I'll start out with this on Page 222 of Christ versus Arizona the Spanish nobel literary laureate quite literally kills me off in the following lines: 'Professor Licencia Margarita was romantically involved with Luke Short, the one who shot the ranch-hand Larry Riley in the back and then ordered his corpse hanged, the way to make sure hanged men don't kick is to hang them dead, look at Riley up there--what composure!,'--. A bit unusual for me to see my name for the first time in print--and in a novel by one of my favorite authors, one who's works I've even re-read on a few occasions--and he kills me off! What price loyalty!?!! At least I'm allowed to maintain my composure.

Anyway to the review of this newly translated into English 261 page work of fiction--it comes as one long stream of conscious paragraph, broken up by commas and not periods. Not unusual for those who have read San Camilo 1936 (IMO his masterpiece), Mazurka for two dead men or Boxwood. That does not mean there is no flow, there's plenty of that at least IMHO. Cela every once in a while puts in signature points, such as: 'the Litany of our Lady is the breastplate that preserves us from sin, I say regina angelorum regina patriarcharum and you say ora pro nobiis twice'--which serve as almost musical counterpoints throughout the body of his work throughout his life. By repeating some things over and over again, sometimes only subtly adding or subtracting a detail here and there, by juxtaposing situations and characters he creates a kaleidoscopic effect while at times increasing the tension as well. What we begin to see then our faces and names gradually emerging into focus as the work moves along towards its ultimate end which for all intents and purposes could just as well be its beginning.

Narrated through the voice of an elderly man--Wendell Liverpool Espana (or Aspen or just plain Span) now living in a rest home(?), the geography of the book is set in Tombstone, Arizona and the region surrounding it--the most famous story relating to the shootout at the O.K. Corral. The backdrop to all this is a community of Hispanics and some anglos, prostitues, homosexuals, wife beaters and cheaters, child molesters and animal sadists, gunmen, ranchers, priests (some living in sin) and revolutionaries. These multitudinous voices and characters often describing murders, and hangings/lynchings, and all sorts of petty and not so petty crime and carnal escapades of their neighbors, friends and enemies--can be seen almost to use our senior citizen as some kind of host they've managed to possess.

To be honest I'm glad that Cela actually made short work of my character and left my private life alone. Anyone familiar with the writer should know that he possessed a very ribald, sometimes quirky sense of humor and there is no holds barred. He took delight in slaying sacred cows and holding up the entrails for his readers to view from all angles and at their leisure.

As for the shootout it's described this way: 'the first ones to fire were Wyatt who got Frank in the stomach and Billy whose shot missed, Holliday's bullet struck Billy in the chest but he was still able to continue fighting, Tom made a move for the rifle that his brother Frank had on the saddle of his horse and Holliday gave him two loads of buckshot in the ribs, buckshot is illegal because lead being soft flattens out and tears through flesh, Ike got Wyatt in one arm and he didn't shoot but instead said, fight or clear out!, Ike took off running and Holliday hunted him down, with one slug Billy hit Virgil in the leg, Frank hit Holliday with a bullet also in his leg, furthermore it drilled a hole in his holster, now Colonel Charles W. Maverick keeps it as a souvenir in his home in Phoenix, Billy fired at Morgan Earp and the slug went through his shoulder, Holliday and Wyatt and Morgan Earp all fired at once at Frank McLaury and brought him down like a bird, Virgil Earp caught Billy Clanton in the chest and knocked him off his feet, this was the end of the fierce shootout at the O.K. Corral, all of half a minute long, half a minute for death to do its sinister cancan, these gunfight stories are always made up or at least they always seem that way because nobody can really know what happened when, much less remember it, the story of the shootout at the O.K. Corral is usually told the way it was told by Wyatt Earp, the Lion of Tomiston, who was the last to die and so couldn't be contradicted, and it seems to me that he sometimes added a few details whenever he told it,'

In any case I've always found Cela's writing to be fluid and at least somewhat experimental--in part the ribald nature of his writing reminds of some of Spain's greatest writers such as Cervantes or Quevedo. As far as I know this is his only work to be set on North American soil and it's my humble opinion that it breathes an alternate life into one of the great myths of the American west--and I enjoyed reading it very much even if he had to kill me to do it. ( )