Mario Vargas Llosa: The Novel as Deicide and the Author as God
The Idea of the Novel as Deicide: The Author as God of Trickery
Mario Vargas Llosa explains his conception of the novel: “Thanks to literature, life is understood and better lived. Thanks to it, life, even for a moment, is less awkward and less sad. A person who does not read, or reads little, or reads only trash, can always talk much but say little.”
To become critical and independent citizens, Vargas Llosa explains, writing novels is an act of rebellion against reality—an attempt at correction. The root of his vocation is a feeling of dissatisfaction with life; each novel is a secret deicide, a symbolic murder of reality. The causes of this rebellion and the origin of his vocation as a novelist are multiple, but all can be defined as a flawed relationship with the world. His reaction was to suppress reality, breaking it to remake it into another reality, made of words, that both reflect and deny it.
The Literature, the Truth, and Lies
Wanting to be different from what one has been is the ultimate human aspiration. From this, fiction was born. When we read novels, we become other beings, including the beings the novelist takes us to. Fiction completes us—we are mutilated beings burdened by the awful dichotomy of having only one life and the desires and fantasies of wanting a thousand. The lies of novels are never gratuitous; they fill the gaps in life. Fiction is a temporary substitute for life. The return to reality is always a brutal impoverishment—the realization that we are less than what we dreamed.
Through fiction, we are more and other without ceasing to be ourselves. We dissolve and multiply, living more lives than we have and could live if we remained confined to the “true,” without leaving the prison of history. Humans do not live only truths; they also need lies. Fiction enriches and completes their lives. The author is a stand-in for God. The act of writing a novel is an act against God himself—a deicide in which the author assumes the task of replacing and rectifying the creation that disappoints them, thereby creating, in fiction, an autonomous and self-sufficient reality.
His Literary Vocation
The author defines the literary vocation as a passion, a passion he admits to being enslaved by. For the writer, their vocation is a master. The literary tradition is a blind bet. To explain this graphically, he likens it to something done in the nineteenth century with some large ladies frightened of their bodies, who, in order to recover a sylph-like silhouette, swallowed tapeworms. Literature is a unique and exclusive dedication. Flaubert said: “Writing is a way of life.” To live is to write.
The Importance of the Plot: The Emotional Aspect of Argument
“I want my books read like the novels I’ve read that I like. I have been literally spellbound. This is the kind of novel that I like to read. And this is the kind of novel that I would write.”
Therefore, it is very important that every intellectual element, which is inevitable in a novel, is dissolved in action, primarily in events that should entice the reader, not for their ideas, but for their color, feeling, emotions, passions, novelty, unusual nature, and the suspense and mystery that might emanate from them. Wherever possible, eliminate the gap between the story and the reader.
Formula/Method of Working
He works with a lot of discipline: from morning until two in the afternoon, he never leaves his studio. To write well takes a little imagination and a lot of sweat.
The Muse of Inspiration
Inspiration is something that comes through a routine, a discipline. At first it is a very nebulous thing, is an uneasiness, a restlessness, a curiosity about something I see very cloudy and confusing and that work is becoming. All for me. I become a sort of cannibal reality. Refinements in Contant REWRITE THEIR WORKS Vargas Llosa is a perfectionist, as reviewed and corrected the galleys magnifier. INFLUENCES LITERARY: WRITINGS REALISTIC AFFILIATION realistic writer is that sect, school or tradition that undoubtedly belong, whose novels reflect events that readers can recognize them as possible through their own experience of reality. The footprint of Flaubert and his masterpiece Madame Bovary. This French author celebrates his literary ideal objectivity and impartiality of the writer, the creation of an impersonal narrative voice marked by an ironic distance. For Vargas Llosa, the author’s apparent autonomy reaches its summit with Flaubert. The Peruvian novelist considers this aspect of Flaubert as the main contribution to the history of the novel contribution he consciously tries to emulate his work. Vargas Llosa also admired Flaubert’s idea of representing a novel all human. “I love to be considered the Flaubert of my time”, because novels Flaubert fully emancipate the creator. The second area of major influence on the work of Vargas Llosa’s novel of medieval chivalry, and in particular Tirant lo Blanc, the Catalan writer Joanot Martorell. William Faulkner’s influence is also evident in our author. In his works he takes on the conception of the fictional story as a tragedy arid, a dark world, the pervasive failure. Vargas Llosa speaks of election in a more concise: “Failure is a choice that implies a certain dignity and even a secret greatness.”