Vargas Llosa

Since no one has posted here in a while I thought I might start a new thread and solicit some opinions on Mario Vargas Llosa who I think is a very Nobel worthy writer. Not the greatest fan of "The Green House' however 'Conversation in the Cathedral' is IMO a flat out masterpiece and other works of his particulary 'The Time of the Hero', 'The War of the End of the World' and 'The Feast of the Goat' are nearly as good. As is 'The real life of Alejandro Mayta'.

I've only read In Praise of a Stepmother and The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto but I liked them enough to automatically purchase any decent hardback copy I find in my used bookstores. I'll have to check out Conversation in the Cathedral next!

I just happened upon him because I was checking the used shelves for some Morgan llywelyn titles and a nice 1st of Stepmother was right next to Morgan. Being a big fan of Garcia Marquez I wanted to try some other South American writers so I checked it out.

FWIW jveezer from what I understand Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa do not like each other at all. Anyway Conversation in the Cathedral is a great book at least IMO and quite different in style and direction than In praise of the Stepmother. I can't say much about The notebooks of Don Rigoberto. I have it but haven't read it.

I didn't know about the relationship between Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa. I had heard or read somewhere that either Vargas Llosa or maybe it was Borges had written a paper or some criticism of Garcia Marquez but don't remember where I saw it.

The thing between him and Garcia Marquez is more about politics. Vargas Llosa attacking Garcia Marquez for being a Castro supporter for one. Also Mario is very much the Global economy type--and has made one very serious run for President of Peru. On the one hand I can't say that I'm a big fan of Castro (which doesn't mean that I think we should have cut all ties or diplomacy with Cuba) and on the other I'm not a big fan of proto-capitalistic new world order kind of economics. Anyway I think that is what it is mainly about and doesn't have a lot to do with their literary productions.

Garcia Marquez 100 Years of Solitudewas probably my introduction to South American fiction some 30-40 years ago...it will also remain a favorite and memorable book.

100 years is without a doubt the seminal work of 20th century South American fiction. It's the yardstick by which a lot of that regions fiction is measured. My favorite work of his though is 'Strange pilgrims' and I think I also liked 'Love in the time of Cholera' better although I no longer have a copy. I've not always been crazy about magical realism and haven't alway been knocked out by some of the more important Latin Boom writers or specific works of theirs. To go further Garcia Marquez's pal Alvaro Mutis seems to get very little attention which is too bad because he's really excellent especially if you like adventure stories or stories about the sea.To go back to Vargas Llosa there are some works that I'm not all that crazy about either. Actually you can say that about the majority of writers around the globe--that some of their work is superior to some of their other work.

I have Love in the time of Cholera on my shelf waiting to be read.

regarding good tales about the sea, a couple of years ago I "flipped" over In the Heart of the Sea by Nathanial Philbrick...a non-fictional account of the story behind Moby Dick.

iThe link to South America - I believe the ship stopped at Valparaiso, Chile.

I aggree with Iriley about the relationship between Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa that it's mainly political. Both are excellent writers but I have to admit that Vargas Llosa's recent books haven't quenched my thirst. I can always re-read Garcia Marquez anytime and still get so much out of his books. Of course my favorite is 100 years in solitude which I read both in English and Spanish.
As a peruvian, I think what devastated Vargas Llosa was his intend to become president, and his now Spanish citizenship. He is not popular in Peru anymore... which is too bad. I loved his early writings.
On another note, his niece Claudia Llosa, just recently co-produced movie together called MADEINUSA which I saw last week. It's being awarded all over the world.

There was an article about Varga Llosa in one of the UK newspapers a couple of years ago that mentioned the breakdown of the friendship between the two writers. While there was a political dispute between them, when VL moved to the right, there was also rumours of a woman being involved. It all came to a head at a literary festival when VL threw a punch at GM. (Incidentally, VL wrote his thesis on GM, thereby creating the original friendship).

I don't agree that One Hundred Years of Solitude is the seminal work of Latin American fiction however. I think that would probably be Men of Maize by Asturias, which is the first magic realist novel. Although Asturias is almost forgotten in the US and Europe, he was one of the first Latin American writers to become well-known outside of his continent, winning the Nobel Prize in 1967. The influence of Asturias on subsequent writers should not be underestimated, stylistically and themetically.

I read one critic suggest that the problems with VL as a novelist are two-fold - he sometimes can seem a little uninterested in his material and therefore become too slick; and for the English reader, has had too many translators which has detracted from his work as a whole.

I just found a nice first of alejandro mayta, so I'll be checking that out soon. I've only read his attempts at eroticism so far. They were good. I still haven't read any of his top-rated works.

