Raymond Leslie Williams
Dept. of Romance Languages and Literatures, Washington University

The Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, author of The war of the End of
tbe World (l98l), The Red Story of Alejandro Mayta (l984) and six other
novels, visited Oxford, Mississippi on April 20, l986 in homage to William
Faulkner. He was received by DL Thomas Verich, Director of the Special
Collections at the University of Mississippi, and Professor Frederick Karl,
Professor of English at New York University who was in residence in
Oxford, preparing a critical biography of Faulkner. During his visit, Vargas
Llosa perused the special collection at the University of Mississippi, took a
tour of Rowan Oak, Faulkner's home, and purchased a vase of red gerani-
ums which he placed at Faulkner's gravesite. While in the Rowan Oak he
was approached by two tourists from the Netherlands who explained that
they were in the Faulkner home precisely because they had read Vargas
Llosa's novels and later came across a newspaper interview in which the
Peruvian had spoken so enthusiastically of Faulkner. The following con-
versation on Faulkner took place whi1e riding in a car along the Mississippi
Delta from Oxford to Ste. Genevieve, Missouri:

Williams: Mario, you were very insistent and determined to make this
trip during your stay in the Midwest. Now that it's over, what do you think
was the best moment of the day for you?
Vargas Llosa: I was very moved at the gravesite, at the great austerity of
the grave. There really was no indication that a great man was buried
there. In addition, the whole setting of the Oxford area is very beautiful.
It's really a beautiful place--its trees, its homes. It probably hasn't changed
much. You can see a lot as it was in Faulkner's lifetime. As you know, I am
very fetishistic with writers: for me it's very moving to see his books, his
manuscripts, the other objects. I was also very impressed by the fact that,
unlike what usually happens, in Oxford, particularly when you see the
courthouse, the homes, you can see how close to reality the fiction was. It
was a wonderful experience. Of course, this is difficult to explain right
now, but for me the most moving, touching moment was when the Dutch
couple said, "We are here because we have read you. We have read your
novels. WC decided to start reading Faulkner after reading your commen-
tary on him in the newspaper."

Williams: Do you have any new sense of Faulkner? Has he changed for
you at all as a consequence of what you've seen and heard in the last few
hours?
Vargas Llosa: Maybe it's too soon to say Probably the real new revelation
was what Frederick Anr1 for telling us about Fau1kner'S drinking. I knew
he was a heavy drinker, but I never rea1ized he drank so much. Now my
admiration for Faulkner is even greater: if you drink so much, how can
you create such a vast and complex world? How is it possible for a mind
totally impregnated by alcohol to handle such detail and create such
coherence? On the other hand the image Fred Karl gave us--of Faulkner
drinking alone--was tragic.

Williams: I'd like to pursue the public and private image you have of
Faulkner a little more. I suppose you've read Joseph Blotner's biography
And then there are the other images from the past and present.
Vargas Llosa: Yes, I've read Blotner's canonical book. Probably a visit like
this gives you a much more visual and emotional view of things. As a
writer, I always like to get as much information as possible about authors'
lives. I think it's pure fetishism, perhaps an unconscious attempt to be con-
taminated, infected by them.

Williams: Let's move from the man to his books. Do you remember when
you first read Faulkner? Was this as dramatic as the story you have told of
your passionate reading of Madame Bovary?
Vargas Llosa: I remember it well. It was l953, my first year at the Univer-
sity of San Marcos in Lima. The first book was Absalom! Absalom! I read
the short stories from These Thirteen early too. In those days I was read-
ing Faulkner in the Spanish and French translations. The French transla-
tions by Maurice Coindreau were marvelous. He was a great trans1atoL I
read his excellent translation Sanctuary with a preface by Andre Malraux, I
was immediately struck by Faulkner's genius. I think I discovered on1y
then the importance of form in literature. Faulkner showed me how a
given organization of time and point of view was ab5olutely essential,
determining whether the text is subtle, ambiguous, or rough, superficial, I
discovered how form itself could be a character or a theme in a novel.
What I remember very wel1, and this is important to note in order to
understand my relationship with Faulkner, is that Faulkner was the first
writer whom I read with a Pen in hand and paper at the side of the book.

Williams: Could you explain exactly what you were doing with pen in
hand?
Vargas Llosa: Yes. I was 1ooklng for a rationale, a structure. At that time I
was already writing some, and reading Faulkner opened my eyes to formal
invention. And I was very excited about this idea. Faulkner also gave me
the firm conviction that form should always be attached to a story The
story cannot be neglected. Form cannot be a goal, an end in itself. I think
fiction should always include the human experience. As you can see, I am
still very loyal to Faulkner's idea of the novel.

