La ta Julia y el escribidor: The Writing Subject's Fantasy of Empowerment

Author(s): Carlos J. Alonso

Source: PMLA, Vol. 106, No. 1 (Jan., 1991), pp. 46-59
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/462822
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La tiaJulia y el escribidor:
The Writing Subject's Fantasy
of Empowerment
CARLOS J ALONSO, associ-
ate professor of Romance lan-
guages at Wesleyan University,
is the author of The Spanish
American Regional Novel:
Modernity and Autochthony
(Cambridge UP, 1990) and of
several articles on nineteenth-
and twentieth-century Latin
American literature. He is
currently working on a book
entitled The Burden of Moder-
nity: The Rhetoric of Cultural
Discourse in Latin America.
46
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CarlosJ. Alonso
On the surface, [ La tia Julia y el escribidor] is a novel about soap operas and
melodrama. On a deeper level it deals with something that has always fasci-
nated me, something to which I devote most of my life but which I have never
understood: Why do I write and what does writing mean?
Mario Vargas Llosa
~M OST CRITICAL considerations of Mario Vargas Llosa's
La ti'a Julia y el escribidor converge on the work's mani-
fest duality, that is, on its two well-defined tracts or textual divides.
The first of these relates the narrator's secret affair with, and eventual
marriage to, a divorced aunt-in-law twelve years his senior, the vicis-
situdes that befall the couple during their elopement, and the familial
scandal that the union precipitates. The other register follows the essen-
tial story lines of various radio soap operas produced by the escribidor
'scriptwriter' of the novel's title, a remarkable, driven man named Pedro
Camacho. The summaries begin as discrete narratives but subsequently
deteriorate into a chaotic melange of characters and plots. In a des-
perate attempt to wipe the slate clean, Camacho proceeds to concoct
outlandish situations that somehow allow him to bring his characters
together, only to have them perish in the midst of improbable and
apocalyptic cataclysms. The novel's concluding installment serves as
a coda to the events depicted earlier: many years later the narrator,
divorced from his aunt and married to a younger cousin, has become
a successful and established writer who lives in Europe. During a visit
to his country, he chances to meet Camacho, the erstwhile prolific
scribbler, who has been reduced to a simple gofer for a third-rate sen-
sationalist rag in Lima.
And yet, what is perhaps most singularly striking about the novel's
structure is that the two parts, though strictly parallel, do not seem
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 CarlosJ. Alonso
to have much in common. Some critics have en-
deavored to resolve this perplexing circumstance
by pointing out that the adolescent's affair with
his aunt eventually begins to take on all the trap-
pings of one of Camacho's melodramatic and
passionate plots, a resemblance that is in fact com-
mented on by several of the novel's characters, in-
cluding Aunt Julia herself: "'The love affair of a
baby and an old lady who's also more or less his
aunt,' Aunt Julia said to me one night as we were
crossing the Parque Central. 'A perfect subject for
one of Pedro Camacho's serials' "-Los amores
de un bebe y una anciana que ademas es algo asi
como su tia-me dijo una noche la tia Julia, mien-
tras cruzabamos el Parque Central-. Cabalito
para un radioteatro de Pedro Camacho' (90; 112).
In this way, the presumably self-evident distinction
between the autobiographical account of experi-
ence and the formulaic soap-opera model is
shaken and overturned. This commingling would
seem to point to the inevitable reduction of expe-
rience through emplotment or, conversely, to the
realization that every personal experience is al-
ready perceived from within the framework of an
autobiographical plot. The novel would appear to
suggest that for all our pretensions, the plots we
use to make sense of our lives (or of our recollec-
tions) are finally not that different from Cama-
cho's bizarre creations. Furthermore, given the
dichotomy between high and popular cultures in
the novel-as represented by the sort of writer
Marito (Varguitas) eventually becomes versus the
writer as represented by Camacho and his tem-
pestuous inventions-the text would seem to be
deliberately questioning the very tenability of that
distinction, since the narrative mechanisms at
work in both scriptural modalities can be shown
to be analogous once these modalities are reduced
to their essential components. In this respect La
t(a Julia y el escribidor can be read as an example
of that more general current within postmodern-
ism which seeks to explode the chasm between
high and low cultures by using popular forms and
discourses to produce objects that ostensibly be-
long to high literary culture.2
But if such an interpretation of the relation be-
tween the two narrative levels is indeed practicable,
I would like to argue that this connection can be
more profitably examined in the context delimited
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47
by the story at the heart of La t'a Julia y el escri-
bidor-the story about the coming into being of
a writer, about how Varguitas, the fledgling art-
ist, becomes Vargas Llosa, the established and suc-
cessful creator who appears in the last pages. For
whatever examination the novel makes of the is-
sues mentioned earlier, it also explores the require-
ments of writing and storytelling: the author's
unstinting commitment to the task, the techniques
that make for effective narrative, the elements that
advance the action and keep the reader's interest
engaged.3 Camacho's soap-opera plots are indeed
hackneyed and predictable, but therein lies their
strength as well, for they operate at the most es-
sential level of continuity, expectation, and satis-
faction; they work as narratives precisely because
they remain at the basic stratum of story crafting.
Furthermore, Camacho demonstrates that being
a writer is an activity-a consuming passion man-
ifested in an obsessive engagement in the act of
writing. These are perhaps the most important les-
sons learned by the young Varguitas, who is seen
not writing but posing as a writer, concocting in-
tricate stories that finally amount to nothing be-
cause he has not yet mastered the elementary
principle of storytelling: that the reader's attention
must be captured and sustained if the work is go-
ing to be read at all.
But from this perspective La t'a Julia y el es-
cribidor would have to be interpreted as a caution-
ary tale as well. For if the novel initially presents
Camacho as a model of effective composition (in
his productivity, not necessarily in the quality of
his work) and of consummate commitment to his
metier, it just as carefully chronicles his gradual
coming apart as a writer, a process that culminates
in his total mental collapse and the abandonment
of his craft. Hence, at another level Camacho
seems to operate as a counterexample, as a case
study of how a writer can self-destruct by allow-
ing personal demons to take over the work at hand.
This essay stems in part from my desire to address
the ambivalence in the novel's depiction of Ca-
macho's writing activity. My overarching aim,
though, is to examine in some detail Vargas Llosa's
parable of how a writer is formed and to use this
analysis to conceptualize in a new way the juxtapo-
sition of the two planes whose exact alternation
produces the text. Simply stated, my goal is to ac-
48 La tia Julia y el escribidor: The Writing Subject
count for the mutual implication and supplemen-
tarity of the two seemingly unconnected stories,
a relation heralded from the outset by the y in the
title La tfa Juliay el escribidor. My point of depar-
ture is another text by Vargas Llosa that shows the
unmistakable signs of a certain repression at work
in his own discourse on the novel.
