Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa
Mario Vargas Llosa in 2005
Born	(1936-03-28) March 28, 1936 Arequipa, Peru
Nationality	Peruvian, Spanish
Occupation(s)	Writer, Journalist, Essayist, Politician
Spouse(s)	Julia Urquidi (1955-1964) Patricia Llosa (1965-present)
Children	Álvaro Gonzalo Morgana
Parent(s)	Ernesto Vargas Maldonado Dora Llosa Ureta
Website	http://www.mvargasllosa.com/

Mario Vargas Llosa (full name: Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa) (born in Arequipa, Peru on March 28, 1936) is a Peruvian writer, politician, journalist and essayist, considered as one of Latin America's leading novelists and essayists. He has taught at the Queen Mary College and King's College of the University of London, Washington State University (Pullman), the University of Puerto Rico (Río Piedras), at Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Georgetown University and at The City University of New York.. He was hailed in the 1960s as one of the main exponents of the Latin American literary boom, and continues to write prolifically. He is considered to have more of a continued international impact and world-wide audience than any other writer from the Latin American Boom.

Vargas Llosa rose to fame in the 1960s with novels such as La ciudad y los perros (The Time of the Hero), La casa verde (The Green House), and the monumental Conversación en la catedral (Conversation in the Cathedral). He referred to the last of these as a "total novel", because its narrative depicted all levels of society. His novels span many literary genres, including comedy, murder mystery, history, and political thriller. Several, such as Pantaleón y las visitadoras and La tía Julia y el escribidor, have been adapted as feature films (the latter as Tune in Tomorrow).

Like many Latin American authors, Vargas Llosa has been politically active throughout his career. The most notable aspect of his political engagement has been his movement from the political left towards the right. He initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, but later became disenchanted. He ran for the Peruvian presidency in 1990, as the center-right FREDEMO coalition candidate, advocating neoliberal reforms, and has subsequently supported conservative moderates.

Vargas Llosa now lives in Madrid and London and recently took up Spanish citizenship. He only spends about 3 months of the year in his native Peru He has been twice married, and his children include the writer Álvaro Vargas Llosa.

Early life and initial success

Mario Vargas Llosa was born on March 28, 1936, in the Peruvian provincial city of Arequipa to a middle class family of Spanish descent, the only child of Ernesto Vargas Maldonado and Dora Llosa Ureta. His parents had already divorced when he was born, and he would not meet his father until he was ten years old. There are many speculations on why Mario's parent's separated which include Ernesto Vargas's social inferiority to the Llosa family and Dora Llosa's mistreatment and suppression by Mario's father. When Dora Llosa returns pregnant to Arequipa in 1935, Ernesto Vargas ignored her presence and files for divorce. A few months after Mario Vargas Llosa is born, Ernesto reveals his romance with a german woman when Enrique Vargas is born, followed by Ernesto, Mario's half brothers.

After Vargas Llosa's parents divorced, Mario and his mother moved to Cochabamba, Bolivia when he was a year old. He spent his childhood with his maternal family, the Llosas, sustained by his grandfather who managed a cotton farm. While growing up in Cochabamba, his mother and her family told him that his father had died, not that his parents had separated. Vargas Llosa obtained his early education at the local Colegio La Salle. During the government of José Luis Bustamante y Rivero, his paternal grandfather obtained an important political post in the Peruvian coastal city of Piura, which prompted Vargas Llosa and his mother to return to Peru near his grandfather and study in the Colegio Salesiano. In 1946, Vargas Llosa moved to Lima and met his father for the first time. His parents reestablished their relationship and lived in Magdalena del Mar, a middle-class Lima suburb, during his teenage years. While in Lima he studied at the Colegio La Salle. When Vargas Llosa was 14, his father sent him to the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima where the writer claims to have gained influence and inspiration in writing the novel La ciudad y los perros.

A year before his graduation, Vargas Llosa was already working as an amateur journalist for various local newspapers. He withdrew from the military academy and finished his studies in Piura, where he worked for the local newspaper La Industria and, at the same time, where the theatrical performance of his first dramatic work, La Huida del Inca, took place.

