Wellsprings
Mario Vargas Llosa
When a master novelist, essayist, and critic searches for the wellsprings of his own work, where does he turn? Mario Vargas Llosa—Peruvian writer, presidential contender, and public intellectual—answers this most personal question with elegant concision in this collection of essays. In “Four Centuries of Don Quixote,” he revisits the quintessential Spanish novel—a fiction about fiction whose ebullient prose still questions the certainties of our stumbling ideals. In recounting his illicit, delicious discovery of Borges’ fiction—“the most important thing to happen to imaginative writing in the Spanish language in modern times”—Vargas Llosa stands in for a generation of Latin American novelists who were liberated from their sense of isolation and inferiority by this Argentinean master of the European tradition.
In a nuanced appreciation of Ortega y Gasset, Vargas Llosa recovers the democratic liberalism of a misunderstood radical—a mid-century political philosopher on a par with Sartre and Russell, ignored because “he was only a Spaniard.” And in essays on the influence of Karl Popper and Isaiah Berlin, the author finds an antidote to the poisonous well of fanaticism in its many modern forms, from socialist utopianism and nationalism to religious fundamentalism. From these essays a picture emerges of a writer for whom the enchantment of literature awakens a critical gaze on the turbulent world in which we live.
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About Mario Vargas Llosa
Reviews for Wellsprings
Publishers Weekly
Vargas Llosa ponders the thinkers, teachers and ideas that mean the most to him. It is a glimpse into the workings of a marvelous mind and an instructive adventure besides...In the end, it is the gaze of this graceful writer who, by shedding a light on what's inspired him, offers a gift to all who care about what fiction, philosophy and politics can do. And as much as readers will value what he has to say about how we humans cope with our turbulent world, it is what he knows about literature that, above all else, makes this little book sing.
Carol Herman
Washington Times
[Vargas Llosa's] perceptions are detailed and astute.
Nedra Crowe-Evers
Library Journal
As in his previous collection of essays, The Temptation of the Impossible, Mario Vargas Llosa proves himself to be a superb practitioner, critic and essayist. Too often when critics write about their favourite authors they simply dwell on them. But when Vargas Llosa discusses the works of pivotal Latin American short-fiction writer Jorge Luis Borges, he makes you want to go and re-read Borges...First-rate essays, by a class act.
Steven Carroll
The Age
Seven stimulating essays by one of Latin America's greatest living writers...[Vargas Llosa] frequently
and tellingly
reminds us that fiction must have the power to enchant us.
Adam Feinstein
Times Literary Supplement