The giant that he is in modern Latin American letters, the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa is perhaps not as well known as such other South American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Colombia - winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature; author of such literary classics as A Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, No One Writes to the Colonel, In Evil Hour and Chronicle of a Death Foretold; and himself the subject of a biographical study by Vargas Llosa - or, for that matter, Isabel Allende of Chile.
Despite this sort of relative obscurity from the eyes of many readers, Llosa’s own tome includes such great works of art as Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - the object of the present review and undoubtedly a twentieth century classic whose place in history is well established and is guaranteed to continue to charm generations after generations of readers all over the world - and several more like The Green House and Conversation in the Cathedral. But what is it really that makes Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter such a memorable and charming read for many generations of readers across the globe?
The novel is based upon a kind of double-barrelled narrative structure which in turn is centred upon three key personalities in the book: Varguitas, an 18-year-old lad who is studying for a law degree at the University of San Marcos in Lima and works part-time as a radio news-editor at Radio Panamericana; Aunt Julia, the 32-year old divorced wife of Varguitas’ cousin, who has recently arrived in Peru from a wrecked marriage in Bolivia; and, lastly, a spartan and eccentric scriptwriter by the name of Pedro Camacho, also from Bolivia, who lives virtually by his favourite verbena-and-mint-tea and works endlessly at his popular radio soap-operas by hacking away at the keys of the old Remington typewriter that he has commandeered from Varguitas’ office at Radio Panamericana.
Camacho’s soapies are broadcast in a sister radio station - Radio Central.
(“The two radio stations”, we are told, “belonged to the same owner and were housed next door to each other”.) In terms of its narrative structure, the novel is torn between an account of a developing relationship between the 18-year-old Varguitas and his 32 year old divorced aunt, culminating in a secret - and rather short-lived - marriage which naturally is heavily opposed by other family members, on the one hand; this unusual - if forceful - liaison between Varguitas and his divorced aunt, who is older than him by no less than 10 years, runs parallel - and is interspersed - with an exploration of some of the major themes which come out of the radio soap-operas which are authored by the Bolivian scriptwriter who, for reasons not too clear to Varguitas, harbours a deep-seated hatred for Argentine actors, and anything Argentine, on the other hand .
Both of Varguitas’ parents, as it so happens, live in America - while he lives with his grandparents in a villa in Lima. His parents only make some hurried and urgent plans to return to Peru when the news of Varguitas’ impending and scandal-riven marriage to Aunt Julia break out and reach them in the US, via the agency of those of his relatives who have remained with him in Peru.
Deeply troubled and incensed, Varguitas’ father - whom he describes as someone “authoritarian” in character - sends a stern letter ahead to Varguitas’ uncle, warning that both Varguitas and Aunt Julia stand to suffer great repercussions should they proceed willy-nilly with their marriage plans.
However, for all that, Varguitas remains undaunted. He is a man deeply in love with his “sweetheart” and he has already proposed to her that they get married as soon as possible.
But, being barely 18, Varguitas needs a guardian’s consent in order to get married legally.
That condition alone instantly rules out Lima as a place where he and Aunt Julia might get married. Accompanied by two of their friends - Pascual and Javier - they make a difficult journey to the outback of Peru where, after a trying and protracted struggle, they are finally wed before a black provincial mayor - a ‘sambo’, as the book calls people of his kind - who can hardly read or write.
And when Varguitas and Aunt Julia finally make it back to Lima, as a married couple, Varguitas manages to pull off a brave attempt at reconciliation with his father. But, at that point, you can’t help getting the awkward feeling that the meeting between the two men could well be the last time that father and son are able to look each other in the eye.
From that point onwards, the structure of the narrative also gets rather pacy: Varguitas goes to live in Europe with his new bride; in eight years’ time their marriage has broken up and he re-marries, this time he marries cousin Patricia, who is also Aunt Julia’s niece; his friend Pedro Camacho, the Bolivian scriptwriter, whom you may be forgiven for feeling that Varguitas has neglected for a long time, overworks himself, mixes up the plots of his soapies and gets everyone confused, before he finally succumbs to a mental break down.
Varguitas is to meet Pedro Camacho again many years later while researching some material for a book that he is writing on the Peruvian military dictatorship of General Manuel Apolinario Odria (1948-56). They meet by chance in the sprawling slums of Lima and it takes Varguitas a little while before he recognizes Pedro Camacho. When, finally, Pedro Camacho takes his leave of Varguitas, someone tells Varguitas that Camacho is a ruined man whose “luck has run out”; and also that Camacho has got back with his wife, a fat Argentine call-girl, who sees to it that there is “food on the table” for both her and Camacho as Camacho himself does not make enough money to support the two of them.
Of course Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is an autobiographical work which is based on the life experiences of Mario Vargas Llosa. It is said that soon after the book was published, Vargas Llosa received a legal suit from none other than Aunt Julia herself who queried some of the book’s contents.
Out of frustration, we are told, she subsequently published a rebuttal of Llosa’s account of their marriage, and their other experiences together, in an out-of-print book titled, “What Mario Did Not Say.”