During the government of Manuel A. Odría in 1953, Vargas Llosa enrolled in Lima's National University of San Marcos to study law and literature. In 1955, at the age of 19, he married Julia Urquidi, his uncle's sister-in-law; he was 13 years younger than her. In 1959, together he and his wife left to Spain thanks to a Javier Prado scholarship, and pursued his post-graduate studies at the Complutense University of Madrid, from which he received a Ph.D. in and literature. The marriage, however did not last very long and in 1964 Vargas Llosa and Urqudi divorced.

In 1959 Vargas Llosa moved to France where he worked as a Spanish teacher, journalist for Agence-France-Presse, and broadcaster for Radio Télévision Française. He made this move because he felt he was unable to make a living as a serious writer in Peru.

La ciudad y los perros

Vargas Llosa first came to wide public attention as a writer in 1963 with La ciudad y los perros (which literally means "The City and the Dogs," though the book has been translated into English as The Time of the Hero, 1966). The book is based on his teenage experiences at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy. The novel shows influence of the existentialist works of Jean-Paul Sartre, and quotes a dialogue from one of his novels at the beginning of each of its two parts. It also manifested what would become Vargas Llosa's trademark technique, the use of alternating dialogue to portray realities that are separated by space and time, and the use of verb tense to move his narrative back and forth in time; as well as establishing what would become the main theme of his narrative: the fight of the individual in search of freedom in an oppressive reality.

La ciudad y los perros met with wide acclaim, and its author was hailed as one of the main exponents of the Latin American literary boom, alongside writers such as Argentina's Julio Cortázar, Mexico's Carlos Fuentes and Colombia's Gabriel García Márquez.

Major works

The Green House

Vargas Llosa followed La Ciudad y Los Perros by writing La casa verde (The Green House, 1966), a novel that shows the considerable influence that William Faulkner had on the budding writer. Some critics still consider this book to be Vargas Llosa's finest and most important achievement. The novel deals with 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 the transformation that will lead her to become la Selvatica, the best known prostitute of the Green House. The novel immediately received enthusiastic critical reception, confirming Vargas Llosa in his position as an important voice of Latin American narrative. The Green House went on to win the first edition of the Rómulo Gallegos International Novel Prize in 1967, out-voting works by the veteran Uruguayan writer Juan Carlos Onetti and by Gabriel García Márquez. This novel alone accumulated enough awards to place the author amongst the leading figures of the Latin-American boom at the time.

Conversation in the Cathedral

At the age of 33, Vargas Llosa completes his third novel. Critics consider to be his most valuable narrative cycle as well as his most overtly political novel. Published in a four-volume edition, Conversación en la Catedral (Conversation in the Cathedral, 1969) was Vargas Llosa's first attempt at what he calls a "total novel," that is, the depiction of all the levels of a society through fictional narrative. The novel is a portrayal of Peru under the dictatorship of Odría in the 1950s, and deals with the lives of characters from the different social strata of the country. The ambitious narrative is built around two axes, the stories of Santiago Zavala and Ambrosio respectively; one the son of a minister, the other his chauffeur. A random meeting at a dog pound leads to a riveting conversation between the two at a nearby bar known as the Cathedral (hence the title). In the course of the encounter Zavala tries to find the truth about his father's role in the murder of a notorious figure of the Peruvian underworld (this is revealed to the reader towards the end of the novel), shedding light on the workings of a dictatorship along the way. The novel makes sophisticated use of techniques of alternating narrative, as the conversation in the bar is inter-cut with scenes from the past.

The War of the End of the World

La guerra del fin del mundo (The War of the End of the World), published in 1981, is a fictional recreation of 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 a number of months.

The Feast of the Goat

La Fiesta del Chivo,(The Feast of the Goat), published in 2000, is a novel based on the historical dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. "The novel has three main strands. One focuses on Urania Cabral, daughter of a Trujillo loyalist and onetime important political figure, who returns to the Dominican Republic for the first time since she left it over thirty years earlier, just before Trujillo was killed. A second focuses on the conspirators who plan and then carry out the murder of the despot, focusing on the actual assassination, and then the consequences of it. Finally, there is Trujillo himself, as scenes from the end of his regime are recounted. The novel moves back and forth between these strands, and along with them are vignettes and reminiscences of earlier and other times as well."

