Alma Mater Literary Blog

A Parenthesis for the Nobel

All Latin Americans and the entire Hispanic American nation are celebrating that the Nobel Prize in literature has returned to a Spanish speaking country. Congratulations to Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian writer who won the 2010 edition of the highest literary prize in the world. As a member of the so called Latin American Literary Boom of the 60’s, and following decades, Vargas Llosa together with Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes and García Márquez lead the movement. García Márquez had won the 1982 Nobel Prize primarily for his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, and overall work.

During my school time, I read together with my classmates La Ciudad y los Perros (The Time of the Hero), Conversación en la Catedral (Conversation in the Cathedral), La Casa Verde (The Green House), Los Jefes (The Cubs and Other Stories,), which became part of our literary analysis framework. My literature teacher, Ruby Díaz, thought that La Casa Verde was his masterpiece by then. I later read La Tía Julia y El Escribidor (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter), which was the book I enjoyed the most from Vargas Llosa, both because of the experience I lived at the moment and the implicit sense of humor, never shown in any other literary work I read by him. I also read La Guerra del Fin del Mundo, which seemed to me somewhat beyond the core realism and style already traditional in the Latin American literary boom. It seemed to me somewhat surreal in relation to its title, and I did not like it at all. Among Vargas Llosa’s greatest achievements is to have become a member of the Real Academia de la Lengua Española since 1996, and he sits on seat L.

When I read Vargas Llosa I thought that his writing style was closer to that of Borges than those of Cortázar or García Márquez, and this is possibly because of his military background. When I read Borges I thought that he was the most European of all Latin Americans in the Latin American literary boom or around it, although this was typical in Cortázar who frequently made it clear with French expressions as in Rayuela. Cortázar even wrote in French, his little known twisted-tongue title Les Autonautes de la Cosmoroute, and also his last book, on how fast people drive in Europe.

Vargas Llosa’s literary work is summarized as follows:

Fiction

* Los Jefes (1959). Incluye los relatos: Los Jefes, El desafío, El hermano menor, Día domingo, Un visitante y El abuelo

* La ciudad y los perros (1962)

* La casa verde (1966), Premio Rómulo Gallegos

* Los cachorros (1967)

* Conversación en La Catedral (1969)

* Pantaleón y las visitadoras (1973)

* La tía Julia y el escribidor (1977)

* La guerra del fin del mundo (1981)

* Historia de Mayta (1984)

* ¿Quién mató a Palomino Molero? (1986)

* El hablador (1987)

* Elogio de la madrastra (1988)

* Lituma en los Andes (1993), Premio Planeta

* Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto (1997)

* La fiesta del chivo (2000)

* El paraíso en la otra esquina (2003)

* Travesuras de la niña mala (2006)

* El sueño del celta (2010)

Essay

* Carta de batalla por Tirant lo Blanc, prólogo a la novela de Joanot Martorell (1969)

* García Márquez: historia de un deicidio (1971)

* Historia secreta de una novela (1971)

* La orgía perpetua: Flaubert y Madame Bovary (1975)

* Entre Sartre y Camus, ensayos (1981)

* Contra viento y marea. Volumen I (1962-1982) (1983)

* La suntuosa abundancia, ensayo sobre Fernando Botero (1984)

* Contra viento y marea. Volumen II (1972-1983) (1986)

* Contra viento y marea. Volumen III (1964-1988) (1990)

* La verdad de las mentiras: ensayos sobre la novela moderna (1990)

* Carta de batalla por Tirant lo Blanc (1991)

* Un hombre triste y feroz, ensayo sobre George Grosz (1992)

* Desafíos a la libertad (1994)

* La utopía arcaica. José María Arguedas y las ficciones del indigenismo (1996)

* Cartas a un joven novelista (1997)

* El lenguaje de la pasión (2001)

* La tentación de lo imposible, ensayo sobre Los Miserables de Victor Hugo (2004)

* El viaje a la ficción, ensayo sobre Juan Carlos Onetti (2008)

Theatre

* La huida del Inca (1952)

* La señorita de Tacna (1981)

* Kathie y el hipopótamo (1983)

* La Chunga (1986)

* El loco de los balcones (1993)

* Ojos bonitos, cuadros feos (1996)

* Odiseo y Penélope (2007)

* Al pie del Támesis (2008)

* Las mil y una noches (2010)