The Reader's Companion to Mexico

Drawing on an impressively broad array of foreign writers who have made Mexico their subject, editor Ryan brings 26 pieces together for an ideal traveling companion. Poet Witter Brynner describes his visit to the bullfights with an alternately pouting and persnickety D.H. Lawrence; Langston Hughes--who shared a Mexico City apartment with Henri Cartier-Bresson--records the creative insults exchanged by artist Diego Rivera and his first wife and former model over alimony; Katherine Anne Porter details the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe; English widow Rosa King (who opened a Cuernavaca tea shop to support her children) portrays her close experience of the Revolution; and of course, Graham Greene reveals his horror at post-Revolutionary anti-Catholic repression that made him call Mexico ``this hating and hateful country.'' Ryan's lucid descriptions of the writers and what led them to Mexico, help the reader to more fully understand and relish the historical and literary importance of the works. While some writers revel in their own traveling adventures, others put the reader in the midst of history or offer a seductive peek into the remarkable artistic world of Mexico in the 1930s and '40s. For the tourist, there is the added pleasure that many of the places described are still there to be visited, quite unchanged. For armchair travelers, the writing is so good that they may well feel they've been there already. (July)