Mario Vargas Llosa got the 2010 Nobel prize for literature for “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat”. He is a fantastic writer. I recently read his "Feast of the Goat". Reading the book I thought that the brilliant inter temporal and non-linear narrative structure that we see in Alejandro González Iñárritu'smovies can be inspired by Llosa. In the interspersed use of time we can see Faulkner' influence who was one of Llosa's favourite authors
I recently read his quite interesting article that he wrote long back in New York Times in 1984 'The art of fiction'. Some insightful marvelous excerpts that I found are -
"In fact, novels do lie - they can't help doing so - but that's only one part of the story. The other is that, throgh lying, they express a cruious truth, which can only be expressed in a veiled and concealed fasion, masquerading as what it is not. This statement has the ring of gibberish. But actually it's quite simple. Men are not content with their lot and nearly all - rich or poor, brilliant or mediocre, famous or obscure - would like to have a life different from the one they lead. To (cunningly) appease this appetite, fiction was born. It is written and read to provide human beings with lives they're unresigned to not having. The germ of every novel contains an element of non-resignation and desire."
"Real life flows without pause, lacks order, is chaotic, each story merging with all stories and hence never having a beginning or ending. Life in a work of fiction is a simulation in which that dizzying disorder achieves order, organization, cause and effect, beginning and end."
"Fiction betrays life, sometimes subtly, sometimes brutally, encapsulating it in a weft of words that reduce it in scale and place it within the reader's reach. Thus the reader can judge it, understand it and, above all, live it with an impunity not granted him in real life."
"At the heart of all fictional work there burns a protest. Their authors created them since they were unable to live them, and their readers (and believers) encounter in these phantom creatures the faces and adventures needed to enhance their own lives. That is the truth expressed by the lies in fiction - the lies that we ourselves are, thelies that console us and make up for our longings and frustrations. How trustworthy then is the testimony of a novel on the very society that produced it? Were those men really that way? They were, in the sense that that was how they wanted to be, how they envisioned themselves loving, suffering and rejoicing. Those lies do not document their lives but rather their driving demons - the dreams that intoxicated them and made the lives they led more tolerable. An era is not populated merely by flesh and blood creatures, but also by the phantom creatures into which they are transformed in order to break the barriers that confine them."
There are great works and greater works of fiction but not close to that of Kafka, Camus and Dostoevesky. The work by these triplets are experiences that not all can undergo as it makes one to reflect in a way that may crack the moribund cosy fragile structure in which we all seem to survive. This is the reason that these works are not for 'faint hearted' people as these sort of works makes one to reflect and the narrative exudes the experience into the reader providing some sort of unease. As Dostoevesky said "It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word." Einstein had once said that "Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss". What is in the narration of Dostoevesky that it spellbinds thinking people across the spectrum. An evolutionary experience is not necessarily joyful but it may be the pathway to 'real joy'. Peaks are reached through arduous and exhausting paths and reading Dostevesky one also reaches the peak of novel writing. A great work of art has the characteristic of closing the gap between the seer and the object of art, or in other words the concept portrayed by the artist would be an experience in itself for the observer . This is what we can experience in Dostoevesky's Crime and Punishment. The story revolves around the crime of double murder committed by the main protagonist Roskolnikov and then its ramifications. While reading the novel we can experience in the most acute way the near full experience of crime and we are sucked into the psyche of Roskolnikov who commits the crime. The narration is such that we also experience the inner working of the capillaries of the criminal and after the novel is complete we may feel our self as an exhausted person who was also part of the event. Crime and Punishment cannot be just characterized as a psychological thriller but this a work comprising of astonishing philosophical undertones. As in any great novel characters are just not individuals rather they are metaphors in large scheme of things. Roskolnikov portrays here the disenchanted bright youth which undergoes unwarranted crime due to the distorted and malaised society in which he lives. "Roskol' niki were sort of gnostic groups who protested against the church and adhered to old rituals opposing the present established authorities. In Crime and Punishment Roskolnikov also is the disenchanted 'youth' with the socialist and reformist undercurrents prevalent in his society. He finds his own solution to resolve his problems. His 'Napoleonic' solution for his miseries is based on the premise that if unworthy people are eliminated for the betterment of a brighter person than the crime is not a crime but a just act and beneficial for the overall society.
"I maintain that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have been made known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred or more men, Newton would have had the right, would indeed have been in duty bound... to eliminate the dozen or hundred men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity. But it does not follow from that that Newton had a right to murder people left and right to steal every day in the market. Then, I remember, I maintain in my article that all... well, legislators and leaders of men, such as Lycurgus, Solon, Mahomet, Napoleon, and so on, were all without exception criminals, from the very fat that, making a new law, they transgressed the ancient one, handed down from their ancestors and held sacred by the people, and they did not stop short of bloodshed either, if that bloodshed - often of innocent persons fighting bravely in the defense of ancient law - were of use to their cause. It's remarkable in fact, that the majority indeed, of these benefactors and leaders of humanity were guilty of terrible carnage. In short, I maintain that all great men or even men a little out of the common, that is to say capable of giving some new word, must from their very nature be criminals - more or less, of course. Otherwise it's hard for them to get out of the common rut; and to retain in the common rut is what they can't submit to, from their very nature again, and to my mind they ought not, indeed, to submit to it. The common people preserve and populate the world, the extraordinary move the world and lead it to its goal...."
But Dostoevesky in Crime and Punishment shows that there are exterior laws that bring order and a crime committed gets penance through suffering of the soul and the act of redemption would lead the person to a 'gradual renewal, his gradual rebirth, his gradual transformation from one world to another , of his growing acquaintance with a new,hitherto complete unknown reality' . The other major protagonist in the novel is Sonya (or "Sofya" meaning "wisdom" in Greek ) is sort of alter ego of Roskolnikov and she shows him the way to redemption. She undergoes suffering throughout the novel and she provides the courage and wisdom to Roskolnikov to achieve redemption through penance. He loves her with a reverential attitude, "I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity."..."They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other."
It is not easy for a novice like me to analyze thoroughly a complex novel such as this. But it is always pleasure trying to understand the work of such great masters as Dostoevesky who is considered more as a prophet than a novelist.