I agree with CarmenDC about Garcia Marquez, though. I would read/re-read something by him before Vargas Llosa. I finished In Evil Hour recently but Love in the Time of Cholera is my fav so far.

Based on the way they both write, I'm not suprised that a woman might have been involved in their split!

To comment a bit. I've read Asturias 3 times but not Men of Maize and I know that's a very important one of his works. Did not care for 'Mulata' very much. I did like El Senor Presidente' quite a bit. I guess my tendency at least some of the time is more towards the dictator novels than the magical realist or erotic works. Some things do borrow from them all. I'll bring up Alejo Carpentier whose works (at least the ones I've read) I prefer to the ones I've read of Asturias. I can't say enough good things about Roberto Arlt's 'Seven Madmen' either who more or less fits into a similar timeframe--maybe a little earlier. I recommend that book wholeheartedly. Between Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa I like VL's work better however I'm probably closer to GM's worldview--at least I think so.

Anyone here know anything or would like to comment on the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra? He and Zbigniew Herbert (who was Polish) are my 2 favorite of favorite poets.

Back in 2006 Iriley was touting Vargas Llosa for the Nobel prize- good job Larry!

Thursday I went by Housing Works and was lucky to spot a hardcover edition of Bad Girl for $7.

Also of note is Javier Cercas winning a top prize in Spain
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=370726&CategoryId=13003

Wow! I just read The War at the End of the World in honor of his Nobel prize. What an amazing read and in many ways very relevent and sobering to these times. War and the politicians who promote them and the poor people on both sides who bear the brunt of them have not changed much since the birth of the nation-state. I'll definitely be looking to add more Vargas Llosa to my "to be read" queue.

sounds like you offer a good example of what makes a Nobel Prize winner: the books wrote decades earlier are still relavent, topical and timely; and the themes illuminate universal human truths.

thanks for the brief concise note.

I like Vargas Llosa's writing for the most part. Was really affected by Feast of the Goat and The War at the End of the World and recently read The Bad Girl. I was unable to finish In Praise of the Stepmother, it was too creepy for me. His writing has a strong feel of historical fiction and I enjoy learning history through his books.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Amado were extremely influential on my introduction to Latin American literature but now I'm trying to explore newer writers. I do want to read Men of Maize and am glad that someone brought it up.

I've enjoyed the books by Vargas Llosa that I've read, especially Los cachorros and La casa verde. He's an author I "like," but don't especially "love." His books are, without a doubt, extremely well-written, but they always come off as a bit cold and distant to me. I've always had an image of him in my mind, (an unfair one, perhaps) writing ponderous, critically-acclaimed texts in an air-conditioned ivory tower. I just don't relate to him very well, I suppose, although maybe I'm just not reading the right books.

My feelings are similar with regard to García Márquez. He was one of my favorite authors as a teenager, but when I re-read Cien años de soledad, I don't find it as wonderful as I used to. The last time I read it, I had just read El siglo de las luces, and I enjoyed Carpentier's book much more.

In terms of living writers, my hypothetical Nobel vote goes to Nicanor Parra, who was mentioned by lriley earlier. His perspective reminds me a lot of Kurt Vonnegut, another old favorite of mine. The Arlt mention is interesting to see in a thread about Vargas Llosa as well. I read MVL's book on Juan Carlos Onetti recently, in which he briefly expresses his rather strong distaste for Arlt (I love Arlt, by the way). He basically says he doesn't understand the "supposed geniality" of Arlt, whom he finds to be a "terrible prosist and a disastrous constructor of stories." I found this comment odd, because when I think about it, those are two of the things that make Arlt's fiction special to me: his terrible prose and his disastrously-constructed stories. I chuckle trying to imagine Los siete locos and Los lanzallamas written with terrific prose and wonderfully-constructed stories (in the traditional sense of such conceptions of prose and story construction).

Finally, As far as the "Boom" authors go, I'll gladly take Cortázar. I think I relate to him much better than I do to Vargas Llosa or García Márquez, and I would throw Rayuela into the conversation concerning "seminal" Latin American texts.

I hate to be a stick-in-the-mud, but...

I’ve had The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta on the shelf for years and decided to give it a go in the wake of Vargas’ Nobel. I could not finish it. For me the prose was plain, the political observations simple and shallow. It could just be a matter of taste, but I don’t think I’ll read any more from him.

Another thing: Upon taking up Mayta I had just finished Pale Fire. That may have ruined me on fiction for awhile. Nabokov makes everyone else seem half-baked.

p.s. I’m reading If This be Treason by Gregory Rabassa, who translated Cortazar, Lispector, García, Vargas and others. He has some interesting things to say about language and the translator’s art.

