So you’ve read Madame Bovary—& now what? "Temptations of St. Anthony"? Gee, that one seems so wholly different from Madame Bovary, the story of “unrequited passion” which is a perennial favorite among literati & book enthusiasts the world over. So, instead, tackle The Perpetual Orgy, perhaps the most extensive research paper ever written by an indisputable genius. Mario Vargas Llosa’s oeuvre is a valediction of Flaubert’s greatness. It is surely included in his extensive repertoire of novels (The War of the End of the World, Conversation in the Cathedral, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta…) because it carries the significant heft of a novel: it (like the autobiography Antes que anochezca, or the historical semi-fiction Schindler’s List and Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat, or the epic nonfiction The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz) is as thrilling as a real novel; as relevant, & passionate, & as literary as any actual novel. Reading it was a pleasure; a pleasure I know only afforded those who have read the Flaubert classic, who have also cemented some type of relationship with it (everyone who’s read it to its tragic conclusion will have had formed some sort of relationship, or reaction, to it, definitely).
In intrepid form, Vargas Llosa does what many could only dream of doing: he has answered that age old question I really know what I like—but why? He gives us an actual explanation as to his personal tastes—he manages to inspire the lover of literature to remain in awe at such pointed and astute adulation.“Emma was killing herself in order that I might live” Vargas Llosa ruminates, with tremendous guts & guile. (This seems to be the same logic behind Woolf’s decision to kill off the Septimus Warren Smith in that other interplay of contrasts, the classic Mrs.Dalloway.) I have discovered that the very reason one reads scenes of death or violence is because the action contrasts so severely with the reader’s own menial everyday. This is called living vicariously through literature. Because the reader doesn’t suffer, because the only thing he must overcome is the next page of text, & then the next, & the next—the scenes of calamity are particularly delicious. Vargas Llosa has the Flaubertian scholar completely down—this novel-sized novel-conscious nonfiction extends the possibilities of the classic novel, already more than 150 years old.
The Perpetual Orgy is the most adequate, the most reverent, of companion pieces. Making Flaubert’s story the central work of this enterprise is what finally merges the poetics of the Latin American 20th century maestro with the French 19th century one. It was a real treat to go through Madame Bovary’s genesis. Her origin tale is enthralling, perhaps the topic of an entire separate work! It was a creation born of multiple sources, the sum of experiences that the writer had under his belt, pitted out into the world with the same austerity as a confessional.
The novel, “the very exemplar of the closed work, of the book that is a perfect circle,” took a considerable time of “gestation”—for the chemical reaction to actually occur. When Vargas Llosa writes about the humility given objects by Flaubert, the reader realizes just how strong that bond between both literary giants is. “The human suffuses things & things the human." There is an inherent tenderness, an overbearing respect for Madame Bovary that it really,truly becomes an indispensable text to accentuate the overall Flaubert experience.