by Mario Vargas Llosa with Rubén Gallo ; translated by Anna Kushner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 17, 2023
An indispensable volume for fans of Vargas Llosa, Latin American literature, and the art of great writing.
Conversations on politics and writing with the 2010 Nobel laureate in literature.
After he joined the Princeton faculty in 2002, Gallo met Mario Vargas Llosa (b. 1936) when the latter spoke at the university about his essay on Les Misérables. When Gallo then became director of the Latin American studies program, he invited Vargas Llosa to spend several semesters teaching there. Gallo has since gone through 50 hours of recordings and notes on the seminars he and Vargas Llosa conducted and has collected that information in this magnificent book. In the first chapters, Vargas Llosa discusses “the effect of the great political events of the twentieth century on literature,” followed by his thoughts on the role of journalism in his maturity as a writer. The bulk of the book consists of long discussions of five Vargas Llosa works: the novels Conversation in the Cathedral, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, Who Killed Palomino Molero?, and The Feast of the Goat; and A Fish in the Water, a hybrid that chronicles Vargas Llosa’s 1990 presidential campaign in his native Peru and a memoir of his youth. The book concludes with a spirited discussion on “the role of the intellectual in the face of the ever more real threat of terrorism.” Many thoughtful questions from Gallo and his students elicit provocative answers on an appealing variety of topics, including the perniciousness of dictatorships, the scourge and popularity of yellow journalism (“there is public pressure for journalism to also be entertainment”), and Vargas Llosa’s approach to writing (he uses “hidden details” that “hide the story’s main event,” a technique he learned from reading Hemingway). The result is a treasure trove of literary advice and political analysis. Vargas Llosa also offers relevant warnings on the ways in which democratic societies can corrode into authoritarianism, as when he notes the ease with which “truths become lies, and lies become truths.”
An indispensable volume for fans of Vargas Llosa, Latin American literature, and the art of great writing.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-374-12901-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
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by David McCullough ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
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New York Times Bestseller
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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SEEN & HEARD
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IndieBound Bestseller
by Steve Martin illustrated by Harry Bliss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2020
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
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IndieBound Bestseller
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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