Misery and glory of criticism and love

After leaving Isabel Preysler's house, Mario Vargas Llosa sent her by messenger, in a conciliatory mood, the manuscript of his latest book.

God only knows the terror that invades a writer when he finishes his novel and sends it to the people he wants to get their first opinions.

Only God knows how many hours a writer spends doing nothing waiting for someone to finish reading what he has been writing alone for so many months.

Well then: the journalist Beatriz Cortázar has recounted that, after receiving her manuscript, Isabel Preysler replied to Vargas Llosa with a letter in which she told him not to come home, that the break was complete.

We are probably facing the most devastating literary criticism that the centuries have seen, a criticism that melts the author and his work, condemning them to the same fate.

One imagines a Nobel laureate who, out of deference,

Out of love, he sends his next book exclusively, and Preysler responds: “We have come this far, there is nowhere to take this narrative, I lose the thread, the syntax is crazy.

Don't come back here, Tamara is scared."

In reality, the reasons for the break are not known because there are two versions, which is always the first consequence of a separation: airing different reports.

Nor is it necessary and neither should we be interested: if the reasons for love are not detailed in public, why the breakup?

But we are interested, of course, we are human, we want to know if our relationships have the same problems as those of Preysler and Vargas Llosa.

In any case, the fact that Vargas Llosa left home and Isabel Preysler wrote to leave him is like when that Woody Allen character called his girlfriend, she told him that she had gone to live with someone else and he exploded: "Look, this It's the last straw, I'm breaking up with you."

I read these days

(Punto de Vista, 2022), with an edition and prologue by Constantino Bértolo, where criticisms are collected that tear apart established authors and authors or authors about to be established.

Mary McCarthy, for example, about Lillian Hellman: “All the words she writes are lies.

Including 'and', 'he', 'the' and 'it'.

My favorite is the Galician laconicism of Valle Inclán to refer to José de Echegaray: “An old idiot”, because sometimes we try to rationalize with dense and elaborate arguments what is simply an insult.

Well, he insults, man, don't give us the bar with 800 words to show us that you can call someone an "old idiot" quoting Seneca.

Unfortunately, there is not that wonderful criticism that Joyce launched at Proust: "Readers reach the end of Proust's sentences before he finishes writing them."

Either,

That issue is what has been forgotten about in all this shady business.

Mario Vargas Llosa has finished a book and is about to publish it, and in that sacred space between the end point and the bookstore, his life has been convulsed.

Anyone who has written a book, no matter how many Nobel Prizes they have won (the idea that the soccer columnist believes that the Nobel is like the Champions League; it can be won several times), knows that this time is the virtuous time that precedes the harvest, full of fears and insecurities.

That book, which is about Creole music, is all that Vargas has now, and in a way he always had.

And he will never leave you by letter.

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