Reviews

The Friends of Pancho Villa by James Carlos Blake

paul_cornelius's review

4.0

View James Carlos Blake's novel as a translation of the Mexican Revolution. It's not mere historical fiction. It's not interpretation. It's an artistic adaptation of the facts and lore of the revolution and two central characters, Villa and Rodolfo Fierro, as you can see them culturally transmitted across from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century. Reading this, I constantly thought of Sam Peckinpah's butchered script for Villa Rides, because Yul Brynner wanted a good guy with no ambiguities or compromises. Blake's Villa must be like what Peckinpah imagines. Otherwise, there is the imaginative twist on the "death" of Fierro, which allowed us to get to the end of Villas' story, too. And with what I see as one of the most sardonic happy endings in all of literature, as Fierro/Contreras disappears into the sunset. Fierro, it should be remembered is the Comrade Duch of the Mexican Revolution and to get your readers to share his perspective, if not sympathy, is quite a feat.