Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

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so the soaps become the blueprints of Camacho's imagination, and what we are given is a privileged view of the arcane and volcanic reaches of a writer's psyche. It would not exaggerate to say that the novel is anchored in the character of Pedro Camacho round which Llosa weaves the semi-autobiographical story through Marito’s struggles as an aspiring writer who falls in love in an odd way, with Julia who is his aunt by marriage and thirteen years his senior, a divorcee. Reminiscing on old days, Marito relates his struggles to make sense of his life at the time when he and Aunt Julia had challenged a big social taboo with their romance. Even at its most intense, they both know that their amorous relationship is a passing fantasy which is fated ab initio even if they defy their families and get married. Still, the cer He was in the prime of his life, his fifties, and his distinguishing traits - a broad forehead, an aquiline nose, a penetrating gaze, the very soul of rectitude and goodness. Infatti la storia è divisa in due parti distinte (a capitoli alternati) per evidenziare la natura doppia dell'argomento: da una parte si racconta dell'innamoramento del giovane Marito Varguitas per sua zia Julia, e della sua dura ma entusiastica lotta per arrivare a poterla sposare nonostante fosse vedova di suo zio; dall'altra viene approfondita la vocazione letteraria dello spiantato giovane peruviano (lavoratore precario come curatore di bollettini) paragonandola con il grande successo dei romanzi radiofonici di Pedro Camacho, che arriva a catalizzare l'attenzione di una intera nazione sfornando storie sempre più incredibili (la cui sinossi viene presentata con un deliberato dilettantismo ai limiti del comico nei capitoli dispari del romanzo).

Mario Vargas Llosa is one of few Nobel winning writers I have wanted to read for ages, but I have to admit, he wasn't near the top of the list, until I came across this novel (which I knew nothing about), But for whatever reason it just appealed to me, it called my name, tempting me in, so I took the Peruvian plunge. Having never read a book set there before I didn't know what to expect, but my literary trip to Lima worked out pretty well in the end. I thought (or I'd hoped) his style may have been similar to that of Latin American counterparts Roberto Bolaño or Gabriel García Márquez, but no, not really, Llosa has a distinctive style all of his own, which, on the whole I much enjoyed. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is a comedic novel about the education of young Mario (called variously Marito and Varguitas) that combines numerous elements of Vargas Llosa’s own life with the fictional relationship with Aunt Julia and Pedro Camacho in Lima in the 1950’s to form an autobiographical fable of identity that is neither autobiography nor history but rather an artistically rendered portrait of the artist as a young man. The primary narrator of the work, Mario, recounts, from a distance of at least twelve years later, his youthful love for his aunt by marriage, their improbable courtship and hilarious attempts to circumvent the law to get married, and his own life as a law student, radio newswriter, and would-be short-story writer. Each of the novel’s twenty chapters, except the last two, which conclude Mario’s narrative, are arranged so that the odd-numbered ones are Mario’s attempts to describe his life and fortunes and the even-numbered ones are actual scripts of soap operas by Pedro Camacho, the indefatigable and prolific Bolivian scriptwriter.As the young Mario makes his way through these few weeks and months of this extraordinary period in his life, he examines his journalistic apprenticeship at Radio Panamerica and the disparate writing assignments that he undertakes to help support Julia and himself as prologues to his Stephen Dedalus-like flight to the artistic Mecca where he aspires to work: Paris.

I write. I write that I am writing. Mentally I see myself writing that I am writing and I can also see myself seeing that I am writing. I remember writing and also seeing myself writing. And I see myself remembering that I see myself writing and I remember seeing myself remembering that I was writing and I write seeing myself write that I remember having seen myself write that I saw myself writing that I was writing and that I was writing that I was writing that I was writing. I can also imagine myself writing that I had already written that I would imagine myself writing that I had written that I was imagining myself writing that I see myself writing that I am writing. My second novel in a row by this author. This one was named one of the best books of the year (1982) by the New York Times Book Review. There’s a lot going on in this multilayered novel so I’ll add my comments to the basic summary on GR. If you should happen to read it-just ignore me. Ignore all I’ve written about. It’s not a real review. In fact, this is not review at all. Aunt Julia, fourteen years older than Mario, a divorced Bolivian who cannot bear children. Physically attractive, she dazzles the young Mario with what he perceives to be healthy cunning and spontaneity. Close family ties prevent their ever getting together, but Julia is decisive and ultimately responsible for their union. She is warm and brave, and she has a wonderful sense of humor, which is what really allows her to continue, despite her awareness that their relationship will not last. The story of her divorce, ending a marriage that lasted three more years than she expected, is told strictly from Mario’s point of view.Forse che Vargas Losa abbia voluto dire che la letteratura ha senso solo se nasce da una esperienza realmente vissuta? In alternating chapters the book interweaves the story of Marito's life with the ever-more-fevered tales of Pedro Camacho, so it’s also like a collection of short stories. We are also treated to the plots of a few short stories written by the aspiring author.