People

By Guy D. Garcia

"It's curious how a novel is there waiting to fall off a tree, and you have to be there to catch it," explains Carlos Fuentes, 57, who waited nearly 30 years for The Old Gringo to ripen into his twelfth novel. His patience has paid off. This week, a month after being published in English, it becomes the first novel by a Mexican to be a best seller in the U.S. An imagined tale about a love triangle involving the American writer Ambrose Bierce, Schoolteacher Harriet Winslow and an officer in Pancho Villa's army during the 1910 Mexican revolution, Gringo has already been optioned for the movies by Jane Fonda, who plans to portray Winslow. How is Fuentes, currently in residence at Harvard, enjoying success north of the border? "You don't have too much time to stop and say 'Hey, I'm a celebrity,' because such things mean nothing in the face of death," he observes. "I have little time and I want to use it well."