White Mughals: Love & Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India

by William Dalrymple
580pp, HarperCollins, £20

In 1616, when Sir Thomas Roe arrived in Agra, India, as the first accredited English ambassador to the Mughal empire, he probably did not expect the small humiliations he would face over the next three years.

His ruler in England, King James I, who wanted a formal trade treaty with the Mughal emperor Jahangir, had told him to be "careful of the preservation of our honour and dignity". But Roe struggled to keep the English flag aloft at the brilliantly adorned Mughal court, where even his only European rival, the Portuguese ambassador, seemed grander than he.

He managed to avoid the bowing and scraping expected of ambassadors, but he felt acutely the shabbiness of the gifts he had brought from England for the aesthete Jahangir; and he could not entirely overcome Jahangir's scepticism about a supposedly great English king who concerned himself with such petty things as trade.

Perhaps Roe shouldn't have worried so much. In retrospect, it is Jahangir who seems a victim of imperial hubris while Roe emerges as a far-sighted diplomat of an emerging economic and military power. Roe failed to get a formal treaty out of Jahangir. But he did secure a toehold for the East India Company on the western coast of India. Over the next 150 years, traders from Britain turned into soldiers and steadily overcame their Portuguese, French and Dutch rivals, even as the Mughal empire, weakened by endless wars and invasions, slowly imploded into independent states.

Loss of territory and influence diminished Mughal emperors in Delhi into pathetic figureheads as early as the mid-18th century. The British gave them generous pensions and allowed them to hold shows of pomp and ceremony periodically - despite their infirmity, they retained, in British eyes, the symbolic value of belonging to India's oldest and most prestigious ruling dynasty.

Neither Jahangir nor Roe could have foreseen the formal end of the Mughal empire, which finally came during the suppression of the Mutiny in 1858, long after the British conquest of India was complete, when an English soldier executed the sons of the rebellious, and - as it turned out - last Mughal emperor, and left their corpses to rot in the streets of Delhi.

White Mughals opens in the last years of the 18th century, when the British were expanding inland after consolidating their presence in the coastal "presidencies" of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. With Napoleon in Egypt, and threatening to travel eastwards, the French were still a nuisance. However, the major threats to the British in India were the Indian states that had grown culturally and politically vigorous at the expense of a declining Mughal empire. Dalrymple details brilliantly the intrigues through which the British extended their influence over the state of Hyderabad, pacified the Marathas in western India, and undermined the power of Tipu Sultan in the south.

But this is only the political background to the "far more intriguing and still largely unwritten story" Dalrymple wishes to alert us to: "the Indian conquest of the European imagination". At the heart of his colourfully and diversely populated book is a poignant story of how General James Achilles Kirkpatrick, the British resident at Hyderabad, went native.

Dalrymple came across Kirkpatrick's story while visiting Hyderabad five years ago. His obsession with this somewhat obscure figure grew as he searched through the records at the India Office Library, and commissioned translations of Persian documents in Hyderabad.

Kirkpatrick seemed different from the other British representatives at upcountry Indian courts who, released from the drab white ghettos of the British presidency towns, embraced keenly the opulent Indo-Persian style of the ruling classes they were in the process of supplanting. In Dalrymple's eyes, Kirkpatrick attempted something riskier: he not only converted to Islam and married Khair un-Nissa, a young girl - a "minor" in contemporary terms - from a Muslim aristocratic family, but also began to question the more brazenly imperialist policies of his bosses.

Dalrymple is not new to what he calls "the unexpected and unplanned minglings of peoples and cultures and ideas". His previous books described his travels through the crossroads - Central Asia, India and the Middle East - where several civilisations, in the days before nation-states, met and flourished. Their brisk, exuberant love of the exotic and the eccentric marked them as profoundly English travel books, part of a romantic tradition defined by Robert Byron, Peter Fleming and Bruce Chatwin.

White Mughals marks a fruitful break from a genre that seems increasingly an inadequate tool to understand a world growing ever more complex. The past becomes much more than an architectural curiosity, as Dalrymple attempts in this technically ambitious book the difficult job of carving a human narrative out of the intransigent mass of untouched archival material: the letters of Kirkpatrick and other British officials, the Persian chronicles of the time. There is a scholarly seriousness here; also, a moral passion.

Writing after September 11 2001, Dalrymple is naturally keen to attack the more shaky generalisations that underpin the much derided but oddly resilient theory of the "clash of civilisations". He also wishes to defend the early British Indophiles from the often vulgar accusation of "Orientalism". This leads him to a few generalisations of his own. He argues that "during the period 1770 to 1830, there was wholesale interracial sexual exploration and surprisingly widespread cultural assimilation and hybridity". He goes on to assert that "virtually all Englishmen in India at this period Indianised themselves to some extent".

The British practice of acquiring Indian wives and maintaining harems does offer a somewhat bracing contrast to the bleak racial segregation of the Victorian 19th century. But it would still not have amounted to "wholesale interracial sexual exploration" if the nubile women on the "fishing fleet" from England had been allowed to cast their net over eligible young Indian men; and it would only have been truly widespread if it had occurred outside the enclaves of elite Indo-Persian culture in which a few fortune-hunters from Britain found themselves luxuriating in the late 18th century.

There remains a question, too, as to how many Indian women actually chose to become the wives and mistresses of British men. Dalrymple seems inclined to think that the women relatives of Khair un-Nissa cannily arranged her affair and marriage with Kirkpatrick in an attempt to further their family's influence in Hyderabad. This may be true, and perhaps, as Dalrymple argues, should be seen as part of the social mores of aristocratic Muslim women. It certainly clears Kirkpatrick of the charge of abusing his great power. But we don't know what Khair un-Nissa thought of being used as a pawn in imperial intrigues, or how she saw her life, which turned out to be short and hard.

Kirkpatrick himself didn't have it easy. The drama of much of his time in India derives from the resistance he faced from his British peers. He chose, it seems from Dalrymple's account, the wrong time to go native, when the imperial conquerors and administrators from Britain, who increasingly replaced the old-style traders and soldiers, were seeking a new, hard basis for British power in India. The old close relations with Indians were supplanted by a policy of racial exclusion and arrogance. Indian cultures and religions had few admirers among the new British generation of evangelists and utilitarians who sought to impose upon India the radical reforms they could only fitfully carry out in Britain.

This period of political and cultural upheaval, during which the British tightened their stranglehold over India, had many victims, British as well as Indian. We don't hear much of them, for their dreams of personal happiness were destined to remain unsung in histories that celebrate imperial and anti-imperial victories. Kirkpatrick was one of them: a "superfluous man" of late 18th-century India. This capacious book is never more engaging than when, spurning polemic and theory, Dalrymple describes, with a novelist's compassion, the tragic costs of his rebellion.

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· Pankaj Mishra is the author of The Romantics (Picador), The Guardian.

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The Guest by Hwang Sok-yong

This, read in German translation, is a remarkable novel. It recounts the return of Yosop, a North Korean expat catholic priest who, upon the death of his brother, returns to North Korea.

His brother was part of a christian militia who committed atrocities in the North Korean civil war when the communists took over. His ghost and the ghosts of some of the people he killed visit Yosop and tell him their stories and unveil some of what happened in the civil war.

The writing is a strange mix of bland stiffness and rich metaphors, and hard to tell what's the usual ineptness of translators and what is really Sok-yong's style.

For a story full of ghosts it's disconcertingly straightforward, disconcerting, perhaps, because in many ways it resembles Pedro Paramo, which is a far superior novel.

That is not to say that The Guest is a bad book. It's not. I recommend it heartily. The subject is something that is not written about often, and the different kinds of fanaticism (communist/christian), the depictions of how these rip apart a close-knit community. it's a quick read, a disturbing read, a powerful book.

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Teaching History with Literature

Pop quiz! Rifle off the dates for the Punic Wars, the Gallic Wars, and the Seljuk Turk uprising — then list the major players and their respective shoe sizes.

Feeling a little overwhelmed? Welcome to how students feel when facts, dates and lists are crammed down their throats in the name of teaching history.

As homeschoolers, we dare not trivialize nor create a boring dislike of this topic. The instruction of history is important not just because of the age-old adage, "If we do not learn from history, we are bound to repeat it," but also because every other subject hinges on history. We must make our students see people of the past and their circumstances as real, facing the same problems we face, if we want to bring relevancy to this subject.

One of the best ways to make history relevant is through literature. Doubtless many have read or heard Diana Waring or Carole Joy Seid praise this method in the homeschooling realm, but even secular institutions have come to recognize the value of teaching history through literature. . . and it’s not even a recent innovation. Nineteenth century common schools used fact-based fiction stories as a curricular core. And today an indication of this trend can be seen in the number of academic and popular articles published in the past ten years relating the benefits of teaching history via literature.

But what about textbooks? Three major studies (Levstik 1986, VanSledright 1995, VanSledright & Kelly 1996) all concluded that a students’ interest and their ability to learn and retain information measurably increased when literature was used. Textbooks are what their name implies, namely text that’s been condensed and stripped of life and color. Translated: boring. Without providing some rocket’s red glare, interest and retention fizzle.

