Making Waves: Essays

by Mario Vargas Llosa

Book Overview

Spanning thirty years of writing, Making Waves traces the development of the Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa's thinking on politics and culture, and shows the breadth of his interests... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374200386
• ISBN13: 9780374200381
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 338 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Interesting but not compelling

Mario Vargas LLosa is Peru's most well- known novelist and a writer of international reputation. Editor and translator John King brings together a rich sample of his non- fictional work. Much of the writing has to do with Politics and Literature, but there are also personal explorations as in his long essay on the period in which his younger son became a Rastafarian. There are also essays on film (Bunel ) on art(Botero)Many of the essays have to do with writers Sartre, Faulkner, Camus , Dos Passos, who Llosa feels in some way close to. He also in this work writes an illuminating essay on Isiah Berlin in which he shows how Berlin makes Ideas the main character of his essays, and how in a brilliant technical fashion Berlin by seeing these ideas from all points-of- view manages nonetheless to convey his own liberal political perspective. In the political realm there is a scathing essay on the myth of Che Guevera, an essay which faults him for the brand of revolutionary socialist violence which went nowhere- but nonetheless shows admiration for Che's having lived by the principles he preached. LLosa writes of himself as one consumed by reading and writing, one who is on fire for Literature. And in his peripatetic and rich career in Madrid, Paris, London, and Lima LLosa has created a body of work of which this volume in so clearly enunciating his literary and political credo, must have an honorable place. )

A beautiful intellectual journey

I gained a new respect for Vargas Llosa after reading this book. I admit that I've often had trouble finishing his novels, like "The Green House" and the "The War of the End of the World." But this collection of essays is very lucid and insightful. A true joy to read.The topics vary, and cover everything from the "bad" films of Luis Bunuel to the fading legacy of Che Guevara. In fact, there seems to be an even split here between literary and political themes. I loved, for example, reading a Latin American perspective on the works of David Mamet.I also enjoyed "Nicaragua at a Crossroads." His description of the capital city is amusing, heartbreaking and gives you a sense that the people of Managua live in a truly surreal world. No writer of magic realism could ever imagine a stranger form of urban chaos than the one depicted in this essay."Making Waves" is a brilliant collection -- one that ranks with Umberto Eco's "Travels in Hyperreality" or Octavio Paz's "Labyrinth of Solitude."

Witty and intelligent random musings

Mario Vargas Llosa is often overshadowed by the more famous Spanish writers such as Garcia Marquez and Fuentes. However, he deserves his place among them and may perhaps be better. "Making Waves" displays the writer's usual quick wit and sarcasm as he muses over everything from Peru's Shining Path to Hemingway to Rastafari to Che. It's a collection of essays spanning many decades, and often they are merely his take on a particular social, political, or literary trend. The book makes for enjoyable reading in bits and pieces. A highly intelligent work!

An excellent essay collection by the great Peruvian writer

"Making Waves," by Mario Vargas Llosa, brings together more than 40 essays by this great writer from Peru. The book has been edited by John King, who also translated these essays into English. Vargas writes about politics, literature, popular culture, the writer's vocation, and other topics. His moods vary greatly throughout the book: outraged, annoyed, sentimental, exasperated, and enthralled. The book is filled with fascinating insights and memories. It is fascinating, for example, to read how Vargas Llosa's first novel was burned and denounced. He frequently attacks Cuban leader Fidel Castro. One of the best selections, "The Story of a Massacre," tells of the tragic slaying of a group of journalists; this piece takes us into the worlds of the Shining Path guerrillas and the Iquichano Indians.Another excellent selection is "My Son the Rastafarian," about his son's conversion to the Rastafarian religion while staying at an English school. Many of Vargas Llosa's essays explore the lives and work of other writers: William Faulkner, Doris Lessing, Julio Cortazar, Ernest Hemingway, and others. And there are a few weird surprises, like his essay on Lorena Bobbitt, the woman who cut off her husband's penis.In an essay on Hemingway, Mario Vargas Llosa writes, "The condition of the writer is strange and paradoxical." He adds that the writer needs to "feed the beast within which enslaves him." Vargas Llosa has been feeding his own "beast" for a long time now, and the world is a richer place because of this. I highly recommend "Making Waves" to all interested in contemporary literature and politics.