Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian novelist, is a word painter, an artist of consummate skill, capable of simultaneous intimate ecstasy and detached observation that constantly surprises, titillates and intensifies.
Aunt Julia And The Scriptwriter is a novel that details how an eighteen year old writer of hack news stories develops relationships with his aunt and, yes, a scriptwriter, both of whom happen to be Bolivian. Auth Julia is an aunt by definable and identifiable, but non-bloodline association. At least there is still some decency! She is a divorcee, not a Peruvian — what would you expect, then? — and attractive to boot. She is also conquerable. She is a passionate older woman — old enough to be his mother! — who succumbs to the young man’s ardent if naive charms a little too easily for her own good or, it must be said, for the keeping of face in an interested, gossiping community.
Pedro Camacho is a stunted, bald, pocket battleship of a radio scriptwriter. He is also Bolivian — an epidemic? — and specialises in sitcoms, melees of melange, several of which he can keep on the boil at the same time. He is employed by our young hero’s radio station to sex-up the regular offerings, to enliven their action with his peculiar brand of obsessive work ethic, an approach that is occasionally method-school in its execution. So when his character needs an operation, he will sit at his ancient typewriter dressed as a surgeon. He is a great success, even when his lateral thinking approach to plot is fully realised, a trait that develops into a need to introduce characters from one soap opera into another almost at random — certainly at random — in order to test the listeners´collaboration of listening habit and attentiveness at the same time. And thus Dirty Den arrives unnoticed in Coronation Street, armed with his original identity and a plot that no one registers.
Article comments