So, what about computers? Flashy software certainly can hold a student’s interest. No doubt about it, the computer is a useful tool for education. However, relegating the instruction of history to a game show format will not connect personally or emotionally with that student. Once again, it is retention that will suffer once the glitz of the animation wears off.

Textbooks and computers can be part of an overall curricular plan for history instruction, but historical fiction is what will truly captivate a student and remain in their memory.

Granted, there are those who feel a tad nervous about using historical fiction. It is, after all, fiction. Right? True, but excellent historical fiction is based on solid research. If the author’s done his job, real facts and events will be enjoyably conveyed. Also, keep in mind that even textbooks or non-fiction resources are not entirely free from error. In fact, many contradict each other.

Besides the usual classics of historical fiction such as D’Aulaire, Dalgliesh, and Sutcliff, new works are published every year. A delightful new series by Jack Cavanaugh and Bill Bright are one such example. Fire and Storm both follow the Great Awakening of the 18th century. Witness for yourself the jockeying of rural residents while they use their pastor as a scapegoat, only to be baptized by the revival for which he continually prayed. Catch the political upheaval of an infant nation enamored with the French revolution’s thirst for blood. Caught up in the action, you’ll be surprised at how much historical fact you’ve devoured once you finish one of these books.

You don’t have to break into your piggy bank to fund this excursion into historical fiction. "Google" discount and used books. Garage sale season is nearly upon us as well as homeschool conference used book sales. And don’t rule out unusual sources such as museum or history center gift shops — especially great for local history.

There are endless ways to incorporate literature-based history as a subject other than the obvious shove a book into your student’s hands. Read out loud as part of a cozy bedtime ritual. Get books on tape/cd which will make errand-running time doubly productive, not to mention interesting. Older students can read aloud to younger students, especially if you combine story time with cookies and milk.

Be forewarned that if you apply good historical literature to your usual homeschool routine, the next time you or your student is asked, "Quick! Compare and contrast China’s Hsia Dynasty to the Shang," you might be surprised at the answers that come pouring out.

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Michelle Griep has four children and wears her stay-at-home-mom badge with pride. She's homeschooled for the past thirteen years and in her spare time (as if) is a freelance author. She can be reached at mmgriep@usfamily.net

this article officially was published here

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10 Steps to Write a Novel

But before you start writing, you need to get organized. You need to put all those wonderful ideas down on paper in a form you can use. Why? Because your memory is fallible, and your creativity has probably left a lot of holes in your story -- holes you need to fill in before you start writing your novel. You need a design document. And you need to produce it using a process that doesn't kill your desire to actually write the story. Here is ten-step process for writing a design document.

Step 1) Take an hour and write a one-sentence summary of your novel. Something like this: "A rogue physicist travels back in time to kill the apostle Paul." (This is the summary for my first novel, Transgression.) The sentence will serve you forever as a ten-second selling tool. This is the big picture, the analog of that big starting triangle in the snowflake picture.

When you later write your book proposal, this sentence should appear very early in the proposal. It's the hook that will sell your book to your editor, to your committee, to the sales force, to bookstore owners, and ultimately to readers. So make the best one you can!

Some hints on what makes a good sentence:

* Shorter is better. Try for fewer than 15 words.
* No character names, please! Better to say "a handicapped trapeze artist" than "Jane Doe".
* Tie together the big picture and the personal picture. Which character has the most to lose in this story? Now tell me what he or she wants to win.
* Read the one-line blurbs on the New York Times Bestseller list to learn how to do this. Writing a one-sentence description is an art form.

Step 2) Take another hour and expand that sentence to a full paragraph describing the story setup, major disasters, and ending of the novel. This is the analog of the second stage of the snowflake. I like to structure a story as "three disasters plus an ending". Each of the disasters takes a quarter of the book to develop and the ending takes the final quarter. I don't know if this is the ideal structure, it's just my personal taste.

If you believe in the Three-Act structure, then the first disaster corresponds to the end of Act 1. The second disaster is the mid-point of Act 2. The third disaster is the end of Act 2, and forces Act 3 which wraps things up. It is OK to have the first disaster be caused by external circumstances, but I think that the second and third disasters should be caused by the protagonist's attempts to "fix things". Things just get worse and worse.

You can also use this paragraph in your proposal. Ideally, your paragraph will have about five sentences. One sentence to give me the backdrop and story setup. Then one sentence each for your three disasters. Then one more sentence to tell the ending. If this sounds suspiciously like back-cover copy, it's because . . . that's what it is and that's where it's going to appear someday.

Step 3) The above gives you a high-level view of your novel. Now you need something similar for the storylines of each of your characters. Characters are the most important part of any novel, and the time you invest in designing them up front will pay off ten-fold when you start writing. For each of your major characters, take an hour and write a one-page summary sheet that tells:

* The character's name
* A one-sentence summary of the character's storyline
* The character's motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)
* The character's goal (what does he/she want concretely?)
* The character's conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)
* The character's epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?
* A one-paragraph summary of the character's storyline

An important point: You may find that you need to go back and revise your one-sentence summary and/or your one-paragraph summary. Go ahead! This is good--it means your characters are teaching you things about your story. It's always okay at any stage of the design process to go back and revise earlier stages. In fact, it's not just okay--it's inevitable. And it's good. Any revisions you make now are revisions you won't need to make later on to a clunky 400 page manuscript.

Another important point: It doesn't have to be perfect. The purpose of each step in the design process is to advance you to the next step. Keep your forward momentum! You can always come back later and fix it when you understand the story better. You will do this too, unless you're a lot smarter than I am.

Step 4) By this stage, you should have a good idea of the large-scale structure of your novel, and you have only spent a day or two. Well, truthfully, you may have spent as much as a week, but it doesn't matter. If the story is broken, you know it now, rather than after investing 500 hours in a rambling first draft. So now just keep growing the story. Take several hours and expand each sentence of your summary paragraph into a full paragraph. All but the last paragraph should end in a disaster. The final paragraph should tell how the book ends.

This is a lot of fun, and at the end of the exercise, you have a pretty decent one-page skeleton of your novel. It's okay if you can't get it all onto one single-spaced page. What matters is that you are growing the ideas that will go into your story. You are expanding the conflict. You should now have a synopsis suitable for a proposal, although there is a better alternative for proposals . . .

Step 5) Take a day or two and write up a one-page description of each major character and a half-page description of the other important characters. These "character synopses" should tell the story from the point of view of each character. As always, feel free to cycle back to the earlier steps and make revisions as you learn cool stuff about your characters. I usually enjoy this step the most and lately, I have been putting the resulting "character synopses" into my proposals instead of a plot-based synopsis. Editors love character synopses, because editors love character-based fiction.

Step 6) By now, you have a solid story and several story-threads, one for each character. Now take a week and expand the one-page plot synopsis of the novel to a four-page synopsis. Basically, you will again be expanding each paragraph from step (4) into a full page. This is a lot of fun, because you are figuring out the high-level logic of the story and making strategic decisions. Here, you will definitely want to cycle back and fix things in the earlier steps as you gain insight into the story and new ideas whack you in the face.

Step 7) Take another week and expand your character descriptions into full-fledged character charts detailing everything there is to know about each character. The standard stuff such as birthdate, description, history, motivation, goal, etc. Most importantly, how will this character change by the end of the novel? This is an expansion of your work in step (3), and it will teach you a lot about your characters. You will probably go back and revise steps (1-6) as your characters become "real" to you and begin making petulant demands on the story. This is good -- great fiction is character-driven. Take as much time as you need to do this, because you're just saving time downstream. When you have finished this process, (and it may take a full month of solid effort to get here), you are ready to write a proposal and sell this novel. Do so.

Step 8) You may or may not take a hiatus here, waiting for the book to sell. At some point, you've got to actually write the novel. Before you do that, there are a couple of things you can do to make that traumatic first draft easier. The first thing to do is to take that four-page synopsis and make a list of all the scenes that you'll need to turn the story into a novel. And the easiest way to make that list is . . . with a spreadsheet.

For some reason, this is scary to a lot of writers. Oh the horror. Deal with it. You learned to use a word-processor. Spreadsheets are easier. You need to make a list of scenes, and spreadsheets were invented for making lists. If you need some tutoring, buy a book. There are a thousand out there, and one of them will work for you. It should take you less than a day to learn the itty bit you need. It'll be the most valuable day you ever spent. Do it.

Make a spreadsheet detailing the scenes that emerge from your four-page plot outline. Make just one line for each scene. In one column, list the POV character. In another (wide) column, tell what happens. If you want to get fancy, add more columns that tell you how many pages you expect to write for the scene. A spreadsheet is ideal, because you can see the whole storyline at a glance, and it's easy to move scenes around to reorder things.

My spreadsheets usually wind up being over 100 lines long, one line for each scene of the novel. As I develop the story, I make new versions of my story spreadsheet. This is incredibly valuable for analyzing a story. It can take a week to make a good spreadsheet. When you are done, you can add a new column for chapter numbers and assign a chapter to each scene.

