Mario Vargas Llosa - Touchstones - Essays In Literature, Art And Politics

There is no better introduction to the life and work of this extraordinary woman than Flora Tristán. La Paria et son rêve , a very thorough edition of her correspondence edited by Stéphane Michaud, Professor of Comparative Literature at the Sorbonne, President of the Society of Romantic and Nineteenth-Century Studies and the author of a recent important book on Lou Andreas-Salomé, which combines erudition with a clear and elegant style. Professor Michaud is probably the leading expert on the life and work of Flora Tristán, having tracked it for many years with the obstinacy of a bloodhound and the tenderness of a lover. Her studies on Tristán and the symposia she has organised on her intellectual and political achievements have been decisive in rescuing Flora Tristán from the unjustified critical neglect she had suffered, despite isolated work like the admirable book Jules Puech wrote on her in 1925.

This new edition of her correspondence, expanded and enriched by notes and commentaries, contains new letters alongside the ones we already know, and also many letters from her correspondents, as well as mapping the social and political context of Flora’s life. The volume as a whole offers an excellent overview of her times: the hopes, polemics and personal disputes that were bound up in the first attempts in France to organise workers politically, the distance that often existed between reality and the ambitious messianic plans of the utopians, and the psychology of the main character herself, who is extremely frank in her letters and in the comments that she wrote in the margins of the correspondence that she received.

There are still major gaps in her biography, but these letters offer an absorbing portrait of her life following her return to France from Peru, especially the final two years. The letters are disarmingly fresh and sincere — luckily she did not write for posterity — revealing all her contradictions and weaknesses. She was a realist and a dreamer, generous and irascible, naïve and pugnacious, truculent and romantic, bold and never discouraged.

This book is the best homage that Flora Tristán could be offered in this the second centenary of her birth.

Marbella, July 2002

The Cubs and Other Stories

The Time of the Hero

The Green House

Captain Pantoja and the Special Service

Conversation in the Cathedral

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

The War of the End of the World

The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

The Perpetual Orgy

Who Killed Palomino Molero?

The Storyteller

In Praise of the Stepmother

A Fish in the Water

Death in the Andes

Making Waves

The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto

The Feast of the Goat

Letters to a Young Novelist

The Language of Passion

The Way to Paradise

The Bad Girl

Literature

Semilla de los sueños. Seeds of Dreams, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1997

Una novela para el siglo XXI. A Twenty-First-Century Novel, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2004

El corazón de las tinieblas. The Heart of Darkness , from La verdad de las mentiras , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1990, 2002 (Abbreviated from now on to LVM)

La muerte en Venecia. Death in Venice , from LVM

La señora Dalloway. Mrs Dalloway , from LVM

Nadja (1928), from LVM

La condición humana. La Condition humaine , from LVM

Trópico de cancer. Tropic of Cancer , LVM

Siete cuentos góticos. Seven Gothic Tales , from LVM

El extranjero. L’Étranger , from LVM

El viejo y el mar. The Old Man and the Sea , from LVM

Lolita , from LVM

El tambor de hojalata. The Tin Drum , from LVM

Extract from La utopia arcáica. José María Arguedas y las ficciones del indigenismo on the Peruvian novelist, José María Arguedas. Edited essay on the novel Los ríos profundos (Deep Rivers) , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1996

Neruda cumple cien años. Neruda at a Hundred, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2004

Como perdí el miedo al avión. How I Lost My Fear of Flying, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1999

La literatura y la vida. Literature and Life, from LVM

Art

Una fábrica de sueños. A Dream Factory. On Museums, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1996

‘Grosz: A Sad and Ferocious Man’, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1992

Dos amigos. Two Friends, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2001

Huellas de Gauguin. Traces of Gauguin, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2002

Los hombres-mujeres del Pacífico. The Men-Women of the Pacific, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2002

El pintor en el burdel. The Painter in the Brothel, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2001

Cuando París era una fiesta. When Paris Was a Fiesta, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2002

Botero en los toros. Botero at the Bullfight, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1992

Culture and Politics

El nacionalismo y la utopía. Nationalism and Utopia, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1991

El hombre que sabía demasiado. The Man Who Knew Too Much. On Isaiah Berlin, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2000

El ladrón en la casa vacía. The Thief in the Empty House. On Revel, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1997

La cultura y el nuevo orden internacional. Culture and the New International Order, © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1997

Las réplicas del 11 de setiembre. Responses to 9/11, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2001

Novelista en New York. Novelist in New York, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2001

Diario de Iraq. Iraq Diary (The eight original articles), © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2003

Historia de ratas. A Story about Rats, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2001

El capitán en su laberinto. The Captain in His Labyrinth, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2001

El caso Pinochet. The Pinochet Affair, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 1999

Bostezos chilenos. Chilean Yawns, in El País , © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2006

La odisea de Flora Tristán. The Odyssey of Flora Tristán © Mario Vargas Llosa, 2002

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2007 by Mario Vargas Llosa

Translation and selection copyright © John King

All rights reserved

Originally published in 2007 by Faber and Faber Ltd., Great Britain

Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010940200

ISBN: 978-1-4299-6747-1

www.fsgbooks.com

1 Efraín Kristal, Temptation of the Word. The Novels of Mario Vargas Llosa , Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, 1998, pp. 185–86.

2 A Fish in the Water. A Memoir , Faber and Faber, London, 1994, p. 209.

3 La verdad de las mentiras , Alfaguara, Madrid, 2002, pp. 13–14.

4 ’Günter Grass en la picota’, El País , 27 August 2006.

5 La utopía arcaica: José María Arguedas y las ficciones del indigenismo , Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1996, p. 17.

6 The Temptation of the Impossible , Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 176–77.

7 ‘Karl Popper al día’, El País 27 April 1989 and 5 June 1989.