Photo: In this picture, the writer Antonio Caballero during an interview with the Colprensa Agency. (Colprensa, Oscar Perez)
By: Antonio Caballero
Colombian novelist and columnist. Write for the magazine Semana.
There are several Vargas Llosa (and I do not here the children). There are several different Mario Vargas Llosa. And I do not distinguish here only the narrator realistic fiction journalist. But leaving aside the political essayist and economic thinker, literary critic and social philosopher, the speaker, the polemicist, the boxer, the statesman, the dispenser torrential interviews, but the foreseeable future still memoirs, I would like other two of the many writers who coexist in Mario Vargas Llosa, the novelist and the novelist malo.El good excuse is their latest, but certainly not last, novel: a big book (or booklet in vargasllosianos parameters) of anything less (or anything else) to 375 pages: Mischief of the bad girl (Alfaguara, May 2006).
First, the good novelist. I say to start because it started very well, with a splendid novel entitled The City and the Dogs, who won the award ... but no, I have no room to talk here of Mario Vargas Llosa has won awards, whether literary or paraliterarios or extraliterary: Natural Flower of Guayaquil, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, of Sympathy to give the Dutch churches, the Capote de Paseo the plaza de toros de la Maestranza in Seville, the ... I say it started very well but know that they started I say: it was me who began reading out there: he had already written and published, and I think he won a prize, a volume of stories that I have not read. Because, and I say in passing, I would doubt that anyone has had time in your life to read all the books that Vargas Llosa has written and published (without forgetting that, as I said earlier, we still have their memories after death) . One Breath. For me. To you too, reader, mon semblable, mon frère.
came speaking, then, Vargas Llosa's good. Without trying, much less reading it over, remember it three or four fine novels and two or three extraordinary: Conversation in the Cathedral, The War of the End of the World, The Feast of the Goat. Literary constructions of ambition vast epic and increasingly complex, overwhelming, overwhelming, like a great mother river left, but Vargas Llosa is also the bad: the daily Reutilio uncle, or Reginald, or whatever that monstrosity, the the stepmother, the aunt of the other, that of I do not know exactly what title, but I've read, or at least started to read. For though you have not read the whole work of Vargas Llosa's possible, yes I've got the tooth to nearly every imaginable. Or, to put a term dear to the liberal, the "Actually existing." And of all the novels of Vargas Llosa bad the worst is this most recent: Mischief of the bad girl. Since the end. The main character tells the narrator, in the last sentence of the book: "At least he admits that I have given topic for a novel. "No, good boy? No. Sorry, but no.
is more: no. There is nothing novel in this song that gives the above "bad girl" to the aforementioned "good kid" in any of the meanings that they want to give the term "romantic." No more bland, nothing more tedious. I summarize what continuación.La bad girl in question is neither girl (have about sixty years) nor bad (it's a fool with remorse), and does mischief, merely living as successive and sustained minor characters, lovers or husbands, who are not even many: only five or six in half a century. An official of the Cuban Revolution, a French consular official, an official of the Japanese mafia whose most outrageous excess is ask you to pull farts. And the narrator, of course: the aforementioned "good kid", a Peruvian official translation service of UNESCO in Paris. The bad girl is a civil wedding with them, and generally succeeds, although not well understood why, because not even a good lay: always says it's not, and that one either, and that hurts.
The secret of its charm that escapes the reader, painstakingly explains the narrator, fearing that the reader may have missed it, is that it is a mysterious woman: a sphinx. How will enigmatic, that being Peruvian girl Chilean girl posing as a later change their passport and a French girl of Peruvian girl again, but falso.Todo this is told in prose translation of unesco. But I am not referring to Julio Cortazar, or that of Julio Ramón Ribeyro, or even to that of the Mario Vargas Llosa, no, but that of a mediocre translator for UNESCO, as a result of "a small spill brain "thinks that the translations trade are more difficult than the literature because they are better paid. (I do not invent anything: see page 334 of the edition Alfaguara). Thus in the novel are, for example, erotic dialogue with: "" I will not return to Paris, "he warned, as he watched her, naked, his back, going on tiptoe to the bathroom." I shall stay in Tokyo and if I can not kill Fukuda, I am pleased to be your dog, and you're the bitch that gángster. "Wow, wow," barked the Chilean. "aesthetic reflections and also found this:" I took her to see cathedral, a show that with all his years in Paris, never failed to dazzle. "As the novel forces us to follow closely the narrator for most of the cities he has visited in his life Vargas Llosa, tireless traveler, and listen to all your tour guide tips .
So if we come to London "by one of those strange conjugations plot chance, we will not fail to visit" the heart of swinging London, Earl's Court, a very lively and cosmopolitan Kensington, for the influx of New Zealanders and Australians, was known as the Kangaroo Valley (Kangaroo Valley). Or if, on the other crazy combination of these, we are in the "crowded Tokyo" instead of remaining in the "impersonal cafeteria Hilton" we will go "to the brothel or maisons closes, there is christened with the name afrancesado châteaux" in Ginza, which is "the neighborhood of Tokyo's night." (They have Jacuzzi and all.) What we are in Paris? The cathedral has been said, that never fail to dazzle. And then "a neighborhood bistro whose specialty is the coq au vin, and, for dessert, a tarte tatin. And by the way of Paris, we must not forget that from the famous restaurant in the Closerie des Lilas, "the banks de l'avenue de l'Observatoire, to l'Ecole Militaire," is a good half hour's walk. " Madrid? We be helpful to know that "coffee Barbieri, Ave Maria street, looks like a decorated Expressionist Berlin of the twenties, or an engraving of Grosz or Otto Dix. And still missing, still missing.
Vargas Llosa has lived and has lectured in almost every city in the world, and all took notes. Sale Lima, of course, "with all the delights of Peruvian cuisine, the ceviche of sea bass, shrimp chowder, rice duck, mixed beef, the cause, chabelo dry." Sale Helsinki, Vienna leaves, leaves Seoul, Korea in the remote. Roma goes well, but only in passing, without much data useful information for visitors: or train schedules and prices of restaurants. But if we, instead, on second-hand furniture Rastro of Madrid on the entries in the cafeteria of Anthropological Museum of Kyoto or tea with scones breakfast at the Russell Hotel in London, Russell Square, near British Museum, where the waiters are very amables.Quiero say, not that I think it is wrong that you have things like a novel.
From the Satyricon of Petronius's novels were made to fit them all. Vargas Llosa himself discovered (he heard at a conference) that Don Quixote are exposed and neoliberal economic principles of Hayek and Milton Friedman. And boredom is a fascinating romantic theme, as in Madame Bovary. But are the characters who are bored, not the reader. Vargas Llosa And the issues are not frivolous or subtle emotions. Proust, for example, brings you a hat of the Duchesse de Guermantes two or three hundred pages of wasted time, time regained, time. And yet we feel we are just wasting time when we read that the translator of UNESCO is dedicated "to go ladies boutiques and shops to choose a gift and yet discreet original, delicate" to end up buying "one of the first things saw and liked, where Vuitton: a vanity with a collection of glass bottles of perfume, creams and lipsticks, and a calendar and a pencil Concheperla hiding in a false bottom.
adultery was something vaguely charming in that cache need. "Vargas Llosa The need good loud and gruesome themes for their stories come to mind. When you do not, you better not escriba.Pero good: at least I confess that I have given topic for an article. right?
