Product Description

Tony Cohan’s On Mexican Time, his chronicle of discovering a new life in the small Mexican mountain town of San Miguel de Allende, has beguiled readers and become a travel classic. Now, in Mexican Days, point of arrival becomes point of departure as—faced with the invasion of the town by tourists and an entire Hollywood movie crew, a magazine editor’s irresistible invitation, and his own incurable wanderlust—Cohan undertakes a richer, wider exploration of the country he has settled in.
Told with the intimate, sensuous insight and broad sweep that captivated readers of On Mexican Time, Mexican Days is set against a changing world as Cohan encounters surprise and adventure in a Mexico both old and new: among the misty mountains and coastal Caribbean towns of Veracruz; the ruins and resorts of Yucatán; the stirring indigenous world of Chiapas; the markets and galleries of Oaxaca; the teeming labyrinth of Mexico City; the remote Sierra Gorda mountains; the haunted city of Guanajuato; and the evocative Mayan ruins of Palenque. Along the way he encounters expatriates and artists, shady operatives and surrealists, and figures from his past.
More than an immensely pleasurable and entertaining travel narrative by one of the most vivid, compelling travel voices to emerge in recent years, Mexican Days is both a celebration of the joys and revelations to be found in this inexhaustibly interesting country and a searching investigation of the Mexican landscape and the grip it is coming to have in the North American imagination.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #187830 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-24
• Released on: 2007-04-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780767920919
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Novelist and memoirist Cohan takes on a travel magazine assignment to make "some trips around Mexico... see how the puzzle of old and new fit together [and] write about it." Traveling south from his San Miguel home, he passes through Vera Cruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas into the Yucatán. Readers familiar with the path may enjoy traveling with him; others will long for a minimal map, an organizing principle and some photographs. As Cohan drifts through Mexico, history (e.g., the founding of Tlacotalpan sometime between A.D. 900 and 1200) and contemporary events (e.g., the barricading of mountain roads by Zapatista insurgents) are revealed. Chats with taxistas and shopkeepers, visits with friends and artists, remarks about his own work and casual references to the famous among Mexico's tourist, exile and expatriate population dot the pages (John Huston gets four pages). Cohan's description of the book as "the Mexican postcard I'm always writing home" is accurate; but postcards work best for readers who can fill in the blanks with their own sense of where the writer is coming from. Perhaps readers of Cohan's previous, well-received account (On Mexican Time: A New Life in San Miguel) will be able to do so. (May 2)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Cohan updates and expands his portrait of life in Mexico from his previous books. This journey commences in San Miguel de Allende, where Cohan finds his beloved town overrun with overbearing Hollywood movie stars filming an action picture. Their intense hypertechnological activity overshadows the town's unique and vital culture, reflecting in its own way the continuing disruption of civilization by predatory northern neighbors. In further contrast to what he witnesses in San Miguel, Cohan encounters native Mexican filmmakers intent on recording genuine Mexican culture, not simply using the land as a stage set. He also demonstrates an encyclopedic knowledge of the long history of Hollywood filmmaking in Mexico. As Cohan travels from Guanajuato to Mexico City, to Oaxaca, and to the Yucatan, the sights and the people he encounters reflect intractable problems left over from repeated disastrous collisions with first Spanish and then U.S. forces. Cohan accurately and vividly describes the riotous extremes of politics, of geography, of wealth, of smells, and of colors that make up today's Mexico. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Praise for Tony Cohan
Mexican Days

“Tony Cohan’s singular novelist’s heart and eye, and the master-craftsmanship of his prose, set him far apart from anyone else today writing about ‘travel.’ Tony Cohan goes through the looking glass beyond ordinary journeying and discovers not just a place, a culture, a history, but the interstices of mood, longing, the beauty and tragedy of the people he finds in that place. He is our pre-eminent explorer of Mexico, and anywhere else he may voyage to.”
—Peter Nichols, author of A Voyage for Madmen

On Mexican Time

“Terribly seductive—an enticing and intoxicating vision of Mexico.”
—Denver Post

“Cohan describes life in Mexico as ‘intimate, voluptuous, sense driven,’ a phrase that also describes On Mexican Time.”
—Boston Sunday Globe

“On Mexican Time is more than a travelogue, more than a vicarious journey for the reader. It is a gentle reminder to examine our lives and weed out the unnecessary, the chaotic, and the frivolous.”
—Tennessean