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Mario Vargas Llosa

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Mario Vargas Llosa
Mario Vargas Llosa in 2005
Mario Vargas Llosa in 2005
NationalityPeruvian, Spanish
SpouseJulia Urquidi (1955–1964)
Patricia Llosa (1965–)
ChildrenÁlvaro Vargas Llosa
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa
Morgana Vargas Llosa
RelativesErnesto Vargas Maldonado
Dora Llosa Ureta
Website
http://www.mvargasllosa.com

Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (born March 28, 1936) is a Peruvian writer, politician, journalist and essayist. Vargas Llosa is considered one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and world-wide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom.[1][2]

Vargas Llosa rose to fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966[3]), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in the Cathedral (Conversación en la catedral, 1969/1975). He continues to write prolifically across an array of literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. Several, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982), have been adapted as feature films.

Most of Vargas Llosa's works are influenced by the writer's perception of Peruvian society and his own experiences as a native Peruvian. Vargas Llosa contributed to the creation of The New Novel (La Nueva Novela) in Latin America, along with other notable Latin American writers of the time such as Mario Benedetti, Gabriel García Márquez, Miguel Ángel Asturias and João Guimarães Rosa.[4]

Like many Latin American authors, Vargas Llosa has been politically active throughout his career; over the course of his life, he has gradually moved from the political left towards the right. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted. He ran for the Peruvian presidency in 1990 with the center-right Frente Democrático (FREDEMO) coalition, advocating neoliberal reforms. He has subsequently supported moderate conservative candidates.

Early life and family

Mario Vargas Llosa was born to a middle-class family of Spanish descent[5] on March 28, 1936, in the Peruvian provincial city of Arequipa.[6] He was the only child of Ernesto Vargas Maldonado and Dora Llosa Ureta, who separated a few months before his birth.[6] Shortly after Mario's birth, his father revealed that he was having an affair with a German woman; consequently, Mario has two younger half-brothers: Enrique and Ernesto Vargas.[7]

Vargas Llosa lived with his maternal family in Arequipa until a year after his parents' divorce, when his maternal grandfather was named honorary consul for Peru in Bolivia.[6] With his mother and her family, Vargas Llosa then moved to Cochabamba, Bolivia, where he spent the first years of his childhood.[6] His maternal family, the Llosas, were sustained by his grandfather, who also managed a cotton farm.[8] As a child Vargas Llosa was led to believe that his father had died—his mother and her family did not want to explain that his parents had separated.[9] During the government of Peruvian President José Bustamante y Rivero, Vargas Llosa's maternal grandfather obtained a diplomatic post in the Peruvian coastal city of Piura and the entire family returned to Peru.[9] While in Piura, Vargas Llosa attended elementary school at the religious academy Colegio Salesiano.[10] In 1946, at the age of ten, he moved to Lima and met his father for the first time.[10] His parents re-established their relationship and lived in Magdalena del Mar, a middle-class Lima suburb, during his teenage years.[11] While in Lima he studied at the Colegio La Salle, a Christian middle school, from 1947 to 1949.[12] When Vargas Llosa was fourteen, his father sent him to the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima.[13]

A year before his graduation, Vargas Llosa began working as an amateur journalist for local newspapers.[14] He withdrew from the military academy and finished his studies in Piura, where he worked for the local newspaper, La Industria, and witnessed the theatrical performance of his first dramatic work, La huida del inca.[15]

In 1953, during the government of Manuel A. Odría, Vargas Llosa enrolled in Lima's National University of San Marcos to study law and literature.[16] He married Julia Urquidi, his maternal uncle's sister-in-law, in 1955 at the age of 19; she was 13 years older.[14] Vargas Llosa began his literary career in earnest in 1957 with the publication of his first short stories, The Leaders (Los jefes) and The Grandfather (El abuelo), while working for two Peruvian newspapers.[17] Upon his graduation from the National University of San Marcos in 1958, he received a scholarship to study at the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain.[18] In 1960, after his scholarship in Madrid had expired, Vargas Llosa moved to France under the impression that he would receive a scholarship to study there; however, upon arriving in Paris he learned that it would not materialize.[19] Despite Mario and Julia's poor economic status, the couple decided to remain in Paris where he began to write prolifically.[19] Their marriage lasted only a few more years, ending in divorce in 1964.[20] A year later, Vargas Llosa married his first cousin, Patricia Llosa,[20] with whom he had three children: Álvaro Vargas Llosa (born 1966), a writer and editor; Gonzalo (born 1967), a businessman; and Morgana (born 1974), a photographer.

