Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Book Report/Review Example

?Aunt Julia and the Script Order No. 519440 ‘Aunt Julia and the Script by Mario Vargas Llosa is a humorous but touching tale of a 19 year old law student called Mario, who has a job at the radio station where he is employed as a news editor. His job was to take newspaper articles and rewrite them for the news bulletins for the radio. Mario falls deeply in love with his aunt Julia Uriquidi who thinks Mario to be a child and calls him ‘Varguitas’. Mario however, proves to her that he has grown into a young man with great ambitions to become a novelist in Paris. Though age has no barrier where love is concerned, yet how the couple goes about fulfilling their dreams with each other is what is going to be discussed in this essay. This comedic novel is neither an autobiography nor history but an endearing portrait painted by the artist himself that sheds light on his journey of becoming a novelist. This novel is the story of a young writer whose aspirations and dreams are put at risk due to his love for his aunt-in-law Julia. It is a story where a young boy falls in love with his own aunt, a thirty two year old divorcee. The writer’s romantic association with Julia complicates his life and puts his career as a writer at risk. His writing suffers as he is busy living life to its fullest. His laborious writing laden with symbolism is doomed from inception. Aunt Julia enters his life at a time when he is trying to establish himself as a writer and find an individual identity without the help of his family. Julia and Mario are quite in love with each other, but when the relatives come to know of the news they disapprove totally and the couple flees to a town they don’t know anything about with the intention of getting married and leading a happy and peaceful life. In the melee, Mario chances upon Pedro Camacho, a Bolivian serial author, who is a soap opera radio writer and he befriends him. Pedro Camacho is a highly successful writer whose writings are packed with melodrama, familial tension and action, but his success is short-lived as his writings become meshed and episodes overlap each other due to the fact that he was gradually losing his grip on reality. At this juncture, Pedro is in a tight spot because he is about to be fired from his job due to his inconsistency in keeping control over his characters, who seemed to die in one of the episodes and again reappear in the next, getting his audience totally confused over the happenings. Mario does not want to keep the secret of his love for Julia any longer and so confronts his family stating that he would provide Julia with a good life. Julia encourages Mario and supports him in every way possible and encourages him to pursue his dream of going to Paris and becoming a writer. It was during this time that Pedro Camacho loses his mind totally and is rushed off to the mental hospital. Becoming a man of letters was the primary aim of Mario who keeps writing a lot. However, his writing is not much appreciated by his friends who feel that he still has to gain a lot of experience in the arena of writing. Mario admires Pedro’s talent and skill for writing and tries to emulate his love for hard work. Mario meets Pedro when he gets hired by his employers to the same radio station where Mario works to write scripts for the radio serials. The radio stations gains a lot of popularity when the serials become quite famous in the capital. Pedro comes up with shockingly different characters that keep the audience spell bound. Though he gains the height of popularity, yet as time passes he makes a hash of his work by mixing up the different characters and changing their names. He gets totally confused with his own work and also confuses the audience to a great extent. He finds it impossible to go on and tells Mario of his problems. Pedro finally loses his reality and is hospitalized. Irony plays a major role in Mario’s ‘Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter’ but at a much deeper level, it speaks of artistic failure. On one hand, we have Mario desiring to become a good writer, but spends much of his time trying to live life in a high fashion with Julia his love, and on the other hand, we have Pedro who worked so hard between scripting and directing serials for the radio station, that he forgets to live and experience life in any sense of the term and finally loses his own sense of reality among his characters. Artistic failure is the core of the story around which all else revolves. While Mario’s love story shows signs of going out of control, so does Pedro’s scriptwriting that goes out of control too. Conclusion The book ‘Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter’ written by Nobel Laureate Jorge Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian writer, essayist, journalist and politician is simple but yet stylistic in its presentation. He is regarded by some critics to have the greatest impact on a worldwide audience than any other Latin American Boom writer. The book Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is considered to be a semi -autobiographical semi -fictional novel written originally in Spanish by Mario Vargas. In the novel Aunt Julia is the taboo lover who helps in refining the base character of Mario and developing him into an outstanding writer and one of Latin America’s best known novelists. In fact we could say that Aunt Julia has made a great contribution in the evolution of Marito into Mario, the writer. Aunt Julia in the novel refers to the author as ‘Marito’ and in the concluding line of the book states that he is “growing up.” And now so everything will be perfect and you’ll be rid of that baby face of yours, promise me you’ll let your mustache grow” (357) The author’s style of writing is a non- linear narration style and tends to confuse his audience, but everything becomes quite clear at the end of the story. By weaving both fact and fiction together, the author makes it all the more interesting to read. References Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter www.librarything.com/work/28652 Book Review: Mario Vargas Llosa www.curledup.com/auntjuli.htm Read More