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Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #36
Granta 36: Vargas Llosa for President
The novelist’s personal account of his campaign for the presidency of Peru. Alvaro Vargas Llosa as his father’s press officer, Sergio Ramirez on the end of the Sandinistas, George Steiner on the end of the dream of communism, Graham Swift, T. Coraghessan Boyle, and Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow (part three).
- GenresPolitics
256 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1991
About the author
Bill Buford
99 books333 followersWilliam Holmes Buford is an American author and journalist. He is the author of the books Among the Thugs and Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. Buford was previously the fiction editor for The New Yorker, where he is still on staff. For sixteen years, he was the editor of Granta, which he relaunched in 1979. He is also credited with coining the term "dirty realism".
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 19, 2021
Reading more on the personal lives or political viewpoints of some writers make you wish you hadn't, and that you had limited your reading just to their fiction. Mario Vargos Llosa happens to be one such writer, unfortunately. This old issue of Granta (from 1991) is about the campaign that he ran for the presidency of Peru in 1989. Now, one might think it is a wonderful thing to have a perceptive writer at the helm of affairs, but the minute Llosa speaks about his political end economic viewpoints, you would begin to wonder if it's the same writer who had written works like 'The Feast of the Goat'.
To not waste more words on this abomination of a human being, I would just say that his long piece 'A fish out of water' is mainly about the reasons for his candidature and the "struggles" that he had to undergo during the campaign. One of his main reasons is that he could not tolerate the nationalisation of banks, insurance companies and other firms in Peru. He writes on and on about how privatisation would turn the country around, as if he were one of the pimps of the western corporates. And if all the puke-worthy reading was not enough, he writes about how he met Margaret Thatcher and got lessons in privatisation from that wretched woman, who is still one of the saints for votaries of privatisation.
He also talks about the attempts on his life and attacks on party members, claims I am doubtful of, as it comes from a right-winger like him. Thankfully, Llosa lost the election. And, with all his arrogance, he writes - "I feel sorry for Peru". This made me think of the time he punched Gabriel Garcia Marquez on his face. I just wished Marquez returned a smashing one, back then.
But the edition is worth a read for Sergio Ramirez's memoirs of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua from the 70s to the 90s, of how they ousted the dictatorial somozas and stood up to the might of the US which was pushing in counter-revolutionaries and arming them as well as attempting to break the revolution through sanctions and on how the Sandinista Govt used secondary schoolchildren and university students to educate the 60% illiterate population (the national literacy crusade of 1980 was a second insurrection).
Former US President Roosevelt had said this about the dictatorial General Anastasio somoza (the first somoza) - "He is a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch". No wonder, since US has been consistent with this stand as far as right wing dictators are concerned. The piece also talks about the history of Nicaragua, of how the Spanish first colonised it centuries earlier, how the US arrived in 1910 and handed over the country to the bankers of the Morgan trust company and how somoza murdered sandino in 1934. And then the crushing loss of the sandinistas in the 1990 election, with people voting against the sandinistas after Bush threatened to unleash more contra violence and continue economic blockade if the sandinistas continued in power...and ofcourse Daniel Ortega's moving address. Ramirez, who wrote the article had served in the leftist Government of National Reconstruction and as Vice President of the country 1985-1990 under the presidency of Daniel Ortega.
Rating this 2 stars, for the Nicaragua piece..and zero for Mario 'privatisation' Llosa.
To not waste more words on this abomination of a human being, I would just say that his long piece 'A fish out of water' is mainly about the reasons for his candidature and the "struggles" that he had to undergo during the campaign. One of his main reasons is that he could not tolerate the nationalisation of banks, insurance companies and other firms in Peru. He writes on and on about how privatisation would turn the country around, as if he were one of the pimps of the western corporates. And if all the puke-worthy reading was not enough, he writes about how he met Margaret Thatcher and got lessons in privatisation from that wretched woman, who is still one of the saints for votaries of privatisation.
