The Mexican Dream: Or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations (edit title)

Shelfari edited the first sentence of The Mexican Dream: Or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations Tuesday, November 3 2009.

• THE DREAM BEGAN ON FEBRUARY 8, 1517, when, from the deck of his ship, Bernal Diaz first saw the great white city of the Maya, the city the Spanish would later name "Great Cairo.""Great Cairo."

Timothy Gray approved James F’s request to combine 7 books, including The Mexican Dream: Or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations, Tuesday, November 3 2009.

James F submitted a request to combine 7 books, including The Mexican Dream: Or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations, Tuesday, November 3 2009.

Shelfari edited the description of The Mexican Dream: Or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations Thursday, August 6 2009.

• Not one dream but many unfold in J. M. G. Le Clézio's conjuring of the consciousness of Mexico, strange and powerful evocation of the imaginings that made and unmade an ancient culture. "What motivated me," Le Clézio has said, "was a sort of dream about what has disappeared and what could have been." A widely respected French novelist with a long history of interest in pre-Columbian Mexico, Le Clézio imagined how the thought of early Indian civilizations might have evolved if not for the interruption of European conquest. In an unprecedented way, his book takes us into the dream that was the religion of the Aztecs, which in its own apocalyptic visions anticipated the coming of the Spanish conquerors. Here the dream of the conquistadores rises before us, too, the glimmering idea of gold drawing Europe into the Mexican dream. Against the religion and thought of the Aztecs and the Tarascans and the Europeans in Mexico, Le Clézio also shows us those of the "barbarians" of the north, the nomadic Indians beyond the pale of the Aztec frontier. Finally, Le Clézio's book is a dream of the present, a meditation on what in Amerindian civilizations--in their language, in their way of telling tales, of wanting to survive their own destruction--moved the poet, playwright, and actor Antonin Artaud and motivates Le Clézio in this book. The author's deep identification with pre-Columbian cultures, whose faith told them the wheel of time would bring their gods and their beliefs back to them, finds fitting expression in this extraordinary book, which brings the dream around.

Shelfari edited the contributors of The Mexican Dream: Or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations Tuesday, July 28 2009.

• Added a contributor: J.-M. G. Le Clezio: (Primary Author)

Shelfari edited the first sentence of The Mexican Dream: Or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations Thursday, July 16 2009.

• THE DREAM BEGAN ON FEBRUARY 8, 1517, when, from the deck of his ship, Bernal Diaz first saw the great white city of the Maya, the city the Spanish would later name "Great Cairo."