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11 - The essays

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2012

Efrain Kristal
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
John King
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
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Summary

When you set out for Ithaka

Ask that your way be long,

Full of adventure, full of instruction.

C. P. Cavafy, ‘Ithaka’

Mario Vargas Llosa is the most widely discussed – and debated – public intellectual in the Spanish-speaking world; his commentaries are read across the globe. To many he has become – in a phrase that he used with intentional irony to describe his long-term ideological sparring partner, Günter Grass – ‘the ‘conscience’ of an era, for he is a writer ‘who has opinions on and debates everything’. He has been commenting on politics since the early 1960s, though his conviction that a writer of fiction can play a decisive role in the political arena waned considerably after his own failed candidacy for the Peruvian presidency in 1990. His publications, on politics and on broader cultural issues, are more extensive than his works of fiction, and are so inextricably linked to his intellectual biography that they are best understood in the context of developments and changes in his views about politics, the arts and culture. Indeed, his collections of essays often include open letters and documents that attest to his ongoing participation in public affairs in Peru and elsewhere.

He first gained employment as a sixteen-year-old cub journalist in Lima for La Crónica newspaper, in early 1952, while still at secondary school. In his evocation of Peru in his Nobel Prize Lecture in December 2010, he talked with affection of his early days in the dusty newspaper offices, remarking that journalism, along with literature, had been a constant throughout his life that allowed him to ‘live more fully, know the world better, meet people from all walks of life, excellent, good, bad and execrable people’.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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  • The essays
  • Edited by Efrain Kristal, University of California, Los Angeles, John King, University of Warwick
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Mario Vargas Llosa
  • Online publication: 28 January 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521864244.013
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  • The essays
  • Edited by Efrain Kristal, University of California, Los Angeles, John King, University of Warwick
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Mario Vargas Llosa
  • Online publication: 28 January 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521864244.013
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The essays
  • Edited by Efrain Kristal, University of California, Los Angeles, John King, University of Warwick
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Mario Vargas Llosa
  • Online publication: 28 January 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521864244.013
Available formats
×