Juan José Arreola’s House in Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco, Mexico: Visit on the 100-Year Anniversary of the Author's Birth

Juan José Arreola’s house sits perched on a hill with a stunning view of the city, the valley, and the Colima volcano. When you pass through the gates, you are in a walled garden, and a house that has many levels. It has been converted into a gallery and cultural center. When I visited, there was an exhibition of “papel picado” (pierced paper) the perforated paper flags that are hung across streets during holidays and fiesta. Most were celebrating Dia de los Muertos.

Juan Jose Arreola's home in Ciudad Guzman, Jalisco, Mexico

There are interesting pine trees and jacarandas, along with other flowering trees. Supposedly, Juan José rode around town on his bicycle, his wild hair flowing. He made an impression in the 1950s with his innovative fictions, which combined a kind of Borgesian surrealism with whimsy and irony. He is considered a quintessential Mexican writer who incorporated many of the traditions, values, and language of his home, Jalisco. Because of the Guerra de los Cristeros, Arreola had to drop out of school after the 4th grade, at age 8. After that, he taught himself everything he knew, which included acting, writing, and working with book construction.

Susan Smith Nash at Juan Jose Arreola's house in Ciudad Guzman, Jalisco, Mexico at the 100th Anniversary of the author's birth

Arreola was known for his prodigious memory for poetry and drama, which must have helped him develop his ear for language, and also to incorporate the world around him. Further, having such a deficit of formal education might account for Arreola’s flamboyant dress and behavior – it would provide armor in a very hierarchical and snobbish literary world.

At the same time, Arreola did appear on the scene at precisely the right time, when artists such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo were championing the authentically Mexican. In being an autodidact, he reminds me of Charles Dickens. I had the good fortune to visit Arreola’s home on precisely the 100th anniversary of his birth, just when a reading / presentation was wrapping up.

View of Arreola's house from the back patio

My friend and I were both given a gift of his book of whimsical short stories, Confabulario. I’ve read a few of them. I find them absolutely delightful. “Rhinoceros” shimmers with a delightful schadenfreude as the divorced wife of a choleric and abusive judge (the “rhinoceros”) is tamed by a quick-witted (but selfish) new wife; he lives an enforced and circumspect life… only wonders why he allowed himself to be converted into a docile, slightly malnourished vegan.

For all who have had to deal with a brute, it has a Dantesque symmetry as the judge experiences his own “contrapasso.” There is tremendous wisdom in Arreola’s “beast fables” – here’s a quote from “Girafa” which perfectly captures the ironies of the human spirit, and the resulting divisions, splits, and double-edged blessings and gifts:

With such wasted technique, which makes it really challenging to both gallop about and to love, the giraffe represents better than anyone the delirious ravings of the spirit; it looks in the heights for what others find on the surface of the earth. (a loose translation of a paragraph from "Girafa") 

Another of my favorites is a discussion in a movie theatre about whether or not the devil got a good deal when he bought the soul of what the commentator in the story considers to be something of a ne’er do well spendthrift. It reminds me a bit of O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief” – kidnappers kidnap a child who is so annoying that by the end, they are paying the parents to take him back.

I breathe deeply and enjoy the woody, slightly spicy aroma of the woods and flowers. I realize we’re between the “sky islands” of mountainous pine forests, and then the chaparral scrub in the valley floor toward the Colima volcano. The volcano is active, the earth is capable of passion and violence, and, as in the Guerra de los Cristeros, is probably inevitable, but unpredictable in its impact. 

View from Juan Jose Arreola's House in Ciudad Guzman, Jalisco: The Colima Volcano