In an interview granted shortly before the pub-
lication of La tia Julia y el escribidor, Vargas Llosa
spoke at length about his recently completed work.
Some of his remarks are of interest not because
they afford any especially penetrating insights into
the novel but, rather, because the references to the
text are utterly superficial. The first of these com-
ments, which I quote in full for reasons that will
become obvious later, concerns the inspiration for
the character of Pedro Camacho:
Vargas Llosa: Well, it took shape, like almost every-
thing I've written, from my old memories. In this case,
memories of the year that I worked for Radio Pan-
americana in Lima, that is, 1953, or '54. I've always
remembered this period as linked to a man who used
to work, not for Radio Panamericana, where I was
in charge of news bulletins, but for a neighboring ra-
dio station, Radio Central, which was also owned by
the owners of Radio Panamericana. This fellow was
quite a colorful person who wrote all the scripts for
the soap operas which were the highlight of Radio
Central programming. He was a Bolivian, and had
been brought to Lima by the proprietors of the radio
station, the Delgado Parker brothers, because in
Bolivia he was an "ace" in all that concerned soap
operas and melodramatic theater. He was in charge
of all the soap operas at the radio station, not only
writing the scripts but also directing and acting the
male leads. He was truly a picturesque character who
worked like a slave, who had an extraordinary sense
of professional responsibility, and who was very ab-
sorbed by his role as writer and performer. But at the
same time, judging him from a literary perspective,
shall we say, he was a sort of parody or caricature, a
pedestrian, twisted and somewhat pathetic version of
a "writer." Still, the man was truly quite popular. I
understand that his soap operas were a real success
on Radio Central. . . . Well, something happened
to Raul Salm6n, something between the comic and
the tragic: he went insane. But the way in which his
insanity was revealed was rather amusing, because it
happened through his listeners. One day, Radio Cen-
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tral began to receive letters, telephone calls, and all
sorts of protests from listeners of the soap operas who
were discovering gross incongruities and incoherences
in the scripts: soap opera characters would change
names or professions or would even skip around from
one soap opera to another. And so, because enor-
mously bizarre and extravagant things began to hap-
pen in Raul Salm6n's scripts, the owners of the radio
station discovered that he was undergoing some sort
of crisis. They spoke to him about it. As a result,
Salmon nervously started to conjure up in his scripts
a series of catastrophes designed to kill off the charac-
ters he could no longer keep separate in his mind, so
that he could begin anew with a clean slate. But in the
end there was no way out: Rauil Salmon had to go off
to a hospital to recuperate. His story always stuck with
me and I kept thinking that I would some day write
something related to it. Actually that tale is the most
remote origin of this novel. Naturally, that entire story
is quite transformed in my book, where it can only
be discerned as a sort of embryonic vestige.
(Oviedo, "Conversation" 154-56; my emphasis)
Any reader of La tia Julia y el escribidor will
realize immediately that Vargas Llosa's closing
statement is inaccurate to the point of being out-
right interesting. For what precedes it, contrary to
the author's final assertion, is a perfect summary
of the novel's depiction of Pedro Camacho and his
misfortunes. And yet Vargas Llosa feels compelled
to explain, seemingly as an afterthought, that there
is hardly any relation between this story and the
one in the novel, because the original anecdote has
been radically changed. He proposes that the ear-
lier tale serves only as a "remote" source that,
when compared with the published version, can
be likened to the undifferentiated matter of an em-
bryo. Vargas Llosa's account of the novel's other
story, that of Varguitas's romance with Aunt Ju-
lia, is couched in similarly absolute terms, but this
time the intention is to allege the perfect con-
sonance between autobiographical experience and
fictional counterpart:
Vargas Llosa: After giving it a great deal of thought
-because this novel has been a project of mine, like
I told you, for a long time-when I began to try to
shape it, to give form to the story, it occurred to me
that in order for it not to be excessively abstract, for
it not to take place in a realm of purely mental games,
of delirious fantasy, it might be balanced by a realis-
 CarlosJ. Alonso
tic story, that is, by a more ordinary, more direct one;
a story more of lived experience than of fantasy or
imagination. Then I thought of this: why couldn't the
story of Raul Salm6n be combined with a story born
of personal experience? The Rail Salm6n story hap-
pened during a very important time in my life because,
in the first place, it was at that time that after feeling
the urge for years, my vocation was decided, although
until then I had not dared to pursue it totally. Sec-
ondly, it was then that I got married for the first time,
and that marriage was in certain ways a very daring
act, because I was only 18, and also because it caused
me many practical and even family problems. Then
it occurred to me that the delirious stories of the pro-
tagonist who writes melodramas and who has a dis-
turbed imagination could perhaps be intertwined
with a story which was precisely the opposite, some-
thing absolutely objective and absolutely true. I
would narrate exactly some episodes of my own life
that would cover several months.
(156; my emphasis)
Vargas Llosa's insistence on his complete objec-
tivity in retelling his affaire d'amour with his aunt
sounds more like a protestation of truthfulness
than a statement of fact: ". .. something abso-
lutely objective and absolutely true." One could
immediately question this claim by simply point-
ing to another version of the affair: bearing the ob-
viously contestatory title Lo que Varguitas no dijo
'What Varguitas Forgot to Say,' it was written by
Vargas Llosa's first wife to correct and amplify the
novelistic account (see Urquidi Illanes). Further-
more, and more significantly still, the assumption
underlying the declaration-that a perfectly ob-
jective and accurate account of experience is
possible-seems surprisingly naive, especially
when one notes that Vargas Llosa's fiction and
criticism continually and relentlessly undermine
such assurance. One has only to consider his depic-
tion of the novel as an unrepentant purveyor of
falsehoods or remember the early experiments
with narrative fragmentation and perspectivism
that culminated in the constructivist outlook on
history and experience advanced by La verdadera
historia de Mayta, gQuien mato a Palomino
Molero? and La guerra delfin del mundo. In dis-
cussing Camacho's story, Vargas Llosa asserts that
biographical experience and literary creation have
nothing in common, but he does so, incongru-
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49
ously, by providing a synopsis of the "original"
story that repeats the textual account in minute de-
tail.4 By the same token, one could argue that the
"absolute objectivity" the author claims for Aunt
Julia's tale is suspect not only because there is a
contrasting and competing version but also be-
cause the concordance between experience and
text that Vargas Llosa invokes here he denounces
elsewhere as simplistic.
