The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

People always repeat the phrase, "don't judge a book by its cover", but the cover of my copy of THE REAL LIFE OF ALEJANDRO MAYTA expresses the content more appropriately than almost any other cover I can remember in that it points directly to Peru and the central problem of literature. A mass of Peruvian-style figures stand in darkness, almost obscured. You have to look carefully to see them at all. A single chink in the cell door, a single beam of light in a dark place---all that is revealed in color are the eyes and brow of a solitary man. Do we know what is happening in Peru---exploited, misgoverned, racked by revolution and poverty ? Can we know what really happens in life ? Can we understand the motivations and deepest emotions of other human beings ? Can literature actually create or, at least, reproduce these ? Vargas Llosa creates a gripping novel out of unlikely pieces. An obscure Trotskyite revolutionary, a member of a party whose membership stands at seven, gets involved in an uprising in an Andean town in 1958. The author-as-narrator is in Paris at the time. He returns to Peru later and in 1983, spends a year trying to track down the people involved (family, colleagues, co-conspirators), to learn what motivated this event and its central character, Alejandro Mayta. He interviews everyone he can find. We jump between these interviews and the re-creation (or is it the actual truth ?) of what happened twenty-five years before. The time line is obscured. We shift constantly between two or more times on every other page, sometimes even on one page. This is a literary trick which some people may find annoying or disconcerting, yet I urge you to stay with the novel. Slowly, the author puts together a picture of an idealistic revolutionary who dissented from nearly everything. The sources tell him of a homosexual dreamer who lived a secretive life in every respect, who had no money, and who was (or wasn't) the inspiration behind the Andean mini-revolt of 1958. "If he had been able to control his sentiments and instincts, he wouldn't have led the double life he led, he wouldn't have had to deal with the intrinsic split between being, by day, a clandestine militant totally given over to the task of changing the world, and, by night, a pervert on the prowl..." We begin to understand Mayta, though some of the interviewees are obviously lying. But Vargas Llosa creates a present (1983) in which Peru is overwhelmed by a Vietnam-like war---invaded by leftwing Cuban and Bolivian forces with Soviet help, who are counterattacked by American marines and airforce. Cuzco is destroyed, the country is collapsing. Though Sendero Luminoso did bring Peru almost to its knees, none of this happened. So can we believe the stories told by everyone about Alejandro Mayta ? Is the story about Mayta years ago true as written by our narrator ? I mean, he's obviously exaggerating even about the present. Suddenly, after a vivid description o

While this is easily a great book Vargas Llosa's writing style may turn off some. The bouncing between an unnamed author researching Mayta's life and the various characters in the novel was an interesting approach and really added to the confusion of the incidents & people being profiled. It's an incendiary approach & leaves some cold, but I felt his character development was right on & disclosed just enough to get us to the next interview, remembrance, encounter... Mayta's involvement w/ the RWP(T) (Revolutionary Worker's Party [Trotskyist]) is about as fractionated as you can get. This revolutionary group of 7 or so people had to keep breaking ties w/ more "mainstream", sellout groups (you know liked Marxists, Stalinists, Socialists, etc.). So it stands to reason that any book following his endeavors would be equally disjointed. Even the settings add to the effect: Mayta's home, the street he avoids crossing, the mountainous Jauja, the rented room where the RWP(T) has their meetings. All add up to one unifying effect. What great literature does.Vargas Llosa isn't merely a writer on Latin American politics; he's an exiled Peruvian presidential candidate himself, so his attention to detail is appreciated. You don't have to be into Latin American politics to enjoy Mayta's mid-century revolutionary endeavors.

I started this book with a slight hesitation. I wasn't so sure if I'd really enjoy a novel about South/Central American politics. What I found instead was a brilliant book that walks the line between invention and reality. The surprise ending of this book is not quite as explosive as the endign to The sixth sense (but almost.) This book is fascinating in the combination of the erotic with the poetic. And then in the last chapter, rather than feeling unforgiving for the fact that I'd been "deceived", I was thrilled that I HAD the wool pulled over my eyes. How? you may ask? I will not say any more. Let's just say that this story on a writer's quest for truth, and the truth as he sees it is a great intoroduction to the works of Vargas Llosa, and one that you won't be able to get out of your mind. Don't be surprised if you find yourself up at night thinking on the myriad plot points. That's when you know a book really was worth your time.

I can't resist the chance to be the first reviewer of this superb work. If you haven't read books by Llosa, you should, and this is a great place to start. The plot and writing style of the book call to mind the complexities and sense of fun in Nabokov and Pynchon, but with a strong sense of heart that both of the other authors are often faulted for lacking. The story is this: A writer in contemporary Peru decides to write a novel about a failed revolution of the 1960's that was perpetrated by a high school classmate (Alejandro Mayta). The novel begins in the present with his idea, his current recollections of the classmate from long ago, his interviews with people associated with the failed revolt and then, voila, there is a subtle transition (well done in the translation) between the idea and research for the story and then the novel actually appearing on the page as the author begins to obtain more mastery over the material. The amazing shift between "I want to write this guy's story" and then the story actually taking over the novel is artfully done. But, in addition to the stylistic triumph, the book has some wonderful themes, especially the hazy line between truth and fiction that is illuminated by an end-of-novel encounter, in the present, between the author and the subject, now imprisoned, of his novel. Without spoiling it, all is not as it appears and the book raises the question about whether any author can pen any "Real Life" but his own.