Peruvian writer Mario. Vargas. Llosa was not a writer I liked, he was a genius writer born to write, a writer like Tolstoy and Sartre.
These three writers came from either rich or wealthy backgrounds and did not have to write for food and livelihood like other writers. Their main works all express sublime themes, and they are so meticulous that they do not have to write commissioned articles, and they do not have to write urgent chapters for three or two pieces of silver to cope with the urging.
Their life experience is very rich, they don't seem to have to worry about what to write, they just need to process their life experience is very attractive. Therefore, their personal stories are richer than the novels they have written, so I like to read Tolstoy's biography "Confessions", Sartre's "Words" and conversations with his partner Beauvoir, and Llosa's biography "Fish in the Water".
Another remarkable thing these three writers have in common is that they all see literature as a means of social participation and political interference. The influence of Tolstoyism is worldwide, and Mahatma Gandhi and Roman Rolland are followers of Tolstoyism. Sartre was the spiritual mentor of France's 1968 May Storm and an influential promoter of Algerian independence, even having his home bombed for it. Llosa was a major driver of Peru's democratization process, running for president in 1990, losing to Fujimori, and has since traveled to Spain to concentrate on writing.
I was able to discover a part of myself in Tolstoy's portrayed Karenin, Levin, and Volensky's gestures and verbal thoughts; I was also able to confirm my existence from Logantine from Sartre's Disgusting as I was. The process of reading Llosa's works is a bit like reading Homer's Epic, where the characters and plots are not possible for me to relate to; Nor can I find episodes or aphorisms in Llosa's work that trigger my memories or empathy. This is why I don't like Llosa, but again, I have to read his main works carefully.
The major writers of the twentieth century had more or less personality or mental defects and presented these defects in their work, and I do not find any similar flaws in Llosa's work. For example, I found in Proust's "Remembrance of the Watery Years" the writer's anxiety and morbid jealousy of death; I found in Kafka's works a writer with extreme inferiority and even autism; I'm from Ian. McEwan's Between the Beds and First Love, The Last Ritual find a writer anxious about sexual impotence there. Llosa is a rare normal genius in the history of literature, and I speculate that this has something to do with the environment in which he grew up, 1936 Mario. Vargas. Llosanian was born into a middle-class family, his father ran away from home before he was born, and fortunately he was favored by his maternal grandfather and uncles, and his childhood was not oppressed by the patriarchy that ordinary people face in childhood. When he became an adult, his father returned to the family, giving him the much-needed adult experience and career guidance, and it was his father who personally guided him to a career as a journalist. His maternal grandfather was mayor of Piura, one of Peru's major cities, and had close ties to Peruvian political elites, which provided Llosa with rich material for writing about political subjects. The economic conditions of physical and mental well-being and abundance ensured the writer's self-confidence, and Llosa did not seem necessary to "drive away the inner demons" by writing, as Sartre did.
Llosa's work is not characterized by subject matter and language, but by handling the plot like building blocks, requiring the reader to straighten out each clue from the maze of structure to obtain the complete plot of multiple stories. "Green House" is such a typical example. Later, the Turkish writer Pamuk developed this structuralist technique to the extreme, and the structure of Pamuk's masterpiece "Snow" is a hexagonal snowflake.
Llosa is not as adept at using magical techniques, magical fiction, and dazzling language as other Latin American writers, and Llosa's style is generally realistic. The pioneering work of Latin American magicalism should be Asturias' The Corn Man, and this passage from Asturias explains why Latin American magicist literature is so:
"Language, as the backbone of fiction, is like the human respiratory organ. The novel has the lung lobes of poetry and the lung lobes of bright green plants. I think that what makes Latin American fiction most appealing to non-American readers is its effect through colorful (and not unapologetic), onomatopoeic language. This language conforms to natural musical tones and sometimes to sounds in Indian languages, or ancient remnants of Indian languages emerge imperceptibly in the prose used by novelists. In order to achieve a fascinating effect, Latin American novelists also attach great importance to the use of words, treating each word as an absolutely independent unit, a symbol. Our prose departs from the grammatical rules of Castilian, because in our grammar the word itself has a certain value, just as in the Indian language each word has its own value. Every word has a sound, a concept; In addition, there is a fascinating abundance of word order translocations. Remove the charm of individual words, and no one can read our literary works, our poems.