#17--MVL has a handful of magic realist novels--the green house being one. Personally I'm not a fan of the style and GGM is especially noted for it. MVL's Conversation in the Cathedral almost starts out that way but is anything but cold--I'd rank it with the best novels that have ever come out of the South American continent. It's a long one though.

I definitely agree with you on Arlt and Parra though. Arlt is a great writer but stylistically he's a little crude. The guy wasn't too concerned about elegance but his novels had pace and a real wallop. For me he's almost like a bridge between Dostoyevsky and Celine. By the way it's unfortunate that Arlt's third novel 'Los lanzallamas'--The flamethrowers--has never been published in English. I actually took the time (almost two years) to translate that several years ago. My fluency in the spanish language is not very good but for me it was a labor of love. I sent bits and pieces on to a couple publishers--but it was no go which wasn't a surprise.

Parra can be drop dead funny. He doesn't give a damn about anybody or better said about anybody's pretensions. He uses his humor to slay sacred cows. Not enough writers or poets like that. Definitely an irrascible old man--but he could just as easily be a punk rocker in the best sense. He's in his 90's but he doesn't think old.

I agree that The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta was tough. Definitely the least favorite of the ones I've read of MVL. Gregory Rabassa's book is excellent. I really enjoyed that and it lead me to some other writers that I have since checked out.

19: That's really cool that you undertook a translation of Los lanzallamas, I've been working on a translation of Arlt's Las fieras off and on over the past few months; it's interesting to actually sit down and think about the relation between what authors write in Spanish (my second language) and how I understand their words, as well as how I might represent them in English (my first language).

It's also interesting you mention Dostoyevsky in relation to Arlt, because I remember thinking when I first read Conversación en la catedral, how very Dostoyevskian it seemed. I'd just read The Idiot and they were both so very complex and intricately pieced together, and I had similar feelings when I finished reading both of them. I really liked them both, but again, the "like" fell just a bit short of "love." I'll have to revisit them in the next few years, because I have a feeling my perspective might shift and I'll find something totally different than I remembered.

I really like a Cátedra edition of Parra's Poemas y antipoemas that I have, because the introduction has a really good explanation of how the three parts are anti-Mistral, anti-Neruda and anti-Parra. I liked how Parra was able to "attack" the two biggest sacred cows of Chilean poetry without seeming mean-spirited, especially when he turns his poetry upon himself in the third part of that collection. I've been meaning to find more books of his...

I started Men of Maize yesterday. My mouth just hung open at the beautiful language. I suspect it will be one that I don't read to the end but it won't matter, I'm reading it for the poetic language. Tell me if I MUST read to the end (to find out something spectacular). Thanks to the person who recommended it.

Considering the Nobel prize, I think the yardstick should be Hemingway. Has the author written something better than any of H's books? In the case of Llosa, at least Conversation and War at the End...He may have won much earlier if he had not been viewed as a political reactionary. I don't know it he really was or is, but his at the very least free-market liberal approach to politics was abhorrent to many, including Marquez (and me, but i don't count here).
So he deserves the prize.

Maybe Fuentes would have gotten it if he hadn't written that tripe about his affair with Jean Seberg.

I think I prefer Hemingway, although it's been a few years since I read any of his novels. One way or the other, it's a very subjective judgement. They're both very different writers...

The thing I can't wrap my head around is, if politics plays such a big part in the granting of the Nobel Prize in Literature, if Borges never got one because he lunched with Videla, accepted a prize from Pinochet and so on, then why and how did Camilo José Cela ever get his?

Still making up for Hemingway.

#24--I actually like a lot of Cela's work--even though he kills me off in Christ vs. Arizona. As well I don't think he ever really hung around Franco or any of his buddies--maybe I'm wrong. He had a low level job as a censor for a short while right after the Spanish Civil War. Definitely on the wrong side of that IMO--Miguel Delibes as well--in their defense they were both really young--don't think that his work on post civil war Spain painted very many pretty pictures. Lots of prostitution and sinning priests--all very ironically drawn.

#24--I actually like a lot of Cela's work--even though he kills me off in Christ vs. Arizona. As well I don't think he ever really hung around Franco or any of his buddies--maybe I'm wrong. He had a low level job as a censor for a short while right after the Spanish Civil War. Definitely on the wrong side of that IMO--Miguel Delibes as well--in their defense they were both really young--don't think that his work on post civil war Spain painted very many pretty pictures. Lots of prostitution and sinning priests--all very ironically drawn.

But he got the award for The Family of Pascual Duarte--they do that sometimes. The would have with Rulfo if the bottle hadn't taken him away.

