SOURCE: "Carlos Fuentes and the New Short Story in Mexico," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. VIII, No. 1, Winter, 1971, pp. 169-79.

Reeve is an American critic and educator and the author of An Annotated Bibliography of Carols Fuentes (1970). In the following essay, Reeve traces the trajectory of Fuentes's short fiction, noting his preoccupation with Mexico's colonial past.

If asked to list the important Mexican short story writers of today, one would no doubt call to mind the names of the dual deities of short fiction. Juan José Arreola and Juan Rulfo, who during their heyday in the mid-fifties represented the universal-fantasy tendency on one side and the rural-realistic on the other. The third member of this prestigious trinity, and one whose star is in continual ascent, is novelist Carlos Fuentes. Unprecedented success has greeted almost all of Fuentes' novels: numerous editions, translations into more than a dozen languages...