Williams: Could you tell me more about the reading experience? Did you
read Faulkner as obsessively as you have explained in your story of
Madame Bovary?.
Vargas Llosa: Not really, because at the beginning I couldn't read him in
English. When I started reading Fau1kner in English it was in about 1962 or
'63, and with the French translation at my side. But Faulkner is one writer
I have never stopped reading. I am rereading him ail the time. I think I've
read Light in August at least a half dozen times. That superb passage with
Hightower preaching and mixing the Bible in his sermon, and the castra-
tion of Joe Christmas are extraordinarily well done. The writers I have
read and reread the most are Faulkner and Flaubert.

Williams: I assume this is why you told me when we were leaving the
gravesite that this was the last homage with flowers that you would give,
having a1ready done the same with Flaubert.
Vargas Llosa: Precise1y as you know, I feel I owe them a lot, and I feel
very close to them. I don't feel the necessity to pay this kind of homage to
any other writers, even ones I admire as much as Hugo.

Williams: Was Faulkner, in your opinion, the most important foreign
writer in Latin America, the one who has influenced the most?
Vargas Llosa: I think such a statement could be made. The only other
writer who could perhaps be comparab1e was Hemingway. Nevertheless, I
don't really think Hemingway has been as lasting as Faulkner. I would even
say Faulkner has been the most important writer in Europe and Latin
America of the past forty or fifty years.

Williams: How about in Peru specifically? You yourself have documented
Faulkner's enormous impact in Colombia. Has he been as important in
Peru?
Vargas Llosa: In Peru he has been very important for my generation.
Carlos Zavaleta, for example, wrote a thesis on Faulkner. The Marble Faun
was translated and published in Peru. Even Arguedas, who was less a
Faulknerian than most, has some traces of Faulkner. The countries where
Faulkner's shadow has been most present, however, are Uruguay and
Argentina.

Williams: Colombian writers often tell me that they read Faulkner
because they can relate to the fictional world of the Yoknapatawpha coun-
try Do you think Peruvians also read him because Mississippi is somehow
like Peru?
Vargas Llosa: Yes, this is an important factor. The societies are very simi-
lar because in each you have two basic cultures: that of the oppressor and
that of the oppressed, which are always clashing, always creating tensions.
It is a difficult co-existence. Also, the presence of the past is something
very mordent in Latin-America and Faulkner's South. It is a phenomenon,
for example, which you don't have in the eastern part of the United States.
Fau1kner's is a traditional world, exactly like Peruvian or Colombian soci-
ety The c1ass structure is totally Latin American. And Faulkner invented a
technical tool to give this world life. This invention was very important to
all us Latin American writers who were searching for an instrument to do
the same. You need a kind of naivete, very typical of these societies, to
dare to attempt to become a twentieth-century Balzac. This was very
important for many Latin American writers.

Williams: I'd like to move to a few specific texts. Which novel is the most
important for You?
Vargas Llosa: Light in August is probably the book that I prefer. Never-
theless, I think that the whole of Faulkner's work is better than any book
taken separately. FOr example, a weak novel, such as Mosquitos, becomes
more interesting when seen in the context of his total work. 1n Mosquitos
the young Faulkner was trying to be an intellectual, rather than a creator,
to write more with his ideas than by instinct. He failed, and I think that
this failure was very instructive for him: he learned he had to return to his
own land. Perhaps Oxford was a kind of prison for him, but staying in
Oxford was the place he paid for writing masterpieces. This whole thing is
very interesting for me.

Williams: Because you fee similarly?
Vargas Llosa: In some ways. Sometimes I hate Peru, but I know that even
though I hate it I need that country I felt that when I was in Europe. 1
knew that if I didn't return to Peru. I would be finished. Unlike some
other writers--such as Cortazar--I am stimulated in Peru, even with all its
problems.

Williams: We haven't said much about a novel as important as The Sound
and the Fury.
Vargas Llosa: It is a book I love very much, even though it is not a mas-
terpiece. Here the equilibrium between form and content is broken. From
time to time form predominates over what is told. In The Sound and the
Fury, unlike Light in August. Faulkner approaches the dangers of Joyce,
who was defeated by indulgence in form.

