Ride Out of Middlebury on the Air Waves of Lima Love

Author: Edward Pickering

Book: "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" (Penguin 1995)
Author: Mario Vargas Llosa
The narrator of Mario Vargas Llosa's novel might resemble you, at least on the surface. Mario is an 18-year-old student, profoundly disinterested in his studies. And to be honest, that is about where the resemblance ends. That is, unless you happen to have married your aunt or, what is perhaps more unlikely, you have befriended a man as strange as Pedro Camacho, the Bolivian radionovela scriptwriter.
Mario is a bright and ambitious young man working at a radio station in 1950s Lima. He dreams of fleeing to Paris and establishing himself as a writer, and to achieve that end he periodically composes short stories.
His duties at the station are minimal and menial: he is responsible for compiling hourly news bulletins to be read on air. This involves reading the day's headlines and then plagiarizing them. On the first page Mario confesses, "I had a job with a pompous-sounding title, a modest salary, duties as a plagiarist and flexible working hours: News Director of Radio Panamericana."
It is this position that throws him into contact with the truly bizarre character of Pedro Camacho, a prolific writer of radio serials and a Bolivian to boot. But before Pedro enters the novel, Mario encounters Aunt Julia.
Aunt Julia is the recently divorced ex-wife of one of Mario's myriad uncles, and she too hails from Bolivia. Out of courtesy to Aunt Julia, but mostly as a result of her playful urging, Mario escorts her to the movies one night -- a seminal outing. Thus begins a pattern of behavior as the two watch innumerable movies together before developing a love affair.
Despite the difference in age (Aunt Julia is 32) the two settle into an innocent yet clandestine relationship. They must keep the fact secret from Mario's relatives, who inhabit Lima in vast, gossiping swarms.
It is after the commencement of the affair that Pedro Camacho, lured by the prospect of artistic freedom, arrives to begin work at the station. Pedro writes soap operas for live broadcast over the radio. He considers himself an artist of the utmost rank.
Pedro produces soap operas in astounding numbers. Hardly ever ceasing to write, the Bolivian works around the clock. He lives ascetically, eschews conventional friendships and awes the listeners of Lima, who tune into his programs in record numbers.
Lionized by co-workers and listeners, he achieves the status of an idol -- this, despite his dwarfish stature, grotesque appearance and off-putting mannerisms.
Only Mario manages to befriend him, and it is a strange friendship that ensues, drawn out during the scriptwriter's quick coffee breaks and dominated by the scriptwriter's imperious pronouncements on art, art and art.
In the hands of a writer as talented as Llosa, the radio serial becomes an art form in itself. Every other chapter in the novel is an episode from one of Pedro's many soap operas. Thus, the novel reads as a daring and delightful amalgam of soap opera and narrative.
The story of Mario and Julia's love is interspersed with the remarkably imaginative and compelling creations of Pedro Camacho.
Llosa deftly intertwines two styles of writing -- both equally engaging. The soap opera chapters are magnetic and verge upon comic masterpieces. The struggles of Mario and Aunt Julia, who now fervently love one another, are rendered persuasively.
As the novel deepens, the love deepens, until love and secrecy clash with dramatic results. Pedro's soap operas, and consequently his reputation, veer wildly off course, mirroring the frenzied activity of the two lovers. As was probably Llosa's intent, the reader is drawn further into both storylines. Llosa, the virtuoso, stands somewhere between the novel's two extremes, orchestrating both with equal facility.
The story of Mario and Aunt Julia is the novel's strength. Their love is unique and rousing and of a type rarely encountered in either life or art.
Llosa expertly handles the relationship of Pedro and Aunt Julia, as he should considering that the novel is autobiographical. As a young man Llosa loved his aunt and lived the experiences of Mario.
Imagine that: to be young, in love (albeit, to your aunt) and in Lima. A far cry from Middlebury in December.