One can infer from these two contradictory and
tortuous rhetorical maneuvers that the distinction
Vargas Llosa is trying to establish-the fabricated
story of the scriptwriter versus the objective, truth-
ful account of the affair with Aunt Julia-is, in
fact, an attempt to suppress a more essential re-
semblance between them, a similarity unrelated,
however, to the degree of accuracy or fictionality
that is supposedly intrinsic to each plot. In my
view the two stories appear alongside each other
not because they strike a balance between fiction
and reality, as Vargas Llosa would say they do, but
because together they weave the real story, the sur-
reptitious subject of La tia Julia y el escribidor:
the account of a writer's coming into being. That
is to say, the copula of the title denotes an imbri-
cation of the two stories, as opposed to their sep-
arate, though parallel, placement in the novel.
Thus the dissimilar stories are presented as begin-
ning and ending at precisely the same time: "I
remember very well the day [the station's manager]
spoke to me of the genius of the airwaves [Ca-
macho], because that very day, at lunchtime, I saw
Aunt Julia for the first time" 'Recuerdo muy bien
el dia que me habl6 del fen6meno radiof6nico por-
que ese mismo dia, a la hora de almuerzo, vi a la
tia Julia por primera vez' (7; 16); moreover, their
coevalness is repeatedly underscored: "During our
nocturnal rambles, Aunt Julia sometimes gave me
a resume of certain episodes that had impressed
her, and I in turn gave her a rundown of my con-
versations with the scriptwriter, and thus, little by
little, Pedro Camacho became a constituent ele-
ment in our romance" 'En nuestras andanzas noc-
turnas, la tia Julia me resumia a veces algunos
episodios que la habian impresionado y yo le con-
taba mis conversaciones con el escriba, de modo
que, insensiblemente, Pedro Camacho pas6 a ser
un componente de nuestro romance' (91; 113). The
narration of Camacho's travails and the tale of
50 La ta Julia y el escribidor: The Writing Subject
Varguitas's affair should be read concurrently, as
complementing each other.
The Scriptwriter
What is, finally, the story told in the even-
numbered chapters of La tia Julia y el escribidor?
Each of the nine episodes begins anew with a dif-
ferent tale altogether, as if to settle from the out-
set that whatever continuity they have does not
reside in their plots. In this way, the text forces
readers into a critical awareness of stylistic, linguis-
tic, and psychological constants, for they realize
that they are reading repeated opening instances
of an identical discursive performance. This de-
emphasizing of histoire, and the concomitant
displacement of attention to the particularities of
recit, advances the proposition that in the final
analysis the "protagonist" of the even-numbered
chapters is Camacho himself, the anchoring figure
for the discursive traits thus underscored. But if
that is so, one must also conclude that the "plot,"
the meaning of this tale, is Camacho's progressive
deterioration from a creator in full control of his
exacting metier to a desperate writer whose only
hope of regaining command lies in painstakingly
destroying everything he has begotten.
Now, however one might interpret the decline
of Camacho's powers or whatever lessons one
might draw from it, the scriptwriter's collapse
seems to me to correlate with the narrator's rise to
a position of discursive authority.5 If we consider
that Camacho's first action in the novel is to ap-
propriate Varguitas's writing instrument-his
typewriter-the diametrical reversal of authorial
fortunes at the end acquires a special significance.
After Camacho's mental breakdown Varguitas
literally takes over the older writer's role at the ra-
dio station, charged now with the responsibility of
assembling the serials that will replace Camacho's
scripts.6 But this substitution is accompanied by
another supplanting, a structural one; the young
writer appropriates for his autobiographical nar-
rative the twentieth and last chapter of the novel,
whose subject matter should have been Camacho's
oeuvre, on the basis of the rigorous alternation
that has dominated the text until that very junc-
ture. This shift leaves little reason to doubt that in
the implicit contest between textual registers set up
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in the novel's design, the surviving voice is that of
the adolescent now transformed into an estab-
lished writer. Moreover, in this concluding chap-
ter the first-person narrator manages to deliver the
final blow to the scriptwriter by explaining away
Camacho's power, his erstwhile envied prodigious
capacity for production, as grounded on the in-
adequate repression of altogether sordid personal
circumstances.
Perhaps the clearest indication yet of the con-
nection between the autobiographical narrator's
development as a writer and Camacho's unravel-
ing as a creator can be gleaned from a direct con-
sideration of the even-numbered chapters. Most
commentators have simply attributed these to
Camacho and used the textual consistencies in his
sections to compose his artistic and psychological
profile. But although the subject matter is un-
equivocally Camacho's radio serials, the text
obviously does not reproduce the actual scripts
over which the Bolivian feverishly labors, since
they are not written in the dialogic format charac-
teristic of that genre. They are, rather, condensed
prose renditions of the actual radio broadcasts.
The resulting question regarding the provenance
of these chapters can only be resolved textually by
proposing that the even-numbered chapters of La
ti'a Julia y el escribidor, the "Camacho" install-
ments of the novel, are the work of the aspiring
writer Varguitas, who has produced them as exer-
cises for mastering the craft of storytelling. This
interpretation was originally advanced by Vargas
Llosa himself:
Pedro Camacho is a natural storyteller without any
kind of sophistication, a genius at that level, with a
tremendous capacity to transform reality and fiction
into his own form. The other, Varguitas, wants to be
a writer but is self-critical. This rigor, in this case, is
a kind of impotence. He wants to write a story, while
Pedro is pouring out all kinds of dramas and catas-
trophes. Pedro's dramas are not presented in scripts
but are described by Varguitas, who transforms them.
That is the apprenticeship he passes through.7
(Ruas 15)
Vargas Llosa's account of the purpose of Marito's
transcriptions does not stand to reason, since it
would have the young writer apprenticing from a
 CarlosJ. Alonso
creator who is characterized as progressively los-
ing control of his metier. Still, it observes a
strangely perfect consonance with my argument
here. For when viewed from that perspective, the
even-numbered chapters become a metaphor for
the relation that links the scriptwriter's decline to
the narrator's ultimate rise to the status of author:
Varguitas achieves mastery through telling the
story of Camacho's demise as a creator. In this
manner, authorship and the activity of writing are
essentially linked to the symbolic murder of a ri-
val, a forerunner whose place and voice the aspir-
ing male writer must appropriate as a necessary
stratagem for achieving his authorial persona.8 In
this agonistic view of the universe of discourse,
becoming a writer is equated not just with the
claiming of a space of one's own but with the van-
quishing of one's precursors as well. Such an ex-
plicitly oedipal conception of the literary fact finds
its just complement in the autobiographical nar-
rative that unfolds in the odd-numbered chapters
of the novel.