Step 9) (Optional. I don't do this step anymore.) Switch back to your word processor and begin writing a narrative description of the story. Take each line of the spreadsheet and expand it to a multi-paragraph description of the scene. Put in any cool lines of dialogue you think of, and sketch out the essential conflict of that scene. If there's no conflict, you'll know it here and you should either add conflict or scrub the scene.

I used to write either one or two pages per chapter, and I started each chapter on a new page. Then I just printed it all out and put it in a loose-leaf notebook, so I could easily swap chapters around later or revise chapters without messing up the others. This process usually took me a week and the end result was a massive 50-page printed document that I would revise in red ink as I wrote the first draft. All my good ideas when I wake up in the morning got hand-written in the margins of this document. This, by the way, is a rather painless way of writing that dreaded detailed synopsis that all writers seem to hate. But it's actually fun to develop, if you have done steps (1) through (8) first. When I did this step, I never showed this synopsis to anyone, least of all to an editor -- it was for me alone. I liked to think of it as the prototype first draft. Imagine writing a first draft in a week! Yes, you can do it and it's well worth the time. But I'll be honest, I don't feel like I need this step anymore, so I don't do it now.

Step 10) At this point, just sit down and start pounding out the real first draft of the novel. You will be astounded at how fast the story flies out of your fingers at this stage. I have seen writers triple their writing speed overnight, while producing better quality first drafts than they usually produce on a third draft.

You might think that all the creativity is chewed out of the story by this time. Well, no, not unless you overdid your analysis when you wrote your Snowflake. This is supposed to be the fun part, because there are many small-scale logic problems to work out here. How does Hero get out of that tree surrounded by alligators and rescue Heroine who's in the burning rowboat? This is the time to figure it out! But it's fun because you already know that the large-scale structure of the novel works. So you only have to solve a limited set of problems, and so you can write relatively fast.

This stage is incredibly fun and exciting. I have heard many writers complain about how hard the first draft is. Invariably, they are seat-of-the-pants writers who have no clue what's coming next. Good grief! Life is too short to write like that! There is no reason to spend 500 hours writing a wandering first draft of your novel when you can write a solid one in 150. Counting the 100 hours it takes to do the design documents, you come out way ahead in time.

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The Snowflake Method. It works for me and for many of my writer friends who have tried it. I've lost track of how many people around the world who have emailed me to say that the Snowflake helped them get their novel on track. So it works for a lot of people. I hope it works for you. Read more about this method here

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The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The classic American story of Hester Prynne, accused of adultery, ostracized by her Puritan community, and abandoned by both her lover and her husband.

The story opens in Puritan Boston, a settlement only fifteen or twenty years old. A young woman stands on a scaffold clasping a three-month-old baby. As a married woman with a missing husband and a new baby, Hester Prynne could have been sentenced to death for the crime of adultery. Instead she is condemned to always wear the letter A as a badge of her shame. As she stands there, she sees her long-missing husband, who has been held captive by Indians. While the town chorus is murmuring against her and her old and unattractive husband stares silently at her, the young and handsome clergyman publicly demands the name of her partner in crime - while desperately praying that she won't reveal him.

The Scarlet Letter rightfully deserves its stature as the first great novel written by an American, the novel that announced American literature equal to any in the world.


The Scarlet Letter {Audio with Text}
Nathaniel Hawthorne | English | Brilliance Audio: CD Unabridged Library Edition | August 1, 2001 | ISBN-10: 1587886111 | 240.91 MB | MP3+PDF

The classic American story of Hester Prynne, accused of adultery, ostracized by her Puritan community, and abandoned by both her lover and her husband.

Part1 | Part2| Part3

Text

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Never Let Me Go a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human.

Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it.

Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.


Kazuo Ishiguro | Random House Audio | English | April 12, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0739317970 | MP3 | 253 MB|

RS: Part1 | Part2 |Part 3

Mirror: Part1 | Part2 | Part3

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Tawaif - Highclass Courtesan in Mughal Empire

A tawaif (Urdu: طوائف, Hindi: तवायफ़) was a courtesan who catered to the nobility of South Asia, particularly during the era of the Mughal Empire. The tawaifs contributed to music, dance, theatre, film, and the Urdu literary tradition.

The patronage of the Mughal court before and after the Mughal Dynasty in the Doab region and the artistic atmosphere of 16th century Lucknow made arts-related careers a viable prospect. As well as the demand for (mostly) male music and dance teachers, many girls were taken at a young age and trained in both performing arts (such as Kathak and Hindustani classical music) as well as literature (ghazal, thumri) to high standards.


Once they had matured and possessed a sufficient command over dancing and singing, they became a tawaif, high-class courtesans who served the moneyed and the nobility. It is also believed that young nawabs to be were sent to these "tawaifs" to learn "tameez" and "tehzeeb" which includes the ability to differentiate and appreciate good music and literature, perhaps even practice it, especially the art of ghazal writing.

These courtesans would dance, sing (especially ghazals), recite poetry (shairi) and entertain their suitors at mehfils. Like the geisha tradition in Japan, their main purpose was to professionally entertain their guests, and while sex was often incidental, it was not assured contractually. High-class or the most popular tawaifs could often pick and choose between the best of their suitors.

The image of the tawaif has had an enduring appeal, immortalized even in Bollywood movies.

Films with a tawaif as a central character include Pakeezah (1972), Amar Prem (1972), Umrao Jaan (1981), Tawaif (film) (1985), Devdas (2002), and Umrao Jaan (2006).

Other films depict a tawaif in a supporting role, often in situations where a man goes to them in loveless marriage or life.

Today, the term in Urdu has undergone semantic pejoration and is now synonymous with a prostitute. [wikipedia]

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The Trouble with the Nobel Prize in Literature

Why literature prizes have way too much influence over what we read.


I grew up believing that the Nobel Prize in Literature was sort of the equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval or those Duncan Hines signs that hung in front of decent motels. A Nobel Prize winner was an author you should check out, an author of verified greatness. With time, this reputation began to fray, as I noticed that some less-than-top-drawer writers, such as Pearl Buck and John Steinbeck, had collected this accolade. And some very great writers, such as James Joyce, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, and Eudora Welty had been ignored. So the Nobel committee’s track record was spotty, to say the least.

Then there was Nobel’s requirement that the prize be given to an author who has produced, in the field of literature, the most outstanding work in an ideal direction. In other words, the author’s work has to be in some way uplifting or improving. This stipulation is so elastic as to be meaningless, but it works a hardship on an author who was just trying to tell a story as best he or she could. It creates a hoop the writer has to jump through, and if you want to see how uncomfortable it could make certain writers, all you have to do is read Faulkner’s Nobel address, which sounds, under the circumstances, like a torture victim repudiating everything he has stood for his whole life.

The big question is, though, why do we place such faith in a committee whose workings, predispositions, and grudges we know almost nothing about? (Nothing personal against today’s winner, Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa.) According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the prize for literature is determined by the Swedish Academy. Tenured for life and known as the “The Eighteen” in Sweden, this group of mostly Scandinavian scholars, linguists, and historians often defies expert speculation about their choices.

Of course, the Nobel announcement may tip us to a writer whom we’ve never heard of and should check out. I certainly would never have discovered Yasunari Kawabata when I was a teenager if it hadn’t been for his Nobel Prize. But any serious reader should be doing that anyway and not waiting for some remote body to direct us to the overlooked authors of the world.

Booksellers and publishers will say that prizes help sell books, and so we should support prizes. I see their point, and I understand that readers need all the help they can get when confronted with thousands of new titles a year (although I want to say that publishers could do us all, readers and writers alike, a huge favor by being more selective about what they publish in the first place).

Prizes do sell books. They can make reputations. At the same time, the Nobel and all the other literary prizes encourage a kind of laziness among readers. They create a false sense of what’s great, and that’s a decision that individual readers ought to be making on their own. They also endow literature with a sort of horse-race mentality, with winners and losers and also-rans. But literature isn’t a race or a game, no matter how much Hemingway talked about getting into the ring with Tolstoy. Literature is its own reward.

At the risk of contradicting myself, I do like the atmosphere that surrounds these selections in England, where bookies run a line on the favorites for both the Nobel and the Man Booker prizes. But least the English have a sense of humor about the whole thing, saying, in effect, OK, if it’s a contest, let’s treat it like a contest and make some money off of it. That may be crass, but at least it’s honest. But even the English system, ultimately, leaves me cold. But then again, I’m not a betting man. [source]

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An Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa

The 2010 Nobel Prize winner described his work on behalf of individual liberty in 2007.


'This is a story that often repeated itself," Mario Vargas Llosa says. "If a father was a businessman, he was a man who had to be complicit with the dictatorship. It was the only way to prosper, right? And what happens is that the son discovers it, the son is young, restless, idealistic, believes in justice and liberty, and he finds out that his vile father is serving a dictatorship that assassinates, incarcerates, censors and is corrupted to the bone."