Other works

Vargas Llosa followed his monumental work Conversación en la catedral with the shorter and much more comic Pantaleón y las visitadoras (Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, 1972), which, through a series of vignettes of dialogues and documents, follows the establishment by the Peruvian armed forces of a corps of prostitutes assigned to visit military outposts in remote jungle areas.

In 1977 Vargas Llosa published La tia Julia y el escribidor (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter), based in part on his first marriage. Julia Urquidi, his ex-wife, later wrote a memoir, Lo que Varguitas no dijo (What Little Vargas Didn't Say) in which she gave her own version of their relationship. Vargas Llosa's novel has been adapted into a Hollywood feature film, Tune in Tomorrow.

Vargas Llosa's most recent novel, Travesuras de la niña mala (2006), 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.

Reception and reputation

Vargas Llosa has long been considered one of the most important of twentieth-century Latin American writers.

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 Lituma en los Andes). The most important distinction he has received to date has probably been the 1994 award of the Cervantes Prize, usually considered the most important prize in Spanish-language literature.

Film adaptations

A number of Vargas Llosa's works have been adapted to the screen, including La ciudad y los perros, Pantaleón y los visitadores (both by the distinguished Peruvian director Francisco Lombardi) and La fiesta del chivo (by Vargas Llosa's own cousin, Luis Llosa). The cast of the last of these movies includes famous actors and actresses such as Paul Freeman, Isabella Rossellini, Tomás Milián and Juan Diego Botto.

Genre and Style

Vargas Llosa's novels include many different literary genres, including comedy (Captain Pantoja and the Special Service), murder mystery (Who Killed Palomino Molero?), historical novel (The War of the End of the World), political thriller (The Feast of the Goat), and erotic (The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto). They are often based on historical events or personal experiences. His writing style often includes intricate changes in time and narrator, similar to that of American novelist William Faulkner, whom Vargas Llosa acknowledges as a literary influence in his account of the novelist's craft A Writer's Reality (La Verdad de las Mentiras) (1991). Vargas Llosa's first novels were set in Peru, but he has broadened his setting over time. Later novels included some set elsewhere in Latin America, such as Brazil (The War of the End of the World (1981)) and the Dominican Republic (Feast of the Goat (2000)). One of his more recent novels (The Road to Paradise (2003)) is set largely in France and Tahiti.

Mario Vargas Llosa's novels are considered to fall under the category of both modernist and postmodernist works. His early works seem to be a modernist vein, such as The Green House and Conversation in the Cathedral, however, his later texts, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Sevice, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, and The Storyteller appear to fall under a postmodernist mode of writing. His earlier work seems to have a more serious, complex, fragmented tone, compared to a more farcical, simplistic one that is generally found in his later novels.

One of the techniques that Vargas Llosa has used throughout the majority of his novels--beginning from the end of Time of the Hero--is that of interlacing dialogues. By combining two conversations, this technique creates the illusion of a flashback (shifting time). However, Vargas Llosa is known to sometimes use this technique as a means of shifting location, rather than time, by weaving together two conversations that are taking place at the same time, but in different places.

In many of his works, Vargas Llosa bases aspect of the story on real historical events. Moreover, most of Vargas Llosa's novels embody traditional themes that surround the conflictive nature of the portrayed characters and the illustration and interrelation of the different cultural, socio-economic, political aspects of Peruvian and Latin American Society. Casto M. Fernández, an accomplished literary scholar, analyzes in depth the different literary techniques and structures found in Vargas Llosa's novels such as the narrative syntax, the forms of dialogue and up to the general message of the Vargas Llosa's narrative.

Literary criticism

Vargas Llosa has written a book-length study of Gabriel García Márquez, a onetime friend with whom he subsequently parted ways in 1976 when Vargas Llosa punched Garcia Marquez in the face in Mexico city at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. A picture with Garcia Marquez's black eye was published a year ago. Although Vargas Llosa has not spoken to him ever since, he recently agreed to allow part of this book to be used as the introduction to a new edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude, which is being re-released in Spain and throughout Latin America. There is recent news and rumors that the dispute between the two writers involves a conflict regarding Vargas Llosa's wife. Interestingly as well, both writers advocate very different political views. While Garcia Marquez has been a supporter of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, Vargas Llosa's political views are neo-liberal as shown by his electoral campaign in Peru and his support for Margaret Thatcher.

