This is an extraordinary book! One of the Oxford University Press' 'Library of Latin America' series, exquisitely translated from the Spanish by Helen Lane, this is a book worthy of the highest praise. Fray Servando Teresa de Mier y Noriega (Mexico, 1763-1827), persecuted by the Inquisition for thirty years for his challenge to the colonial mentality and his willingness "to play an active role in movements of emancipation," These memoirs were written in the Inquisitor's prisons. It is truly a most extraordinary book, a topsy-turvy book -where Europeans are the "barbarians"! An exalting experience! De Mier was famed in his own time as a scholar and a thinker and indeed, the 240 pages of this most uncommon of books, this rarity, unsheathe the most remarkable figure of a man, and enlighten us, almost with a novelist's succinct eye, about the true nature of the world and its passing, and our time in it. Impossible to overstate the importance of this publication. Simply first-rate!

The very concept of grammar - a system in which language can be fixed, structured and therefore transformed - is one of the great achievements of Indian culture. In the past 50 years philosophers and linguists have devoted enormous intellectual energies to the investigation of how the concept was developed among the thinkers of ancient India, for whom the idea became a central problem in their philosophical tradition. Was language, our faculty for naming objects, given by God or did man invent it, either on his own or with powers borrowed from the divine realm?

Through a species of time-space journey akin to Hanuman's, Octavio Paz explores this dilemma: ''What is language made of,'' he asks, ''and most important of all, is it already made, or is it something that is perpetually in the making?''

I picked up this book at a used bookstore, intrigued with what I thought would be an interesting storyline: a modern man goes through a stunning transformation into that of a savage, seen from the viewpoint of an old friend staring at his picture in Florence, trying to imagine the journey his friend had taken upon himself, alone, scarred, and in the dense jungle of magic.
After the first few captivating pages (one of the best beginnings I have ever read), It became apparent that there was much more to this book than a story about a Peruvian academic and outsider becoming a Machiguenga. It is a story of a writer's obsession with his craft, and his seeking of a deeper meaning in stories, and his exhaustive search into these mysterious storytellers of the jungle, and how it will validate his own strange seeking in the world of words.
It is the story of an outsider, now a central member of an exclusive and ancient order, of the determination and resolve, ("that of a lunatic or a saint"), that drove him onward. It blends the academic intelligence of Borges and the magic of Marquez, but better, and with a fervor and intelligence that betrays an intellect to be reckoned with.
It is a masterpiece. Bravo Llosa.

Dreamlike and unique, a picture in a European gallery opens the door to a world of myth both modern and ancient. Incandescent writing by a master describing the search for an old friend ending in a visit to an Amazonian tribe and a meeting with the Storyteller. Read it and enjoy this modern fable...I highly enjoyed this book!

This book has the most amazing sense of voice and character I have ever read. The storyteller recounts the Machiguengas' mythology, day to day life, and even a few familiar stories (Kafka's The Metamorphosis) with an achingly beautiful love for the subject matter combined with the bitter knowledge that all this might be lost. The writer in Firenze sounds like a writer, constantly making connections between actions and the larger, metaphorical picture. The book delves into more than just a tribe, but the human mind as well. I think I'll read it again, next time in Spanish.

I admit to a bias. Helen Dore Boylston was a cousin of my grandfather's and I've been feeling terribly cheated since I read this book because I never met her. The story is remarkable. Two young women decide to drive from Albania to Paris. Their adventures are not, perhaps, quite as colorful as one might hope, but their daring and imagination in deciding upon such an voyage make your realize that Laura Ingalls Wilder really raised one heck of a brave and free daughter. I'd recommend it to anyone who's read the Little House Books or any of Helen Dore Boylston's books about Sue Barton.

Rose Wilder Lane- Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter- and Helen Dore Boyleston- author of the Sue Barton - were friends and traveled by car from Paris to Albania during the 1920's. This book is basically excerpts from their diaries and provides some wonderful insight into their lives and is great just because it is surprising in the way that people you never imagined were connected are.

Many memoirs have the benefit of allowing us a personal interpretation on events we have observed in the media on a more superficial scale. The main attraction of this memoir is being able to catch a glimpse of the real life events that later shaped Vargas Llosa's amazing fiction. The fact that his early life was the foundation of many of his great works (Conversations in the Cathedral, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter etc)is perhaps suggestion enough to the avid Vargas Llosa reader that the accounts of his childhood, adolescence and early manhood are sure to be fascinating, and indeed they are.

