Showing posts with label Mario Vargas Llosa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mario Vargas Llosa. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

2011: Favorite Quotes

I love quotes! I collect them just as I collect books. I've done this for years. I highlight them, bookmark them, think about them. I have little post-its and sticky notes all over my books, and a notebook of favorite quotes. Sometimes I re-visit them and depending on depth even have to write something about them!

Here are nine favorite quotes, and an excerpt from a poem, I collected this year.

Romance:
  • "Because" ... "ye've bewitched and bespelled me, my sweet Silence, didn't ye know? I'll agree that the sky is pink, that the moon is made o' marzipan and sugared raisins, and that mermaids swim the muddy waters o' the Thames, if ye'll only stop weepin'. Me chest breaks apart and gapes wide open when I see tears in yer pretty eyes. Me lungs, me liver, and me heart cannot stand to be thus exposed." -- Mickey -- Scandalous Desires by Elizabeth Hoyt
  • "The scent of you," he said so softly. "Heaven help me, the scent of you." -- Clevedon -- Silk is for Seduction by Loretta Chase
  • "To address your question fairly, Miss Eversea... while I understand my broken engagement is a popular topic of conversation among the fashionable set, one must consider the possibility that the end of it was serendipitous for both Lady Abigail and I. And that thus freed our hearts might now love more appropriately and happily." Take that, Miss Eversea. He was rather proud of thatThat epic, steaming mound of balderdash. -- Alex -- What I Did For A Duke by Julie Anne Long
Urban Fantasy
  • "The Beast Lord walked out of the warehouse. The screen went dark. My knight in furry armor." -- Kate Daniels -- Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews
Science Fiction
  • "The beautiful thing about losing your illusions, he thought, was that you got to stop pretending." -- Miller - Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
Historical Fiction
  • "In New York nobody looks at a woman with that arrogance anymore. Measuring her, weighing her, calculating how much flesh there is in each one of her breasts and thighs, how much hair on her pubis, the exact curve of her buttocks. She closes her eyes, feeling slightly dizzy. In New York not even Latins—Dominicans, Colombians, Guatemalans—give such looks. They’ve learned to repress them, realized they mustn’t look at women the way male dogs look at female dogs, stallions look at mares, boars look at sows.." -- Urania -- The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa

Gay Fiction
  • "All men have macho in them. Even gay ones, but there are varying degrees, and while most forms of macho are lethal to the progression of the world and society, there are some acceptable levels, very low levels, that can sometimes be useful." Chulito by Charles Rice-González

Gay Speculative Fiction
  • "I squeeze it in my grasp and it shrinks to a twirlable size, sits comfortably between my fingers, a pen. There is no need for any statement of authority more grand than this, I think, not in this day and age. What was comfortable in one era as a humble reed with a wedge-shaped end, will be comfortable here and now as simple ballpoint. It is the most important of all these objects of power, I think -- though I am prejudiced, I suspect -- the original of all tools for shaping order and chaos." -- "Oneirica by Hal Duncan" -- Wilde Stories 2011: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction edited by Steve Berman
Non-Fiction
  • "Combat isn't where you might die -- though that does happen -- it's where you find out whether you get to keep on living." War by Sebastian Junger
Poetry

"Before Cortés lops off a messenger's
hands and has another trampled,
before the branding and burning,
there is wonderment
and, for a moment, endearment
as Cortés dances, off beat, around
the long neck of his field piece." --
Excerpt from Cortés and Cannon
 Empire by Xochiquetzal Candelaria

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Review: The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa


The people celebrate
and go all the way
for the Feast of the Goat
the Thirtieth of May.

—"Mataron El Chivo"
“They Killed the Goat”
A Dominican merengue




The Feast of the Goat or La Fiesta del Chivo is a fictionalized account of the Trujillo Era written by the Peruvian writer and winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa. This powerful and haunting historical fiction novel depicts the last day in the life of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina who held power over his people in the Dominican Republic between 1930 and May 30, 1961. The original book is written in Spanish, however in my opinion the translation of the book by Edith Grossman is excellent and I do not have complaints when it comes to either the language nor how the translation effected the writer's prose.

Vargas Llosa approaches the story from three different points of view:
  • The present and past memories of the fictional character Urania Cabral.
  • Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina's view of events as they unfold on the day that he was assassinated, May 30, 1961, and his memories of past events. 
  • The point of view of the Trujillo's assassins as events unfold on May 30, 1961, and their memories of the past events that motivated their actions. 
The three perspectives allow the writer to present the full scope of the history encompassing the Trujillo Era in a fast paced style that keeps the reader glued to the pages. The three points of view, which seem disparate at first, alternate and get closer to each other until they merge at the end in a cohesive manner.

