Synopsis
The first collection of essays by the world-renowned Peruvian novelist explores the relationship of literature and politics, the issue of Latin American independence, and the magic realist style of his books, among other topics.
Reviews
A strong selection of the 60-year-old Peruvian novelist's (Death in the Andes, 1996, etc.) journalism and literary essays, spanning 30 years of prodigious, passionate creativity. Such collections of fugitive works by great writers are tricky: Some seem to consist largely of pet peeves and fragmentary musings. That's not the case here. Vargas Llosa writes with compelling insight, verve, and intelligence about even the most modest matters. He is a cosmopolitan figure, having spent a great deal of time in Europe and the US, and the wide range of his knowledge and experience is frequently on display. He writes with vigor and clarity: Essays produced in the 1960s and '70s on, say, the difference between Camus and Sartre, are just as alive and relevant now as when he wrote them. Naturally, Vargas Llosa writes a good deal about politics, especially South American politics. (``The raison d'ˆtre of a writer,'' he reminds us, ``is protest, disagreement, criticism.'') Though politicial essays are especially prone to seeming dated and irrelevant, in Vargas Llosa's hands the opposite is true. He cannily brings out the element of the permanent that inhabits the ephemeral. But perhaps his best efforts in this book are the literary essays. He turns his analytic gaze on Doris Lessing, Grass, Dos Passos, Faulkner, Cort zar, Bataille, Bu¤uel, de Beauvoir, Joyce, Bellow, Rushdie, and Havel, among others, to considerable effect. In addition, he has interesting things to say about such diverse topics as Lorena Bobbit, the British school system, and the grave of Rin Tin Tin. The collection is also of interest because it offers an intimate chronicle of Vargas Llosa's intellectual life, tracing his trajectory from the political left to the right, a transit he has made with admirable honesty and self-criticism. A fine collection demonstrating that, like his American colleague John Updike, Vargas Llosa has done some of his finest writing in essays and reviews. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
The celebrated Peruvian novelist (and onetime candidate for president of his Andean homeland) employs his consummate articulateness to coax the reader into seeing things his way in these essays about authors, locations, and cultural and political movements. "Faulkner in Laberinto" draws interesting parallels between Mississippi and the Amazonian region of Peru. In "The Story of a Massacre," a sad story is documented, that of the murder in Peru of a group of journalists mistakenly thought to be terrorists. "When Madrid Was a Village" nostalgically charts Vargas Llosa's disappointment in Madrid and its university when he went there to study for his doctorate in 1958--but concludes with a fond remembrance of the Madrilenos' hospitality. Other essays, including "My Son the Rastafarian" and "The Penis or Life: The Bobbitt Affair," discuss further personal and social situations for which the author has obvious concern. Brad Hooper
The eminent Peruvian novelist (e.g., Death in the Andes, LJ 10/15/95), whose recent memoir, A Fish in the Water (LJ 5/1/94), recounts his unsuccessful bid for president of his country, lived for many years as an expatriate in Paris and London. He has also produced a substantial body of journalistic writings, and in this omnibus collection covering three decades, selected by his translator King, he addresses topics as diverse as the work of Surrealist filmmaker Bru?el, the World Cup of 1982, and the Lorena Bobbit grotesquerie. While he can stall in laudatory generalities when writing about Isaiah Berlin or John Dos Passos, for example, Vargas Llosa writes most effectively when discussing authors who have profoundly influenced him: Faulkner, Joyce, Sartre. Everywhere his conviction in the value of the writer's metier?"literature is fire"?burns, and the writer's ability to effect social justice in society. He testifies to such a change now taking place in Latin America. Despite a sometimes murky translation, there are some gems here.
-?Amy Boaz "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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