Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa (born 28 March 1936), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, is a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and a former politician, who also holds Spanish citizenship. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America’s most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat.” He also won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize, the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award, the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes International Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit.
Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, literally The City and the Dogs, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in the Cathedral (Conversación en la catedral, 1969/1975). He writes prolifically across an array of literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. Several, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982), have been adapted as feature films.
(Wikipedia)
Vargas Llosa’s Comic Anarchy
In Vargas Llosa’s world, something is almost always fucked up–a death, a massacre, a marriage, a disappearance–and it is up to him or his characters to find out why and how.
See also the conversation video with Phil Swanson.
- Vargas Llosa, Mario. Captain Pantoja and the Special Service. Trans. Gregory Kolovakos and Ronald Christ. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990.
On Mario Vargas Llosa
A conversation about Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, with Phil Swanson (University of Sheffield)
Vargas Llosa videos
Mario Vargas Llosa and Paul Holdengräber: A Life In Letters | 5-14-2018 | LIVE from the NYPL:
Captain Pantoja and the Special Service | Mario Vargas Llosa [REVIEW]:
Pantaleón y las visitadoras (1999 movie)
Pantaleón y las visitadoras (1999):
- Castro-Klaren, Sara. “Humor and Class in Pantaleón y las visitadoras.” Latin American Literary Review 7.13 (Fall/Winter 1978): 64-79.
- Freud, Sigmund. Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 8. Trans and ed. James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1960.
- Luchting, Wolfgang. “Un recurso narrativo como estructura: Pantaleón y las visitadoras de Mario Vargas Llosa.” Mester 14.2 (1986): 102-108.
- Oviedo, José Miguel. “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero: On Vargas Llosa’s Intellectuals and the Military.” Trans. Richard A. Valdes. World Literature Today 52.1 (Winter 1978): 16-23.
- Vargas Llosa, Mario. Conversation in the Cathedral. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
- Wood, Michael. “Humour and Irony: Captain Pantoja and the Special Service and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.” The Cambridge Companion to Mario Vargas Llosa. Ed. Efrain Kristal and John King. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 49-61.
One of the qualities recommending Pantaleón Pantoja for his mission is that he has no vices: “not a smoker, not a drinker, no wandering eye” (3). But paradoxically, to carry it out he has to immerse himself in a demi-monde with which he is unfamiliar. Indeed, as he is to keep his distance from army installations, even his meetings with his handler, Lieutenant Bacacorzo, take place in “bars and brothels.” As Bacacorzo puts it: “You’ll have to hang out a lot in those places, won’t you?” (14). Dutiful as always, the quartermaster heads for Iquitos’s red-light district, starting at a place called the “Mau Mau,” showing from the start his unfamiliarity with such establishments: “’Ahem. . . I mean hello,’ Pantaleón Pantoja blows his nose, sits on the stool, leans on the bar. ‘Yeah, a beer, please’” (17). Unsurprisingly, his evening’s “research,” meeting the Mau Mau’s madam, whom he will later hire for the Special Service, leaves him reeling the following morning: “’My head is killing me,’ Pantita curls up, covers himself with the sheets. ‘My body is falling to pieces, I got the shivers’” (20). The alcohol reminds Pantoja that he, too, has a body, which may betray him as his mission progresses.
Vargas Llosa questions
The following questions are taken from your blog posts…
On Humour
Did you like the humour aspect of the novel? Did anyone else find it a bit unusual for this topic?
Was there a particular moment or scene in the book that stood out most and made you laugh or something you found funny?
Did you find the book’s comedic aspects funny?
Did Vargas Llosa’s style of comedy work for you? Or were you more disturbed by it?
Do you think that this novel can be categorized under your own definition of comedy? Does it fall under more of a black comedy type as Jon mentioned in the lecture? Or do the satirical elements allow for a very specific type of dark humor to emerge?
What was a specific comedic moment that genuinely made you laugh? How did you feel about some of the ‘dark’ humour used throughout?
What did you believe would make this novel a comedy? Is there anything you found particularly funny throughout your reading?
Are these comedic or humorous elements in the novel are truly intended to take away from these serious topics, or are they supposed to make readers think deeper about what they are laughing about and potentially see the issues in front of their eyes? What do you guys think?
On Sex and Sexuality
Do you think the sexual desires in this story are over-exaggerated or fall to the truth of what soldiers were like back in the day?
Do you think that there would have been a way for the military to regulate sexual interactions besides the special service? Or do you think that the idea of regulating desires, especially in isolated (jungle) conditions will always be set up to fail from the start?
On Pantoja
In the start Pantoja rejects carrying out the special project, and then ironically, he ends up taking part in it himself. Why do you think the author chose to have his character end up like that? Did having Pantoja give up his principles add something more to the overall story?
Do you believe that Pantoja changed his personality because of the “heat” as Pochita describes, or was he always a little more loose than the persona that he used in his professional and personal life?
How much do you think Pantaleon Pantoja was actually influenced by the aphrodisiacal Amazon? Was he just letting his inner self show?
Other
What do you think is the role of the Brothers of the Ark in this story? Is there an underlying message Vargas Llosa is attempting to make, potentially about the dangers of cults? Or maybe of ‘culty’ beliefs as such? Share some thoughts and some examples of why you think what you do.
What you think the purpose of the monks’ involvement in the plot was?
What do you think the broader significance of the cult was, with the place it has within this story?
Did you think of any other reasons why the ‘Special Service’ ended? Was there some way to allow it to continue without preventing chaos? Did you find the book comedic at all? In a parodic sense? Or, did you feel differently about Llosa’s work and Pantoja’s ‘Special Service’? Why did you feel this way?
That horrifying image of the cycle of life or better yet, the cycle of the devoured, seems to have a greater meaning. What do you think it means?
Do you share my perspective on the impact of exaggeration in the book? Why and why not?