Vargas Llosa uses the fictional characters of Urania, Agustin Cabral and their family to bring cohesion to the story, as Urania returns to the city of Santo Domingo after years of absence, and in turn to her memories of the past while confronting her senile and silent father with his past sins. Her memories, accusations and revelations take the reader to a time when the Dominican Republic and its people lived under the mesmerizing power of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina. Vargas Llosa uses Urania as the voice representing Dominican women of her time, as she narrates experiences that are full of wonder, innocence, horror, and ultimately terrible betrayal. The betrayal experienced by Urania is a double edged sword as it comes from her father and from a society that is patriarchal in nature, killing her faith in men.

Trujillo had quite a few nicknames: el Jefe (the Chief), el Generalissimo, the Benefactor, and of course the Goat. Vargas Llosa portrays Trujillo on his last day as an old man in his 70's who is slowly losing control of his body, his allies, the country and its people. It is an intimate and personal portrayal of a man who truly believes his own press: God and Trujillo, Trujillo and God. He believes that he is savior to the Dominican people and that they owe him everything, including their properties, women, children and even their very lives. As the base of his rule there is authoritarianism and paternalism, however this is combined with violence and corruption that ends in immense abuse of power over his people, family, collaborators and enemies alike.
More than anything else, what he could not forgive was that just as he had corrupted and brutalized this country, the Goat had also corrupted and brutalized Antonio de la Maza. - Antonio de la Maza - Chapter 6
The assassins point of view is the most compelling for me in this story. Vargas Llosa portrays the last moments, the history and motives that placed Antonio de la Maza, Antonio (Tony) Imbert Barrera, Lieutenant Amadito García Guerrero, and Salvador (El Turco) Estrella Sadhalá on the San Cristóbal Highway on May 30, 1961 and made assassins out of family men and former trujillistas. Theirs are stories of men who were subjugated first through love and then through fear, and whose spirits were almost broken after years of giving of themselves to a man and a country that took it all and gave nothing in return except terror and betrayal. Their stories are moving, horrifying, and violent, and the individual motivations and the after effects of their collective actions, as portrayed by Vargas Llosa, are fascinating.
"They kill our fathers, our brothers, our friends. And now they’re killing our women. And here we sit, resigned, waiting our turn,” he heard himself say. Antonio (Tony) Imbert Barrera - Chapter 9
Vargas Llosa is known for successfully "depicting the effects of authoritarianism, violence and the abuse of power on the individual." The Feast of the Goat is an excellent example of this theme. He explores it through all three points of view, even that of Trujillo himself, as it is through him that the reader experiences how and why that power is abused and used to control collaborators and enemies alike. Previously I mentioned authoritarianism and paternalism, however Vargas Llosa goes further by portraying the Trujillo Era as a machista-run society and makes a connection between sex and power, where sex is used by Trujillo as a controlling tool to obtain and maintain his power.

Furthermore, in my opinion, where Vargas Llosa truly succeeds with The Feast of the Goat in his portrayal of the Latin American dictator and in his usage of a conversational, fast paced style that makes this historical fiction novel accessible to the reader. His inclusion of violence and torture is key and contributes to the sense of reality the reader experiences when confronted with true horror and terror. Torture and violence are not just words that are mentioned within the narration. Vargas Llosa brilliantly weaves in history and fiction to make this an excellent read.

There's so much more that I could say about The Feast of the Goat. This is a partial re-read for me, I first read it in Spanish, however this is my first attempt at reading the English translation. I would like to thank Mariana for encouraging me to re-read it in English for our book club. A note: I enjoyed this book this time around much more than the first time. Why? Well, the first time I didn't know anything about the history of the Dominican Republic and researched both history and characters as I read the book, this time I just enjoyed it. What I can tell you all is that both times the story haunted me for days after I finished it.

The Feast of the Goat (La Fiesta del Chivo) by Mario Vargas Llosa. Highly recommended.

Category: Historical Fiction
Series: None
Publisher/Release Date: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1 edition / March 4, 2011 - Kindle Edition
First Read: B+
Grade: A

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Note: I started a side blog Quotes and Thoughts that I will be using to post write ups on the books I'm reading, as I read them. Not reviews, just thoughts on specific moments in a story that catch my attention, or even to expand on a particular thread in a story while writing a review. I wrote two posts about The Feast of the Goat on that site:

Links to Quotes and Thoughts:
Sex and Power in The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
The end justifies the means... The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa