Mario Vargas Llosa and the Noble Prize

By Pedro Blas Gonzalez.

For Mario Vargas Llosa, the interplay between fiction and life, he convincingly argues, is something that writers should concern themselves with.

Given the current mania of the Swedish Academy in awarding the noble peace and literature prizes to hand picked, politically useful proponents of radical ideological causes, it seems timely to remind ourselves about the purpose of literature. Let us take the curious snubbing by the Swedish Academy of the masterful Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa as a prime example of the need for such a reminder.

In Letters to a Young Poet, the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke ruminates on the nature of writing with an aspiring writer named Franz Xaver Kappus. There are ten letters in total, beginning on February 17, 1903 and culminating with his letter of December 26, 1908.

Mario Vargas Llosa’s Letters to a Young Novelist takes its inspiration from Rilke’s work. This book is one of those eloquent and rare works of erudition that stir clear of ostentatious theory and ideology. While Rilke’s ten letters are genuine articles of communication, each of Vargas Llosa’s twelve letters serve as chapters designed to tackle a particular literary problem. Vargas Llosa uses this style and/or genre merely as a literary device to discuss concerns that pertain to writing.

Vargas Llosa’s Letters to a Young Novelist takes a refreshing look at the writing vocation. His perspective is instructive, not only about writing, but also life, aspirations, essential human qualities and characteristics. In this work we do not find the aesthetic sterility and ideological straitjacket so fundamental to most who write academic works of criticism. Also absent are currently fashionable, however asinine and pretentious “theoretical” notions that assert that there are no such things as writers, and that the true arbiter of interpretation about what is written – that is, texts – is to be left to the whim of the reader. Simply stated, Vargas Llosa is an autonomous, creative writer.

Letters to a Young Novelist is akin to other now classic works that attempt to describe and inspire the vocation to communicate through writing. As we read Vargas Llosa’s book we are quickly reminded of Somerset Maugham’s The Summing Up, an insightful work that offers as much conscientious reflection on life and death as it does on the craft of writing. The Summing Up offers a stunning display of Maugham’s ideas on literature, philosophy and aesthetics.

Vargas Llosa begins the book with a discussion of the nature of literary vocation. He suggests that the literary vocation must be worked at, even though he also concedes that writers are not made but rather born. He points out that talent, or what some people call genius, is not ready-made, but rather only begins to manifest itself after many arduous years of discipline and perseverance. He argues that due to this very reason those who approach literature like they would religion – that is, with total dedication – develop the capacity to transcend themselves through their work. Vargas Llosa calls the desire to write, “a basic questioning of reality.” This is equivalent to vital, existential hunger.

Convinced that people who are satisfied with reality do not desire to write, he then proceeds to decipher the inner world of the writer. Writers, he argues, are essentially architects who scrutinize the order of the universe while simultaneously organizing and constructing reality with the power of the written word. Vargas Llosa goes on to say that this process of discovery only reaffirms the conviction of most writers that writing is the only authentic mode of life for them.

For Vargas Llosa, the interplay between fiction and life, he convincingly argues, is something that writers should concern themselves with. While real life – human existence – as we know it, often remains unenlightened, he tells us, fiction on the other hand allows readers a suitable ground to transcend the former. This is an interesting point, and one that may go a long way in explaining both, the joys of reading and writing, as well as the malevolent psychology of malcontents, especially when these officiate as cultural or literary critics. Let us consider Vargas Llosa’s perspective:

So the game of literature is not innocuous. The fruit of a deep dissatisfaction with real life, fiction is itself a source of discomfort and dissatisfaction. Those who, through reading, live a great story…return to real life with a heightened sensitivity to its limitations and imperfections, alerted by these magnificent fantasies to the fact that the real world, and life as it is lived, is infinitely more mediocre than life as invented by novelists.

Vargas Llosa is as well read, as he is a prolific writer. Among his better known works one encounters: The Time of the Hero, Conversations in the Cathedral, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, In Praise of the Stepmother and The Feast of the Goat. One of the many strengths of Letters to a Young Novelist is Vargas Llosa’s literary ability and experience as a writer. This is coupled with his erudition as a reader. Taken together, these two aspects of Vargas Llosa’s literary prowess make for a very articulate and readable book.

Fictional time and real time, as the author refers to these, serve to delineate how we view time in fiction and how its objective counterpart is actually experienced/lived. While characters maneuver through the events and time indigenous to plot construction, what they engage in, or fail to realize, is that time is the form that delivers them to the stage that is the real world.

The writer has the following to say on the subject:

Because I believe that it is precisely when you are examining the temporal point of view in fiction that you are best able to notice how inseparable “form” and “content” really are, though I’ve dissociated them in a brutal way to reveal the secret anatomy of the novel.

We ought not to forget that works of fiction are free-standing creations that are regulated by the internal mechanism of time, point of view and plot. There are no formulas, even when a work is formulaic because the work will only be one more example of a particular dominant theme, etc., Vargas Llosa adds: “And of course we agree that it is always the individual case that matters in literature, since generic models can never tell us what we would like to know about the particular nature of a certain novel.”

Another notable angle of this book is Vargas Llosa’s respectful showcasing and augmentation of the work of European, North American and Latin American writers. His knowledge of the latter is a particularly valuable aspect of this book in that it serves as a short literary history of Latin American writers and the status of literature in the Spanish-speaking world. For this reason alone, this work is essential reading for anyone interested in the development and contribution of Latin American writers to world literature.

More importantly, his commentaries on the works and thought of Spanish and Latin American writers and thinkers is not marked by fashionable, and currently gutted notions of racism, disenfranchisement, as well as radical ideological talk of colonialism. These are currently abused notions that have lost all semblance of the seriousness that they may have enjoyed at some point. Vargas Llosa does not treat writers and thinkers as victims. Neither does he indulge in opportunistic talk of Hispanic/Latino cultural identity or conveniently stereotypical notions of “Latin American” writers versus other writers.

Vargas Llosa’s treatment of writers is that of self-respecting, autonomous entities, that while issuing from diverse places and times nevertheless must be embraced or rejected based on the respective literary merits that they bring to their craft.

Hence, it seems pointless to accuse this master writer of being too “costumbrista,” “regional-minded,” or “provincial,” when in fact, few writers today are as varied in their plots and themes as Mario Vargas Llosa. Let us be sincere, this is a writer who merits this prize for his literary skill.

In addition, because he is a genuine thinker who is concerned with universal principles of human liberty, personal autonomy and democracy, and not a petty, party-minded ideologue, Vargas Llosa’s work always sincerely address the very universal human concerns that the Swedish Academy claims, at least outwardly and openly, to be dedicated to.

Pedro Blas Gonzalez, Ph.D. is a Professor of Philosophy at Barry University.