Con Vargas Llosa The last novelist has died. I thought that when I learned, with surprise and sorrow, of his death. Once, a writer – I wouldn’t know who, perhaps just a critic – described him as a “nineteenth” author. He said it with disdain and that’s why his phrase was recorded. It did not seem so much a criticism of his literature and an ideological disqualification. Interestingly, that same writer admired Céline or Hamsun, both very little exemplary from the political point of view. But they were already dead, I suppose, and that made them less uncomfortable.
The ambition of the nineteenth -century writers, the golden age of the novel, was present in Vargas Llosa. Dickens, Tolstobo, Galdós They ambitioned that replacement of reality Through long, solid novels, full of characters and complexities with which one could evade this pedestrian reality and dive into another. And then return renewed, wiser or, at least, different.
Naturally, any disdain towards the work of the Peruvian comes from ignorance or an ideological myopia that does not distinguish the straw grain. It is true, however, that in Spain there is a certain word tradition that does not always sympathize with the narrative, that does not value or understand it, and perhaps that critic expressed a double prejudice. Faced with the Anglo -Saxon novels that take the novelties – mostly clearly narrative, by the plasticity of the English language – in Spain there is a frequent inclination towards poetic prose and Greguería, but in alluvion.
So that an ingenuity after another can lead to the construction of a product that will then be called “narrative artifact“In cultural texts. They are books that the same can have 150 than 200 pages, depending on when the author of his own ingenuity.
In the novels of Vargas Llosa, as in Kubrick’s films, each element It has a purpose. Nothing is left, no phrase is there for his mere brightness. That obsession to put two words never seen in the same line is positive and commendable, without a doubt, but as much as it is an unusual plane in a film. Finally, words, such as images, must be at the service of construction of something superior: characters, some scenarios, an argument. For me, with forgiveness, that’s the narrative; The other, many times, pure manierism.
With the narrative taken to his culmen, novels are built as a conversation in the cathedral; With the other, toys are built. Sometimes, when the depth of the treated surpasses the game, it reaches Literary peaksas with some books by Francisco Umbral, but they are exceptions.
The best novels of Vargas Llosa are powerful experiences, and some had a lot of avant -garde. Multiple perspectivism, narrative collage, self -fiction … all that was already in The city and dogs or in Aunt Julia and the writer. Isn’t it self -fiction that the protagonist is called Varguitas and aspire to be a writer? He also wrote One of the best books On creative writing, Letters to a young novelistwhich ends with a kind of ironic Autobicot, the best lesson for the candidate for narrator.
Then there were his political opinions. He was liberal, or perhaps neoliberal, yes. It was whatever, but he publicly defended his ideas without insults (which I know). And no one was obliged to read their stands.
I was interested in his novels. And what they represent: a way of facing literature with the ambition of those who believe that a novel can weigh as much as reality. That way of writing It is disappearing by mor of the new technological habits. Nowadays, a novel like the War of the End of the World – which perhaps is not one of its best, but extraordinarily ambitious – would have it difficult to find editor or readers. There are also no novels that can take the public debate with their publication.
I have the impression that Vargas Llosa was generous with lifehe gave him everything he had inside, nothing was kept. And not only in the literary field: also in the sentimental and even in the friendly, where he even fought to punch with García Márquezas can happen between real friends.
Once, in an act – I don’t remember where – I dared to greet him. I told him that I admired it a lot. “Ah, thank you very much,” Cortés smiled, but distant. Then another admirer approached and said the same as me, and then another and another. I felt, therefore, the frustration that my message had not made me dent. After all, who was I but one more among many heavy ones?
That frustration made me understand, suddenly, how much his books meant. The Penal for his death confirms it to me.
