In 1988, when Mario Vargas Llosa sat down on a Toronto stage with Adrienne Clarkson, he hadn't yet won his Nobel Prize for Literature (that came in 2010) so he wasn't yet a "central" figure in the world of writing. In this conversation, he teases out the hazy line between being an artist (who inhabits the world of the imagination), and being a professional politician (who inhabits the world of practical problem-solving) in a way that reflects a very different vision for the role for the artist in a society. In North America, we're more ambivalent about professional practitioners of literature who stray too far into the world of politics, as if political life will sully them and contaminate the artistic vision. But in Vargas Llosa's native Peru (as in many countries), it's expected that writers will be asked to comment on politics, and not doing so undermines the role of the public intellectual. As he so aptly notes, literature "... is something that can help people to live, that can help people to solve problems [...] literature is important, [and] rooted in life. And this idea is one of the reasons why writers are pushed in Latin America to be involved in political problems and in the public debate." It's a symbol, perhaps, of the marginal role that artists in general (and writers in particular) play in contemporary North American society. And in the background a series of important questions about the role of the artist: What does a society look like when writers are more actively involved in political discussion and even political contests? What does it do to politics when writers are central players? And more importantly, what does it do to literature?
***
This audio recording of Mario Vargas Llosa in conversation with Adrienne Clarkson was recorded on stage at Harbourfront Reading Series in 1988. It is used with the kind permission of the Toronto International Festival of Authors. Thanks to TIFA for allowing us access to their archives for this series. Find out more about the Festival and its annual festival along with many other activities at FestivalOfAuthors.ca.
Click here to check out Season One of Writers Off the Page where you'll be able to listen to all 26 episodes which feature Umberto Eco, Susan Sontag, Nikki Giovanni, Grace Paley and many more.
***
SHOW NOTES
Works by Mario Vargas Llosa (in English)
The Perpetual Orgy: Flaubert and Madame Bovary (print edition)
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (print edition)
Time of the Hero (print edition) (ebook)
Who Killed Palomino Molero (print edition) (ebook)
The Call of the Tribe (print edition)
Sabers and Utopias: Visions of Latin America (print edition)
Conversation in the Cathedral (print edition)
Works by Mario Vargas Llosa (en Español)
La civilización del espectáculo (print edition) (ebook)
La fiesta del chivo (audiobook)
El fuego de la imaginación : libros, escenarios, pantallas y museos (print edition)
Other Related Books or Materials
Mario Vargas Llosa: a Life of Writing (print edition)
Belonging: the Paradox of Citizenship by Adrienne Clarkson (print edition) (ebook)
The Shining Path : Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes (print edition)
About the Host of Writers Off the Page
Randy Boyagoda is a novelist and professor of English at the University of Toronto, where he serves as advisor on civil discourse and vice-dean undergraduate, in the Faculty of Arts and Science. He has written seven books, including four novels. His work has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize and named a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year and New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection. He regularly contributes essays, opinions and reviews to publications including the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Financial Times of London, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Globe and Mail, and appears frequently on CBC Radio. A former president of PEN Canada, Boyagoda lives in Toronto with his wife and their four daughters.
Music is by Yuka
Thanks to the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) for allowing TPL access to their archives to feature some of the best-known writers in the world from moments in the past. Thanks as well to Library and Archives Canada for generously allowing TPL access to these archives.