The Perpetual Orgy - Flaubert and Madame Bovary [Hardcover]

Mario Vargas Llosa (Author), Helen Lane (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1986

The book's first section is a tete-a-tete with Emma Bovary; the second traces the gestation and birth of the novel, as well as Flaubert's method, his mania for documentation, and the novel's literary sources; the third situates it in literary history. Vargas Llosa's first work of non-fiction will send the reader back to Flaubert's masterpiece with renewed interest.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Vargas Llosa begins by explaining the special meaning Madame Bovary has for him. Then he deals with the story the novel tells and "the sources it uses, the way in which it transforms itself into time and language." Here he examines the "added element" Flaubert joined to his perceptions of realityfor example, his humanizing of objects, his obsession with pairs, and his manipulation of fictional time and narrative. Finally, focusing on such issues as the antihero and interior monologue, the author discusses the place of Madame Bovary in the development of the modern novel. This knowledgeable and highly readable book may not break any new scholarly ground but is valuable as an intelligent introduction and personal appreciation by an important novelist. Richard Kuczkowski, Dir., Continuing Education, Dominican Coll., Blauvelt,
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English, Spanish (translation)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux; 1st edition (December 1, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374230773
• ISBN-13: 978-0374230777
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,320,431 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

MARIO VARGAS LLOSA was born in Arequipa, Peru, in 1936. In 1958 he earned a scholarship to study in Madrid, and later he lived in Paris. His first story collection, The Cubs and Other Stories, was published in 1959. Vargas Llosa's reputation grew with the publication in 1963 of The Time of the Hero, a controversial novel about the politics of his country. The Peruvian military burned a thousand copies of the book. He continued to live abroad until 1980, returning to Lima just before the restoration of democratic rule.

A man of politics as well as literature, Vargas Llosa served as president of PEN International from 1977 to 1979, and headed the government commission to investigate the massacre of eight journalists in the Peruvian Andes in 1983.

Vargas Llosa has produced critical studies of García Márquez, Flaubert, Sartre, and Camus, and has written extensively on the roots of contemporary fiction. For his own work, he has received virtually every important international literary award. Vargas Llosa's works include The Green House (1968) and Conversation in the Cathedral (1975), about which Suzanne Jill Levine for The New York Times Book Review said: "With an ambition worthy of such masters of the 19th-century novel as Balzac, Dickens and Galdós, but with a technical skill that brings him closer to the heirs of Flaubert and Henry James . . . Mario Vargas Llosa has [created] one of the largest narrative efforts in contemporary Latin American letters." In 1982, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter to broad critical acclaim. In 1984, FSG published the bestselling The War of the End of the World, winner of the Ritz Paris Hemingway Award. The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta was published in 1986. The Perpetual Orgy, Vargas Llosa's study of Flaubert and Madame Bovary, appeared in the winter of 1986, and a mystery, Who Killed Palomino Molero?, the year after. The Storyteller, a novel, was published to great acclaim in 1989. In 1990, FSG published In Praise of the Stepmother, also a bestseller. Of that novel, Dan Cryer wrote: "Mario Vargas Llosa is a writer of promethean authority, making outstanding fiction in whatever direction he turns" (Newsday).

In 1990, Vargas Llosa ran for the presidency of his native Peru. In 1994, FSG published his memoir, A Fish in the Water, in which he recorded his campaign experience. In 1994, Vargas Llosa was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor, and, in 1995, the Jerusalem Prize, which is awarded to writers whose work expresses the idea of the freedom of the individual in society. In 1996, Death in the Andes, Vargas Llosa's next novel, was published to wide acclaim. Making Waves, a collection of his literary and political essays, was published in 1997; The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, a novel, was published in 1998; The Feast of the Goat, which sold more than 400,000 copies in Spanish-language, was published in English in 2001; The Language of Passion, his most recent collection of nonfiction essays on politics and culture, was published by FSG in June 2003. The Way to Paradise, a novel, was published in November 2003; The Bad Girl, a novel, was published in the U.S. by FSG in October, 2007. His most recent novel, El Sueño del Celta, will be published in 2011 or 2012. Two works of nonfiction are planned for the near future as well.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars literature is one perpetual orgy, August 2, 2008

By 

Ethem Alpaydin (Istanbul, Turkey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Perpetual Orgy (Paperback)

This book is about Mme Bovary, Flaubert and writing fiction. What is fiction, who is an author and why does he write?

" 'The race of gladiators is not dead; every artist is one. He amuses the public with his agonies'. The truth is that, by writing about them, 'agonies' are mitigated; literature exorcises them or makes them endurable." (p. 89)