Writing career

Beginning and first major works

Vargas Llosa's first novel, The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros), was published in 1963. The book is set among a community of cadets in a Lima military school, and the plot is based on the author's own experiences at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy.[21] This early piece gained wide public attention and immediate success.[22] Its vitality and adept use of sophisticated literary techniques immediately impressed critics,[23] and it won the Premio de la Crítica Española award.[22] Nevertheless, its sharp criticism of the Peruvian military establishment led to a strong negative reception in Peru. Several Peruvian generals attacked the novel by claiming that it was the work of a "degenerate mind" and stating that Vargas Llosa was "paid by Ecuador" to undermine the prestige of the Peruvian Army.[22]

In 1965, Vargas Llosa followed The Time of the Hero with The Green House (La casa verde), about a brothel called "The Green House" and how its quasi-mythical presence affects the lives of the characters. The main plot follows Bonifacia, a girl who is about to receive the vows of the church, and her transformation into la Selvatica, the best-known prostitute of "The Green House". The novel immediately received an enthusiastic critical reception, confirming Vargas Llosa as an important voice of Latin American narrative.[24] The Green House won the first edition of the Rómulo Gallegos International Novel Prize in 1967, contending with works by veteran Uruguayan writer Juan Carlos Onetti and by Gabriel García Márquez.[25] This novel alone accumulated enough awards to place the author among the leading figures of the Latin American boom.[26] Some critics still consider The Green House to be Vargas Llosa's finest and most important achievement.[26] Indeed, Latin American literary critic Gerald Martin suggests that The Green House is "one of the greatest novels to have emerged from Latin America".[26]

Vargas Llosa's third novel, Conversation in the Cathedral (Conversación en la catedral), was published in 1969, when he was 33. This ambitious narrative is built around the stories of Santiago Zavala, the son of a minister, and Ambrosio, his chauffeur.[27] A random meeting at a dog pound leads the pair to a riveting conversation at a nearby bar known as "the Cathedral".[28] During the encounter Zavala searches for the truth about his father's role in the murder of a notorious Peruvian underworld figure, shedding light on the workings of a dictatorship along the way. Unfortunately for Zavala, his quest results in a dead end with no answers and no sign of a better future.[29] The novel attacks the dictatorial government of Odría by showing how a dictatorship controls and destroys lives.[22] The persistent theme of hopelessness makes Conversation in the Cathedral Vargas Llosa's most bitter novel.[29]

1970s and the "discovery of humor"

In 1971, Vargas Llosa published García Márquez: Story of a Deicide (García Márquez: historia de un deicidio) as his doctoral thesis for the University of London. His thesis was later published as a book.[30] Although Vargas Llosa wrote this book-length study about his then friend, Nobel prize-winning Columbian author Gabriel García Márquez, they have not spoken to each other in more than 30 years. In 1976, Vargas Llosa punched García Márquez in the face in Mexico City at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, ending the friendship.[31] Journalist Francisco Igartua, Vargas Llosa’s friend, witnessed the event. In his book, Huellas de un Destierro, Igartua states that after knocking García Márquez out, leaving him on the floor, Vargas Llosa said: "That’s for what you did to Patricia in Barcelona."[32] Neither writer has publicly stated the underlying reasons for the quarrel.[33] A photo of García Márquez's black eye was published in 2007, reigniting public interest in the feud.[34] Despite the decades of silence, Vargas Llosa recently agreed to allow part of his book to be used as the introduction to a new edition of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, which is being re-released in Spain and throughout Latin America.[35]

Following the monumental work Conversation in the Cathedral, Vargas Llosa's literary career shifted away from more serious themes such as politics and problems with society. Latin American literature scholar Raymond L. Williams describes this phase of works as "the discovery of humor".[36] His first attempt at a satirical novel was Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (Pantaleón y las visitadoras), published in 1973.[37] This shorter, humorous novel offers vignettes of dialogues and documents about the Peruvian armed forces and a corps of prostitutes assigned to visit military outposts in remote jungle areas.[38] These aspects of the plot are similar to Vargas Llosa's earlier novel The Green House; in fact, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service is essentially a parody of both The Green House and the literary approach that novel represents.[38] Vargas Llosa's motivation to write the novel came from actually witnessing prostitutes hired by the Peruvian Army and brought to serve soldiers in the jungle.[39]

From 1974 to 1987, Vargas Llosa focused on his writing, while still taking time to pursue other endeavors.[40] In 1975, he co-directed a motion-picture adaptation of his novel, Captain Pantoja and the Secret Service.[40] Following that unsuccessful production, he was elected President of the International PEN, a worldwide association of writers.[40] During this time Vargas Llosa constantly travelled to speak at conferences organized by a number of internationally renowned institutions, such as the University of Jerusalem and the University of Cambridge.[41]

In 1977, Vargas Llosa published Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (La tía Julia y el escribidor), based in part on his marriage to his first wife, Julia Urquidi, to whom he dedicated the novel.[42] She later wrote a memoir, Lo que Varguitas no dijo (What Little Vargas Didn't Say), in which she gives her personal account of their relationship. She states that Vargas Llosa's account exaggerates many negative points in their courtship and marriage while minimizing her role of assisting his literary career.[43] Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is considered one of the most striking examples of how the language and imagery of popular culture can be used in literature.[44] The novel has been adapted into a Hollywood feature film, Tune in Tomorrow.

Later novels

Vargas Llosa's fourth major novel, The War of the End of the World (La guerra del fin del mundo), was published in 1981 and was his first attempt at a historical novel.[45] This work initiated a radical change in Vargas Llosa's style towards themes like messianism and the irrational behaviour of humans.[46] It fictionally recreates the War of Canudos, an incident in 19th-century Brazil in which an armed millenarian cult held off a siege by the national army for months.[47] As in Vargas Llosa's earlier work, this novel carries a sober and serious theme, with an overall dark tone.[47] Vargas Llosa's bold exploration of humanity's propensity to idealize violence and his account of a man-made catastrophe brought on from the unexpected consequences of fanaticism earned the novel substantial recognition.[48] Because of the ambition and execution of its theme, critics have argued that this is one of Vargas Llosa's greatest literary pieces.[48] Even though the book has been acclaimed in Brazil, it was initially poorly received because a foreigner was writing about a Brazilian theme.[49] The book was also criticized as revolutionary and anti-socialist.[50] Vargas Llosa claims that this book is his favorite and was his most difficult accomplishment.[50]

After completing The War of the End of the World, Vargas Llosa began to write novels that were significantly shorter than his earlier books. In 1983, he finished The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (Historia de Mayta, 1984).[45] The novel focuses on a leftist insurrection that took place on May 29, 1962 in the Andean city of Jauja.[45] After completing The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, Vargas Llosa was asked by the Peruvian President Fernando Belaúnde Terry to join the Investigatory Commission, a task force to inquire into the horrific massacre of eight journalists at the hands of the villagers of Uchuraccay.[51] The Commission's main purpose was to investigate the murders in order to provide information regarding the incident to the public.[52] Unfortunately for Vargas Llosa, his involvement with the Investigatory Commission led to immediate negative reactions and slandering from the Peruvian press; many suggested that the massacre was a conspiracy to keep the journalists from reporting the presence of government paramilitary forces in Uchuraccay.[52] Following his involvement with the Investigatory Commission, Vargas Llosa published a series of articles to defend his position in the affair.[52] In 1986, Vargas Llosa completed his next novel, Who Killed Palomino Molero (¿Quién mató a Palomino Molero?), which he began writing shortly after the end of the Uchuraccay investigation.[52] Though the plot of this mystery novel is similar to the tragic events at Uchuraccay, literary critic Roy Boland points out that it was not an attempt to reconstruct the murders, but rather a "literary exorcism" of Vargas Llosa's own experiences during the commission.[53]

It would be almost 20 years before Vargas Llosa wrote another major work; The Feast of the Goat (La fiesta del chivo), a political thriller, was published in 2000 (and in English in 2001). According to Williams, it is Vargas Llosa's most complete and most ambitious novel since The War of the End of the World.[54] It is based on the historical dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, who governed the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. The novel has three main strands: one concerns Urania Cabral, the daughter of a former political figure and Trujillo loyalist, who returns for the first time since leaving the Dominican Republic after Trujillo's assassination 30 years earlier; the second concentrates on the assassination itself, the conspirators who carry it out, and its consequences; the third and final strand deals with Trujillo himself in scenes from the end of his regime.[54] The book quickly received positive reviews in Spain and Latin America,[55] and has had a significant impact on the Latin American world, being regarded as one of Vargas Llosa's best pieces of work.[54]

In 2006, Vargas Llosa's wrote The Bad Girl (Travesuras de la niña mala), which journalist Kathryn Harrison approvingly argues is a rewrite (rather than simply a recycling) of the French modernist Gustave Flaubert's classic novel Madame Bovary (1856).[56] In Vargas Llosa's version, the plot relates the decades-long obsession of its narrator, a Peruvian expatriate, with a woman with whom he first fell in love when both were teenagers.

