Vargas Llosa

And in keeping with his oft-repeated philosophical belief that novels should enhance and amplify life, not merely recount it, he has taken some liberties with history. But he quickly adds that 'with essential facts, I have been loyal.'"--interview with Mario Vargas Llosa in January Magazine, 2002.

It is a fact of literary history that Mario Vargas Llosa, this year's Nobel laureate for literature, visited the Philippines in the 1970s at the height of martial law and spoke before an audience of mainly Filipino writers at the annual Philippine Center of International P.E.N. conference at the Cultural Center's main gallery.

I was sent by my managing editor Neal Cruz to cover the conference and the guest speaker's talk, and it was one of the few times my account made the front page of the Philippines Daily Express. But the next day at the same venue, I received a gentle reproach from my former professor in stylistics, Nieves Epistola, who explained that I had wrongly referred to the Peruvian writer in subsequent paragraphs of my report as "Llosa." His complete surname is "Vargas Llosa," she said, the way Gabriel Garcia Marquez is "Garcia Marquez."

I have no copy of that report; I vaguely recall it had something to do with language, and the then dark-haired Vargas Llosa, garbed in a suit like the one in the picture, was, at some point, at a loss for words. He paused, gesticulated with his hands till he exasperatedly threw them and called English "this terrible language."

Later, at lunch, Rosalinda Orosa went up to him and engaged him in conversation in his native Spanish, and he felt more at ease.

I would read his books many years later when they became available. Two stand out in memory: In Praise of the Stepmother and The Feast of the Goat. The first was, for me, an eye-opener on how a novelist can push the envelope in terms of choosing a permissible subject--here we have a madrasta engaging in torrid sex with a minor who is actually the seducer.

The second had me thinking in many parts while reading, "This is so much like what happened to our country." The interlacing of sex and brutal power (South American dictators or many strong men have a reputation of being ladies' men or just run-of-the-mill rapists) has been noted in that novel, and I can't help recalling the short story "When Dovie Moans" by R. Zamora Linmark from the recently published anthology Mondo Marcos as I write this.

I'll have to visit the archives one day to look for a copy of that old news report on the dark-haired, pomaded man who came a-visiting and went on to win the Nobel.

In photo: this year's winner of the Nobel prize in literature