Mr. Vargas Llosa could have plucked this scenario from his personal recollections of living under dictatorial rule in Peru. But he tells this story to make a more universal point: Dictatorships poison everything in their grasp, from political institutions right down to relationships between fathers and sons.

When I meet Mr. Vargas Llosa in his home in Lima, I am not surprised to find that the world-famous novelist is a natural storyteller. He speaks to me in Spanish, gripping his black-rimmed glasses in his hand and occasionally waving them around for emphasis.

Mr. Vargas Llosa's bold ideas and expressive language may make him one of Latin America's finest writers -- "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter," "The Time of the Hero" and "Conversation in the Cathedral" are just a few of his classic works -- but those same traits didn't necessarily serve him well at the polls. After running for president of Peru in 1990 and losing to Alberto Fujimori, Mr. Vargas Llosa decided to devote his full attention to writing. He now lives in Lima for about three months of the year, spending the rest of his time in Europe.

"I am not going to participate in professional politics again," he says. And he doesn't have to. Mr. Vargas Llosa has found an effective way to expose the destructive nature of dictatorships, while underscoring the importance of individual liberty and free will. He just picks up his pen. "Words are acts," he says, echoing Jean-Paul Sartre. "Through writing, one can change history."

During the 1990 presidential campaign Mr. Varga Llosa emphasized the need for a market economy, privatization, free trade, and above all, the dissemination of private property. He didn't exactly receive a welcome reception. "It was a very different era, because to speak of private property, private enterprise, the market -- it was sacrilegious," he says. "I was fairly vulnerable in that campaign," he continues, "because I didn't lie. I said exactly what we were going to do. It was a question of principle and also . . . I thought it would be impossible to do liberal, radical reforms without having the mandate to do them."

Now, almost 20 years later, the landscape looks very different. Mr. Vargas Llosa explains that he was propelled into politics when then president Alan Garcia, at the time a socialist and a populist, attempted to nationalize the banks. Today he is running the country again, but "now, the same Alan Garcia is the champion of capitalism in Peru!" Mr. Vargas Llosa laughs merrily. "It's funny, no?"

He is relatively upbeat about Latin America today: "I'm not as pessimistic as others who believe that Latin America has returned to the time of populism, leftism." The region has its problems, to be sure, one major one coming from Caracas in the form of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But according to Mr. Vargas Llosa, perhaps what is most remarkable is what Mr. Chavez has not been able to do.

"We have a big problem with Chavez," Mr. Vargas Llosa admits. "He's a demagogue and a 19th century socialist. He is a destabilizing force for democracy in Latin America, but what he thought would be so easy hasn't been so easy. There has been a lot of resistance."

One of Mr. Chavez's major errors was his refusal last month to renew the license of popular Radio Caracas Television, or RCTV. "International hostility was enormous," Mr. Vargas Llosa notes. "For me, most important was that the protests in Venezuela were very strong, in particular the sectors that were once very sympathetic to him, for example the students in the Central University of Venezuela, not only the students in the private universities."

It is such infringements of free speech that highlight why in places like Latin America, reading a good novel can be much more than just a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. "I think in countries where basic problems are still unresolved, where a society remains so traumatized by deep conflicts -- as in Latin America or in third world countries in general -- the novel is not only a form of entertainment, but it substitutes for something that these societies are not accustomed to seeing -- information, for example," Mr. Vargas Llosa says. "If you live in a country where there is nothing comparable to free information, often literature becomes the only way to be more or less informed about what's going on." Literature can also be a form of resistance, perhaps the only way to express discontent in the absence of political parties.

This all sounds true enough, but in a dictatorship, wouldn't literature be censored as well? "In undeveloped countries censorship doesn't reach that point of subtlety, as it did in Spain for example," Mr. Vargas Llosa explains. "Because in undeveloped countries, the dictators are, well, functioning illiterates that don't think that literature can be dangerous."

To give one example, Mr. Vargas Llosa's first novel, "The Time of the Hero," about life at a military school in Lima, was burned publicly in Peru by a military dictatorship in the 1960s. But the authorities apparently didn't find the book enough of a political threat to ban it outright, and in the end it was Mr. Vargas Llosa who reaped the benefits of the public burning. "It became a best seller!" He exclaims, laughing.

There is another disturbing current in Mr. Vargas Llosa's work that is less often discussed -- mistreatment of women, ranging from disrespect to outright violence. The abuses are particularly horrifying in "The Feast of the Goat," a novel based on the life of Rafael Trujillo, the dictator who terrorized the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961. Mr. Vargas Llosa describes traveling to the Dominican Republic and being stunned to hear stories of peasants offering their own daughters as "gifts" to the lustful tyrant. Trujillo and his sons, he tells me, could abuse any woman of any social class with absolute impunity. The situation in the Dominican Republic, which he refers to as a "laboratory of horrors," may have tended toward the extreme, but it underscores a larger trend: "The woman is almost always the first victim of a dictatorship."

Mr. Vargas Llosa discovered that this phenomenon was hardly limited to Latin America. "I went to Iraq after the invasion," he tells me. "When I heard stories about the sons of Saddam Hussein, it seemed like I was in the Dominican Republic, hearing stories about the sons of Trujillo! That women would be taken from the street, put in automobiles and simply presented like objects . . . The phenomenon was very similar, even with such different cultures and religions." He concludes: "Brutality takes the same form in dictatorial regimes."

Did this mean that Mr. Vargas Llosa supported the invasion of Iraq? "I was against it at the beginning," he says. But then he went to Iraq and heard accounts of life under Saddam Hussein. "Because there has been so much opposition to the war, already one forgets that this was one of the most monstrous dictatorships that humanity has ever seen, comparable to that of Hitler, or Stalin." He changed his mind about the invasion: "Iraq is better without Saddam Hussein than with Saddam Hussein. Without a doubt."

Mr. Vargas Llosa's broad, visceral hatred of dictatorships in part stems from personal experience, in particular growing up in 1950s Peru under the dictatorship of Manuel Odria. "All the political parties were prohibited, there was strict censorship of radio and the press," he explains. "The university had many professors in exile and many student prisoners . . . this is the atmosphere in which a boy of my generation entered adulthood."

This period is the backdrop for "Conversation in the Cathedral," which Mr. Vargas Llosa said would be the work that he would rescue from a fire. The brilliant, four-volume novel rarely addresses Odria directly, rather zooming in on relationships between ordinary Peruvians from all levels of society. With unembellished prose, Mr. Vargas Llosa plunges you right into the heart of a nation without hope. "It's a novel in which I wanted to show what I lived through in through in those years, how the dictatorship didn't limit itself to censorship or prohibiting political life, no!" Mr. Vargas Llosa tells me. "The dictatorship created a system that impregnated every act of life."

And herein lies the power of Mr. Vargas Llosa's work: He finds that tyranny takes its toll in places we hadn't even thought to look. As for the value of freedom, perhaps he puts it best in "The Feast of the Goat": "It must be nice. Your cup of coffee or glass of rum must taste better, the smoke of your cigar, a swim in the ocean on a hot day, the movie you see on Saturday, the merengue on the radio, everything must leave a more pleasurable sensation in your body and spirit when you had what Trujillo had taken away from Dominicans 31 years ago: free will."

We begin to wrap up our interview. We both drink red wine. A room nearby houses Mr. Vargas Llosa's private library -- I notice that some of the volumes are bound in leather. He tells me that there are more than 18,000 books. His collection is clearly a point of pride, but it is also a tangible representation of his belief in the power of words. Or as he would say it: "I think that literature has the important effect of creating free, independent, critical citizens who cannot be manipulated."

Ms. Parker was an assistant editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal. This interview originally appeared in the June 23, 2007 edition of the Journal.

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Literature and Liberty in Mario Vargas Llosa's Novels

The work of Mario Vargas Llosa, in its purest essence, is borne of a fundamental indignation -- a radical criticism of the many faces of oppression and fanaticism. There was the oppression of military juntas in his first novels, the social injustice and political corruption in Conversación en La Catedral, the religious fanaticism of The War of the End of the World, the wretched guerrilla utopianism in Historia de Mayta, and, of course, the authoritarian caudillismo of Rafael Trujillo, the paradigm of a Latin American Dictator, in La fiesta del Chivo. Yet in all of this, what Vargas Llosa's writing is not -- and never has been -- is literature with an argument. Rather, Vargas Llosa offers the world a sophisticated artistic re-creation of the extremes and vices of human misery, written in order to reveal that reality -- and exorcize it.



Then there is the playful side -- and it's thrilling in his literature, having made countless men and women laugh and smile worldwide -- which seems an oasis of liberty or a game that Vargas Llosa uses to replenish the soul after the tremendous effort required by his libertarian novels. Through affectionate dreams and reveries, Vargas Llosa's novels escape his other demons.

Vargas Llosa is the opposite of a "conservative" writer. He is a liberal intellectual. And it is today, faced with the currents of intolerance that persist in Latin America, that we will at last vindicate the legitimacy of a liberal democratic telling of history. It is a liberal project, a civilizing project par excellence; it is what founded our nations, and it is what Vargas Llosa brings to life in his life and his works. Faced with authoritarian power, the liberal soul makes no distinctions. Vargas Llosa, it's true, believed in the Cuban Revolution and did so for a decade, because he believed it was his fate to be a liberator of men. But he also had the courage to tear himself away from that same revolution when he became aware of its irreversible totalitarian direction. With the same substance and conviction, he has criticized military dictators and corrupt governments around the globe. It was he who baptized Mexico's PRI as "the perfect dictatorship." And no novel can outdo his treatment of the Dominican Republic's Trujillo regime, with his combination of literary excellence and radical moral critique.

It was not only in novels that Vargas Llosa defended liberty. He has also done so in his columns in El País and Reforma. As an essayist and reporter, he was like a young soldier fighting for liberty. And indeed, he often carried himself straight to the mouth of the wolf (to Baghdad, Gaza, Congo, Haiti, Darfur). He has never ceased to draw criticism for his works. But the voice that counts to him is his internal voice -- and the imperative of truth.

His triumph this Thursday is also that of Peruvian literature. This tragic and diverse country has finally won the Nobel it deserves. The Spanish language also counts a victory. The Nobel, as almost everyone knows, passed over Jorge Luis Borges, and most thought it would pass over Vargas Llosa as well. With this honor, the Swedish Academy honors not only Vargas Llosa but itself, by returning to a tradition of honoring the best candidates.

And the prize comes at the best possible moment for Latin America. Caudillismo, militarism, redeemer ideology, populism, and fanaticism are all still present in our countries. And yet over the last 20 years, our march toward democracy has been permanent. After Octavio Paz, Vargas Llosa has been its staunchest defender.

Mario Vargas Llosa's Nobel Prize is an act of justice toward literature and toward liberty. They are two inseparable words. [source]

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Mario Vargas Llosa: a Controversial Latin American Writer

The following is a 2003 interview between Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer and newly crowned Nobel winner Mario Vargas Llosa.

Mario Vargas Llosa, one of Latin America's biggest writers of all time, has always been one of the least ``politically correct'' intellectuals in the region.

He broke ranks with Cuba decades before his colleagues on the left discovered that Fidel Castro was a dictator, denounced Mexico's previous semi-authoritarian government as ``the perfect dictatorship, `` and most recently lashed out against former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori when most of Latin America was continuing to tolerate his autocratic ways.

You can agree or disagree with Vargas Llosa, but you cannot take his opinions lightly. He has always gone against the conventional wisdom of the day in Latin America, and he has been right more often than not.

TV INTERVIEW

Earlier this week, after his weekend visit to South Florida to speak at the Miami Book Fair International, I taped a television interview with Vargas Llosa, 67.

Among the highlights:

Q: You recently returned from a two-week reporting trip to Iraq. Can President Bush bring democracy to that country, or is that a crazy illusion?

A: To think that Iraq will one day become a democratic country is not a utopia. At this point, the methods to bring about democracy are debatable. Only in very exceptional cases can one accept democracy to be brought about by an army, but it has happened in Germany, for instance.

Q: But in post-war Germany, there were virtually no killings of American soldiers. Are Iraqis against the U.S. presence there?

A: Most Iraqis are happy that the Baath party and Saddam Hussein have fallen. That was one of the conclusions I arrived at during my trip. It doesn't mean that they are happy with a foreign occupation, but I do think that there are, nowadays, some possibilities of a modernization and democratization that weren't there during the Baath dictatorship.

Q: Do you think Bush and his allies truly believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

A: I think the governments knew that there was no definitive evidence, but they thought it was the most effective way to ``sell'' the war. They made a mistake. It would have been ethically and politically more acceptable to say that this was a bloody dictatorship comparable to [Germany's Adolf] Hitler or that of [Russia's Joseph] Stalin, which was not only destroying the people of Iraq but was also a terrible threat to its neighbors.

Q: You are now spending a few months in Washington, as a visiting professor at Georgetown University. From what you see in America, do you think Bush will be reelected?

A: I have the impression that U.S. public opinion is moving away from that massive support for Bush's policies toward a more critical stand. For the first time, one can nowadays see a possibility that Bush can be defeated.

Q: A few years ago you made big headlines by proclaiming that Mexico was ``a perfect dictatorship.'' Is Mexico in a never-ending political transition now?

A: Fortunately, I was wrong. It wasn't so perfect. From a perfect dictatorship, it changed to an imperfect democracy. And that is a great progress. There is freedom of expression, political freedoms . . . [Mexican President Vicente] Fox has not satisfied the big expectations that were placed on him. The difficulties he has faced have been huge, but there has also been a shortage of energy, of leadership, to carry out the reforms. That's what is keeping the country paralyzed.

Q: How would you describe Argentina's President Néstor Kirchner?

A: I would describe Kirchner as a demagogue. I don't agree with the [Argentine government's] perception that [former President Carlos] Menem's policies were ultra-free market reforms. They were not. They were a smoke-screen for huge corruption and influence peddling, which naturally had very negative results. And that frustration has moved the Argentine people to turn from the Menem demagoguery to the Kirchner demagoguery. I'm afraid that the results will be equally catastrophic.

Q: And Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva?

A: I used to perceive him as a populist, a dangerous demagogue. [But] he has changed significantly. If Lula becomes Brazil's Tony Blair, that would be a welcome phenomenon. It would be about time for Latin America, but it remains to be seen.

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Interview with Mario Vargas Llosa: Watching the Dictators

Mario Vargas Llosa has spent his life fighting totalitarianism - both on and off the page

Obs: What was the inspiration for The Feast of the Goat ?

MVL: In 1975, I went to the Dominican Republic for eight months during the shooting of a film based on my novel Captain Pantoja and the Special Service. It was during this period I heard and read about Trujillo. I had the idea of a novel set with this historical background. It's a long project. I went many times to the Dominican Republic to read the papers, and also to interview many people: victims, neutral people and collaborators of Trujillo.

Obs: To what degree is the book really about Alberto Fujimori?


MVL: Well, I think it's a book about Trujillo, but if you write about a dictator you are writing about all dictators, and about totalitarianism. I was writing not only about Trujillo but about an emblematic figure and something that has been experienced in many other societies.

Obs: Particularly in Latin America.

MVL: When I was at university in the Fifties, Latin America was full of dictators. Trujillo was the emblematic figure because, of course, of his cruelty, corruption, extravagance, and theatricalities. He pushed to the extreme trends which were quite common to most dictators of the time.

Obs: The corruption of power.

MVL: Dictators are not natural catastrophes. That's something I wanted to describe: how dictators are made with the collaboration of many people, and sometimes even with the collaboration of their victims.

Obs: Do you have insights into dictatorship from your political experience?

MVL: My three years in politics was very instructive about the way in which the appetite for political power can destroy a human mind, destroy principles and values and transform people into little monsters.

Obs: This novel is written partly from a woman's point of view. Was that a problem?

MVL: A challenge, not a problem. I wanted a woman to be one of the protagonists, because I think women were the worst victims of Trujillo. To his authoritarianism you have to add machismo. Trujillo used sex not only for pleasure but also as an instrument of power. And in this he went far further than many, many other dictators. He went to bed, for example, with the wives of his collaborators.

Obs: Like a Shakespeare play.

MVL: In a way. Coriolanus is a fantastic play about this subject.

Obs: When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?

MVL: It started not as writing but as reading. I learnt to read when I was five and I think that is the most important thing that happened to me.

Obs: What kind of things did you read?

MVL: I read novels of adventure. At that time children read not comics but texts. I remember the magazines. I started to write continuations of these stories. Because I was frustrated that they'd finished. Sometimes I wanted to change the endings. It started like this kind of play.

Obs: Like the plot of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.

MVL: That's right. When I entered university I knew that what I would like to do is become a writer. But at that time, in a society like mine, it was very difficult to decide to become only a writer... Well, what I tried to do, I'm going to make a living doing other things and literature would become my main interest, but my life would be taken by...

Obs: Journalism?

MVL: Yeah. But when I came to Europe in 1958 I decided I'm going to try to be a writer and consecrate my time and my energies to writing. I would survive doing marginal jobs. That was a very important moment in my life.

Obs: Quite a number of your books have got you into trouble.

MVL: The writer's job is to write with rigour, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that's part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life.

Obs: Does that reflect the more public role of the writer in Latin America?

MVL: I think the contribution of writers to the public debate is something that can make a difference. If culture is completely cut from what is going on it becomes very artificial.

Obs: Is this love of controversy in your nature or intrinsic to your subjects?

MVL: My books don't fit very easily into stereotypes. I think that is one explanation. I have tried always to be an independent writer. That doesn't mean that I have not been wrong. Probably I've been wrong many times.

Obs: What made you go into politics?

MVL: Well, I always was involved in politics, but as an intellectual. In the late Eighties I thought it was necessary to have a practical commitment with politics... it was the wrong decision.

Obs: Were you shocked by the failure of your ideas to be taken up?

