Three Conversations and One Monologue on Human Failure

Abstract

lished under the two participants' names as Garcia Mdrquez y la problemdtica de la novela, Buenos Aires, Corregidor/Marcha, 1973. 17 Letter from Mario Vargas Llosa, 16 June 1965. 18 In school, for instance, he gets to tend the rabbits that have replaced Judas. Since it is the patres of the school who charge him with this task, I wonder if it was not meant to foreshadow one of the ways out Vargas Llosa offers Cuellar later in the novella: to become a shepherd here, of rabbits, later of souls, i.e., a priest. 19 Oviedo, Recurrencias y divergencias en Pantaleon y las visitadoras in the Memorias of the IV Congreso de la Nueva Narrativa Hispanoamericana (Cali, Colombia, 14-17 August 1974), 1, p. 5. 20 Mario Vargas Llosa in his acceptance speech upon receiving the Romulo Gallegos Prize in Caracas, 1967; reproduced in Homenaje, pp. 17-21. 21 Oviedo, La escision total de Juan Goytisolo: Hacia un encuentro con lo Hispanoamericano, Revista Iberoamericana, 42:95, p. 194. Oviedo's subtitle for one of the parts of his essay is El acto sexual de escribir, in which he mentions one more analogy for writing (. . . la literatura una forma sublimada de onanismo) and quotes from Goytisolo's novel: j Placer solitario de la escritura! . . . abolir la obstinada avaricia del orden real (Juan sin tierra, p. 298). 22 Vargas Llosa, Caracas acceptance speech, Homenaje, p. 18. 23 Ibid., p. 19. 24 Letter from Mario Vargas Llosa, 14 April 1964. 25 Conversacion entre Borges y Sabato, reproduced in Estampa (Sunday supplement of Lima's Expreso), 25 May 1975, from Argentina's Gente (n.d.).