SOURCE: "Los dias enmascarados and Cantar de ciegos: Reading the Stories and Reading the Books," in Carlos Fuentes, A Critical View, edited by Robert Brody and Charles Rossman, University of Texas Press, 1982, pp. 18-33.

Brushwood is an American critic and educator specializing in Mexican, Mexican American, and Spanish American literature. In the following essay, he examines the reading experience of two Fuentes story collections and proposes a new ordering for the stories so that would make the volumes more effective. In the process, he analyzes the narrative techniques employed by Fuentes.

Several characteristics of Carlos Fuentes' fiction vie for attention in any analytical consideration of his work. Stylistic virtuosity, the joining of past and present, what it means to be Mexican, his commentary on the human estate, all readily come to mind. On the other hand, if one thinks in terms of what actually happens to a reader...