MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
From
Letters to a Young Novelist
S
TYLE [S AN ESSENT[AL ELEMENT,
though not the only element, of
narrative form. Novels are made of words, and the way a writer
chooses and orders his language largely determines whether his
stories possess or lack the power of persuasion. Of course, a novel's lan–
guage cannot be disassociated from what it relates to-words shape
their subject. The only way to know if a novelist has succeeded or failed
in his undertaking is to decide whether, through his writing, the fiction
lives, liberates itself from its creator and real life, and impresses itself on
the reader as an autonomous reality.
It is, therefore, what a text conveys that determines whether it is effi–
cient or inefficient, life-giving or lifeless. In order to identify the ele–
ments of style, perhaps we should begin by eliminating the idea of
correctness.
It doesn't matter at all whether a style is correct or incor–
rect; what matters is that it be efficient, or suited to its task, which is to
infuse the stories it tells with the illusion of life-real life. There are nov–
elists who write very correctly, obeying the grammatical and stylistic
imperatives of their times, like Cervantes, Stendhal, Dickens, Garda
Marquez; and there are others, no less great, who break all the ru les,
making all kinds of grammatical mistakes, like Balzac, Joyce,
PIO
Baroja, Celine, Cortazar, and Lezama Lima. From an academic point of
view, their style is full of improprieties, but that does not keep them
from being good or even excellent novelists . Azorlll, who was an extra–
ordinary prose stylist (and nevertheless a very boring novelist), wrote in
a collection of autobiographical essays titled
Madrid:
"The man of let–
ters writes prose, correct prose, classical prose, and yet that prose is
worth nothing without the leavening of grace, worthy intent, irony, dis–
dain, or sarcasm."
It
is a sharp observation: stylistic correctness alone
does not guarantee either the success or failure of a work of fiction.
Editor's Note: Excerpted from
Letters to a Young Novelist
by Mario Vargas
L1osa. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. To be published in June
2002
by
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright
©
2002
by Mario Vargas L1osa.
Translation copyright ©
2002
by Natasha Wimmer. All rights reserved.