Later life and political involvement

File:Fredemo-vargasllosa.jpg
Vargas Llosa 1990 election poster

Like many Latin American intellectuals, Vargas Llosa was initially a supporter of the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro.[24] He studied Marxism in depth as a university student and was later seduced by communist ideals after the success of the Cuban Revolution.[57] Gradually, Vargas Llosa realized that Cuban socialism was incompatible with what he considered to be general liberties and freedoms.[58] The official rupture between the writer and the policies of the Cuban government occurred when Fidel Castro imprisoned the poet Herberto Padilla. Vargas Llosa, along with other intellectuals of the time, wrote a letter to Castro protesting against the Cuban political system and the imprisonment of the artist.[59] Vargas Llosa has identified himself with right-wing political ideologies ever since.[60] Since he relinquished his earlier leftism, he has opposed both left- and right-wing authoritarian regimes.[61]

During the 1980s, Vargas Llosa became increasingly politically active in his native country. In 1983, during the Sendero Luminoso uprising, he experienced what literary critic Jean Franco calls "the most uncomfortable event in [his] political career" when he was appointed to the Investigatory Commission.[62] The commission concluded that it was the indigenous villagers who had been responsible for the killings; for Vargas Llosa the incident showed "how vulnerable democracy is in Latin America and how easily it dies under dictatorships of the right and left".[63] These conclusions, and Vargas Llosa personally, came under intense criticism: anthropologist Enrique Mayer, for instance, accused him of "paternalism",[64] while fellow anthropologist Carlos Iván Degregori criticized him for his ignorance of the Andean world.[65] Vargas Llosa was accused of actively colluding in a government cover-up of army involvement in the massacre.[52] Above all, as Latin American literature scholar Misha Kokotovic summarizes, the novelist was charged with seeing "indigenous cultures as a 'primitive' obstacle to the full realization of his Western model of modernity".[66] Shocked both by the atrocity itself and then by the reaction his report had provoked, Vargas Llosa responded that his critics were apparently more concerned with his report than with the hundreds of peasants who would later die at the hands of Sendero.[67] As Franco notes, the experience also inspired one of Vargas Llosa's later novels, Death in the Andes (Lituma en los Andes) originally published in 1993 in Barcelona.[62]

Vargas Llosa at the founding act of UPD, September 2007

Over the course of the decade, Vargas Llosa also became known for his staunch neoliberal views. In 1987, he helped form and soon became a leader of the Movimiento Libertad.[68] The following year his party entered a coalition with the parties of Peru's two principal conservative politicians at the time, ex-president Fernando Belaúnde Terry (of the Popular Action party) and Luis Bedoya Reyes (of the Partido Popular Cristiano), to form the tripartite center-right coalition known as Frente Democrático (FREDEMO).[68] He ran for the presidency of Peru in 1990 as the candidate of the FREDEMO coalition. He proposed a drastic economic austerity program that frightened most of the country's poor; this program emphasized the need for privatization, a market economy, free trade, and most importantly, the dissemination of private property.[69] During the campaign, his opponents read racy passages from his novels over the radio in an apparent attempt to shock voters. Although he won the first round with 34% of the vote, Vargas Llosa was defeated by a then-unknown agricultural engineer, Alberto Fujimori, in the subsequent run-off.[69] Vargas Llosa included an account of his run for the presidency in the memoir El pez en el agua (1993), published in an English-language translation (by Helen Lane) as A Fish in the Water.[70] Since his defeat, Vargas Llosa has focused mainly on his writing, with only an occasional political involvement.[71]

He has mainly lived in London since his electoral defeat,[72] but spends roughly three months of the year in his native Peru.[69] Vargas Llosa also acquired Spanish citizenship in 1993; not only does he frequently visit Spain for various conferences, but he also enjoys vacationing there.[72] In 1994 he was elected a member of the Real Academia Española (Spanish Royal Academy)[72] and has also been involved in the country's political arena. In February 2008 he stopped supporting the Partido Popular in favor of the recently created Union, Progress and Democracy, claiming that certain conservative views held by the former party are at odds with his liberal beliefs. His political ideologies appear in the book Política razonable, written with Fernando Savater, Rosa Díez, Álvaro Pombo, Albert Boadella and Carlos Martínez Gorriarán.[73] He continues to write, both journalism and fiction, and to travel extensively. He has also taught as a visiting professor at a number of prominent universities.[74]

