Question about Mario Vargas Llosa

I had taken Llosa's novel Death in the Andes down off my shelf to read at long last. However, I note here on LT that this novel is Book 4 in the Novelas de Lituma series. Is this a series that must be read in order or five independent novels? Thanks!

FWIW I'm not sure of the other three--my guess would be that two of them are Captain Pantoja and the Special Service and Who killed Palomino Molero?--but I don't think it's strictly necessary to read them in order. I didn't. That said it probably wouldn't hurt to read them in order.

Death in the Andes is I think the second Mario Vargas Llosa book I read. The first would have been the Green House. Conversation in the Cathedral (which is kind of massive) turned me into a huge fan and I've read most of his fiction. There are some weaker ones. Death in the Andes is kind of in the middle for me. The Feast of the Goat, The war of the end of the world and Alejandro Mayta are three others of his I particularly liked.

According to LT the Novelas de Lituma series (http://www.librarything.com/series/Novelas+de+Lituma) is

1 - The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa
2 - The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta by Mario Vargas Llosa
3 - Who Killed Palomino Molero? by Mario Vargas Llosa
4 - Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa
5 - The Discreet Hero: A Novel by Mario Vargas Llosa

I should have included this info in my original post.

>2 lriley:

I'm surprised to hear you're such a fan. His recent-ish essays (assuming newspaper articles and opinion pieces count as such) reveal him as such an obtuse reactionary I dumped everything I had of his fiction.

>4 LolaWalser: That aside, do you know whether or not this is an actual series?

#4--somewhere along the line MVL embraced neo-liberal politics. I know he made a run for Peruvian President and failed. No--I don't think I care much for his politics. I wouldn't be voting for him for dogcatcher. In any case I've deliberately avoided his non-fiction and essays. If you look in my library you won't find any of that.

There are some things going on his fiction though that are very interesting. The war of the end of the world for instance is kind of a historical novel about a Brazilian peasant's rebellion back in the 19th century. The peasants are arrayed against all the powers of the state--the army, the church, the monied interests and of course they get clobbered but it's like one of those events that can easily disappear from history (and shouldn't) and Mario's rendering of this is not all that unlike Zola's Germinal. His two dictator novels--the first Conversation in the Cathedral is just outstanding---he wrote that as a young man before his forays into politics and he seems obviously to be on the left then. I'd mention as well The feast of the Goat--which is about Trujillo--the Dominican Republic's dictator who was an absolute monster--an American supported regime--that's a great book too and quite similar in tone and effect to Manuel Vazquez Montalban's Galindez--which is also about Trujillo's dictatorship. The last I'd mention is The dream of the Celt--which is about Roger Casement--an Anglo/Irish revolutionary and key figure behind the Easter rebellion who just also happened to be gay--his personal diaries used against him in trial giving the British state that extra bit of cover to turn him into an unsympathetic character and execute him.

I have no idea why MVL has such shitty politics but he can be a very interesting writer and some of his subject matter is IMO worth taking a look at.

Alejandro Mayta by the way takes a sympathetic look at a Latin American communist--the sometimes almost horrific sacrifices he makes to stay true to his politics with bits here and there about liberation theology.

>5 rocketjk:

If I knew, I'd have told. Is this your passive-aggressive way of telling me not to have a conversation with someone else posting in this thread on some other topic? :)

>6 lriley:

Time's getting ever shorter and god knows there's tons of splendid writing I'll miss out on no matter what, so I'm increasingly reluctant to engage with legacies of dipshits. Vargas Llosa's type of shittiness is something transcending turncoat politics, I think, so not sure I should sacrifice time to him of any "period". Plus some of the stuff of his I'd read was simply lies and simply stupid. He accused Spanish socialists of planning to teach children to masturbate and waxed lugubrious on modern trends as taking "the mystery" out of sex. Hard to take a self-proclaimed intellectual seriously after that sort of thing. But I note what you say about a devolution of sorts.

>7 LolaWalser: No. I do that all the time, myself. Sometimes we can get so anxious to respond to a particular post that we overlook the original point of someone's thread. I do try to remember to at least an acknowledge an original poster's question/point even if I'm not able to address it specifically, unless by the time I chime in it's so far down the conversation that the original concept has already been lost. But I can't say I have a perfect record in that regard.

>8 rocketjk:

OK

#7--well I didn't know all that. It sounds pretty rich for someone whose father took him (at puberty) to a brothel so as to make sure he'd turn out a real man--at least I remember that in one of his short stories. He's gotten old, rich and famous and that may have something to do with all that. I think his family growing up were well to do and conservative--military academy and all that and his earlier works seemed to me to be auto-biographical. The revolutionary spirit of his younger years and he turned left but eventually he returns to the place where he started. I like a lot of the novels he has written but not all--he definitely has some crap. His political views do stink.