Aunt Julia
I do not think it difficult to argue that Varguitas's
ascendance to the status of writer is related to the
development of his liaison with his aunt. His ap-
prenticeship in literature is depicted as closely
shadowing his apprenticeship in sexuality and
romantic love. Nonetheless, what these chapters
propose is not simply a correspondence between
sexuality and creation, between carnal knowledge
and textual wisdom (although Camacho's uncom-
promising forsaking of sex would appear to lend
some credence to that view). At the risk of stating
the obvious, I must emphasize that the love object
Marito chooses is not just any woman but his
aunt, someone bound to him through kinship. The
significance of this peculiar selection is amply con-
firmed later in the novel by the narrator's choice
of a second wife, this time a first cousin, Patricia.
Just as important, though, there is throughout the
text a marked stress on the ties of kinship that link
the narrator and his immediate and extended fam-
ilies and spread seemingly in all directions.
At the time of the story the narrator lives with
his maternal grandparents and meets with other
members of his family on a regular and almost
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51
ritualistic basis: "I wrote at my grandparents'
house, during my lunch hours and at night. Dur-
ing that week I didn't drop in at any of my uncles'
houses for the midday meal, and skipped my usual
visits to my girl cousins" 'Escribia en casa de mis
abuelos, a mediodia y en las noches. Esa semana
no almorce donde ninguno de mis tios, ni hice las
visitas acostumbradas a las primas' (44; 59). In all,
eighteen aunts, uncles, and cousins either make an
appearance or receive mention in the text. Further-
more, almost every person outside the immediate
family that is remarked on turns out to be a rela-
tive of sorts. For instance: "There was a perfect
planned conspiracy to force me to marry in the
church, in which even the Archbishop of Lima was
involved (he was, it goes without saying, a relative
of ours)" 'Hubo una conspiraci6n perfecta para
obligarme a casar por la Iglesia, en la que estuvo
involucrado hasta el arzobispo de Lima (era, por
supuesto, pariente nuestro)' (358; 429-30).9 It is
not surprising, then, that the protagonist should
borrow from the lexicon of ethnological investi-
gation to refer to his family. On at least two occa-
sions he describes his parentage as a "tribu" (60),
another time as a "clan" (241), and later as his "sel-
vatica parentela" 'feral kin' (431). The reader will
also remember that the father-son duo who own
the two radio stations, Radio Panamericana and
Radio Central, are referred to throughout the
novel as Genaro-papa and Genaro-hijo. Because
of this insistence on familial relations, the narra-
tor seems to move within a social and affective
universe where kinship is both the organizing par-
adigm and the doxa, the indisputable ideological
belief system under which everything else is
subsumed.
It is precisely against this specific background
that Marito's affair with Aunt Julia acquires its ul-
timate significance. In choosing his aunt as an ob-
ject of sexual desire, Varguitas transgresses the
boundaries established by the laws of kinship in
a cosmos where, as we have seen, kinship reigns
supreme. But this breach is patently considered
dangerous more because of what it connotes than
because of the offense itself; for clearly the burn-
ing issue in the family's preoccupation with the af-
fair is not consanguinity-after all, Julia is only
a relative by marriage and a foreigner to boot-
but rather the couple's difference in age. Hence,
52 La tia Julia y el escribidor: The Writing Subject
the scandal, the disturbance created within the
family by the liaison, is primarily attributable to
another violation, one to which the romance al-
ludes in a barely disguised fashion: the possibil-
ity of an incestuous relationship between mother
and son. Indeed, in what could be regarded as the
reverse of apophasis (mentioning by denying that
one will mention), the text appears to make light
of this interpretation precisely by bringing it up:
" 'The truth of the matter is that you're talking to
me as though you were my mama,' I said to her.
'The fact is, I could be your mama,' Aunt Julia
said" '-La verdad es que estas hablando como si
fueras mi mama-le dije yo. -Es quepodrfa ser
tu mama' (161; 195). And later, "After looking over
my papers, the functionaries would inevitably
crack jokes at my expense that were like so many
kicks in the belly: 'So you want to marry your
mama, do you?'" 'Los municipes, luego de revi-
sar los documentos, solian hacerme bromas que
eran patadas en el est6mago: ",pero como, quieres
casarte con tu mama?"' (274; 331). Understood
in this vein, then, the even-numbered chapters de-
lineate the aspiring writer's successful seduction
of a symbolic mother figure and link that accom-
plishment to his attainment of authorial mastery.
We can now begin to discern the metaphoric
connection between this conclusion and the one
reached earlier about the "Camacho" install-
ments. Before, we saw how those chapters told the
story of a writer's rise founded on a rival's silence,
on the writer's symbolic annihilation of his pre-
decessor within what could be described as a zero-
sum universe of discursive power. Now, the same
process of empowerment is construed as implying
the transgression of incest restrictions through a
sexual liaison with an obvious mother surrogate.
Both these symbolic acts of violence and infringe-
ment-murder and incest-are represented as
making possible the birth of the writer. Male au-
thorship is thereby depicted as resting fundamen-
tally on transgression, with the writer envisaged
as a breaker of rules and taboos, as an iconoclast
engaged in a struggle both with his literary precur-
sors and with the social conventions of his contem-
poraries. This conception of the writer is one that
Vargas Llosa has advanced and expounded on in
several critical essays, as well as in his monographic
studies on authors such as Flaubert and Garcia
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Marquez.10 And yet, his allegorical tale of a
writer's formation follows an oedipal scenario in
which, it would appear, Oedipus can murder Laius
and marry Jocasta without having to atone for his
deeds through demotion and punitive self-injury.
In the aftermath of this realization, an interesting
question insinuates itself: Is La tia Julia y el es-
cribidor a statement on poiesis in the guise of an
oedipal struggle, or can it be interpreted as the
reverse-as an oedipal fantasy masquerading as
the story of a writer's formation? To explore this
question, we will have to inquire into the particu-
lars of another story, one that is carefully, yet only
partially, cloaked in Vargas Llosa's text.
The Father's Signature
After Marito's affair with his aunt becomes pub-
lic (i.e., familial) knowledge, his parents, who re-
side at the time in the United States, hastily return
home to handle the situation. The mother is rather
swiftly mollified, but the father remains beside
himself and beyond easy assuagement. In a letter
to his son he explicitly states his draconian inten-
tions with respect to the entire matter:
"As for you, I should like to inform you that I am
armed and will not allow you to make a fool of me.
If you do not obey to the letter and this woman does
not leave the country within the time limit that I have
indicated above, I shall put five bullets through you
and kill you like a dog, right in the middle of the
street."
He had signed it with his two family names and
added a postscript: "You can go ask for police pro-
tection if you wish. And to remove all possible doubts
as to my intentions, I herewith affix my signature once
again to my decision to kill you, wherever I find you,
like a dog." And he had indeed signed his name a sec-
ond time, in an even bolder hand than the first time.
(345; my emphasis)
"En cuanto a ti, quiero que sepas que ando armado
y que no permitire que te buries de mi. Si no obede-
ces al pie de la letra y esa mujer no sale del pais en
el plazo indicado, te matare de cinco balazos como
a un perro, en plena calle."
