Starting the year by reading the latest novel in Spanish of a Nobel Prize-winning author like Mario Vargas Llosa means knowing that you are starting on the right foot, that you will not make mistakes, and in fact, that you will not make mistakes. It will be the last novel he wrote (p.303). And it was in this key that I read it and enjoyed it: a writer who has had an excellent literary career and who says this is his last novel. And so, starting from the same title: I dedicate my silence to you (Alfaguara, 2023), in the novel there is that feeling of climax and farewell, that silence in the fundamental moments of art or one’s own life (p.50). It was the same silence that created a communion, a kind of shared euphoria among the entire audience when Lalo Molfino’s guitar stopped.
The novel is structured in three interconnected narrative levels. On the one hand, the author creates an essay that introduces and discusses Creole music, its history and its importance for Peru, in alternating chapters, joined by his own voice: “The proud author of these lines considers this the most important contribution of all magnificent” (p. 25). Thanks to this novel, I have a playlist on Spotify of songs by Cecilia Barraza, Abanto Morales, Felipe Pingo, Rafael Otero, Chabuca Granda… and Lucha Reyes. About the Peruvian waltz, I was looking for different Creole genres and their interpreters on the app and they all found the novel creates a wonderful soundtrack for my own reading.
This essayistic part is developed literary on two other narrative levels; On the one hand, the author, who turns into a traditional narrator, tells us, in the third person, the changes of Toño Azpilcueta, who is married, has two daughters, has little money, is a Creole music critic, and is the “proletarian intellectual” of folklore. .13 ) in his daily life, is characterized by his tenacity, his love of Creole music, and his ability to sense the threat of mice and an excruciating itch on the skin of his body. All of this will be turned upside down when he hears the best guitar of his life, when he listens to Lalo Molfino: “Toño’s face was bathed in tears and his soul was open and full of longing, eager to reunite these citizens with an embrace of brothers who had witnessed the genius” (p. 34). And on the other hand, Lalo Molfino and the silent revolution, the book Toño wrote about Lalo’s biography, which spills over into the history, present and future of Peru. Metaliterature, especially the content it contains, its structure (p.169) and its very complex, every It shows his obsession with writing in terms of his desire to create symbols that are always partial and ultimately existential. He puts forward the thesis that Creole music can unite all of Peru, eliminating xenophobia and lack of equality (p. 185). And here comes huachafería (p. 143), which is a sign of staleness far beyond, “a way of understanding the world unlike any other, something more naive and sensitive, less cultured but more intuitive and characteristic. “In every social class” (p.69), beautifully illustrated by the love between Lala and Toni. This utopia is what pervades Lalo’s book (“Lalo Molfino and homage to huachafería”, p. 72) and Vargas Llosa’s book, with different endings of course. I believe that this utopia and the novel itself contain the author’s beliefs and wishes for his country and his endless desire for social happiness in the face of an unpleasant reality. Therefore, with an almost naive approach, huachafa proposes a utopian solution that solves problems and builds a good future.
So why should you read this novel? Because it is an example of literary mastery, how a story can be told perfectly, hybridized with the metonymic contribution of Creole music, with an essay-style story exemplifying his love for his country and his wishes for happiness for it. the population of all loved ones; and as this was still a true farewell to all that was a lifelong work of literary art, he devoted his silence to the rhythm of the Creole waltz, which he dedicated to us. A charm.