Style

Plot, setting, and major themes

An English translation of The Feast of the Goat (2000) from 2001

Vargas Llosa's style encompasses historical material as well as his own personal experiences.[75] For example, in his first novel, The Time of the Hero, his own experiences at the Leoncio Prado military school informed his depiction of the corrupt social institution which mocked the moral standards it was supposed to uphold.[21] Furthermore, the corruption of the book's school is a reflection of the corruption of Peruvian society at the time the novel was written.[23] Vargas Llosa frequently uses his writing to challenge the inadequacies of society, such as demoralization and oppression by those in political power towards those who challenge this power. One of the main themes he has explored in his writing is the individual's struggle for freedom within an oppressive reality.[76] A good example of this is his two-volume novel, Conversation in the Cathedral, which is based on the tyrannical dictatorship of Peruvian President Manuel A. Odría.[77] The protagonist, Santiago, rebels against the suffocating dictatorship by participating in the subversive activities of leftist political groups.[78] In addition to themes such as demoralization and oppression, Vargas Llosa's second novel, The Green House, explores "a denunciation of Peru's basic institutions", dealing with issues of abuse and exploitation of the workers in the brothel by corrupt military officers.[36]

Many of Vargas Llosa's earlier novels were set in Peru, while in more recent work he has expanded to other regions of Latin America, such as Brazil and the Dominican Republic.[79] His responsibilities as a writer and lecturer have allowed him to travel frequently and led to settings for his novels in regions outside of Peru.[40] The War of the End of the World is his first major work set outside Peru.[22] Though the plot deals with historical events of the Canudos revolt against the Brazilian government, the novel is not based directly on historical fact; rather, its main inspiration is the non-fiction account of those events published by Brazilian writer Euclides da Cunha in 1902.[47] The Feast of the Goat, based on the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, takes place in the Dominican Republic;[54] in preparation for this novel, Vargas Llosa undertook a comprehensive study of Dominican history.[80] The novel was characteristically realist, and Vargas Llosa underscores that he "respected the basic facts, [. . .] I have not exaggerated", but at the same time he points out "It's a novel, not a history book, so I took many, many liberties."[81]

One of Vargas Llosa's more recent novels, The Way to Paradise (El paraíso en la otra esquina), is set largely in France and Tahiti.[82] Based on the biography of former social reformer, Flora Tristan, he demonstrates how Flora and Paul Gauguin were unable to find paradise, but were still able to inspire followers to keep working towards a socialist utopia.[83] Unfortunately, Vargas Llosa was not as successful in transforming these historical figures into fiction. Some critics, such as Barbara Mujica, argue that The Way to Paradise lacks the "audacity, energy, political vision, and narrative genius" that was present in his previous works.[84]

Modernism and postmodernism

The works of Mario Vargas Llosa are viewed as both modernist and postmodernist novels.[85] Though there is still much debate over the differences between modernist and postmodernist literature, literary scholar M. Keith Booker claims that the difficulty and technical complexity of Vargas Llosa's early works, such as The Green House and Conversation in the Cathedral, are clearly elements of the modern novel.[26] Furthermore, these earlier novels all carry a certain seriousness of attitude—another important defining aspect of modernist art.[85] In contrast to his earlier works, his later novels such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, and The Storyteller (El hablador) appear to follow a postmodernist mode of writing.[86] These novels all carry a much lighter, farcical and comic tone—characteristics of postmodernism.[38] In a comparison of two of Vargas Llosa's novels, The Green House and Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, Booker discusses the contrast between modernism and postmodernism found in the writers works; while both novels explore the theme of prostitution as well as the workings of the Peruvian military, the former is gravely serious whereas the latter is ridiculously comic.[38]