Williams: But something like the Benjy section in that novel must have
been very impressive for a young writer.
Vargas Llosa: Well, it's very impressive to discover that you are entering
the mind of an idiot. I was both confused and excited the first time I read
it. But here I think Faulkner indulges in formalistic excess.

Williams: Is As I Lay Dying more successful?
Vargas Llosa: Definitely. Here form is consistent with the story

Williams: Given what you have stated in your frank confessions about
what attracts you as a reader--the violence and sex that you mention in
the book on Madame Bovary--I assume Sanctuary wou1d be one of your
cherished Faulkner novels.
Vargas Llosa: Actually I came across that book relatively late. I have read
the original version in English and I love it.

Williams: I've noticed some similarities between "A Rose for Emily" and
some of your early stories--the macabre, the shocking ending. Do you
think this story was a kind of model for the adolescent Vargas Llosa, writ-
ing his first stories?
Vargas Llosa: I think it could have been kind of a model. I have read it
Many, many times and each time I am impressed by its extraordinary con-
centration, its synthesis of so much in so few pages. It must have been
extremely difficult to tell such a terrible me1odrama in so few pages. But
it's told in such an indirect manner that once you discover what has really
happened, it is too late. It's one of Faulkner's masterpieces. What
impresses me most in this story is that 1t is not only the story of the crime
committed by lovely Miss Emily, but at the same time, the whole history of
the town in which the lady lived her love story and her macabre marriage
with the corpse of her lover. Actually in the text you literally see the time
flowing and the small village growing and its inhabitants coming of age.
The background of the story is--as often in Faulkner--as important as the
story itself.

Williams: Do you think you could have written the early novels, The
Time of the Hero, The Green House, Conversation in the Cathedral if you
hadn't read Faulkner?
Vargas Llosa: I doubt it very much. If I hadn't read Faulkner I wouldn't
have written them, or at least I wouldn't have written them the way I did.
As I have already mentioned, Faulkner was the first writer I read with a
pen in hand and paper at my side.

Williams: Do you think your presentation of Boa in The Time Of the Hero
had its origin in reading the Benjy section of The Sound and the Fury?
Vargas Llosa: It's quite possible. At least the fact that I decided to present
one character consistency from the inside--through his mind, his appe-
tites, h1s instincts. I probably did it this way because I had read the presen-
tation of a character like Benly.

Williams: Now what about the Piura sections in The Green House? Do
you think that this very different style can be attributed to Faulkner too?
Vargas Llosa: I think this comes from a variety of sources. One is the
novels of chivalry also cinema. I deliberately use an epic language in these
sections. I wanted this-part of The Green House to be distanced from the
reader. It comes to the reader from an intermediary--the town. I think I
had the right to indulge here.

Williams: Do you think you had exhausted Faulkner by the time you
completed Conversation in the Cathedral?
Vargas Llosa: Seen in retrospect, I think that when I finished Conversa-
tion in tbe Cathedral I had reached a point at which I discovered that
invisibility was a more desirab1e goa1 than it had been before.

Williams: You were no longer interested in form?
Vargas Llosa: I was no longer interested in the goal of exhibiting form in
itself. Now I know that clarity can be better than difficulty, and at the same
time tell a worthwhile story. It was a lesson I learned with experience, per-
haps comparable to the experience of needing a sinful love affair in order
to be able to appreciate a good marriage.

Williams: I've insisted a lot on Faulkner today for obvious reasons. 8ut
what about other American writers? Are there any others that have been
important for you?
Vargas Llosa: I have read him with enormous admiration. Poe,
Also. And the whole Lost Generation: Hemingway, Dos Passos, Caldwell,
Steinbeck. I was rereading Hawthorne with a group of friends in the
l960s. I have always been a litt1e impatient with Henry James. I read
Capote's ear1y books with great Pleasure. I have always been surprised that
Paul Bowles has not been more recognized. He wrote some stories I con-
sider very good. And I like Carson McCullers... very subtlc, delicate and
with great sensitivity for the violence of human relationships. I once read
a critic, Edmund Wilson, with great passion. I think his essay To the Fin-
land Station is like a great novel. I was so impressed with Edmund Wilson
in the mid-l960s that I went to the British Museum every day for six
months to read him.

Williams: I'd l1ke to finish with one last question about Faulkner. Do you
remember your reaction upon hearing of his death?
Vargas Llosa: Yes, I was in London and I read it in The Times. There I
read one morning that he had died. Since that morning I have always
wanted to come once to the South and visit Oxford. As I said before, it
was a wonderful experience.