SOURCE: An introduction to Confabulario and Other Inventions by Juan José Arreola, University of Texas Press, 1964, pp. vii–xi.

In the following excerpt, Schade surveys the collected pieces of Arreola's Confabulario and Other Inventions, noting the author's stylistic gifts and deft use of humor and satire.

Arreola, who has lived for many years in Mexico City, was born in Ciudad Guzmán in the state of Jalisco, Mexico in 1918. His stories first appeared in little magazines in Guadalajara in the early 1940's—one of them called Pan he edited with his friend Rulfo—and his first book, Varia Invención, came out in 1949. Confabulario followed in 1952, and in 1955 was published in a second edition together with Varia Invención in one volume. His bestiary appeared in 1958 under the title Punta de plata. In 1962 these books, together with the addition of a large number of new pieces, were all...