Words and language allow readers to participate in our creative life. Words and words make the reader restless, anxious, win their sympathy, make them forget their daily lives, and immerse themselves in the plot of the novel, sharing hardships with the characters of the novel. Our novels retain the value of the human person in its entirety; To make man more perfect, and never to contain anything that demoralizes man. Perhaps that's why our novels conquer and stir people. It is for this reason that our novels use language as a tool, endowing it with literary depth, immeasurable magical value and profound human touch, thus becoming a channel for the exchange of ideas and a spokesperson for the people. (Asturias Nobel Prize acceptance speech)
Latin American writers known for their language style include Juan of Mexico. Erfo's "Plains of Fire" and "Pedro. Balmo, Carlos. Entes' "The Clearest Zone" and "Artemio. The Death of Cross", "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Colombian writer Márquez, although it is a Chinese translation, we can still feel the light and shadow of language. When we read Yu Hua and Su Tong's novellas, it clearly smells like a Chinese translation of "Agni Plain", almost a direct imitation. And the language style of Mo Yan's "Frog", "Forty-One Cannons" and "Milk and Fat Buttocks" is a routine of the Chinese translation of "One Hundred Years of Solitude".
Llosa's knack for using elaborate structures to dazzle stories, was Llosa's contemporary, Argentine writer Julio Irio. Cortázar's Hopscotch is also known for its exquisite structure.
The structure of Llosa's other novel, Maita the Madman, is also elaborate, with ten chapters each consisting of two parts, one part is the author's interview with someone Mayita knows or has a fate, and the other part is a third-person narration. This constitutes a plump figure full of contradictions with a feverish passion for the revolution from multiple angles, a Che Che figure that seems to be regarded as George . A companion to Orwell's "1984" reads, from Madman Mayita to the "Big Brother" in "1984" after the success of the revolution. Llosa's cautious and skeptical approach to Latin American revolutions is one of the reasons for his longstanding feud with Márquez, who supported Cuba.
Llosa's new work, The Day of the Ram, portrays a dictator based on the tragic fate of a victimized Dominican woman Urania, based on Dominican President (1891-1961) Trujillo. Latin America in the twentieth century was once the continent of dictators, notably Jiménez in Venezuela (2014-2001), Battista in Cuba (1901-1973), Piloon in Argentina (1895-1974), Torrijos (1929-1981) and Noriega in Panama (1934-2017), Pinochet in Chile (1915-2006), etc., these characters provided Latin American writers with rich writing material. Many writers have written influential works with dictators as the protagonists, who have determined the fate of Latin American people for a long time, and Llosa has created the image of the dictator "Ram", which is the same as the mayor of "The Green House", Anselmo, and the madman Maita, who are slaves to power, destroying themselves in the process of pursuing power.
Llosa put forward the theory of "Chinese box" and "connected tube" in the structure of the novel, "Chinese box" is simply explained as "the story in the story, the story set of stories, the story in the story, the story and the story", "connected tube" is a novel in which there are multiple stories, these stories are not isolated from each other, but there is intersection and connection, that is, the convergence of clues, the most typical example is "Anna Karenina" Levin's and Kitty's story, Anna and Volensky's story, two clues, It was achieved through a meeting between Levin and Anna. Llosa tells five independent stories distinguished by characters in "The Green House", but these five stories intersect with the other four in the process of their respective development, and then develop separately and independently.
In addition to the exquisite structure, Llosa's novel also has the characteristics of the free transformation of the human name, and the transformation of the person can solve the dilemma of the narrative, similar to the transformation of the lens, this technique, Llosa is particularly good at. Just list a passage from "The Ram's Festival" to see Llosa's skills, which are worth learning and pondering by writers.
Do you still hate Dad today? Do you still hate Dad today? She said loudly in her heart, "I can't stand it." But the anger is still burning, but the wounds are still bleeding, but the depression still occupies your heart and poisons your soul, just as you did when you were young, when you studied and worked so hard that study and labor became medicine for forgetting everything. You really hated him at that time. Every cell in your body, all the thoughts and emotions in your heart, resents your father. You had hoped for disaster, disease, and accidents to befall your father. Ulania, God has fulfilled your request. Precisely, it is the devil who has granted your wish. Isn't it enough to let the cerebral hemorrhage torment him alive? Isn't it enough to keep him in a wheelchair for ten years, unable to walk, not to speak, and to rely on nurses for eating, sleeping, dressing, undressing, cutting nails, shaving his face, and urinating? "Are you still not satisfied?" "Nope!"
The stream of consciousness of the protagonist Urania, she begins her dialogue in the second person, which is again third person for the author. It seems that again the author and Ulania are in dialogue, so there is another hidden first-person.
Learn to write novels, and you can't miss learning from Llosa's works.