Habia firmado con sus dos apellidos y rubrica y
anfadido unapostdata: "Puedes ir a pedir protecci6n
policial, si quieres. Y para que quede bien claro, aqui
firmo otra vez mi decisi6n de matarte donde te en-
 CarlosJ. Alonso
cuentre como a un perro." Yen efecto, habfafirmado
por segunda vez, con trazo mds energico que la
primera. (414; my emphasis)
The father's threat is identified here with the
double affixing of his name, a repetition that is
meant to vouch for the reality of the intentions
that the signature subscribes. But just as clearly,
the threat is signaled by what is described as the
full name-one that encompasses both the fa-
ther's surnames, what in Spanish is commonly re-
ferred to as "el nombre con sus dos apellidos." In
this passage, the father's use of his full name un-
derwrites the gravity of his menace and renders his
homicidal warning somehow more imminent and
real. This identification of the father's authority
with his complete signature-the signature that in-
cludes both family names-becomes altogether
significant if we take into consideration the impor-
tant role that kinship plays in the novel's universe.
I would also like to suggest that this association
can assist us in approaching the imperfectly con-
cealed story with which La tia Julia y el escribidor
concludes, that of the narrator's subsequent mar-
riage to his first cousin Patricia.
Marito's divorce from Aunt Julia and his wed-
ding of Patricia are significant events that the
novel dispenses with in two sentences:
When Aunt Julia and I were divorced, copious tears
were shed in my vast family, because everyone (begin-
ning naturally with my mother and father) adored her.
And when, a year later, I married again, a cousin of
mine this time (the daughter of Aunt Olga and Un-
cle Lucho, what a coincidence), it created less of an
uproar within the family than the first time. (358)
Cuando la tia Julia y yo nos divorciamos hubo en mi
dilatada familia copiosas lagrimas, porque todo el
mundo (empezando por mi madre y mi padre, claro
esta) la adoraba. Y cuando, un afio despues, volvi a
casarme, esta vez con una prima (hija de la tia Olga
y el tio Lucho, qu6 casualidad) el escandalo fue me-
nos ruidoso que la primera vez. (429)
The expression "what a coincidence" would ap-
pear merely to refer to the narrator's new relation-
ship with his aunt and uncle, who have gone from
being his sister- and brother-in-law to becoming
his mother- and father-in-law. But, of course, it
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53
can also be read as remarking on the seemingly
fortuitous circumstance that Marito has married
in succession his aunt and his cousin. Such an ex-
pression of surprise cannot, however, conceal the
consistency in the events it claims to dismiss as
mere coincidence, since it underscores that the pro-
tagonist chooses both his love objects within the
confines of a world securely bounded by kinship
ties. But how does this internal, endogamous dis-
placement from aunt to cousin fit into the oedi-
pal paradigm we recognized earlier? A possible
answer begins to unfold when we examine the new
genealogical arrangement in the light of the previ-
ously gained insight: that in La tia Julia y el es-
cribidor, the father's authority is associated with
the version of his signature that comprises both
his family names.1 The following abbreviated dia-
gram indicates the essential kinship relations in-
stituted by the narrator's second marriage:
Grandfather Llosa Grandmother
I
Father Mother Uncle Aunt
Vargas Llosa Lucho Llosa Olga
I I
Mario Vargas Llosa Cousin Patricia Llosa
I I
(Son Vargas Llosa)
If we are attentive to the figurative link that the
novel establishes between the father's signature
and authority, we can argue that the narrator's
marriage to his cousin provides the final turn in
the oedipal model we have been considering. For
any son born to Mario Vargas Llosa and Patricia
Llosa can only aspire to be, in name at least, a mere
repetition of the father: Vargas Llosa. Thus this
gambit anticipates and metaphorically cancels the
threat of the son's ever overtaking his progenitor.
The novel becomes, then, a fantasy of triumphant
oedipal desire from both sides of the oedipal par-
adigm. On the one hand, it depicts the emblematic
vanquishing of the surrogate father by the son-
the supplanting of Pedro Camacho and the seduc-
tion of the surrogate mother figure-but also the
symbolic annulment of the future oedipal chal-
lenge represented by a grown man's son. In other
words, the fanciful Oedipus portrayed in La tl'a Ju-
54 La tia Julia y el escribidor: The Writing Subject
liay el escribidor marries his mother and murders
his father, and when he becomes an adult he also
preempts and neutralizes the possibility of his own
son's condemning him to Laius's fate. By means
of this endogamous stroke the grown narrator's
offspring are figuratively foreclosed from mount-
ing any sort of effective oedipal attack, since they
are condemned merely to repeat the father's
name-the very sign of his authority.12
In Vargas Llosa's account of his development
as a writer, his father always looms large. The au-
thor has explained on a number of occasions that
his father's injunction against writing (leveled out
of concern for Mario's developing masculinity)
turned that pursuit into a forbidden and therefore
secret endeavor:
[Writing] was one of the reasons why there were al-
ways disagreements between my father and myself.
I used to write in Piura, I remember, and my grand-
parents, my uncles, applauded me for it. They thought
it was cute. When my father discovered that inclina-
tion in me he was frightened. He thought something
was seriously wrong. . . So my vocation grew and
solidified a bit secretly.13 (Harss and Dohmann 354)
Hence, everything Vargas Llosa has ever written
could be regarded as in some respect an act of defi-
ance against his father. But I think we would be
mistaken to view this conflict as the primordial
subtext to which the oedipal struggle in La t'a Ju-
lia y el escribidor alludes. For Vargas Llosa's ac-
count of his relationship with his father is, on the
one hand, simply yet another story of how the
writer comes into being, a narrative identical in
status with the novelistic version, despite the
avowedly privileged position of autobiography.
On the other hand, the oedipal story is a con-
venient cultural paradigm for the mise-en-scene
that is-as I explain below-at the foundation of
Vargas Llosa's conception of writing. Vargas Llosa
has asserted that La tia Julia y el escribidor ulti-
mately explores "something that has always fas-
cinated me, something to which I devote most of
my life but which I have never understood: Why
do I write and what does writing mean?" ("Pas-
sion" 108). The statement allows us to conjecture
that perhaps the novel can be read as providing
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some sort of answer to Vargas Llosa's perplexed
rhetorical questions on writing.