He also talks about the attempts on his life and attacks on party members, claims I am doubtful of, as it comes from a right-winger like him. Thankfully, Llosa lost the election. And, with all his arrogance, he writes - "I feel sorry for Peru". This made me think of the time he punched Gabriel Garcia Marquez on his face. I just wished Marquez returned a smashing one, back then.
But the edition is worth a read for Sergio Ramirez's memoirs of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua from the 70s to the 90s, of how they ousted the dictatorial somozas and stood up to the might of the US which was pushing in counter-revolutionaries and arming them as well as attempting to break the revolution through sanctions and on how the Sandinista Govt used secondary schoolchildren and university students to educate the 60% illiterate population (the national literacy crusade of 1980 was a second insurrection).
Former US President Roosevelt had said this about the dictatorial General Anastasio somoza (the first somoza) - "He is a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch". No wonder, since US has been consistent with this stand as far as right wing dictators are concerned. The piece also talks about the history of Nicaragua, of how the Spanish first colonised it centuries earlier, how the US arrived in 1910 and handed over the country to the bankers of the Morgan trust company and how somoza murdered sandino in 1934. And then the crushing loss of the sandinistas in the 1990 election, with people voting against the sandinistas after Bush threatened to unleash more contra violence and continue economic blockade if the sandinistas continued in power...and ofcourse Daniel Ortega's moving address. Ramirez, who wrote the article had served in the leftist Government of National Reconstruction and as Vice President of the country 1985-1990 under the presidency of Daniel Ortega.
Rating this 2 stars, for the Nicaragua piece..and zero for Mario 'privatisation' Llosa.
July 14, 2024
Finally finished this one. Some excellent writing although nothing really grabbed me to the extent that I wanted more or thought let's pursue more of this writer's oeuvre. Vargas Llosa's political campaign for Peruvian leadership was interesting although he comes across as a bit of an egotist. Maybe no surprise there! Steiner's essay on an aging communist proof-reader took me 3 attempts to finish but ended up being the most engaging essay. Definitely worth a perusal as all entries are worth reading, just doesn't hang together as a collection all that well.
November 30, 2020
Three pieces on Vargas Llosa which were entertaining. What to say? Really, not much. It is like a variety show but better. I enjoyed something in each of the pieces. Aside from Vargas Llosa, there were none that I would want to read more. What was there was enough. A light snack of a read but Mario, I'd read a full book of his attempt at presidency.
October 31, 2025
An interesting look at Vargas Llosa's run for the Peruvian presidency as seen from 3 perspectives: his own, his PR guy (and son), and his professional campaign manager. Also the story of election night in Nicaragua; back when President Reagan made that seem the most important event in the western hemisphere (for a different perspective see Garry Trudeau).
Also great stories by T.C. Boyle, George Steiner, and Graham Swift.
And an absolutely abhorrent one by Martin Amis about a man who lives backward through time and gets caught up in 'medical' experiments at Auschwitz where every 'thing' is done last to first.
I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Also great stories by T.C. Boyle, George Steiner, and Graham Swift.
And an absolutely abhorrent one by Martin Amis about a man who lives backward through time and gets caught up in 'medical' experiments at Auschwitz where every 'thing' is done last to first.
I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time.
January 8, 2008
Mario Vargas Llosa is one of my favorite writers. Originally from Peru, I think he might live in Paris now. He came to Pittsburgh once to talk. I didn't go. I heard he was harrassed by a political activist. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe because he's a political 'moderate' or 'conservative' or some such. I wonder if the person who berated him has ever read his bks? Most of them are political, most expose dictatorial abuses, & most are sensitive to political radicalism even w/ Llosa not being one himself. Anyway, this Grant publication is about Llosa running for president of Peru. He lost. I wish he'd won. He cdn't've possibly been any worse than what they've already had. & I'm sure that he wd've been better than the more 'radical' Sindira Luminosa. Besides that, though, the bk's pretty lackluster - that might just be better than being sensationally full of promises for a better society. After all, no politician ever keeps such promises - or, if they do, somebody hired by the CIA snuffs them & then puts some genocidal lunatic in their place. Vargas Llosa probably cdn't've pulled it off but he probably wd've tried w/ more integrity than most.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews