈥檚 imagery is vivid and his characterizations are memorable (because disparaging), but he allows a tangent involving the least sympathetic characters to steal the show from the charmingly dysfunctional family at its center.
While The Flies often reads like a stage play due to its preponderance of dialogue, The Bosses reads like, well, a proper novel, albeit a short one. This time, Azuela gives adequate attention to all three directions of his plot鈥攖he naive grocer Don Juan, the muckraking reporter Rodriguez, and the corrupt Del Llano business clan. However, these arcs do not terminate in unison, so the story limps to rather than lands at the finish line.
Azuela鈥檚 obscurity may be explained by his association with a specific historical event. Like all period writers, if you are not interested in the period, then you won鈥檛 be interested in the writer. But I am interested in Azuela and would appreciate the chance to read more of him.
Both of these short novels are a bit too far removed from the time they were written to be fully understood. You'd have to know quite a bit about the politics surrounding the Mexican Revolution to get the full impact of either of the stories. Unfortunately, my knowledge in that arena is very lacking.
These two short novels both take place during the Mexican Revolution. The genuinely excellent "The Flies" is something of a social satire, following a group of supporters of the now deposed regime as they escape the capital on a train and look at options for their next move. "The Bosses", not quite as good as the first, follows the fortunes of businessmen in a small city as the rise of one family brings about the fall of another.