MVL: Well, I was, but it was worse than that. In a democratic election you win or lose, but what happened afterwards was very confused. Fujimori won the election. Then what he did was to initiate some of the reforms I was offering. And for many years Fujimori was popular. As Trujillo and many dictators are. This was very shocking.

Obs: Do you think you've put that phase of your life behind you? You've written A Fish In The Water.

MVL: Oh, absolutely. Literature has this extraordinary power. You write about something and even if it is the worst experience, I think you achieve a catharsis, and are completely cured.

Obs: How much time do you spend in London?

MVL: I manage to spend at least three months a year in London.

Obs: You are known in this country for your approval of Mrs Thatcher.

MVL: It's very sad what has happened with Mrs Thatcher. When she took power she really made an extraordinary impact on British life, society, politics. But then I am afraid she will be remembered more as a very bitter Conservative fighting against Europe, and saying absurd things about Europe. What has happened in Britain is very interesting, because I am convinced that the best disciple of Mrs Thatcher is Tony Blair, who has been following the kind of reforms that Mrs Thatcher started.

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Mario Vargas Llosa was born in Arequipa, Peru, in 1936. He is author of many acclaimed novels, including Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1982)

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/apr/07/fiction.features

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Mario Vargas Llosa stirs controversy in Peru

While known internationally for his writing, 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient Mario Vargas Llosa has also been a highly controversial political figure in his native Peru.

His political identity as a right-wing maverick began in the late 1980s when he led a mass movement against a decision by President Alan García, then in his first term (1985-1990), to nationalize the country’s banks.

That movement morphed into a political party, Fredemo, with Mr. Vargas Llosa at the helm. Many of Peru’s current political elite got their start with the movement and Vargas Llosa was easily expected to capture that country’s presidency in 1990. The novelist-turned-politician, however, did not count on the emergence of an unknown math teacher, Alberto Fujimori.

Mr. Fujimori came from nowhere to easily beat Vargas Llosa. Fujimori co-opted the economic and political recipes that Vargas Llosa espoused on the campaign trail.

Vargas Llosa became a leading international voice against Fujimori after the 1992 decision to close Congress and the judiciary and rule by decree. He was one of the few people denouncing Fujimori, who was president from 1990 to 2000 and is now serving a 25-year prison sentence on human rights abuse charges.
Politics and the prize

Antonio Cisneros, a Peruvian poet who recently won one of Latin America’s top literature prizes, says Vargas Llosa’s politics is likely why it took the Nobel committee so many years before recognizing his achievements.

“Mario has deserved this prize for many years," says Mr. Cisneros, who recently won the Pablo Neruda Iberian-American poetry prize in Chile. "The only thing that kept him on the short list and not among the winners probably had to do with his politics. He has never kept his opinions quiet,”

Alejandro Guerrero, dean of the journalism school at the Technological University of Peru, says Vargas Llosa would have captured the world’s top literature prize years ago if he had not been an outspoken defender of economic liberalism.

“Vargas Llosa should have been awarded the Nobel Prize much earlier if he had kept the left-wing tradition of other Latin American writers,” such as Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez, says Mr. Guerrero.

While living and working outside of Peru for years, Vargas Llosa has maintained close ties with his home country, most recently agreeing to head a committee to build a Memory Museum that would explore the years of political violence in the country unleashed by two communist insurgencies: the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA).
Vargas Llosa's political clout

The museum has been a sore spot for a large swath of Peru’s right wing, which identifies with Vargas Llosa economically but not politically since the Fujimori years. Fujimori’s political allies, including his daughter, Keiko Fujimori, who is running for president, oppose the museum.

Vargas Llosa is still a strong supporter of the museum, but in September he abruptly quit as head of the organizing committee when the government – again run by a newly reelected Mr. Garcia (2006-present) – passed legislation redefining how crimes against humanity would be tried.

In a letter to Garcia, Vargas Llosa said the legislation was a thinly veiled effort to provide amnesty for human rights violators.

Vargas Llosa's resignation is widely credited with ouster of the defense minister who wrote the questionable law and the government’s decision to ask Congress to repeal it within two weeks of its passage.

Garcia said there was no bad blood between him and Vargas Llosa, announcing earlier this week that another well-known local icon, painter Fernando de Syzlo, would head the committee. Mr. de Syzlo and Vargas Llosa are contemporaries and friends. His selection was interpreted as a nod to Vargas Llosa.

Garcia said today, in a public statement recognizing Vargas Llosa’s win, that he chose him for the museum committee for his “universal objectivity.” [source]

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Mario Vargas Llosa: The 2010 Winner of Nobel Literature Prize

Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Spanish-speaking world who once ran for president in his homeland, won the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday.

The Swedish Academy said it honored the 74-year-old author "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt and defeat."

Vargas Llosa has written more than 30 novels, plays and essays, including "Conversation in the Cathedral" and "The Green House." In 1995, he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor.

His international breakthrough came with the 1960s novel "The Time of The Hero," which builds on his experiences from the Peruvian military academy Leoncio Prado. The book was considered controversial in his homeland and a thousand copies were burnt publicly by officers from the academy.

Vargas Llosa is the first South American winner of the prestigious 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) Nobel Prize in literature since it was awarded to Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982.

In the previous six years, the academy rewarded five Europeans and one Turk, sparking criticism that it was too euro-centric.

Born in Arequipa, Peru, Vargas Llosa grew up with his grandparents in Bolivia after his parents divorced, the academy said. The family moved back to Peru in 1946 and he later went to military school before studying literature and law in Lima and Madrid.

In 1959, he moved to Paris where he worked as a language teacher and as a journalist for Agence France-Presse and the national television service of France.

He has lectured and taught at a number of universities in the U.S., South America and Europe. He is teaching this semester at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J.

In 1990, he ran for the presidency but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori. In 1994 he was elected to the Spanish Academy, where he took his seat in 1996.

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Nietzsche and Spengler

Friedrich Nietzsche and Oswald Spengler loom large over the 20th Century horizon of European thought. Nietzsche was influential in the thinking of Spengler, whilst either one or both had a major impact on the thinking of most of the writers discussed in this section.

Both were primarily concerned with questions of decay and the possibilities of regeneration. Both held that Western Civilisation had entered a cycle of decadence that was particularly evident in the cultural, moral and spiritual spheres. They were therefore of great relevance to many of the new generation of artists, writers and poets who emerged from the First World War, a war which made transparent the crisis of Western Civilisation which had really entered its cycle of decay several centuries previously. The English and French Revolutions, in the name of 'The People', marked the overthrow of the old order by the new bourgeoisie, the victory of money over blood-family lineage.

Democracy for many of the cultural elite was not a political creed to be welcomed but rather a symptom, like bolshevism, of the rise of the masses and behind them of the rule of money: of quantity over quality, with the arts being the first to be degraded.

Nietzsche and Spengler stand as the great thinkers that sought to ennoble man, in a tide of intellectualism that degraded him and his culture. Against them, stood Marx; and the liberal economic theorists, who make of everything a matter of economics; Freud who reduces man and culture to a mass of sexual complexes; and Darwin, who reduces man to being just another animal?

To Nietzsche the meaning of man was that of 'overturning' his present state, to Will higher forms of existence, which are ultimately expressed in the arts. This was seen as being embodied in the great men of history. These great men, creators via their own individual will, are separated from the mass of humanity by a great gulf. Man is the tightrope between animal and 'Overman': " rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal". Among the first sentences uttered by Nietzsche's prophet Zarathustra are these words that define the purpose of man:

"I teach you the Overman. Man is something that should overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All creatures have hitherto created something beyond themselves and do you want to be the ebb of this great tide and return to the animals rather than overcome man? The Overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Overman shall be the meaning of the earth".

Despite the Darwinian interpretations of Nietzsche, it was a rejection of Darwinism that prompted Nietzsche to herald the Overman as an act of Will rather than as evolution through random genetic mutation. Human existence beyond any other organism is only justified by culture, which is the perfection of nature through human Will.

"This basic idea of culture in so far as it assigns only one task to every single one of us: to promote inside and outside of ourselves the generation of the philosopher, the artist, and the saint, and thus to work at the perfection of nature." (Untimely Meditations)

In the same essay, Nietzsche states that the goal of humanity lies in its "highest specimens". Nature wants to make the life of man "significant and meaningful by generating the philosopher and artist...". Thereby not only is man redeemed but also nature herself is redeemed.

With the central focus of history, of mankind, of nature herself being epitomised by the artist it is no wonder that Nietzsche's philosophy caught the imagination of so many of the creative elite. Prefiguring Spengler with a rejection of history as lineal and progressive, Nietzsche states that what comes later in a civilisation is not necessarily, what is best. What is best is reflected in the highest specimens, the artists and philosophers, where the gulf that separates these higher men from the average citizen is greater than that which separates the average man from the chimpanzee.

