The author of this long work states at the beginning that he plans to write a history of literature in Mexico in terms of what is essentially “Mexican.” What he actually does write is a history of the country’s literature from an extremely biased pro-Catholic point of view. Everything worthwhile in Mexican literature comes from Catholicism; everything vile and worthless derives from anti-clerical and anti-Catholic concepts. Azuela, according to him, is writing fine stuff when he follows the Catholic point of view, but when he does not he drops into the abyss.
Personally, I had hoped to find much information and some interpretations of worth on the young writers of Mexico who are today so much in the public eye: Carlos Fuentes, Spota, Arreola, Rulfo, and of course, Agustín Yáñez, the grandest of them all, author of the magnificent Al filo del agua. AR of these names are given only a passing mention, and then merely to disparage them as “negative and pessimistic.” They are representative, says the author, of the disintegration of society in Mexico (and in the world) today. But no effort whatever is made to present or to discuss these writers; no attempt is made to tell why this kind of writing exists, and no critique is given of its literary value. José Vasconcelos (the Vasconcelos of his later years, of course, the conservative Catholic) is made out to he the great hero of Mexican literature today. A similar bias permeates the entire work, reducing it to a third-rate commentary, in the opinion of this reviewer.