Interlacing dialogues

Literary scholar M. Keith Booker argues that Vargas Llosa perfects the technique of interlacing dialogues in his novel The Green House.[38] By combining two conversations that occur at different times, he creates the illusion of a flashback. Moreover, Vargas Llosa sometimes uses this technique as a means of shifting location by weaving together two concurrent conversations happening in different places.[87] This technique is a staple of his repertoire, which he began using near the end of his first novel, The Time of the Hero,[88] However, he does not use interlacing dialogues in the same way in all of his novels. For example, in The Green House the technique is used in a serious fashion to achieve a sober tone and to focus on the interrelatedness of important events separated in time or space.[89] In contrast, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service employs this strategy for comic effects and uses simpler spatial shifts.[90] This device is similar to both Virginia Woolf's mixing of different characters' soliloquies and Gustave Flaubert's counterpoint technique in which he blends together conversation with other events, such as speeches.[87]

Literary influences

Vargas Llosa's first literary influences were relatively obscure Peruvian writers such as Martín Adán, Carlos Oquendo de Amat, and César Moro.[91] As a young writer, he looked to these revolutionary novelists in search of new narrative structures and techniques in order to delineate a more contemporary, multifaceted experience of urban Peru. He was looking for a style different from the traditional descriptions of land and rural life made famous by Peru's foremost novelist at the time, José María Arguedas.[92] Vargas Llosa wrote of Arguedas's work that it was "an example of old-fashioned regionalism that had already exhausted its imaginary possibilities".[91] Although he did not share Arguedas's passion for indigenous reality, Vargas Llosa admired and respected the novelist for his contributions to Peruvian literature.[93]

Rather than restrict himself to Peruvian literature, Vargas Llosa also searched abroad for literary inspiration. Two French figures, existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre and writer Gustave Flaubert heavily influenced both his technique and style.[94] Sartre's influence is most prevalent in his extensive use of conversation.[95] The epigraph of The Time of the Hero, his first novel, is also taken directly from Sartre's work.[96] Flaubert's artistic independence—the disregard of reality and morals in his novels—has always been admired by Vargas Llosa,[97] who wrote a book-length study of Flaubert's aesthetics, The Perpetual Orgy.[98] In his analysis of Flaubert, Vargas Llosa questions the revolutionary power of literature in a political setting;[99] this is in contrast to his earlier view that "literature is an act of rebellion", thus classifying this work as a transitional book for Vargas Llosa.[99]

One of Vargas Llosa's favourite novelists, and arguably the most influential on his writing career, is the American novelist William Faulkner.[100] Vargas Llosa considers Faulkner "the writer who perfected the methods of the modern novel".[101] Both writers' styles include intricate changes in time and narration.[95][101] In The Time of the Hero, for example, aspects of Vargas Llosa's plot, his main character's development and his use of narrative time are influenced by his favourite Faulkner novel, Light in August.[102]

In addition to the study of Flaubert, Vargas Llosa has written literary criticisms of other authors that he has admired, such as Gabriel García Márquez, Albert Camus, Ernest Hemingway, and Sartre.[103] The main goals of his non-fiction works are to acknowledge the influence of these authors on his writing, and to recognize a connection between himself and the other writers;[103] he offers little systematic analysis of these authors' literary techniques.[103] In The Perpetual Orgy, for example, he discusses the relationship between his own aesthetics and Flaubert's, rather than focusing on Flaubert's alone.[104]

Legacy

Mario Vargas Llosa's signature

Mario Vargas Llosa is considered a major Latin American writer,[105] alongside other greats such as Julio Cortázar, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes.[105] With his contemporaries and the writers of the previous generation, Vargas Llosa is an important contributor to La Nueva Novela (The New Novel) in Latin America.[106] Indeed, for the literary critic Gerald Martin, writing in 1987, Vargas Llosa was "perhaps the most successful ... [and] certainly the most controversial Latin American novelist of the past twenty-five years".[107]

Most of Vargas Llosa's narratives have been translated into multiple languages, marking his international critical success.[105] Vargas Llosa is also noted for his substantial contribution to journalism, an accomplishment characteristic of few other Latin American writers.[108] He is recognized among those who have most consciously promoted literature in general, and more specifically the novel itself, as avenues for meaningful commentary about life.[109] During his prolific career, he has written more than a dozen novels and many other books and stories, and, for decades, he has been a voice for Latin American literature.[110] He has won numerous awards for his writing, from the 1959 Premio Leopoldo Alas and the 1962 Premio Biblioteca Breve to the 1993 Premio Planeta (for Death in the Andes) and the Jerusalem Prize in 1995.[111] The most important distinction he has received is probably the 1994 Cervantes Prize, usually considered the most important accolade in Spanish-language literature and awarded to authors whose "body of work contributed to enrich, in a notable way, the literary patrimony of the Spanish language".[112]

