Consistent and more than desirable Introduction: Mario Varga Llosa at Princeton thanks to Ruben Gallo details a number of important aspects to properly contextualize the book Conversation at Princetonalso published in Romanian in 2023 thanks to the translation by Tudor Sandru-Mehedinci in the author’s series of the Bucharest publishing house Humanitas Fiction.

It sheds light on the many aspects of the history of the great Peruvian-born writer’s academic and professional relationship with a prominent American university, a relationship that began before Llosa became an author. Nobelskaya. He explains how the volume, deliberately related by title to one of his most famous, not necessarily accessible books, came to be. The main topics of conversation between Llosa and Ruben Gallo were announced. Literature and politics. We are told that these conversations represent the actual and intellectual realization of Mario Vargas Llosa’s visit to Princeton in 2015, where he was a visiting professor.

After starting the reading, the reader will quickly understand that the mentioned big topics are discussed in close connection with the personal and creative biography of the guest.

Llosa was born in Latin America, where a dictatorship reigned. It is quite natural that his works tried to unravel its mechanisms. I reanalyze the conversations based on how they were recorded in the books Conversation in the Cathedral and Feast of the Goat. The action of the first takes place in Peru, during the dictatorship of Audria, while the story in the second book lavishly tells about the details, often harsh, sometimes even incredible (Llosa was accused of exaggeration, and accusations sometimes came even from some who served as witnesses to the writer), about the Dominican Republic during the bloody, strange and bloody Trujillo.

Analysis script preserved as such in discussions centered on other books such as History of the Maya, Who killed Palomino Moleroin general, even in a book with the greatest degree of autobiographical character, Fish in water, which deals with the conditions of Lhosa’s unsuccessful candidacy for the post of president, initially contains a detailed commentary on the action. Commentary in an economy where the place of honor belongs to the recognition of origins, documentation, establishing connections between reality and fiction. An opportunity for Llosa at some point to remind us of a little book by the now almost forgotten Claude Simon, in which he calls for a revision of the concept of realism. Even claiming non-existence de facto realism The most important characters, their role and mission are then rotated from all sides. Interesting, for example, is the comment about how they increased the weight of the female character, especially Urania Cabral Feast of the Goat. The third point is discussions and questions. The auditors, of course mostly students, all well-informed, well-read and up-to-date, ask for more information. They are connected with the action, and with the historical context, and with the creative process, and with the way of writing Fate.

After all, at least this time, the Devil is not in the details, but in the way the writer perceives the world, understood, lived and reflected in his books a story related to what Camus once called life in interesting times. And again this time, repetitions embodied in the repetition of some ideas about the way a dictatorship exists, about the dynamics of history, about the differences between journalism and literature, about the conditions of being a journalist, which very often kill a writer and others. they couldn’t be more profitable.

Llosa lived, as I said, in interesting times. Whose overture was emblematic of a brief membership in Peru’s small communist party, the disillusionment that followed, and establishment in Europe. Then the events in Cuba and the revolution of July 26, 1953 led by Fidel Castro. Which at the beginning did not pretend to be communism. Hence its support of intellectuals, hence the hope for a better future for Latin America, hence even some support and sympathy from the USA. Llosa would arrive in Cuba only in 1962, and what he would find there would mean the ultimate collapse of illusions. The writer will face the destructive force of censorship on the spot. You can read interesting things about censorship, censors, self-censorship Conversation at Princeton. I did it with a sense of perseverance deja vu a deja vu which also ended the associated with the dictatorship. Which, ideologized or not, still cannot allow free thought and speech.

The literary landscape in which the writer Mario Vargas Llosa was formed was also interesting. The struggle between the formula dominates in Europe, in Paris a new novel from which dust and powder were chosen today and which actually did not convince even Losa at that time (however, there are Conversation at Princeton some interesting observations about the formula, as well as about Alain Rob-Grillet’s novel To jealousy) and the model represented by Sartre’s novels. Who first conquered Fate, so that later exorcism intervened. This, Sartre, “was a thinking machine, and therefore his novels seem like essays.” Sartre’s books, says Llosa, “are a collection of ideas, themes in the form of a novel, but without any of the elements that make a good novel.” In fact, Sartre lacked not only greatness, but also, as Llosa says, tears, love, passion. In other words, his existentialism was by no means humanism. Despite the fact that the one who so well captured Boris Vian u L’écume des jours. _Read the rest of the article on Contributors.ro