SOURCE: Introduction to Confabulario and Other Inventions, University of Texas Press, 1964, pp. vii-xi.

In the following introduction to Arreola's Confabulario and Other Inventions, Schade praises the scope, wit, and literary technique of Arreola's short stories.

In the last twenty years or so Mexican literature has been greatly enriched by the works of a group of extremely talented writers both in poetry and in prose. Octavio Paz (1914), Agustín Yáñez (1904), Juan Rulfo (1918), and Rosario Castellanos (1925) have already been translated into English and other languages and their work has been greeted with critical acclaim in Europe and the United States as well as in Mexico and other countries of the Spanish-speaking world. One of the most original and interesting writers among this generation is undoubtedly Juan José Arreola (1918), whose collected short stories, satiric sketches, bestiary, and sundry inventions are gathered together here under the general title Confabulario, which means...