Initially thoughts and points before jumping into passages I
like/demonstrate some of the initial points.
-First the use of time – The quick and unmarked shifts
between present and past provide many layers to the story. In addition to
having the narrators point of view, and the point of view of his interview
subject, Llosa throws us into the past to provide internality and externality
of Mayta. It’s somewhat jarring at first but ultimately an extraordinarily
effective way to related the story. Huge amount of craft on Llosa’s part.
-The novel is very aware of the fact that it’s a novel. This
allows the narrator, and hence the author, to comment on: politics
(specifically the divisions and fallout from Marxism to Leninism, Stalinism,
Trotskyism, etc.), history, “present day” trash and filth filled Peru, social
issues (the various thoughts about homosexuality), and finally, the actual
construction of a narrative and the idea of truth.
-I’m a long opponent of writing
about writing because the genre seems to have been coopted by people who simply
have nothing to write about. In the case of Llosa, he clearly has a lot to
write about and the writing on writing serves a broader function re: the construction
of narrative/story and questions the importance of truth. So, I put him in the
category of people who write about writing for a worthwhile end – although it’s
nearly ad nauseum…
-Meta at its pinnacle, or close...
-Meta at its pinnacle, or close...
-In general, although much of it is history and politics
(not to mention the fact that our narrator’s opening and final opinion doesn’t
explicitly change), it was effective as literature, a telling of history, and
also eliciting emotions of both revolutionary joy and hopelessness. And it
didn’t fail as an epistemological venture (and I’m a huge zealot on this idea:
often holding the position that if one’s interested in epistemological
discussions, one ought to study academic philosophy first…)
-Lastly, the novel/narrator often contradicts itself on
universal values, i.e., we can and will know the truth/it’s impossible to know
the truth. This idea of truth ties into the idea of real, which makes me think
about the title. Many times I thought there’s
a reason this book isn’t called “The TRUE Life…”
On the Dialogue
--Much of the book is dialogue, and when characters speak
they speak for long periods of time. He has a reflective and explanatory
sensibility.
“Mayta agreed, ‘Blind terrorism, cut off from the masses,
estranges the people from the revolutionary vanguard. We are going to be
something else: the spark that lights the fuse, the snowball that turn into the
avalance.’
‘You’re waxing poetic today.’ Anatolio burst out laughing…
“(83)
Passages of Value/ Some Sentences I liked
“The assault on heaven, I thought. We shall bring heaven down
from heaven, establish it on earth; heaven and earth were becoming one in this
twilight hour. The ashen clouds in the sky met the ashen clouds from the fires.
And those little black spots that flew, innumerably, from all four points on the
compass toward Cuzco—they weren’t ashes but vultures. Spurred on by hunger,
braving smoke and flames, they dove on towards their desirable prey. From the
heights, the surrvioviors, parents, wounded, the fighters, the
internationalists, all of them, with a minimum of fantasy, could hear the
anxious tearing, the febrile pecking, the abject beating of wings, and smell
the horrifying stench.” (200-201)
“…I still have a vivid impression of his insecurity and
histrionics. Ever since then, I’ve tried to avoid meeting writers I like, so
that the same thing that happened with the poet Cardenal doesn’t happen with
them. Every time I try to read him, something like acid flows out of the book
and ruins it—the memory of the man who wrote it.” (80)
The senator (On writing, crafting, truth)
“’I don’t know if I’ve acted
properly in speaking to you so frankly,’ he says to me. It’s one of my defects,
I know it. But in this case, for political reasons, it would be better not to
stir up the mud and spatter people with it. But, after all, you aren’t a
historian but a novelist. If you had said, I’m going to write an essay, a
sociopolitical study, I wouldn’t have said a word. Fiction is different. You
can believe what I’ve said or not, of course.’
I inform him that all the
testimonials I get, true or false, are useful to me. Did it seem to him I would
disguard his assertions? He’s wrong. What I use is not the truth of testimonies
but their power to suggest, their power as inventions, their color, their
dramatic strength…” (101)
“Nowadays, Mayta thought, they use electric shocks on the
testicles, sodium-pentothal injections, immersion in tubs of shit, cigarette
burns. Not much progress in this field.” (Great tear on torture 108.)
“One person was sure I’d never be allowed to enter Quero,
because the army uses it as a concentration camp and torture center. ‘That’s
where they bring prisoners from all over the Mantaro Valley to make them talk.
They use the most up-to-date methods. When they’ve finished with the prisoners,
they take them up in helicopters and drop them out over the Jungle to terrorize
the Reds, who are supposedly watching from below.” (246)
“As I fall asleep, I hear a rhythmic noise. No, it isn’t the
night birds. It’s the wind , which slaps the waters of Lake Paca against the terrace
of the inn. That soft music and the beautiful, starry night sky of Jauja
Suggest a peaceful land and happy, tranquil people. They lie. Because all
fictions are lies.” (276)
The Professor asking
“’Does it make any sense to be writing a novel with Peru in
this condition and Peruvians all living on borrowed time?’ Does it make any
sense? I tell him it certainly does because I’m doing it.” (140)
“…he’s impressed me as being a bitter man interested in
nothing.” (149)
“A lady tells the man who’d been talking about filling the
pots of water that he’s an ignoramus. When the bombs start falling, all you can
do is pray! Pots of water against bombs! What did he think, that war was like a
carnival, stupid asshole?” (157).
“’If I didn’t know it was against your principles, I’d ask
you to have an abortion,’ said Mayta, as if he’d prepared the statement.” (194)
The narrator on the novel “’Something inspired by his life.
Not a biography but a novel. A free history of the period, Mayta’s world, the
things that happened in those years’” (15)
“Revolutionaries wore ties in those days.”
“His ugliness is so outrageous that it’s charming.” (207)
On Mayta – “’I don’t know, maybe not, he was like granite.”’
(41)
On the university system “The Spanish literature professor
seemed convinced that it was more important to read what Leo Spitzer had
written about García Lorca than to read Lorca himself… He had withdrawn from
the university in disgust: real culture was just the opposite of what they were
teaching.” (48)
“My last trip involved some slapstick comedy. When I finally
figured out that I was definitively stuck in the mud, I asked some boys talking
on the corner to give me a push. They helped me, but before getting down and
pushing, they held a knife to my throat and threatened to kill me it I didn’t
give them everything I had.” (52)
“If… I also succumb to despair, I won’t write this novel.
That won’t help anyone. No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something,
while despair is nothing.” (79)
Other Places
On 96 – the
discussion w/ the politician – on homosexuality, and how it leads to the
downfall of society. It’s hilarious, on one level, because it’s juxtaposed with
the politician, who’s clearly the actual source of the stratification of Peru. The
narrator explicitly address the inherent contradictions between the senator and
his description of Mayta on 98.
On 107, the discussion of informers, how easy it was to get
people thrown into jail at the time. By looking through the slit.
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