After the book, entitled García Márquez: historia de un deicidio, was published in 1971 in an edition of 20,000 copies, the initial edition quickly sold out; but despite great demand (and at least one pirated edition) Vargas Llosa refused to allow its republication for many years. The study was eventually included in a volume of his collected works in 2006. It has not been translated into English. He has also written book-length studies of Flaubert and of the Valencian writer Joanot Martorell. Vargas Llosa's discussion of his own novels is contained in A Writer's Reality (1991).

Political involvement

File:Fredemo-vargasllosa.jpg

Vargas Llosa 1990 election poster

Like many fellow Latin American intellectuals, Vargas Llosa was initially a supporter of the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro. However, he eventually became disenchanted with the policies of the Cuban government and moved considerably to the right. Ever since he detached himself from communist ideals, he has opposed both left and right wing authoritarian regimes.

During the 1980s, Vargas Llosa became increasingly politically active in his native country, and became known for his staunch neoliberal views. In 1987, he helped form and soon became leader of the Movimiento Libertad. The following year his party entered into a coalition with the parties of Peru's two principal conservative politicians at the time, ex-president Fernando Belaunde Terry (AP) and Luis Bedoya Reyes (PPC), to form the tripartite coalition known as Frente Democratico (FREDEMO). He ran for the presidency of Peru in 1990 as the candidate of the center-right FREDEMO coalition. He proposed a drastic 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. During the campaign, his opponents read racy passages of his works 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. His account of his run for the presidency was subsequently included in a memoir, published in an English-language translation (by Helen Lane) as A Fish in the Water.

On his most recent visit to Peru before the 2006 presidential elections, Vargas Llosa campaigned in favor of conservative candidate Lourdes Flores, saying she respected democracy and promised "a moderate" program for the country. In contrast, he warned that if nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala were to win it would be a "great misfortune" since he "will push Peru toward the same catastrophic route that Chávez is pushing his country." Although Humala had led a rebellion against Fujimori in 2000, Vargas Llosa suggested that Humala was a carbon copy of Fujimori. He asked: "How it is possible that at least a third of Peruvians want a return to dictatorship, authoritarianism, a subjugated press, judicial manipulation, impunity and the systematic abuse of human rights?" As the presidential race during the second round drew to an end and polls showed Humala trailing former president Alan Garcia, Vargas Llosa tepidly endorsed Garcia as "the lesser of two evils."

Many Spanish-language publications have begun to describe Vargas Llosa as "Spanish-Peruvian" since he received citizenship in Spain in 1993. Since 1996 he has increasingly made Spain his home. In 1994 he was elected a member of the Spanish Royal Academy (Real Academia Española).

Vargas Llosa's political involvement has expanded outside of Latin America, and to Iraq: he spent twelve days in Baghdad in June 2003. In an interview, Vargas Llosa summarizes his experiences there:"I had written two articles opposing the war, criticizing the unilateral intervention, but I didn't feel comfortable with them. I needed to see the situation firsthand in the field to determine whether I was right or wrong, so I went. I was also worried about our daughter, Morgana, who was in Iraq taking pictures while working for a Spanish nongovernmental organization called Fundación Iberoamérica Europa. It was one of the first relief organizations to provide humanitarian help, but as the number of terrorist attacks mounted its members were unable to function and had to leave. During my visit there was some danger, but at that time the attacks were still small scale. I filed seven stories, mostly regarding the situation of common people. With my daughter's help and that of the Spanish embassy I was able to interview key people. Sadly, four of them are no longer alive, including Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, who was assassinated soon after his return from exile, also the head of the UN mission in Baghdad, Sergio Vieira de Mello, a great humanitarian and a personal friend of mine for many years."

Family

His cousin, Luis Llosa, is a Peruvian film director, who has filmed an adaptation of Vargas Llosa's novel The Feast of the Goat.

After his divorce from Julia Urquidi, Vargas Llosa married his first cousin, Patricia Llosa, in 1965. Together they have three children: Álvaro Vargas Llosa, a writer and editor; Gonzalo, a businessman; and Morgana, a photographer. Nobel Prize-winning Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez is godfather to one of his sons.