26: I looked into Cela's past the other day. A historian named Pere Ysàs wrote a book in 2004 which included evidence that Cela was a willing informant to the Franco regime, handing over the names of non-conformist and possibly-bribable intellectuals. Here's a link that talks about it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/books.spain

Fascist snitch, that's pretty damning...although I will some day try to put all that out of my mind and read La familia de Pascual Duarte and La colmena. Maybe I'll do a quick rotation through famous writers with fascist tendencies, Leopoldo Lugones/Louis-Ferdinand Céline/Camilo José Cela...

@28: I'd never heard much tell of Rulfo's alcoholism, and it seems to be a bit of a hush-hush subject in biographies about the author. Maybe that did play a part in his decision not to publish anything after Pedro Páramo.

Here's a letter from Juan Carlos Onetti to Juan Rulfo regarding the rampant attempts to explain his silence (I've been enjoying this database of Onetti-related documents I found the other day):

Madrid, May 20, 1985

My dear Juan:

In a secretive and hurried manner I write you these lines with the friendly purpose of warning you. That experienced seductor and devious manufacturer of poems who wears, with incomprehensible vanity, the name of Félix Grande, the fellow who years ago dethroned, I believe permanently, my happy tranquility, so isolated from the literary world, today proposes to do the same to you.

Through very well-compensated sources I have learned that Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos is stealthily and treacherously preparing a monographic volume dedicated to your person and that silence you mysteriously maintain. All of the corrupt collaborators that Félix Grande is able to buy off in order to achieve his unspeakable intention will undoubtedly ask themselves why Juan Rulfo hasn't written more than "Pedro Páramo and "El llano en llamas," and I very much fear an abundance of pseudo-sagacious investigators providing answers to this phenomenon.

Apparently--and readers will surely see it this way--the dedication of a monographic edition to Juan or to Pedro, above all by a cultural publication with the prestige of Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, represents an homage, a recognition of the literary value of the monographed individual. But the truth is that the reader, turning pages, comes to see that absolutely every one of the collaborators, in innocent conspiracy, only writes about the same topic, one after the other, and he ends up hating the thus-homaged writer. This is known as saturation, a treacherous knifestroke. Because they don't even consult the poor fellow, victimized all the same whether he is dead or whether he still breathes. In any such circumstances, he is prohibited from defending himself and his readers, hung over from the experience, will never again return to his books.

I hope that at this occasion you will know to keep quiet, make an effort not to respond to letters, flee from interviews and any other form of publicity. Remain silent no matter how hard it is and stay put in your little corner of Mexico where you dedicate yourself to achieving indigenous happiness.

For my part, satisfying my legitimate desire to annoy, with those annoyances that fortify friendship, hug you and ask you for the thousandth time: "My dear Juan, have you finished 'Cordillera'?"

And you'll answer no, also for the thousandth time, and you'll keep intoxicating yourself with your immortal Coca-Cola, legitimate pride of the Yankee culture.

Faithfully yours,

Juan Carlos Onetti

Onetti if one of the few writer whose every word pleases me. First there was Body Snatcher, which gave me a feeling similar to what Arlt gave me. Then A Brief Life finished me off.

I never suggest that A Brief Life is the best this or that, knowing it simply isn't for everyone--since this is the Vargas Llosa post, I will say that I often consider Conversation in the Cathedral to be the best something or other, recommend it without reserve...

So thanks, 615, for the letter.

#29--Good luck on Celine. A great writer by the way. Maybe not entirely sane. The Nazis did want to use him for propaganda purposes but he had a strong antipathy towards Germans in general. Besides that he was slovenly, uncouth , had a taste for obscenity and was unpredictable and besides which he was always mouthing off about what failures they were. He was hated as well by almost the entire Vichy regime for similar reasons. There's tons of biographical material on this. It's a wonder he survived the war and the ten years or so after. Pretty much universally detested by big shots of every stripe.

A good left wing comparitive to Celine is the Belgian Louis Paul Boon. Chapel Road is fantastic. More of a reach but in the same ballpark Arno Schmidt.

As for Cela--there's some shit under the surface for sure. A great writer IMO. Very unique. His style is singularly recognizable. One doesn't get a pro-fascist ideology out of his work.

Journey to the End of the Night, along with Conversations in the Cathedral, Fado Alexandrino, and A Brief Life are among my triply read.

