Hey Mario! Congrats!
Mario Vargas Lhosa has won the Nobel Prize for Literature and I am delighted. Vargas Lhosa is such an odd figure in letters. Political but not. Sensible but not. Erotic but not. And so on. Here is an interesting quote from Vargas Lhosa on the value of the novel
Fiction is an art of societies in which faith is undergoing some sort of crisis, in which it’s necessary to believe in something, in which the unitarian, trusting and absolute vision has been supplanted by a shattered one and an uncertainty about the world we inhabit and the afterworld.
Hmm … So much for Dante’s grand unitary vision. For more on Vargas Lhosa’s ideas and works, you might check out Michiko Kakutani´’s short article from NYT. Here is the link. But once again, I smile at the great writer’s achievement.