This week’s journey through Mario Vargas Llosa’s Captain Pantoja and the Special Service was a somewhat entertaining read. The tale conveyed a sense of exoticism, as the lascivious themes were played out against a backdrop of formality, which was entirely new to me. As emphasized in the lecture, the book cleverly mocks seriousness through seriousness. […]
Captain Pantoja and the Special Service was written by Mario Vargas Llosa in 1973. I decided to read this novel because I’d heard of the author before, namely about the book “The Time of the Hero.” I really wanted to like this book, but truthfully I wa…
Captain Pantoja and the Special Service was written by Mario Vargas Llosa in 1973. I decided to read this novel because I’d heard of the author before, namely about the book “The Time of the Hero.” I really wanted to like this book, but truthfully I wa…
Mario Vargas Llosa’s Captain Pantoja and the Special Service was an eventful read. The book—both directly and indirectly—dealt with heavier themes of colonialism, discipline and control, sexuality, prostitution, and corruption, while simultaneously providing comedy. The first thing that stood out to me was how corrupt the military was. This was most explicitly shown to me […]
Reading the first few pages of this novel already made me nauseous; needless to comment on the rest of the book which was only more and more outrageous as it went along. From the descriptors of the maths that are required to run a brothel, to completely grotesque descriptors about Captain Pantoja’s hemorrhoids, or cult … Continue reading
Hello Blog readers,This week I read Captain Pantoja And The Special Service by Mario Vargas Llosa, and I was not expecting what I just read. To put it blankly, this book was all about sex, yet in such a formal way to disguise the topic. The overa…
Hello Blog readers,This week I read Captain Pantoja And The Special Service by Mario Vargas Llosa, and I was not expecting what I just read. To put it blankly, this book was all about sex, yet in such a formal way to disguise the topic. The overa…
This was an interesting book. When I was choosing which books to read, the synopsis of this one seemed intriguing and it ended up being exactly that. The way the book was written was quite interesting, the comedic dialogue had an underlying layer of seriousness that made the overall book, satirical. The character of Pantoja […]
Hi all, This week we discuss Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, paying homage to the increasing demand for specialists (aka lust), the ridiculous professionalism/euphemisms of bureaucratic systems, and the racial depiction of Chino Porfirio. Question: What do you think is the role of the Brothers of the Ark in this story? Is there an …
Mario Vargas Llosa, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service
