MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
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"mini-Borges" whose imitations lack the essentiality of the prose they
mimic, making what was original, authentic, beautiful, and stimulating
something caricaturish, ugly, and insincere. (The question of sincerity or
lack of sincerity in literature is not an ethical issue but an aesthetic one.)
Something similar has happened around another great prose stylist of
the language, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Unlike Borges's style, his style is
not sober, but is instead exuberant, and not intellectualized at all, rather,
sensory and sensual. Its clarity and correctness reveal classical origins,
but it is not stiff or old-fashioned-it is open to the assimilation of say–
ings and popular expressions and to neologisms and foreign words, and
it possesses a rich musicality and conceptual purity, free of complica–
tions or intellectual wordplay. Heat, taste, music, all the textures of per–
ception and the appetites of the body are expressed naturally and
without fuss, and fantasy draws breath with the same freedom, casting
itself unfettered toward the extraordinary. Reading
One Hundred Years
of Solitude
or
Love in the Time of Cholera
we are overwhelmed by the
certainty that only in these words, with this grace and rhythm, would
these stories be believable, convincing, fascinating, moving; that, sepa–
rated from these words, on the other hand, they would not have been
able to enchant us: his stories
are
the words in which they are told.
And the truth is that words are also the stories they tell. As a result,
when a writer borrows a style, the literature that is produced sounds
false, like mere parody. After Borges, Garcia Marquez is the most imi–
tated writer in the language, and although some of his disciples have
been successful-that is to say, they've attracted many readers-the
work, no matter how diligent the disciple, fails to take on a life of its
own, and its ancillary, forced character is immediately evident. Litera–
ture is pure artifice, but great literature is able to hide that fact, while
mediocre literature gives itself away.
Although it seems to me that with the preceding I've told you every–
thing I know about style, in view of' your letter's demands for
practical
advice, I'll give you this: since you want to be a novelist, and you can't
be one without a coherent and essential style, set out to find your style.
Read constantly, because it is impossible to acquire a rich, full sense of
language without reading plenty of good literature; and try as hard as
you can, though this is not quite so easy, not to imitate the styles of the
novelists you most admire and who first taught you to love literature.
Imitate them in everything else: in their dedication, in their discipline, in
their habits; if you feel it is right make their convictions yours. But try
to avoid the mechanical reproduction of the patterns and rhythms of
their writing, since if you don't manage to develop a personal style, your