One thing to remember is great writers can be scumbags--at least in part. Put another way you'd might not really want to meet and/or get to know them. The other side of Celine's virulent anti-semitism/racist ideology--is it doesn't show up in his fiction. Another side of Celine was he was a doctor with a general practice who pretty much threw away a high society career to work in one of the worst Paris slums and often didn't charge those who came through his doors (many of whom couldn't afford it) anything--and did that for many, many years. During the occupation though he was considered a collaborationist by many he treated French resistance patients discreetly like any other patients and knowing full well who they were. Celine was also a disabled WWI vet.

To Cela--no doubt there's something very sinsister about him. In some respects though we can look at Sartre, Heidegger even Hemingway and find similar traits to Cela's. For instance Hemingway's dispute with Dos Passos which started after the murder of a POUM friend of Dos Passos by communist agents during the Spanish Civil War.

Coetzee's recent Summertime nicely illustrates how the great writer can be a person of questionable character. A really interesting book

@34: I agree with you here, and I certainly am willing to read a book by a person I might not like. I think it's easy for someone of my generation (born in the 80s) to look at the first half of the 20th century and come to some fairly rigid conclusions about who was right and who was very, very wrong. With the frame of mind that the fascists of the 1930s were the most wrong of all, it's hard for me to want to approach an author who was at all connected to fascism.

But I don't necessarily think that's the right approach, considering that I am judging them with the weight of history on my side...Céline, for one, is an author that I am very curious about, and I would like to read the copy of Voyage au bout de la nuit that I bought last year, not forgetting about who the author was, but utilizing his background to (hopefully) better understand his book. I mean, if Juan Carlos Onetti is one of my favorite authors, I am very curious to read an author who was in turn one of his favorites.

If Onetti is one of your favorite authors you belong in the pantheon of great readers.

But something helpful: Vonnegut wrote a great essay on Celine in one of his collections. If you can find that and read it, the next step will be easy.

Another consideration: Celine wrote his book in the late 20s I think, or started it then. It has nothing to do with fascism. And i think for him fascism was misanthropism. The great Alvaro Mutis has Maqroll reading about the Vendee counter-revolution in one or more novel: I believe both Mutis and Celine respond to the notion of the individual in history, rejecting anti-human forms of thought, which are all that are used to communicate during times of war--nobody seems worth a shit during war...Not that Mutis was anywhere near the right, but like yet another great writer of European war experience, Cendrars, he had a refined sense of the human, the human experience, and wrote 'minutely' about moments and people, which to them seem to supercede societal events in meaning.

And there is Hamsun, a sad fellow, so long after Mysteries and Hunger...

There is a true crime book by A. Louise Staman -With the stroke of a pen which fascinatingly details life within the French literary scene during the WWII occupation. The crime revolves around the murder of the French publisher Robert DeNoel shortly after the liberation. DeNoel's publishing house like the other majors Gallimard and Hachette all had to collaborate to operate at all and at the same all tried to hide it and tried like hell to make their competitors look like shit. Gaston Gallimard had a real hatred for DeNoel--Celine was in DeNoel's house--had done more than any other author to make his publishing company what it was but was also a collosal ongoing headache for his publisher--at the same time Gallimard considered Celine to be the one writer who had gotten away and in fact kind of thought of him as stolen property. After DeNoel's death the company was literally stolen away from DeNoel's widow and Celine would eventually sign up with Gallimard. Then he became Gallimard's headache with his constant demands for more money etc.--numerous nasty innuendo's throughout his last 3 books about what a jerk Gallimard and various lackey's was/were and more than once more or less accusing them of DeNoel's demise.

Anyway Mutis is another excellent South American writer well worth reading.

interesting--thanks

@37: that's great; being a born-and-raised Hoosier, Vonnegut is near and dear to my heart. I've been thinking about making a pilgrimage up the highway to Naptown to see the new Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library some weekend. I'll be sure to keep Vonnegut, one of my childhood heroes, firmly in mind when I give Céline a go.

Here's a quote I found by Vonnegut regarding Céline:

"Compulsively, with no financial gain in prospect, and understanding that many people will believe that I share many of his authentically vile opinions, I continue to say good things about this man. And my name is most snugly tied to his in the Penguin paperback editions of his last three books, Castle to Castle, North, and Rigadoon. My name is on each cover: 'With a new introduction,' it says, 'by Kurt Vonnegut.'"

I've been reading Vargas Llosa's autobiography A Fish in the Water. I stumbled across it in a friends of the library book sale and thought it looked interesting, though I had heard of him I'd never read any of his books. Once I finish this (which is quite weighty) I'll have to follow up with his other work. At the moment I'm still working my way through his very interesting childhood.

Though I have despised his politics, his A Conversation in the Cathedral is one of the best books I have ever read. And a very different book, The War of the End of the World, is an amazing work, best read with the da Cunha contemporary work.