A number of Vargas Llosa's works have been adapted for the screen, including The Time of the Hero and Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (both by the distinguished Peruvian director Francisco Lombardi) and The Feast of the Goat (by Vargas Llosa's cousin, Luis Llosa).[113] Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter was turned into the English-language film, Tune in Tomorrow. The Feast of the Goat has also been adapted as a theatrical play by Jorge Alí Triana, a Colombian playwright and director.[114]

List of selected works

Fiction

Drama

  • 1952 – La huida del inca
  • 1981 – La señorita de Tacna

Non-fiction

  • 1971 – García Márquez: historia de un deicidio (García Márquez: Story of a Deicide)
  • 1975 – La orgía perpetua: Flaubert y "Madame Bovary" (The Perpetual Orgy)
  • 1990 – La verdad de las mentiras: ensayos sobre la novela moderna (A Writer's Reality)
  • 1993 – El pez en el agua. Memorias (A Fish in the Water)
  • 1996 – La utopía arcaica: José María Arguedas y las ficciones del indigenismo
  • 1997 – Cartas a un joven novelista (Letters to a Young Novelist)
  • 2001 – El lenguaje de la pasión (The Language of Passion)
  • 2004 – La tentación de lo imposible (The Temptation of the Impossible)
  • 2007 – El Pregón de Sevilla (as Introduction for LOS TOROS)

Vargas Llosa's essays and journalism have been collected as Contra viento y marea, issued in three volumes (1983, 1986, and 1990). A selection has been edited by John King and translated and published as Making Waves.

