Product Description

Mario Vargas Llosa condenses a lifetime of writing, reading, and thought into an essential manual for aspiring writers. Drawing on the stories and novels of writers from around the globe-Borges, Bierce, Cline, Cortzar, Faulkner, Kafka, Robbe-Grillet-he lays bare the inner workings of fiction, all the while urging young novelists not to lose touch with the elemental urge to create. Conversational, eloquent, and effortlessly erudite, this little book is destined to be read and re-read by young writers, old writers, would-be writers, and all those with a stake in the world of letters.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1231927 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Now based in London and teaching at Georgetown University in the U.S., Peruvian novelist and erstwhile politician Vargas Llosa's novels (In Praise of the Stepmother, etc.) and essays (Making Waves). Though the "Letters to a Young " concept has recently been franchised by another publisher (applying it to everything from golf to rabble-rousing), Rilke's slender and sage Letters to a Young Poet remains the standard after 100 years. Vargas Llosa's 12 Letters to a generalized interlocutor drift in and out of Rilke's league, rich with insight into Western literature and with commentary on the urge that overtakes its practitioners "The literary vocation is not a hobby, a sport, or a pleasant leisure-time activity. It is an all-encompassing, all-excluding occupation, an urgent priority, a freely chosen servitude that turns its victims (its lucky victims) into slaves." Yet Vargas Llosa is also somewhat wryly withholding, as if to thicken the plot: "Writing novels is the equivalent of what professional strippers do when they take off their clothes and exhibit their naked bodies on stage. The novelist performs the same acts in reverse." His examples of good and great novelists, whom he discusses while making larger philosophical points about concepts like style, time or representation, are pretty hard to take issue with: Woolf and James; Dos Passos and Hemingway; Flaubert (Madame Bovary is a particular favorite), de Beauvoir and Robbe-Grillet; Borges and Cervantes. Neither a survey course in what to read nor a practical guide to writing, the book finally is a meditation on writing and its proper relationship to life. "Good novels, great ones, never actually seem to tell us anything; rather, they make us live it, and share in it, by virtue of their persuasive powers." Particularly given the excellent translation here by PW contributing editor Wimmer, the same could be said for letters like these.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Imitating Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, the famed Peruvian novelist passes out advice in the form of 11 letters.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The author of the magnificent historical novel the Feast of the Goat [BKL Jl 01] ostensibly addresses a young protege in this series of 11 letters distilling his own fiction-writing concepts into concrete terms. The great Peruvian master proves to be a wellspring of wisdom, experience, and inspiration not only for serious fiction writers but also for serious fiction readers. Eschewing the presentation of some kind of program for quick publication, Vargas Llosa instead becomes an instructor in the anatomy of the novel. Believing that "inventing beings and stories" is based in a writer's need for rebellion, and that "literature becomes a permanent preoccupation, something that takes up your entire existence," Vargas Llosa compels readers and would-be writers to ponder, among other ideas, the need for a novel to possess the "power of persuasion," an "essentiality" of language, and a form "expressi[ve] of the artist's originality." Commentary on favorite books merges with theories and musings, resulting in a work of sheer, provocative eloquence. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Entertaining but forgettable
These short essays examine various literary techniques in detail but are ultimately unhelpful in writing (or reading) fiction. While discussing narrative options available to the writer, we never are offered advice of why different techniques work or when they might work. Or even how different authors make them work (except for one or two examples in the final chapters). There is only the indefinable je ne sais quoi. The book is very well written, witty and it is interesting to see the list of the works Vargas Llosa admires but ultimately, sad to say, forgettable.

Essential Companion
Reading Mario Vargas Llosa's works of literature is one of the best experiences a reader can have. In "Letters to a Young Novelist" Vargas Llosa shares the name of authors that have shaped his life as a writer, along with his personal insight on narrative techniques, and an unconditional love for the written word. Each chapter presents valuable information for anyone interested in the art of writing or for anyone who enjoys reading a well-written book.

Concise, Real, and Enlightening
This book is written as a series of letters to an anonymous, aspiring novelist. Obviously it is fashioned after Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet", and although somewhat cheeky, the style and tone of these pseudo-letters fit Mario Vargas Llosa's objectives in writing.

Unlike some of the mainstream writing tutorials that are around, this volume, although slight in page length, has genuine and truly original insights that will help your writing tremendously. For example, whereas most writing instructors teaach you to stick to one point-of-view, Vargas Llosa says one of the most unbending rules in fiction is that no novel sticks to one kind of point-of-view, that it subtly changes. There are equally startling and persuasive directives regarding spatial and temporal matters in fiction.

The book is fun to read as well; only a novelist of Vargas Llosa's caliber can dismiss many of the so-called 'classics' and not seem vindictive and/or crazy. To fully understand this book (although not totally necessary), a reader should have at least a passing knowledge of the writers and their works that Vargas Llosa invokes as examples. i.e. Proust, Flaubert, Robbes-Grillet, etc.

If you are an aspiring writer, chances are good that this wry book will be an indispensable guide. Highly recommended.