La verdad de las mentiras (The Truth of Lies).

AuthorMujica, Barbara

Born in Arequipa, Peru, in 1936, Mario Vargas Llosa achieved his first critical success with La ciudad y los perros (The City and the Dogs) in 1963 and went on to become one of Latin America's most highly acclaimed novelists as well as a respected playwright. In La verdad de las mentiras he grapples with a problem that has abosorbed him for many years: the nature of fiction.

La verdad de las mentiras is a collection of commentaries on twenty-five of the author's favorite novels and stories, preceded by an essay on the "truth" of fiction. For Vargas Llosa fans, these introductory remarks will probably be the most fascinating part of the book, for in them, the author elaborates on his concept of the character and purpose of fiction, thereby adding to our understanding of his work.

The Spanish Inquisitors banned novels from the colonies because they thought that the fabrications these books contained would be dangerous to the spiritual well-being of the Indians. Vargas asserts that the holy fathers were right to fear novels, which, although made up of lies, express hidden truths. Men and women, says Vargas, are never satisfied with their lot. Fiction allows them to play out their desires vicariously. This liberating process may lead to rebellion against authority, a fact the Inquisitors understood perfectly.

Whether a novel or story is based on fact or is a creation of pure fantasy, it always consits of lies, for the very process of writing fiction entails selection and embellishment, and, therefore, distortion. The "truth" of a novel does not depend on its adherence to facts, explains Vargs, but on its ability to persuade its readers. A novel is "true" if it causes the reader to enter into the illusion. A good novel fills the gap between real life and desire. The "lies" provide an alternative. They address the deficiencies in our existence and, thereby, constitute a protest against reality. This is precisely what the Inquisitors feared. Within the fictions that men and women create reside the seeds of revolt.

The works that Vargas Llosa analyzes are varied. The list includes Dubliners, by James Joyce; Manhattan Transfer, by John Dos Passos; The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald; The House of the Sleeping Beauties, by Yasunari Kawabata; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexandr Solzhenitsin. The breadth of the material makes it impossible to synthesize, but the following synopses...

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