Notes

  1. ^ Boland & Harvey 1988, p. 7
  2. ^ Cevallos 1991, p. 272
  3. ^ The first year given is the original publication date; the second is the year of English publication.
  4. ^ Shaw 1973, p. 431 and Lamb 1971, p. 102
  5. ^ Williams 2001, pp. 15–16
  6. ^ a b c d Williams 2001, p. 17
  7. ^ Morote 1998, p. 14
  8. ^ Morote 1998, pp. 6–7
  9. ^ a b Williams 2001, p. 24
  10. ^ a b Williams 2001, p. 30
  11. ^ Williams 2001, p. 31
  12. ^ Williams 2001, p. 32
  13. ^ Vincent 2007, p. 2
  14. ^ a b Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 9
  15. ^ Williams 2001, p. 34
  16. ^ Williams 2001, p. 39
  17. ^ The newspapers were El Mercurio Peruano and El Comercio. Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 21
  18. ^ Williams 2001, p. 44
  19. ^ a b Williams 2001, p. 45
  20. ^ a b Williams 2001, p. 54
  21. ^ a b Kristal 1998, p. 32
  22. ^ a b c d e Cevallos 1991, p. 273
  23. ^ a b Kristal 1998, p. 33
  24. ^ a b Kristal 1998, p. xi
  25. ^ Armas Marcelo 2002, p. 102. See also I Edition of the International Novel Prize Rómulo Gallegos, Gobierno Bolivariano de Venezuela Ministerio del Poder Popular para La Cultura, retrieved 2008-04-16 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help).
  26. ^ a b c d Booker 1994, p. 6
  27. ^ Kristal 1998, p. 61
  28. ^ Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 80
  29. ^ a b Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 106
  30. ^ Shaw 1973, p. 431
  31. ^ "Todo occurrió en 1976, en el Palacio de Bellas Artes de la ciudad de México. [. . .] todos los presentes quedaron impresionados y sorprendidos por el puñetazo que MVLL propinó a García Márquez cuando el escritor colombiano venía a abrazar al novelista peruano." Armas Marcelo 2002, p. 110
  32. ^ "Esto es por lo que le hiciste a Patricia en Barcelona." Igartua 1998, p. ?? See also Coca, César (August 27, 2006), "30 años después de la ruptura con García Márquez, Vargas Llosa desvela las claves literarias y personales", Hoy, retrieved 2008-04-16 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help) Template:Es icon
  33. ^ Crowe 2007. As Crowe mentions, Rodrigo Moya explores plausible reasons for the friendship's dissolution in an essay titled "The Terrific Story of a Black Eye."
  34. ^ Cohen, Noam (2007-03-29), "García Márquez's Shiner Ends Its 31 Years of Quietude", The New York Times, retrieved 2008-03-31 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  35. ^ Vincent 2007, p. 3
  36. ^ a b Qtd. in Cevallos 1991, p. 273
  37. ^ Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 136
  38. ^ a b c d e Booker 1994, p. 33
  39. ^ Setti 1989, p. 65
  40. ^ a b c d Williams 2001, p. 60
  41. ^ Williams 2001, pp. 60–61
  42. ^ Kristal 1998, p. 91
  43. ^ Kristal 1998, p. 221
  44. ^ Booker 1994, p. 54
  45. ^ a b c Kristal 1998, p. 140
  46. ^ Campos 1981, p. 299
  47. ^ a b c Booker 1994, p. 75
  48. ^ a b Kristal 1998, p. 124
  49. ^ Setti 1989, p. 46
  50. ^ a b Setti 1989, p. 42
  51. ^ Kristal 1998, pp. 150–151
  52. ^ a b c d e Kristal 1998, p. 151
  53. ^ Boland & Harvey 1988, p. 164
  54. ^ a b c d Williams 2001, p. 267
  55. ^ Williams 2001, p. 268
  56. ^ Harrison 2007
  57. ^ Setti 1989, p. 140
  58. ^ Setti 1989, p. 141
  59. ^ Setti 1989, p. 142
  60. ^ Morote 1998, p. 234
  61. ^ Vincent 2007, p. 1
  62. ^ a b Franco 2002, p. 56
  63. ^ Qtd. Kirk 1997, pp. 183–184
  64. ^ Qtd. Kokotovic 2007, p. 172
  65. ^ Qtd. Kokotovic 2007, p. 177
  66. ^ Kokotovic 2007, p. 177
  67. ^ Qtd. Kristal 1999, p. 231
  68. ^ a b Boland & Harvey 1988, p. 8
  69. ^ a b c Parker 2007
  70. ^ Larsen 2000, p. 155
  71. ^ Williams 2001, p. 82
  72. ^ a b c Williams 2001, p. 83
  73. ^ "Escritor Mario Vargas Llosa retira su apoyo al PP y pide el voto para UPyD", Terra Actualidad, 2008-02-25, retrieved 2008-03-22 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help) Template:Es icon
  74. ^ These include Queen Mary, University of London and King's College London, both part of the University of London, the Pullman campus of Washington State University, the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras, Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Georgetown University, and the City University of New York. See "Biographical Sketch". Mario Vargas Llosa Papers. Princeton University Library. Retrieved on 2008-04-14.
  75. ^ Booker 1994, p. 48
  76. ^ Morote 1998, pp. 66–67
  77. ^ Kristal 1998, p. 56
  78. ^ Kristal 1998, p. 59
  79. ^ Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 19
  80. ^ Williams 2001, p. 270
  81. ^ Qtd. in Gussow 2002
  82. ^ Vargas Llosa 2003
  83. ^ Heawood 2003
  84. ^ Mujica 2004
  85. ^ a b Booker 1994, p. 32
  86. ^ Booker 1994, p. 3
  87. ^ a b Booker 1994, p. 14
  88. ^ Booker 1994, p. 13
  89. ^ Booker 1994, p. 35
  90. ^ Booker 1994, pp. 35–36
  91. ^ a b Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 3
  92. ^ Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 4
  93. ^ Kristal 1998, p. 9
  94. ^ Castro-Klarén 1990, pp. 6–7
  95. ^ a b Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 6
  96. ^ Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 34
  97. ^ Kristal 1998, p. 25
  98. ^ Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 115
  99. ^ a b Kristal 1998, p. 81
  100. ^ Kristal 1998, p. 28
  101. ^ a b Kristal 1998, p. 26
  102. ^ Kristal 1998, p. 34
  103. ^ a b c Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 116
  104. ^ Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 119
  105. ^ a b c Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 1
  106. ^ Lamb 1971, p. 102
  107. ^ Martin 1987, p. 205
  108. ^ Castro-Klarén 1990, p. 2
  109. ^ Muñoz 2000, p. 2
  110. ^ Williams 2001, p. 84
  111. ^ "Vargas Llosa Wins The Jerusalem Prize", The New York Times, 1995-01-17, retrieved 2008-03-20 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  112. ^ Premio "Miguel de Cervantes", Gobierno de España - Ministerio de Cultura, retrieved 2008-04-12 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help) Template:Es icon
  113. ^ Mario Vargas Llosa, The Internet Movie Database, retrieved 2008-03-20 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  114. ^ Navarro 2003

References


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