La t'a Juliay el escribidor, I have argued, enacts
a triumphant fantasy of oedipal desire: the suc-
cessful usurpation of the father's place followed
by the subject's self-constitution into an autono-
mous and invulnerable agent, symbolically im-
mune to the precise challenge he has masterly
carried out. This last maneuver is projected into
the text as the proleptic annulment of the son's
difference from the father by compelling the son
to assume the father's last name, the sign of the
father's authority. And yet, this fantasy is conveyed
as the story of a writer's acquisition of a persona,
of a distinctive literary identity signified by the
author's signature: Vargas Llosa.14 The resulting
juxtaposition provides an insight into the ideology
that underlies Vargas Llosa's writing: literary cre-
ation offers the ever-renewed opportunity for the
phantasmatic affirmation of a self-sufficient and
sovereign subjectivity in the face of a persistent
threat to the subject's autonomy and self-
consistency. In the oedipal narrative of La t'a Julia
y el escribidor and in Vargas Llosa's autobiograph-
ical statements, this threat is identified symboli-
cally with the father, but it can be construed in
more broadly discursive terms as the threat of the
subject's always imminent dispersal in the dissem-
inatory labyrinths and networks of language. 5 As
a means of warding off this peril, a praxis of writ-
ing is instituted that results in the composition of
texts that are both warrantors of and monuments
to the subjectivity that is avowedly responsible for
their production. But it is important to understand
how this subjectivity is inscribed in Vargas Llosa's
texts, since the encoding is not done through the
conspicuous author surrogate of the narrator or
the implied author. Instead, the presence and
authority of the writing subject is hypostatized
into the discrete mechanism of textual generation
that rules all Vargas Llosa's novels. Thus, at the
core of his works there always lies ensconced an
implacable and consistent textual machine whose
"turns" generate the novel and whose specificity
can be abstracted from the text. One has only to
think of the careful and almost mathematically
parsed orchestration of fragments in La Casa
Verde and Conversacion en La Catedral, where
 CarlosJ. Alonso
specific characters or installments of stories suc-
ceed one another following a strict combinatory
principle,16 or to recall the rigorous alternation of
narrative material that creates the texts of La tia
Juliay el escribidor and the more recent El habla-
dor and Elogio de la madrastra. Consequently,
while his novels expressly depict personal knowl-
edge as limited, imperfect, and contingent, their
relentless and unwavering generative principle
bespeaks a subjectivity in full possession of its rhe-
torical prerogatives. Every one of them re-creates
this subjectivity and affirms its concomitant
authority. For this reason the repeated attempts to
subsume Vargas Llosa's more recent production
under the category of the postmodern have invari-
ably run into difficulties. Despite the obvious su-
perficial affinities, his authoritative and centered
discursive posture cannot be easily reconciled with
the fundamental postmodern challenge to that
very notion of the subject (see, e.g., Galvez Avero
133-44).
Moreover, this interpretation of Vargas Llosa's
conception of writing may help us understand the
controversial political theses that have brought the
author to the forefront of ideological debate in
Latin America. As is well known, Vargas Llosa is
one of a group of Latin American writers and in-
tellectuals who initially embraced the achieve-
ments and goals of the Cuban revolution but later
forswore the Marxist agenda. Citing the moral,
political, and economic bankruptcy of what he
calls the "utopian" left and the militaristic right
in Latin America, Vargas Llosa has repeatedly ar-
gued for private enterprise and, above all, for a free
market in both commodities and ideas-for an
arena where individuals can transact economically
and intellectually with a minimum of institutional
intervention or obstacles, whether from the state
bureaucrat or from the revolutionary commissar.17
In agreement with Fernand Braudel, Vargas Llosa
envisions this market at its inception as "an in-
dependent and sovereign space where human ac-
tivity was allowed to obtain, in a sense to boil over
without impediment, guided only by the interest
and will of the individual who arrived at it to buy
or to sell, to produce or to consume" 'un espacio
independiente y soberano donde la accion hu-
mana pudo volcarse sin acondicionamientos, en
cierto modo desbocarse, de acuerdo s6lo al interes
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55
y voluntad del individuo que ocurria a el para
comprar o vender, para producir o consumir'
(Contra viento 2: 433). And later Vargas Llosa
adds:
Man . . . acquires an individual face and a private
space only in modern times, when the multiplicity of
noncontrolled economic, social, and artistic activi-
ties and functions . . . stimulated the evolution of
philosophical and political thought until it arrived at
that idea which breaks with the entire historical tra-
dition of humanity: the notion of individual
sovereignty.
El hombre . .. adquiere una cara individual y un es-
pacio propio s6lo en los tiempos modernos, cuando
la multiplicaci6n de actividades y funciones econ6-
micas, sociales y artisticas no controladas . . . esti-
mularon la evoluci6n del pensamiento filosofico y
politico hasta instituir esa noci6n que rompe con toda
la tradici6n hist6rica de la humanidad: la de sobera-
nia individual. (Contra viento 2: 434)
Vargas Llosa's position is admirable in its con-
sistency and courageous in its open espousal of
ideas and projects opposite to those that have been
traditionally judged politically suitable for a Latin
American intellectual to promote. But in conceiv-
ing of the market as a domain where autonomous
subjects freely assemble and transact, is he not in-
dulging in a fantasy essentially similar to the one
identified in La tia Julia y el escribidor? In other
words, might not the economic, political, and
intellectual subject on which Vargas Llosa
predicates his political views correspond to the
self-fashioning and sovereign agent whose phan-
tasmatic creation he portrays in the novel, except
that this time the fantasy takes place in the social
realm and involves the convergence of similarly
conceived and constituted subjects? The open
market, rendered in this vision as a contest be-
tween two autonomous agents (a buyer and a
seller) that is ruled by the immutable law of sup-
ply and demand, becomes, in fact, a text-a per-
fect analogue for a Vargas Llosa novel: a work
where two or more characters, stories, or narrative
levels vie for textual space in a contest orchestrated
by the principle of textual generation-the textual
machine-that controls all his works.
56 La tia Julia y el escribidor: The Writing Subject
But if Vargas Llosa's economic and political
views are analogues of his fictions, that very fact
paradoxically relegates the author to silence in the
political arena, according to his own assertions
about his craft: he has persistently characterized
fiction as a compensatory or consoling fantasy
and has warned of the dangers inherent in indis-
criminately using that fantasy outside the realm
of artistic creation. Although his political convic-
tions have undergone profound transformations,
Vargas Llosa has consistently maintained that fic-
tion springs from an ineradicable discrepancy be-
tween reality and desire. He has expressed this
belief most recently in the prologue to Kathiey el
hipopotamo:
The inevitable abyss between the concrete reality of
human existence and the desires that inflame it and
that it can never quiet down is not only the origin of
human unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and rebellious-
ness: it is also fiction's raison d'etre, a lie thanks to
which we are able cheatingly to complement the in-
sufficiencies of life, to broaden the asphyxiating limits
of our condition, and to gain access to worlds that
are richer or more sordid or more intense than-but
in any event different from-the one that fortune has
bestowed on us.