Hence, Ezra Pound's Nietzschean attitudes towards the artist and the mass were reflected in many other contemporaries. Some such as Wyndham Lewis and Evola were even suspicious of Fascism as being 'too democratic', too much of a mass movement. Pound states:

"The artist has no longer any belief or suspicion that the mass, the half-educated simpering general... can in any way share his delights...The aristocracy of the arts is ready again for its service. Modern civilisation has bred a race with brains like those of rabbits, and... we artists who have been so long despised are about to take over controls".

D H Lawrence went so far as to see himself as a coming dictator who would relieve the masses of the 'burden of democracy', whilst D'Annunzio did actually become a ruler of his own State (Fiume) for a time, where the arts were the focus.

Nietzsche demanded new law tablets upon which would be inscribed the word 'noble' (Zarathustra). The creative elite make their own laws through their acts of creation, and are not constrained by the democratic mob with their laws, morals and values that are designed for the control of the average. Hence, Nietzsche's prophet Zarathustra counsels higher man to stay aloof from the masses, and from the market place, as the masses will drag the higher man down to the dead level of 'equality' with such doctrines as democracy.

Overman would be willed into creation by Higher Men striving to 'self-over come', to reach beyond themselves through hardship upon oneself. The Nietzschean brute is one of many distortions of Nietzsche, who contrarily states that the strong are compassionate towards the lesser.

Whilst Nietzsche places culture as the criterion for defining the value of both societies and individuals, Oswald Spengler develops morphology of culture as the basis of historical analysis. Both philosophers elevate the cultural beyond the contemporary fads of economic, sexual and biological determinism, as the basis of their world-views. Spengler in the preface to The Decline of The West states that the two figures to whom he owes most are Goethe for 'method' and Nietzsche for the questioning faculty.

Hence, Spengler was also of great interest to the new genera¬tion of artists, poets and authors. Spengler explains that by drawing on analogous cycles of history in each of the civilisations he could explain how and why Western Civilisation was undergoing a cycle of decay. Like Nietzsche, Spengler sees democracy, parliamentarianism, egalitarianism and the rise of money and the merchant on the ruins of the old aristocracy of birth (or blood) as symptoms of the decadence that are reducing the arts to the lowest denominator.

Many of the cultural elite, such as Yeats and Evola, were of a mystical nature; and their knowledge of the cyclic myths of many ancient cultures of East and West and the Americas accorded with the cyclical conclusions draw by Spengler. In his influential magnum opus The Decline of the West, Spengler rejects the Darwinian, lineal, progressive approach to history, explaining:

"I see in place of that empty figment of one linear history... the drama of a number of mighty cultures, each having its own life; its own death... Each culture has its own new possibilities of self-expression, which arise, ripen, decay and never return... I see world history as a picture of endless formations and transformations, of the marvellous waxing and waning of organic forms. The professional historian, on the other hand, sees it as a sort of tapeworm industriously adding to itself one epoch after another".

This cyclic approach to history is organic. It sees cultures as living entities with a birth, a flourishing, a decay and death. Each civilisation, although self-contained, has the same cyclic phases, which Spengler identifies with the four seasons. The winter phase is the advanced civilisation where the city replaces the country, profit replaces heroism, and the merchant replaces the aristocrat. As for the social castes, these cease to have a cultural value and are mere economic reflections. The rootless city-dwelling proletariat replaces the rural yeoman and craftsman, the merchant re¬places the warrior, and the banker replaces the noble. Hence, what is often regarded as 'new', 'progressive', 'modern' and 'western'- the rise of abortion, family planning, of banking practices, of parliaments and voting majorities, of feminism, socialism, revolutions - have already been played out in the 'winter' phase of prior civilisations. Spengler describes it thus:

"You, the West, are dying. I see in you all the characteris¬tic stigma of decay. I can prove that your great wealth and your great poverty, your capitalism and your socialism your wars and your revolutions, your atheism and your pessimism and your cynicism, your immorality, your birth control that is bleeding you from below and killing you off at the top in your brains. I can prove to you that these were characteristic marks of the dying ages of ancient states... Alexandria and Greece and neurotic Rome...".

Many of the new generation of writers were thus drawn to Spengler's analysis of the way the rule of money, of money values and of the money baron's control of politics, had become determinators of the tastes of a civilisation in its final cycle. They were concerned with overthrowing the rule of money and returning civilisation to its 'springtime' where the arts flourished under the patronage of born nobles. W.B.Yeats and Evola look to certain epochs of the medieval period of the West. Ezra Pound sought the overthrow of the banks through the economic theory of Social Credit. Hamsun and Williamson wished for a return to rural values in place of those of the City. Many were attracted to Fascism. Spengler states that in the final phase of the winter cycle there arises a reaction against the rule of money. Money marches on reaching its peak then exhausts its possibilities:

"It thrust into the life of the yeoman's countryside and set the earth moving; its thought transformed every son of handicraft: today it presses victoriously upon industry, to make the productive work of entrepreneur and engineer and labourer alike, its spoil. The machine with its human retinue, the real queen of this century is in danger of succumbing to a stronger power. Money, also, is beginning to lose its authority, and the last conflict is at hand in which civilisation receives its conclusive form - the conflict be¬tween money and blood".

New 'Caesars', strong leaders not harnessed to the plutocrats and their parliaments and media, will overcome the rule of money. In Spengler's last book, The Hour of Decision, he sees the Fascist legions in Italy as heralds of the 'new Caesarism'. Mussolini was much impressed with both Nietzsche and Spengler. Spengler resumes:

"The sword is victorious over money, the master-will subdue again the plunderer-will... Money is overthrown and abolished by blood. Life is alpha and omega, the cosmic stream in microcosmic form... And so, the drama of a high culture - that wondrous world of deities, arts, thoughts, battles, cities - closes with the return of the pristine facts of blood eternal that is one and the same as the ever-circling cosmic flow".

Kerry Bolton

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http://www.oswaldmosley.com/people.htm

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The People of the Book

People of any divine religions such as Jews, Christians are called “the People of the Book.” The Holy Qur’an mentions the People of the Book on many occasions. Although they are called unbelievers for refusing the prophethood of Muhammad (PBUH), yet they are not unbelievers in the sense of “negating Allah.”

The Holy Qur’an in some respects grants privileges to the People of the Book compared to unbelievers. For example, to marry someone from the People of the Book and eat their food is lawful. (Al-Maidah, 5) The privilege granted to them is because of their being closer to the true faith compared to the people of disbelief. The Holy Qur’an announces to them:

“Say: O People of the Book! Come to an agreement between us and you: that we shall worship none but Allah, and that we shall ascribe no partners unto Him, and that none of us shall take others for lords beside Allah.” (Al-i ‘Imran Surah, 3:64) That is, let us not call others Lord, God, Creator. Let the order of Allah (SWT) and His Pleasure be our criteria for our deeds… Let all of us be servants to Allah (SWT). Let us consider ourselves responsible to Him. Let us be dependent on and loyal to each other in accordance with these rules. (1)

The Holy Qur’an declares that the People of the Book have taken their own rabbis and monks as their lords. “They have taken as lords beside Allah their rabbis and their monks and the Messiah son of Mary, when they were bidden to worship only One God. There is no God save Him. Be He glorified from all that they ascribe as partner (unto Him)!” (At-Tawbe Surah, 9:31) When Adiy Bin Hatem, who converted to Islam from Christianity, said to the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), “The Messenger of Allah! We did not take them as our Lord,” the Prophet Muhammad made this explanation: “They made those unlawful which Allah declared lawful and lawful which Allah declared unlawful, and you obeyed them. That is taking them as lords.” (2) One need not necessarily call something “lord” in order to have it as his lord. (3)

The following verse indicates the way to follow in the treatment of the People of the Book: “And argue not with the People of the Book unless it be in (a way) that is better, save with such of them as do wrong; and say: We believe in that which hath been revealed unto us and revealed unto you; our God and your God is One, and unto Him we surrender.” (Al-‘Ankaboot Surah, 29:46)

In this verse, the People of the Book are divided into two:
1. Those cruel
2. Those fair
It is commanded that there only be an argument with those fair in a way, which is better. This kind of approach will bring them closer to Islam and they will experience no difficulty in converting to Islam. Because when they convert to Islam, they do not have to reject Moses, Jesus (peace be upon them)… Thus, they will follow the religion of the Seal of the Prophets (PBUH) and save themselves from being the members of a falsified religion.

The Holy Qur’an announces that Christians are closer to Islam than Jews are, “Thou wilt find the most vehement of mankind in hostility to those who believe (to be) the Jews and the idolaters. And thou wilt find the nearest of them in affection to those who believe (to be) those who say: Lo! We are Christians. That is because there are among them priests and monks, and because they are not proud." (Al-Maidah Surah, 5:82)

History is a proof of the verse above. Among Jews are few to convert to Islam. Yet many among Christians have chosen Islam as a result of their researches. Today in Europe, the number of Muslims of previously Christian upbringing exceeds one hundred thousands. Again, in Europe, a large number of churches have been transformed into mosques and these mosques serve as the centers of Islamic activities.

Just as the fine results of Islamic activities in Christian countries are realities, the negative attitudes of governors against Islam are also realities.

