"When I asked him what had fractured his marriage to Patricia Llosa, which produced three children, he dropped all his smiles and chuckles. 'Look,' he said, 'that topic has to do with love. Love is probably the most enriching experience that a human being can have. Nothing transforms a person’s life as much as love. At the same time, love is a private experience. If it’s made public, it becomes cheap, shoddy, full of commonplaces. This is why it’s so hard to write about love in literature. You have to find the most clever ways so that it doesn’t lose its authenticity and become commonplace. So I think that a person shouldn’t talk about love precisely if love is so important in his life.' You’re a romantic, I said. 'I think we all are. I think that romanticism has marked our lives very much, that it’s very difficult not to be romantic in some way, although many of us don’t realize it. You live it or you reject it. You vaccinate yourself against it. Let’s say that I haven’t rejected it. When it’s happened, I’ve lived it.'... [His son] was enormously disappointed when Mario told ¡Hola! that his first year with Preysler had been the happiest year of his life. 'If the year in which you leave your wife of 50 years and you don’t speak to your son is the happiest year of your life... why say it publicly?'"
From "The Elder Statesman of Latin American Literature — and a Writer of Our Moment/Mario Vargas Llosa isn’t a household name among American readers. But at 81, he remains a literary and political colossus across the Spanish-speaking world, and his novels have never felt more relevant" (NYT).
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The Latin Rat.
It turns when the lady starts nagging.
You can run a long time on obligation, however.
He was on a roll in the answer until he got carried away at the end and inadvertently proved his point.
Of course most Americans don't know who Vargas Llosa is. He abandoned leftism to embrace the right, a most unforgivable sin in American literary circles...
Others will always judge and snipe about your reasons for leaving your spouse, so the most dignified thing to do is keep your trap shut and give them nothing to work with. The only persons who know what goes on in a marriage are the people in it.
If you publicly say that the happiest year of your life was the first one without your family and your wife, then what you have experienced is self love.
Great writer living quite cimfortably in his hugely rich new wife's mansion in Madrid.
It's astonishing though how many women will stubbornly choose nagging over a loving marriage.
It's almost as if many women use their pre-frontal cortex about as much as men use their nipples.
Yes hes lost his step endorsing the left candidate humala some years ago, how the times can say his novels are relevant now?
I've read "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter". It's an interesting book. Part of what made it interesting was the mix of what seems autobiography and fiction where the reader is challenged to figure out which is which.
They made into a terrible film with Keanu Reeves, star ship troopers bad.
So it really was, in part, an autobiography: "His first wife, Julia Urquidi, was his aunt by marriage, 10 years his senior and the inspiration for the character of Aunt Julia in his 1977 novel Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, which became a film."
LLosa is 79 years old. It's part of the reality of getting older that your judgement suffers. Some people become childlike. Not everyone suffers this but I think most people do.
Starship Troopers is a classic. A perfect complement to the trilogy which includes Robocop and Total Recall.
Unlike the despairing letter writer in the other thread, Mario truly has everything he needs. Except years.
Looks, fame, wealth, fuckable wife, reasonably good judgment for an artist, and the richest imagination among contemporary novelists.
Personal cruelty aside, he is one of the best.
No narcisco, they made it into a very good movie with Peter Falk.
He rationalizes away his selfishness, praising himself for abandoning a 50-year relationship when many marriages fail after 2,5, or 10 years.
Tim said:
"He was on a roll in the answer until he got carried away at the end and inadvertently proved his point."
The quoted material obscures the text, but it was his son, who was highly critical of his father, who said that last line in the post.
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is a hoot.
Everyone should read A Fish in the Water: A Memoir. It's a fascinating look into Peruvian politics and an indictment of the way the international left promotes socialism.
Halfway through his 'splaining, we cut to Patricia's eyeroll.
One word: lissome.
I liked both "Aunt Julia" and "Tune In Tomorrow," although I admit it's been years since I saw it.
I have the DVD for "Starship Troopers" and have seen it twice. I love how they tried to trash Heinlein and utterly failed. I think because Rico and the troopers are the ones risking their lives, so how can you root against them?
Reading the article, right at the top, I come across this:
'“The Call of the Tribe” feels like his attempt to beat back the waves of nationalism and populism now flooding our world. He is a defender of individual liberty and democracy in Latin America.'
How dare these individuals decide the course their country should take! Those deplorables!
"It didn’t help that Vargas Llosa’s beliefs were often subject to gross distortion. Carlos Granés, the editor who assembled “Sabers and Utopias,” told me that he once heard the Peruvian author Dante Castro Arrasco declare that if Vargas Llosa had become president of Peru, he would have replaced the national coat of arms with a swastika."
Hmmmm, leftist author denouncing someone as a nazi. Where have I been hearing this before?
narciso
Yes hes lost his step endorsing the left candidate humala some years ago
Had Humala governed like Hugo Chavez- who endorsed Humala- you would have a point. For the most part, Humala governed like his more centrist predecessors. In addition, Vargas Llosa's endorsement of Humala was conditional- on Humala's making a pledge for democracy.
I suspect that ex-Army officer Humala kept his word because he realized that there is little love in Peru for military socialism after the disaster of the Velasco et al regime from 1968-80. Moreover, having suffered through the terrorism of Sendero Luminiso and others, there is little tolerance in Peru for the leftist ideas that Sendero and others espoused.
I have read and will continue to read Vargas Llosa in Spanish. Ditto Roberto Ampuero.
well I think changing the venue from lima to new orleans seems foolish, then they left out the cmq subplot,
he didn't turn out too bad, whereas Toledo ended up kind of a crook, because of the car wash backwash,
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