http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Sat, 3 Nov 2007 15:07:13 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/10/28/060336.php#comment-647646 That was back in the day when the guy could still WRITE. The only point he appears to TRY to make in the new books is that somewhere along the line he was introduced--VERY RELUCTANTLY--to cunnilingus. 647646@blogcritics.org Sat, 3 Nov 2007 15:07:13 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/10/28/060336.php#comment-647298 Sounds like fun. Loved his early book Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, which had me rollin in the aisles way back in the 1980s - a story of a lad with a fancy for his sexy older cousin, interspersed with the increasingly leaky episodes from five radio soaps written by his workaholic colleague. 647298@blogcritics.org Fri, 2 Nov 2007 03:16:23 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/10/28/060336.php#comment-646525 I read this latest effort by Varga Llosa in Spanish when it first came out. He still has the precise positioning of prose as always, but as he gets older there is less and less substance to what he writes. (I have to wonder if there is a relationship with his political posture--as he started out on the left with interest in and energy for social justice issues and gradually has shifted rightward to the point that his current political stance is further right than the dictator he lost his big to be president of Peru to, Fujimori.) Hardening of the creative arteries has clearly set in for this writer right along with hardening of the poltical arteries. La niņa traviesa is trivial and tedious, and his previous novel, El paraiso en la otra esquina, which attempted to show two parallel lives: those of Flora Tristan, 19th century revolutionary and her grandson, painter Paul Gaugin was an abject failure which managed to take two extremely interesting people and beat them into boredom itself. Too bad. He used to be a terrific writer, but his last book that was not a fatuous snoozer was La fiesta del chivo--the fictionalized last days in power of Trujillo, longterm dictator of the Dominican Republic. Unfortunately, Gabriel Garcia Marquez beat him to the punch on that topic years earlier with the outrageous Otoņo del patriarca. Since the only thing even worth opening the books for is his use of language, I cannot imagine reading Vargas Llosa in translation! 646525@blogcritics.org Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:10:51 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/10/28/060336.php#comment-645937 This article has been selected for syndication to <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/newslogs/bookreviews"> Advance.net </A>, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to <a href = "http://www.boston.com/ae/books/blogcritics/"> Boston.com</a>. Nice work! 645937@blogcritics.org Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:38:51 EDT