But I'm getting old too and I don't read as much as I use to.....and I always try to add new writers and from places all over the globe. It was natural that I started reading Vargas Llosa because I went off on this huge Latin American kick at one time. The other thing there was a couple who were local college professors--(Elmira College) who opened up a book store and she taught romance languages + literature courses and her thing was the Nouveau Roman and Latin Boom writers. Her dissertation was on Vargas Llosa's Green House. She kind of opened up a lot of that to me because I was interested. I already knew a whole shitload of French writers--I was a fan of Queneau and Pinget and Le Clezio and had read some Robbe-Grillet and a few others and she would tell stories about how she knew (as in gotten to know) a lot of them and that Claude Simon was a nasty old man and that she loved Robbe-Grillet's work but didn't care for him personally but Pinget, Butor and Sarraute were really nice people. I didn't know that many Latin American writers at that time--I'd dabbled in Garcia Marquez, there was Arlt's one book, maybe Onetti and a couple others. Bolano hadn't even shown up--so that's when that got serious and keep in mind I'm a post office clerk working gravedyards--always short on sleep and playing in recreational ice hockey leagues on the side. I made it through high school with a C+ average--worked a bunch of factory jobs and spent 4 years in the Coast Guard. I'm a bit of an outlier. I don't think there are very many people who turn out like me. But anyway she introduced me to more than just Vargas Llosa--Donoso, Sabato and Cortazar, Roa Bastos and probably Mutis too. She was friends with Luisa Valenzuela who would come to visit her now and again. Some writers I found on my own like Piglia and Parra and Rosario Castellanos.....and then Bolano came along. The thing is it's been a trip and very worthwhile for the most part. That's just a part of the journey I've taken.

>10 lriley:

See, the brothel thing fits for me perfectly with what I've seen of MLV's outlook, in his worldview women exist as erotic objects and little else. The traditional slut-if-not-mother. And nobody, but nobody, romanticises prostitution like Latins do, as if it were a truly mutual transaction. (Of course, this is typical for men of his origins and generation, hardly an exception. Even a communist like Márquez doesn't bat an eye describing buying teenagers to fuck. Neruda, the poet of love, also a communist, tells ingenuously in his memoirs how he raped a servant of untouchable caste in India, without a breath of regret, of any sense that what he did was appalling. One could go on.) Gays discombobulate him as well, no point to them at all unless he can tell himself it's some sort of aestheticised "perversion", an artistic whim. His is a 19th century mind.

But I never meant that there are no good reasons to read him, I was just curious about the attraction for my own guidance.

Well, I don't want to digress further from rocketjk's topic. At least it bumped the thread up some... :)

#10--how it stuck me actually though--and it's not the first time I've run into that with Spanish speaking writers is it's also a catholic thing (and something that your local priest might bless)--keeping your son on the right side or that dread over the potential shame and/or damnation if he happens to turn out homosexual. But it seemed also more the worry for families with money and status. Those on the absolute bottom kind of living chaotically life having to hustle all the time and taking things as they come. That's more the usual though wherever you go. But for me anyway In praise of the stepmother and Aunt Julia and the scriptwriter are among his worse books.


But one of the worst things I've read was the apparently a true story about Carlos Salinas who would later become Mexico's president in the 90's--that when he was a small boy--6/7 years old he shot and killed a servant just out of curiosity. I read that in Charles Bowden's Down by the river. It can be a wicked world.

I can believe it. I saw something like that in Syria once, the armed guards of a VIP's beach house directing a well-dressed boy, presumably of the household, to kick a man lying on the ground, moaning and bleeding. Looked like a beggar. Boy was just that age, no more than 7-8. He kicked, the guards laughed and spurred him on.

In answer to your original question: no, they don't need to be read in order. Death in the Andes follows a character from Who Killed Palermo Moleno (which I can recommend) but is a stand-alone story.

>14 sometimeunderwater: Thank you!

While I would agree that they don't need to be read in order, I read 1 sometime after 4 and really wished I had read 1 first. It was a matter of which book I could find when. I still haven't read 3 and 5. 2 was the very first book I read by Vargas Llosa. It certainly didn't seem like it needed some explanation for any of the events or characters and could be a stand alone.

>16 SassyLassy: Thanks for that. I think I'm just going to jump in with Death in the Andes. If I like it well enough, maybe I'll go back and read these five in order.

What Sassy said. I've read 2, 3 and 4, and slightly wish that I had read 1 first.

>18 kidzdoc: Thanks. I'm starting to think more and more that after I've read Death in the Andes (which I've already started) I'll go back and gradually work my way through the books in the order above.