El abismo inevitable entre la realidad concreta de una
existencia humana y los deseos que la soliviantan y
que jamas podra aplacar, no es s6lo el origen de la
infelicidad, la insatisfaccion y la rebeldia del hombre.
Es tambien la raz6n de ser de la ficci6n, mentira gra-
cias a la cual podemos tramposamente completar las
insuficiencias de la vida, ensanchar las fronteras as-
fixiantes de nuestra condici6n y acceder a mundos
mas ricos o mas sordidos o mas intensos, en todo caso
distintos del que nos ha deparado la suerte.18 (10)
This discrepancy, Vargas Llosa argues, is intrinsic
to the human condition, and so is the desire to
bridge the resulting chasm through fictional con-
structs. But he has also cautioned against attempts
to impose fiction on reality, which in his view re-
sult in ideological dogma and utopian authoritari-
anism. To this pernicious form of compensatory
fantasy he opposes the benign and harmless fabri-
cation of literary or artistic (imaginative) creation.
Fiction allows human beings to give free rein to the
imaginings born of their dissatisfaction with the
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real, while avoiding the disastrous consequences
that ensue when these impulses, in the shape of
ideological formulations, make demands on
reality:
This magic act, abolishing the real and re-creating it
in the imagination, seems to me quite respectable, and
I practice it passionately, since it is what novelists-
all artists-do; but it is not an advisable practice for
anyone who wants to know what goes on in the po-
litical and social sphere and to contribute in an effec-
tive, direct way to combating the hydra head of
iniquity, wherever its tentacles may show up.
Esta magia-abolir lo real y recrearlo con la
fantasia-me parece muy respetable, y la practico con
ardor, pues es lo que hacen los novelistas-todos los
artistas-pero no es una practica recomendable para
quien quiere saber lo que esta ocurriendo a su alre-
dedor en el campo politico y social y contribuir de
manera efectiva-inmediata-a combatir, alli donde
aparezca, alguno de los tentaculos de la hidra de la
iniquidad. (Contra viento 2: 100)
And, he avers, although the use of linguistic poly-
semy is admissible in literature, the same practice
leads to chaos and social disintegration when used
outside the confines of the fictional:
Verbal prestidigitation is equally worthy; it is the
foundation of literature. But when this technique of
permutations is employed outside the novel, the play
or the poem-in the political text or context, for
instance-something very grave occurs: human
morality breaks down and social solidarity dissolves.
The result is the death of dialogue, the rule of mis-
trust, the crumbling of society into isolated and sus-
picious beings, if not openly hostile to one another.
[La] prestidigitaci6n verbal es tambi6n respetable; ella
es el fundamento de la literatura. Pero cuando se em-
plea esa tecnica de la permutaci6n fuera de la novela,
el drama o la poesia, en el texto y el contexto politico
por ejemplo, algo gravisimo acontece: la moral hu-
mana se resquebraja y la solidaridad social se diluye.
El resultado es la muerte del dialogo, el reino de la
desconfianza, la pulverizaci6n de la sociedad en se-
res aislados y recelosos cuando no hostiles unos a
otros.19 (Contra viento 2: 101)
Fiction has salutary value, therefore, only as long
as it renounces the world. When the compensatory
 CarlosJ. Alonso
impulse that is responsible for its existence is al-
lowed to affect the realm of the real, the results are,
as the remarks just quoted make clear, apocalyp-
tic. Thus if, as I argue above, there is a figural
similarity between Vargas Llosa's fictional con-
structs and his ideological pronouncements, his
adamant requirement that the two remain mutu-
ally exclusive thoroughly compromises those
pronouncements. In the end his stricture that po-
litical advocacy be divorced from the stuff of lit-
erature returns to haunt him in the guise of the
continuity between his own political figurations
and the rhetoric of his fictions.
In demanding the disconnection of literature
from ideological agency, Vargas Llosa forgets that
all discourse-including literary discourse-is a
form of empowerment and, therefore, an ideolog-
ical force. Yet he also obscures the condition that
all discourse-including political discourse-is
tropological and hence susceptible to the sort of
rhetorical scrutiny that is usually reserved for liter-
ary texts. It is only fitting, then, that an under-
standing of La tia Juliay el escribidor as a fantasy
of empowerment should have paved the way for
a literary consideration of Vargas Llosa's ideolog-
ical prescription for Latin America's political and
economic afflictions. But the self-inflicted paral-
ysis to which the last realization condemns Vargas
Llosa's political discourse finally calls into ques-
tion the pertinence of any proposal that takes as
its deluded point of departure the dissociation of
rhetoric from ideology.
Notes
11 have made whatever changes seemed necessary in the
passages quoted from the published translation of La tta Ju-
lia y el escribidor. Translations from Spanish works for which
no English versions are cited are my own.
2A number of critics have specifically addressed these and
related issues in La tia Julia y el escribidor: Arrigoitia, Ferre,
Gonzalez, Machen, McCracken, Sosnowski, and Yndurain.
30r, as William Kennedy said in reviewing the English trans-
lation, the novel is "a work that celebrates story" (14). Several
critics have remarked on the narrator's literary apprentice-
ship. See, for instance, the works by Andreu, Feal, Jones,
Oviedo ("La t(a Julia"), Prieto, and Soubeyroux. Of these,
Oviedo, Prieto, and Feal (particularly Feal's discussion of
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57
Marito's relationship with his father) are the most suggestive
for the interpretive approach I develop.
4The serious threats of legal action made by Raiil Salm6n,
the man on whom Vargas Llosa based the character of
Camacho, also attest to the similarities between the two ver-
sions (see Lewis 144).
5I am not convinced that a consistent lesson on the proper
relation between literature and reality can be gleaned from
the depiction of Pedro Camacho's fall or from Varguitas's
ultimate success. For example, John Lipski argues that the
novel advances a proposition regarding literary composition:
"[Varguitas's] early attempts are of little value because they
lean too heavily on reality and too little on creative imagina-
tion; the endlessly churned out stories of Camacho are equally
worthless for the opposite reason: unrestrained imagination
without the creative shaping tempered by daily reality. It is
only by synthesizing the two extremes that a lasting litera-
ture will result" (122). While this interpretation may account
for Camacho's collapse as a creator, it does not help us un-
derstand Varguitas's ascendance to a clear position of
authorial hegemony. Moreover, it appears to restate Vargas
Llosa's previously cited comments on his avowed desire to
balance a "truthful" story with a "fictive" creation in order
to produce an effective novel. I agree with Castro-Klar6n's
contention that "the novel does not differentiate, or does not
attempt to establish the differences between Camacho and
the new creator" 'La novela no diferencia, o no esclarece la
diferencias entre Camacho y el nuevo fabulador' (109).