Allah Almighty, Who orders a proper argument with the fair people of the Book, decrees His ordinance for the cruel ones with the verse below:

“Fight against such of those who have been given the Book as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.” (At-Tawbe Surah, 9:29)

From time to time, the question “if the features which read in the verse include all of the People of the Book” becomes a matter of debate.” (4) It must not be ignored that the verse does not say “Fight against those all who have been given the Book until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low,” actually it says “Fight against such of those who…” (5) The practice of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) became in this way. In the Mecca era of Islam, The Prophet Muhammad sent some Muslims to Abyssinia, which was a Christian country then, and told them they would be at peace there. As for the era of Medina, he was engaged in dialogue with both Jews and Christians, told them the religion of Allah Almighty, tried to convince them. As a result, many people converted to Islam.

As the Qur’an states, “not all of them (the People of the Book) are alike” (Al-i ‘Imran Surah, 3:113) to regard all of them within the same category is contrary to the Qur’anic and historical reality. The verse, “O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors; they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust.” (Al-Maidah Surah, 5:51) is not prevention for dialogue and social relations with them for to marry someone from the People of the Book is permitted in the Qur’an (Al-Maidah, 5).

Hamdi Yazır speaks of the verse above as follows: Muslims are not prohibited to do goodness to them, to make friends with them and to be governor of them, but prohibited to have them protectors and be involved in complicity. Because they cannot be companions to Muslims. (6)

It is possible to sum up the point as follows: To be involved in social relations with them is one thing, and to admire their religion and common practices is quite another thing. Whereas the first is not included in the Qur’anic prohibition, the second one is strictly prohibited. [www.questionsonislam.com]

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Teaching Children to Appreciate Literature

Charlotte Huck and her colleagues (1987) have defined literature as "...the imaginative shaping of life and thought into the forms and structures of language." If life, thought and/or imagination are missing, the language alone will not suffice.

Appreciation may be explained as the capacity to understand, learn from, and above all enjoy literary works. It involves the ability to read and respond creatively, sharing the author's role by drawing on one's own imagination and experience. The text enters the reader as the reader enters the text. Their worlds are joined.

Two basic approaches to teaching literature at any level are the "structural" (traditional literary analysis) and the "reader response" approaches. While they may be viewed as opposites, they are more productively regarded as complementary. Structural analysis provides the terms and concepts that help readers interpret and discuss literature, while reader response emphasizes the integrated experience an individual has with a text, with the reader's personal response having primacy over formal knowledge of textual characteristics. A strong case can be made for beginning with reader response. If done without first establishing the personal relationship by which the reader breathes life into a text, formal analysis is likely to resemble an autopsy.

READER RESPONSE

Perhaps the best known theorist to explicate reader response as a pedagogical as well as critical stance is Louise Rosenblatt (1978), who formulated the "transactional theory" of reading and the distinction between "efferent" (utilitarian) and "aesthetic" reading. Aesthetic reading centers on a transaction between reader and text fostered through personal response, reflection, discussion, and elaboration, leading to new literary experiences, both in reading and in writing. In this process, reader and text mutually affect one another. Jim Parsons (1978) echoes this view in his description of reading as "the meeting of two meaning makers over literature...[which]...produces changes in both, the author's text and the reader's growth." (p. 18) For this to happen, he asserts, reading instruction should not seek to control the reader's experience but rather to facilitate the reader's own structuring of that experience.

For children, encounters with literature should retain characteristics of play, children's most natural activity. This principle is well illustrated in the exuberance of color and design in children's books and in themes that align the natural and the fantastic. John Dixon (1987) describes the maturing responses of young readers as "drawing on parts of the imaginary world in their play (and progressively, in drama and writing) and thus trying to explore complex situations and characters from the inside; talking and writing about personal and other familiar experiences that chime in with what's been read, thus approaching them from a new perspective; raising questions about the imaginary world and its people, discovering new connections between the imaginary and the real world, and thus discussing what human experience is actually like." (p. 764)

Probably the most frequently given advice for stimulating creative reader response is simply to surround children with good reading. Bill Martin, Jr. (1987) proposes a supportive, non-analytic approach to literature of which two major components are oral reading and an abundance of interesting books. Reading would develop "by osmosis," he writes. "Without consciousness of how or why...[t]he reader is forever rummaging and scavenging through the pages for a glimpse of self...[f]or the pleasure of finding a closer relationship of the outer world to the inner world and vice versa. For the intense satisfaction of finding a special book that speaks to both the heart and the mind." (p. 18)

Describing a literature program for the gifted, Denise Bartelo and James Cornette (1982) advocate both exposure to a wide variety of materials and the design of activities that encourage creative reader response, such as compiling a museum of personal artifacts in relation to autobiographical writing, pretending to be a book with fantastic characteristics, and putting a current events item in the form of an animal fable. In their program, emphasis is on "making reading less of a skill-related activity and more of a personal experience that could be shared and discussed." (p. 6)

At the middle and junior high school level, when analytic sophistication may begin to develop, emphasis may still be placed on the encouragement of personal response as a way of exploring the possibilities of various genres. Philip Anderson (1982) recommends exposure to a broad range of works and a lot of writing and sharing of personal responses to build awareness of the commonalities among readers of the same texts. In this way students begin to understand their membership in a cultural and literary community. He considers the intense sociability and garrulousness of students at this age as a resource too often overlooked. He writes that "it seems that more time is spent in the middle school and junior high school trying to get students to shut up than there is trying to channel that verbal onslaught into something productive." (p. 7) He would like to see more in-class publications of student work, oral reading of plays, discussion, and other kinds of literary sharing that lead to active, productive language use.

Similarly, Dixon (1987) suggests having students maintain their own journals, recording their responses to poems and stories. Personal class anthologies of selected works and excerpts from the reading journals can be compiled. Response approaches, then, emphasize both the personal and the social. Anyone who can compare the experiences of reading a poem in solitude and hearing one read and discussed in a group may understand the importance of both aspects. Sometimes the solitary experience is appropriate, but other times--and this may be most of the time for younger readers--the social reading in which they play an active role is the most enriching.

STRUCTURAL APPROACHES

As they and their reading material mature, children may need concepts and strategies for dealing with the increasing length and complexity of what they read. Michael Higgins (1986) points out such elements as flashback, conflict, and parallel structures that are common in children's stories and novels. As they encounter more varied literature, young readers must make decisions such as setting purposes for themselves and modifying reading strategies in accordance with the possibilities within a text. Higgins also believes there is a kind of literary canon at each age level, implying the development of cultural literacy. This includes acquaintance with works that Americans are often assumed to have read as children, such as, say, Winnie the Pooh, Wind in the Willows, and Alice in Wonderland. It may also entail knowledge of genres such as legends, myths, folktales, poetry, and so on, formal features of literature, and the vocabulary to discuss this knowledge.




Joy Moss (1984) has developed a curriculum for elementary school teachers based on the concept of "focus units," sets of stories grouped around a common theme or author. She defines categories of questions for teachers to use in story sessions, ranging from a close focus on the story and its structural elements to open-ended reader response. These categories are

1. previewing,
2. literal recall,
3. basic literary elements and devices (e.g., plot, character, figures of speech),
4. implied meanings and logic,
5. formal artistic features and genres,
6. comparing stories and finding relationships, and
7. subjective responses such as speculation and evaluation.

Jon Stott (1982) has developed the concept of a "spiralled sequence story curriculum" designed to lead students through increasing levels of complexity, with earlier stories arranged so as to introduce students to components and techniques found in later stories. For example, in Stott's curriculum a number of fairy tales and journey stories lead up to reading The Hobbit, which, in addition to being interesting to middle grade students, enables him to talk about structural features such as character, plot, setting, and so on--what he calls the "grammar" of literary construction.

Fairytales, myths, fables and legends are frequently recommended for teaching literary analysis because of their clear formal features and predictable patterns. Denise Nessel (1985) describes a program of storytelling using such material. It encourages students to use their imaginations to visualize scenes that are not shown in pictures as well as to use the structure of stories to improve listening comprehension. Bette Bosma (1981) finds that sixth-grade students are very interested in the formal features of folktales and in using this knowledge to "make evaluative comparisons, discover unstated premises, and draw conclusions"--which lead them into critical thinking.

Anita McClain (1985) also discusses teaching critical thinking through literary analysis, for example, by comparing different versions of the same fairy tale, understanding genre characteristics, and developing intercultural knowledge both of differences between cultures and of shared values.

Literature is the means by which people communicate across cultures and across ages -- across all divisions of time and space to gather the collective wisdom of the human experience. It is also the way we explore and communicate with the future. Through teaching literature, we recognize the special claim that children have on the future as well as our willingness to share the past. To appreciate literature is to appreciate what it means to be part of the entire human scene. No child should be denied that.

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This publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under contract no. RI88062001. Contractors undertaking such projects under government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their judgment in professional and technical matters. Points of view or opinions, however, do not necessarily represent the official view or opinions of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. ERIC Digests are in the public domain and may be freely reproduced. [www.vtaide.com]

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