When I Discovered Latin American Literature

Yesterday, I received I Gave You My Silence, the new novel by Nobel Prizewinner Mario Vargas Llosa. Vargas Llosa died last year; this is his final work, published posthumously. 

When I saw the notice that it was being published. My mind moved back in time, some 40 years, to 1986. I was in a master of liberal arts program at Washington University in St. Louis, and I signed up for a fall seminar – The Latin American Novel. We would be reading novels by Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Manuel Puig (Kiss of the Spider Woman), and Carlos Fuentes, among others. The reading syllabus was challenging.

 

I don’t recall why I signed up for that particular course; others were available. My total reading experience in the Latin American novel was limited to one book – One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Perhaps that was the reason; Latin America has a vast literature, and I’d read very little of it.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

An Unknown Woman: how I discovered a hidden tragedy tied to Russia’s most famous painting – Vladimir Raevsky at The Guardian.

 

Did Edgar Allan Poe Invent Detective Fiction? – Thom Delapa at The Collector.

 

John Brown in Lake Placid – Evan Portman at Emerging Civil War. 

“Harsh Times” by Mario Vargas Llosa

When you read a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa, you never know if you’re reading fiction, non-fiction, or a combination of the two. When I first started reading his most recent novel, Harsh Times  (English edition, 2021), I thought someone had made a mistake and Vargas Llosa had written of mid-20^th century Guatemala. 

I first discovered Vargas Llosa in the 1980s, when I took a class in “The Latin American Novel.” He was part of what had become known as the “Latin American Boom,” a veritable explosion of literature that included the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (like 100 Years of Solitude), the wonderful novels of Carlos Fuentes (The Death of Artemio Cruz), the poetry and fiction of Octavio Paz, and writers like Manuel Puig (Kiss of the Spider Woman). 

 

For my class, we read Vargas Llosa’s The Green House (1968). On a business trip, I found and began reading The War of the End of the World (1984). For my major paper, I read, analyzed, and reconstructed Conversation in the Cathedral(1975), a huge novel without an immediate discernible narrative structure (it’s there, but you have to do some heavy lifting to find it). After that, reading the funny Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1982) punched home for me his broad reach of topic, history, and popular culture. And I’ve now read most of his works. 

Mario Vargas Llosa

For Harsh Times, Vargas Llosa tells the story of the before, during, and after of two government overthrows in Guatemala in the 1950s. The first was 1954, the overthrow of the democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz that was orchestrated, planned, and financed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (an event involving mercenaries, John Foster Dulles of the State Department, and his brother Allen Dulles, director of the CIA; the U.S. could often be its own worst enemy). The second event was the 1957 assassination of Arbenz’s successor, the military dictator Carlos Castillo Armas.

 

Vargas Llosa moves back and forth between the two stories, tying them together with real major characters and (possibly fictional) minor characters. He keeps you guessing as to what is real and what is invented. The overall story is underpinned by extensive historical research. The author doesn’t do anything by halves.

 

If there is one character who seems to move almost interchangeably through the narrative, it is Marta Borrero Parra, called “Miss Guatemala” by everyone from her father to her numerous lovers. For a time, she was the mistress of the dictator assassinated in 1957 and was said to be involved in the killing. Or it may have been that she was implicated to direct attention away from the real killers. We follow her from her life in Guatemala, her fleeing to the Dominican Republic, her work as a political journalist, and her likely involvement as an agent for the CIA, which spirited her out of the Dominican Republic when strongman Rafael Trujillo was assassinated in 1961. An ardent anti-communist, Trujillo was famous for his brutal regime; one of his main henchmen is a significant character in Harsh Times.

 

By the end of the book, the reader is prepared for the epilogue – an interview between the author and Miss Guatemala, now in her 80s and living outside Washington, D.C., not far from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. I assume the interview really happened, but Vargas Llosa is so good at imagining what historical people said and thought that the interview could easily be entirely invented. But it’s a feature that makes Harsh Times an impressive feat – and perhaps sleight of hand.

 

Related:

 

Edith Grossman’s Why Translation Matters.

 

The past is never past.

 

I grew up in 100 years of solitude.

A poem and a post at Literary Life

I have two features at Literary Life today.

One is a poem, "Imago Dei," that helps to introduce Literary Life's book feature in September, Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. The poem is inspired by this statement by L'Engle: "If the work comes to the artist and says, "here I am, serve me," then the job of the artist, great or small, is to serve." The poem provides a little (poetic) explanation of the origin of a critical scene in my novel Dancing King. You can read "Imago Dei" here.

The second feature is post on fiction, "Finding Faulkner via Mexico and Peru." I never read William Faulkner until my mid-30s, and here I was, a born-and-raised Southerner. I discovered Faulkner after reading Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa and novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, and other Latin American writers. You can read the post at Literary Life here.

Thursdays - Pleasantly Disturbed

It’s another stupendous edition of Pleasantly Disturbed Thursdays, with our leader Duane Scott in command and leading the way through the darkness.

Speaking of Duane, he’s getting married Nov. 6. You might want to tell him congratulations at his blog or on Twitter -- @duane_scott .

I’ve been reading David Platt’s Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream. Add that to Michael Spencer’s Mere Churchianity, and I’m going to turn into a bomb thrower.

I didn’t post anything about when it was announced a couple of weeks ago, but I think the Nobel Committee did a remarkable thing when it gave the prize for literature to Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. I was introduced to his writing in 1986 when I took a seminar on the Latin American Novel for my master’s program.

The first of his novels I read was The War of the End of World, which was based on a true story. And then The Green House, and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. I did my seminar paper and presentation on Conversations in the Cathedral, which is simultaneously one of the most difficult and rewarding novels I’ve ever read. (William Faulkner is easy compared to that book – I thought I was going to lose my mind reading it until I realized how it was structured, and then I started it over again.) I’ve read virtually everything he’s written.

I’ve been mostly off the grid (i.e. Twitter and Facebook) this week, and there’s a reason, which I’ll explain in a few days. Because of that, I'll have a shorter edition of Saturday Good Reads this weekend.

And, last, but not least, what everyone’s been waiting for – a photo of Cameron Young and his grandfather. (I’m the one on the right.)