Thoughts on Vargas Llosa’s Win
I first became aware of Margio Vargas Llosa and his work in the 1990s when I heard him speak at the Miami Book Fair International. He was always a hit with Cuban Miami (anyone who is an enemy of Fidel….), but political issues aside, what drew me (and many readers) to his work is the authenticity and power of his fiction.
Today the Swedish Academy said that it is honoring Vargas Llosa for outlining the “structures of power” and for “his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.” The Academy’s permanent secretary, Peter Englund, called him “a divinely gifted storyteller” whose writing touches the reader.
I agree on both points, but I believe that Englund’s comment lies closer to why readers will probably continue to turn to Vargas Llosa’s work 50, 100 years from now.
The art of telling stories, and writing novels, centers on one’s ability to immerse readers in another reality that is compelling, yet familiar enough to make readers forget that it is simply a story. When readers say that a character’s experiences feel “real,” that is among the highest praise that a fiction writer can receive, because ideas in stories are meant to be lived through in (imaginary) time and space, not understood as abstractions (as they are in essays).
There’s nothing wrong with abstractions – we need them to make sense of our lives and the world – but the danger of mulling over our lives primarily as abstractions is that this habit tends to blind us to the truths of living in a human body and how that heavy, quotidian experience shapes us. Great fiction, because it thrusts us back into lived experience, makes us more human.
Vargas Llosa can do this – make readers feel what it’s like to be someone else, to suffer like someone else, to feel the humiliations and pangs of lust that are common to everyone, but as experienced by one individual – say a Central American dictator (Feast of the Goat) or an elderly professor (In Praise of the Stepmother). He does this far better with male characters than with female characters, btw.
That he’s able to take this ability and use it to thread a story about broader political issues – well, that’s what novelists ought to be doing nowadays, and I’m glad to see the Academy recognize it.
But what I cherish about Vargas Llosa is his ability to tell big stories in miniature that resonate far beyond the page.
This brings me to my favorite VL work.
In Praise of the Stepmother is a small gem of a novel. It’s naughty, wicked classic that details an erotic triangle between an older, self-absorbed professor, his beautiful, new (younger) wife and his son from a previous marriage. Some reviewers, including Anthony Burgess, writing for the New York Times, brushed it off as trivial. I think that misses the point; in this book about betrayal, nothing is more political than the (deeply) personal.
(That may have been what the New Yorker was getting at when the magazine said that “Not only would an American presidential candidate not have written [this novel] but the National Endowment for the Arts wouldn’t have given it a grant.”)
For years after I read In Praise of the Stepmother, I could not forget the scenes of the professor spending hours in the bathroom with his tedious grooming routines – clipping of nose hairs and toenails, combing his hair just so – while down the hall, his cherubic son circles closer and closer around the father’s neglected bride, who may or may not be enticing him.
No innocence in that childhood. No exemption from responsibility for the grown-ups, either. Latin American politics in a nutshell.
Congratulations, Mr. Vargas Llosa, for snatching the brass ring.
Barbara
I am an American writer who lived in Lima for seven years (2007-2014), where I covered Andean traditions, melting glaciers and daily life in the capital for Miami Herald, MSNBC and Huffington Post. I now live and work in northern Florida where I champion climate change advocacy and compassionate, affordable eldercare.
7 Comments
Joann Biondi
Beautiful piece, Barbara. Bravo for Vargas Llosa!
Levi Novey
Excellent article, Barbara. I haven’t read any of his books, but your review described them the best of any of the write-ups I have read so far. I have read some of his editorials in El Comercio though and liked them.
Pico
Great post Barbara!
Mario Vargas Llosa has had so many great books that it is really hard to choose a favorite. Indeed, the narrative about the grooming habits of the professor totally had me wishing that more men would participate on.
I have been able to narrow my selection to “The Storyteller”, “The Feast of the Goat”, “Death in the Andes”, “The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto”, and “The War of the End of the World” as my preferred books, but you could easily make a case for any of his earlier works and I would end up agreeing and I will have to start all over again.
I am glad to say that I still keep at least 15 of his works in my library, and if the proverbial questions of “if you were stranded in an island…” were to be asked I would have to take them all.
Saludos
Barb
Pico — I didn’t like “Notebooks” as much as “Stepmother” — it seemed like he was treading old ground — but “Feast” is quite an excellent novel, one that manages to say a lot about the lingering effects of dictatorship on individuals and on countries. “Death in the Andes” in on my list of books to read — if I can get my hands on an English-language translation.
“War” — I don’t know anything about it. Plot?
Well, I hope that you don’t find yourself stranded on an island soon, but it’s good to know that you have your library picked out.:)
Barb
thanks, Levi and Joann.
I know, J., that you’ve probably seen VL at the Book Fair several times. He is one of Miami’s darlings.
Levi — You are now in the U.S. and have access to that glorious public library system that can bring you any book you want, in Eng or Spanish. Lucky you!
Pico
Barbara,
I do have both English and Spanish versions of “Death in the Andes”, “The Storyteller”, “The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta”, and “The War of the End of the World”. You are more than welcome to borrow them if you like.
War is a novel based on an uprising in the back lands of Brazil. Massive and complex, and one of his most voluminous pieces. I still vividly remember one passage where MVL sucks you into the story and makes you to experience the dying moments of someone who has been mortally wounder in battle, from that person’s viewpoint. Simply amazing!
Actually, I believe I am going to re-read that novel again now. I was looking for a good book and this is the perfect excuse to look for that chapter.
Saludos
Barb
Pico, now I’m wanting to read “War.” Funny that you mention that passage — it reminds me of the character dying on the battlefield in Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” I wonder if VL was tipping the hat to that scene as well?
We’ll swap books when we meet in person, one of these days.