Notes on The Real Life . . .

Fascinating Passages

“Not even friendship comes before the revolution for a revolutionary: get that through your head and never forget it” (65).

Such an astonishing thing to hear Mayta say, considering he is actually the one being blinded by the relationship, by his erotic attraction to Vallejos, to the extent that he underestimates the whole revolution.  These moments where Mayta was shown to grapple with his sexual orientation, to grapple with being human and being in love, were some of the most powerful for me—politics and Peru aside.

“That’s how I work.  And I think the only way to write stories is to start with History—with a capital H.” / “I wonder if we ever really know what you call History with a capital H,” Maria interrupts.  “Or if there’s as much make-believe in history as in novels” (67).

This portion of dialogue—as well as other moments in the text when Llosa pondered his creative process—really got me thinking about how be forge fiction and forge history in very similar ways.  Both are constructed and artificial.  Who is to say that a story has less validity as a piece of history than, well, a piece of history?  I think this has a lot to do with the way Llosa blurred the lines here between tenses, perspectives, scenes, etc.

Striking Imagery

His feet worked like clock hands permanently set at ten minutes to two (5).

Mayta saw it: thick, leafy, closed, hieroglyphic; and he saw himself, next to Vallejos and Ubilluz and an army of shadows . . . where he would be forced to disperse, to dilute his strength, to atomize himself in the indescribably labyrinth (132).

Now we’re leaving the open country and in the darkness I can make out an agglomeration of low and tenuous shadows: the shacks.  Made of adobe, corrugated sheet metal, boards, and straw matting, they give the impression of being half-finished, interrupted just as they were taking shape (308).

Character-Driven Moments

Moises makes the military men feel like civilians, the priests like laymen, and the bourgeois like proletarians, true native sons of the nation (28).

That’s what you see in the photo: a tired man.  Tired from not having slept enough, from having walked a lot, or, maybe, tired from something that’s much older, the fatigue of a life that has reached a boundary, not old age yet, but something that might well be old age if behind it there is, as in Mayta’s case, nothing but lost illusions, frustrations, mistakes, enemies, policial deceptions, want, bad food, jail, police stations, an underground life, failures of all kinds and nothing even remotely resembling a victory (14).

“. . . He had a self-destructive streak.  He was always heterodox, a rebel by nature.  As soon as he got involved in something, he began to dissent and he ended up in the dissenting faction.  Disagreeing was his strongest instinct” (31).

Could there have been anything as captivating for a man like Mayta that out of the blue having someone stick a sub-machine gun in his hands? (66)

He says he doesn’t care if the terrorists win, because “nothing could be worse than what we’re already living” (110).

. . . and Adelaida thought: Now is the moment.  mayta was right next to her on the sofa, and she waited.  But he didn’t even try to hold her hand, and she said to herself: He must really be in love with me. 

A total orphan.  That’s what he became, by being a militant in smaller and smaller, even more radical sects, looking for an ideological purity he never found (141). 

“It’s easy if you know the topography of the mountains, if you know how to fire a Mauser, and if the Indians rise up” (15).

“It bothers me because I realize that you know more about it than I do.”  He smiles (295).

Narration Through Aphorism

No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing (79).

I only want to garner as much information, as many opinions about him as I can, so that later I can add a large dose of fancy to all that data, so I can create something that will be unrecognizable version of what actually happened (81).

Miscellaneous Excerpts/Notes

Maya demurred, afraid to reopen a discussion that would keep him from his cigarette (46).

I like the way this desire to smoke helps direct the pacing of the scene, and likewise in the scene with Adelaide, when Mayta continuously asks for a drink of water.  It’s almost neurotic.

“I don’t know how you can sleep with that noise every night.” / “I can sleep with that noise because I don’t have any choice,” Mayta replied (103).  What a GREAT way to show that Mayta has been wrestling with his sexuality without saying he’s been wrestling with his sexuality.

Were the mountains accepting him? (137).

And I shall think, remember, and imagine until, just before dawn, I give form to this episode in the real life of Alejandro Mayta.  A whistle blew and the train began to move(145).

Indeed, this is often how we create stories—by thinking, remembering, and imagining in equal parts.  And only then does the train begin to move.

“You’re the Mayta of the Jauja business with Lieutenant Vallejos?”  I hesitatingly ask. / “No, I’m not that one,” he blurts out, realizing what’s going on.  “He’s not here anymore” (284).

Huge irony in this scene.  I loved the anti-climax here.