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In Praise of Reading and Fiction: The Nobel Lecture
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On December 7, 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His Nobel lLecture is a resounding tribute to fiction's power to inspire readers to greater ambition, to dissent, and to political action. "We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist," Vargas Llosa writes. "Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute—the foundation of the human condition—and should be better." Vargas Llosa's lecture is a powerful argument for the necessity of literature in our lives today. For, as he eloquently writes, "literature not only submerges us in the dream of beauty and happiness but alerts us to every kind of oppression."
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Comece a lerDados do livro
In Praise of Reading and Fiction: The Nobel Lecture
Descrição
On December 7, 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His Nobel lLecture is a resounding tribute to fiction's power to inspire readers to greater ambition, to dissent, and to political action. "We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist," Vargas Llosa writes. "Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute—the foundation of the human condition—and should be better." Vargas Llosa's lecture is a powerful argument for the necessity of literature in our lives today. For, as he eloquently writes, "literature not only submerges us in the dream of beauty and happiness but alerts us to every kind of oppression."
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The text of Vargas Llosa's 2010 Nobel speech. Probably I would have appreciated this a little more if I'd known more about him, but there's some lovely discussion of the importance of storytelling and how it raises us above the mere quest for survival. He employs wonderful imagery as well. I need to read some of Vargas Llosa's fiction one of these days.
Mario Vargas Llosa's Nobel Lecture is a charming short read, not without power. He summarizes the influences on his literary life, as well as exploring the redemptive and transformational power of stories (oral, theatrical, and fictional). I was moved by the power of his hopes, dreams, and compassion, while noticing the edge in some of his comments. In brief summary, Llosa argues for parallel worlds of reality and imagination, which mutually inform each other, with the latter having the unique power to improve the former. Highly recommended.
Mario Vargas Llosa's Nobel Prize Lecture is beautifully written. It provides insight into the role that fiction plays in all of our lives. Llosa also provides some insight into how his own background has influenced his writing. It was a quick read that made me move Llosa higher on my TBR list. Here are just a couple of quotes that I liked: "Literature creates a fraternity within human diversity and eclipses the frontiers erected among men and women by ignorance, ideologies, religions, languages, and stupidity." "Literature is a false representation of life that nevertheless helps us to understand life better, to orient ourselves in the labyrinth where we are born, pass by, and die." "That is why we have to continue dreaming, reading, and writing, the most effective way we have found to alleviate our moral condition, to defeat the corrosion of time, and to transform the impossible into possibility."