Word: skarmeta
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Skarmeta, like Llosa, chooses a writer--Chilean poet-hero Pablo Neruda--as his protagonist. The lines vibrate with metaphor. Poetry intermingles with the text of the play in a way that emphasizes the living spirit of Neruda in the hearts of revolutionaries...
...From early morning," Skarmeta's Neruda says, "the ocean begins its fantastic way of rising. It seems to be kneading an endless loaf of bread...
DESPITE THEIR brilliance, Llosa and Skarmeta seem to strain for metaphors and one-liners. ("Let's not carry democracy to the point of taking a vote to see who our father is," says Skarmeta's ever-composing Neruda.) On stage, an actor's delivery might compensate for much of the stiffness, but in print, it is trying...
...works seem more fluent because they represent the influence of past art on present artists by--within their plays--showing films of what influences them to write. The others expose their own arts and become all too obvious as they write about the process of writing. Llosa and Skarmeta portray writers-at-work who pace back and forth creating poetry and writing and erasing the multiple climaxes of a trash novel...
Whether one prefers Llosa's and Skarmeta's direct discussion of their artistic process or the tantalizing clues provided by Fuentes and Puig probably depends on whether one approaches literature analytically or emotionally. But whatever your literary yen, this book will fulfill it--and in large measure...