6Talking about his new responsibilities at the station and
the numerous part-time jobs he takes to support himself and
his bride, Varguitas says that "thanks to all these jobs (which
made me feel something like a rival of Pedro Camacho), I
contrived to triple my income" 'con estos trabajos (que me
hacian sentir, un poco, emulo de Pedro Camacho) logr6 tripli-
car mis ingresos' (351; 422). Significantly enough, the first
thing he does with this income is to redeem his typewriter,
which he had pawned earlier.
7Magnarelli has recently echoed Vargas Llosa's statement
by proposing that the even-numbered chapters should be con-
sidered "practice prose pieces re-written by the would-be writer
Marito, since they share several characteristics in common with
the stories we know he has written in the odd-numbered chap-
ters" (204).
8This formulation is reminiscent of the process of poetic
self-constitution that has been amply studied by Bloom (Anxi-
ety and Map).
9The family roster reads as follows: parents-Dora and "Fa-
ther"; grandparents-Carmen and "Grandfather"; aunts-
Olga, Laura, Gaby, Hortensia, Jesuis, Eliana, Celia, Julia;
uncles-Lucho, Juan, Jorge, Alejandro, Pedro, Javier, Pan-
cracio; and cousins-Jaime, Nancy, Patricia. Among the other
relatives mentioned are Guillemo Osores, "a physician who
was some sort of distant family relation" 'un medico
vagamente relacionado con la familia' (155; 118); and Sena-
tor Adolfo Salcedo, "distantly related to the familial tribe"
'emparentado de algin modo con la tribu familiar' (45; 60).
'?See, for instance, "El novelista y sus demonios," a sec-
tion of Garcta Mdrquez: Historia de un deicidio and La or-
58 La tia Julia y el escribidor: The Writing Subject
gia perpetua: Flaubert y Madame Bovary.
1 In Spanish one's legal last name is always double, a com-
bination of one's father's and mother's paternal last names.
Only the first part of one's double surname survives in the
family name of one's children, who take one name from each
parent.
12In an article entitled "My Son, the Rastafarian," Vargas
Llosa describes how his younger son, as a rebellious adoles-
cent, adopted Rastafarian philosophy and later abandoned
it. Here the son's defiance is tamed in two fundamental ways:
first, it is used as material for the father's authorial discourse;
and second, it is described as having ended when the son be-
gan to work and write for the Instituto Libertad y Democra-
cia, a Peruvian organization whose political and economic
views Vargas Llosa amply supported.
3In another place he asserts that his father "found out
that I was writing poems, [and] feared for my future (a poet
is doomed to die of hunger) and for my 'manhood' (the be-
lief that poets are homosexual is still very widespread)" ("Pas-
sion" 99-100).
14Vargas Llosa's first published work, Losjefes 'The Chiefs,'
an uneven collection of short stories written during his twen-
ties, lists the author's name as Mario Vargas. In 1963 he pub-
lished his first novel, La ciudad y los perros 'The Time of
the Hero,' which received the Seix Barral Prize and which
catapulted him to the recognition and status he has enjoyed
since. By that time the author's signature had become what
it would be from then on, Mario Vargas Llosa. (I would like
to thank Sylvia Molloy for bringing this revealing detail to
my attention.) By the same token, it is significant that in La
tia Julia y el escribidor all the protagonist's relatives are re-
ferred to by name except his father and grandfather, whose
names are never revealed.
15My indebtedness to Derrida's work here is clear. See his
Of Grammatology and Dissemination. I have also found use-
ful in this context Smith's work on the subject as a philosophi-
cal and ideological category.
'6For instance, Oviedo has averred that "the structural
regularity of La Casa Verde is almost maniacal" 'la regularidad
estructural de La Casa Verde es casi maniatica' (Mario Vargas
Llosa 143). Regarding Conversaci6n en La Catedral, Gerdes
says that "as in Vargas Llosa's previous novels, the plot lines
or narrative segments are presented in an orderly fashion that
repeats itself based on . . . a sequence" (102).
17Contra viento y marea, a two-volume compilation of
Vargas Llosa's essays, chronicles his ideological evolution from
the early sixties to the present. Another important text in this
regard is his prologue to Hernando de Soto's explosive book
El otro sendero, where de Soto contends that the illegal and
allegedly parasitical underground economy of Lima is more
effective and productive than the official and bureaucratically
hampered economic structure. Vargas Llosa agrees: "It is cru-
cial for the state to remember always that before one can dis-
tribute wealth one has first to produce it. And that, to
accomplish this, it is imperative that acts by the state exert
the least amount of control on its citizens' actions, since they
know better than anybody what they want and what is to their
advantage" 'Lo fundamental es que este Estado recuerde
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siempre que, antes de distribuir la riqueza, hay que producirla.
Y que, para conseguirlo, es indispensable que la acci6n esta-
tal sea lo menos obstructora de la acci6n de los ciudadanos,
ya que 6stos saben mejor que nadie lo que quieren y lo que
les conviene' (xxviii). Regarding intellectual life, he argues else-
where that "the state must guarantee free speech and the un-
checked flow of ideas, encourage research and arts, guarantee
all its citizens access to education and information, without
imposing or privileging any doctrine, theory, or ideology, let-
ting these flourish and compete with one another freely" 'El
estado debe garantizar la libertad de expresi6n y el libre tran-
sito de las ideas, fomentar la investigaci6n y las artes, garan-
tizar el acceso a la educaci6n y a la informaci6n de todos,
pero no imponer ni privilegiar doctrinas, teorias o ideolo-
gias, sino permitir que 6stas florezcan y compitan libremente'
(Contra viento 2: 319).
18And also: "Human beings are not happy with their lot
and most of them . . . would like to have a life different
from the one they lead. To appease this appetite deceitfully,
fictions were born. They are written and read to provide hu-
man beings with the lives they are unresigned to not having.
At the core of every novel there is nonconformity and unful-
filled desire" 'Los hombres no estan contentos con su suerte
y casi todos . . . quisieran una vida distinta de la que llevan.
Para aplacar-tramposamente-ese apetito nacieron las fic-
ciones. Ellas se escriben y se leen para que los seres humanos
tengan las vidas que no se resignan a no tener. En el embri6n
de toda novela hay una inconformidad y un deseo inalcan-
zado' (Contra viento 2: 419). The entire essay in which this
passage appears is apposite to the present discussion ("El arte
de mentir," Contra viento 2: 418-24).
9With pragmatic assurance Vargas Llosa has therefore con-
cluded that "in politics there is no choice but to be a realist.
That is not the case in literature, and that is why it is a more
independent and lasting endeavor" 'en politica no hay mas
remedio que ser realista. En literatura no y por eso es una
actividad mas libre y duradera que la politica' (Contra viento
2: 180).
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