Mario Vargas Llosa also has 2 half brothers; Ernesto Vargas and Enrique Vargas.

In January 2008, the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio reported that Vargas Llosa had recently been hospitalized with a cardiac condition. He left the hospital on January 19, with little public comment on his hospitalization, while Peruvian news sources reported that he was out of danger and fully recovered.

Works

Fiction

• 1959 – Los jefes; English translation: The Cubs and Other Stories (1979)
• 1963 – La ciudad y los perros; English translation: The Time of the Hero (1966)
• 1966 – La casa verde; English translation: The Green House (1968)
• 1969 – Conversacion en la catedral; English translation: Conversation in the Cathedral (1975)
• 1973 – Pantaleon y las visitadoras; English translation: Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1978)
• 1977 – La tia Julia y el escribidor; English translation: Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1982)
• 1981 – La guerra del fin del mundo; English translation: The War of the End of the World (1984)
• 1984 – Historia de Mayta; English translation: The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (1985)
• 1986 – Quien mato a Palomino Molero?; English translation: Who Killed Palomino Molero? (1987)
• 1987 – El hablador; English translation: The Storyteller (1989)
• 1988 – Elogio de la madrastra; English translation: In Praise of the Stepmother (1990)
• 1993 – Lituma en los Andes; English translation: Death in the Andes (1996)
• 1997 – Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto; English translation: Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (1998)
• 2000 – La fiesta del chivo; English translation: The Feast of the Goat (2002)
• 2003 – El paraíso en la otra esquina; English translation: The Way to Paradise (2003)
• 2006 – Travesuras de la niña mala; English translation: The Bad Girl (2007)

Non-fiction

• Carta de batalla por Tirant lo Blanch
• 1971 – García Márquez: historia de un deicidio; English translation: García Márquez: Story of a Deicide
• 1975 – La orgía perpetua; English translation: The Perpetual Orgy
• 1991 – A Writer's Reality
• 1993 – El pez en el agua; A Fish in the Water
• 1996 – Making Waves
• 1997 – Cartas a un joven novelista; English translation: Letters to a Young Novelist
• 2001 – El lenguaje de la pasión; English translation: The Language of Passion
• 2004 – La tentación de lo imposible; – English translation: The Temptation of the Impossible (2007)
• 2007 – El Pregón de Sevilla – excerpt as Introduction to Los Toros

References

• Armas, Marcelo (1991). Vargas Llosa, el vicio de escribir. Madrid: Ediciones Temas de Hoy. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month= and |coauthors= (help)

• Bach, Caleb (2004). "Mario Vargas Llosa: Author of Limitless Worlds". Americas. 56 (2): 38–44. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

• Boland, Roy; Harvey, Sally (1988), Mario Vargas Llosa: From Pantaleón y las visitadoras to Elogio de la madrastra, Auckland: Antipodas, the Journal of Hispanic Studies of the University of Auckland / VOX/AHS, ISBN 0-9597858-1-7.

• Booker, M. Keith (1994). Vargas Llosa Among the Postmodernists. Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-1248-1. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month= and |accessyear= (help)

• Fernández, Casto Manuel (1977). Aproximación formal a la novelística de Vargas Llosa (in Spanish). Madrid: Editora Nacional. ISBN 84-276-0383-5.

• Larsen, Neil (2000). "Mario Vargas Llosa: The Realist as Neo-liberal". Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. 9 (2): 155–179. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

• Morote, Herbert (1990). Vargas Llosa, tal cual (in Spanish). Lima: Jaime Campodónico. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

• Parker, Emily (2007-06-23). "Storyteller: The famous novelist on politics, and how writing can change the course of history". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2008-03-06. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |1= and |month= (help)

• Rossman, Charles (1987). "Mario Vargas Llosa's Conversation in the Cathedral: Power Politics in a Corrupt Society". Contemporary Literature. 28 (4): 493–509. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |coauthors= and |month= (help)

• Vincent, Elizabeth (2007). "Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa". Macleans. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

• Williams, Raymond L. (2001). Vargas Llosa: otra historia de un deicidio. Mexico: Taurus. ISBN 968-19-0814-7. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

External links

• Template:Es icon Official website