Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT This article argues for a shift toward aurality and away from the emphasis on orality that has long been a keynote in criticism about the work of Juan Rulfo. To attend to the ears that listen rather than solely the voice that speaks, I not only consider the Jaliscan writer's entire oeuvre but also turn to a seldom-studied yet readily available archive: Rulfo's recordings of a few stories from El llano en llamas and two fragments from Pedro Páramo. Addressing these audio versions amplifies the importance of the aural throughout Rulfo's writings and expands on the readings of other critics who examine some of the sounds that echo across his works but who rarely acknowledge the constitutive role of the listener. And just as Rulfo's own experiences with tape reveal these listening techniques, his representations of other sound reproduction technologies portray the effects of changing aural perceptions and practices.
When, in December of 1952, tire salesman Juan Rulfo asked his supervisors at Goodrich-Euzkadi to install a radio in his company car, they immediately refused. He had made the request at a routine check-in during his fifth year at the firm, where he had a family connection and where he worked in publicity before moving to the sales department and a grueling schedule of fourteen-hour days, seven days a week. Rulfo had not expected the managers to say no so swiftly since to him a car radio hardly seemed extravagant- he had, after all, already purchased record players at a time when his friends considered them an unthinkable luxury (García Bonilla 108). The response appears to have pushed Rulfo to a breaking point: he soon quit this position, whose responsibilities had taken him across the country. But those solitary and largely silent trips in the company car were, as he later recalled, also the period when the threads of Pedro Páramo were coming together. "Lo único que aprendí fue a perder la memoria," Rulfo remarked of this time behind the wheel. "Tuve que tratar con tanta gente y estar en tantos lugares que acabé por no conocer a nadie ni acordarme de cómo eran los pueblos y las ciudades por donde anduve y no tenía a nadie junto a mí para que me los...