Vargas Llosa
Thomas Jones
Mario Vargas Llosa has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In the LRB archive you can read Michael Wood on The Feast of the Goat, Lorna Scott Fox on The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, Philip Horne on The Perpetual Orgy, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, The War of the End of the World and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, John Sturrock on The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, and Ronan Bennett on Vargas Llosa's political ambitions (and the Shining Path).
Comments
What has struck me in the reaction is that people continue to call him an opponent of totalitarianism, for example, or a voice for freedom, when Vargos Llosa has a tradition of uncritical boot-licking. Just this year, he was intervening in Chile to offer his support to an unrepentant ex-member of Pinochet's regime who is running for President.
Why can't he just concern himself with Peru? rather than this continual use of his literary prestige to boost those in countries he knows nothing about, but who just happen to share his ideology. Instead, he overflows his rightful influence due to the basic fact of a shared language.
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