466
PARTISAN REVIEW
through each other, while the author hovers, conspicuously re–
mote from this psychic cannibalism (both
Totem and Taboo
and
another variety of
Sexual Politics),
never permitting us the in–
itial attraction. We never think of either Larry or Ramirez, "I'd
like to be like him," nor are we enticed by any evil in either that
might give us some satisfaction in
not
being like them. Again,
like the anorexic, Puig focuses so much attention on the visible
aftereffect of Qourishing matter that in fighting (and winning)
to
control it, he loses all sense of its appetizing quality. So do we.
Because the only solvency Puig permits himself is formal, we
end the book bankrupt too, except in continuing admiration for
Puig's dedicated , scrupulous, and intelligent, though never in–
tellectualized, inquiry into dramatic compression as a mode of
writing novels.
Mario Vargas Llosa's novel is also based on autobiography.
While Puig limits us to the transcription of his characters'
speeches, and, notably, to that of their silences, Vargas Llosa
never lets us directly experience any of the nine radio scripts
composed by the novel's alter-protagonist, a Colombian script–
writer. Nor does Vargas Llosa quote any of the short stories writ–
ten by his surrogate, Varguitas, in the book's eleven other chap–
ters. These tell the adventures of the eighteen-year-old author in
a romantic escapade that culminates in marriage to a thirty-two–
year-old woman who is legally his aunt, and of his day-to-day
work at a radio station. At the station he meets the heroic hack,
who writes ten scripts in ten hours each day, spending another
seven rehearsing, acting, and directing these radio dramas. Al–
ternating the unconfessional (though true) love tale with install–
ments of the radio cliff-hangers, Vargas Llosa plainly enjoys
himself, as will the reader, especially given the inventiveness of
the book's translator, Helen R. Lane. While repugnance feeds
Puig 's formal retreat from his subject and disguises his nourish–
ing complicity, Vargas Llosa's amiability and lack of bitterness
show in his dedication to the eponymous Julia, his first wife and
romantic object of his novel, in the genial melodrama of his
youthful love, and in the mock-seriousness of the radio soap op–
eras. Vargas Llosa never forgets that a novelist's basis for
ergo
sum
is
I write
(with emphasis on the pronoun) or that he is the
supreme superviser in this double-stranded narrative. Cutting
back on the multiple, overlapping points of view in his earlier