The stories of his early life are interspersed with his ill fated run for Presidency in Peru much later in his life. Although this section is also well written and offers an insightful if rather bleak view of the politics of the third world it doesn't match the magic and narrative interest of his earlier memoirs.

Overall this book presents a portrait of a wise, humble and compassionate man who struggles to come to terms with his ambivalence for his homeland.

Mario Vargas Llosa's account of his presidential campaign, interwoven with a memoir of his childhood and young adulthood, is compelling. It is a shame that someone with such a practical, intelligent and courageous plan for governing Peru was not elected. Vargas Llosa has serious doubts that Peru will ever become a "serious" nation, and after reading A Fish in the Water it's difficult to disagree. The insights into racism in Peru are fascinating, and the story of his young life is entertaining and at times moving, especially as it concerns his abusive father. This work is not at all self-serving, and yet the reader cannot help but admire (and like) Vargas Llosa. My only quibble is that some of the passages of his college days are overlong with lists of friends and acquaintances, some of whom are not remarkable and could have easily been left out. But Vargas Llosa, as usual, has produced a work of rigor and grace.

A Fish In the Water is Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa's bittersweet tale of the three years he spent in public life and of his quixotic campaign for the presidency of his native Peru.

His candidacy, he says, all came about "through the caprice of the wheel of fortune." At the time, he thought his decision to run for president of Peru was a "moral" one. "Circumstances," he writes, "placed me in a position of leadership at a critical moment in the life of my country." But Vargas Llosa is first and foremost a writer, not a politician, and so he has been willing to dig a little deeper into the reasoning behind his decision. "If the decadence, the impoverishment, the terrorism, and the multiple crises of Peruvian society had not made it an almost impossible challenge to govern such a country, it would never have entered my head to accept such a task." Motivation doesn't get much more quixotic than that.

Even more engaging than Vargas Llosa's revelations about his unsuccessful foray into the political world, are his reminiscences about his childhood and youth, which he intersperses throughout this book. He begins with a vivid and traumatic memory: the revelation by his mother that his father, whom the author thought had died before his birth, was, in reality, alive and waiting to meet him in a nearby hotel. It was a revelation that Vargas Llosa did not greet with joy.

In fiction, the cruelties experienced in childhood might be used to help explain the adult who survived them, but Vargas Llosa wisely makes no attempt to connect the two. The sections regarding the presidential campaign and those on his youth run along parallel tracks, but the story of his early life trails off after his graduation from college and his decision to go to Europe to write. The matter-of-fact air about the stories suggests that Vargas Llosa is more concerned with remembering than with interpreting and analyzing.

While the personal memories make for the most compelling reading, the campaign memoir does offer a convincing self-portrait of a political innocent sinking under a tide of democratic absurdities. Wildly popular at first, Vargas Llosa presented a coherent, but harsh, economic plan to his fellow Peruvians and rapidly became Peru's sacrificial llama. Near the end of the campaign, he endured catcalls, stone throwing and scurrilous allegations about almost everything, including his books.

Those of us who know and love Vargas Llosa and his books greeted his loss to Alberto Fujimori with more than one sigh of relief. But anyone who has an interest in the gorgeous landscape of Peru, Latin American politics, or the magnificent works of Mario Vargas Llosa will find this book essential reading.

This is definitely an entertaining read, and very funny at that. The (autobiographical?) protagonist, Mario, falls in love with his "aunt" Julia (not a blood relation), the kind of relationship that is the stuff of radio soap operas - meanwhile, Mario's coworker and confidant is the enigmatic and pseudobohemian/pseudointellectual Pedro Camacho, the most popular radio scriptwriter in Peru. The rest of the novel consists of excerpts from Camacho's radio serials interwoven (chapter by chapter) with tales of Mario's scampering about with Julia.

My greatest frustration with the book is that it didn't use the full potential of the blurring of lines between "story" and "reality." Unfortunately, the interplay between "story" and "reality" was billed as the theme of the novel, whose chapters alternate between descriptions of "reality" and descriptions of Camacho's fictional world of radio serials. Camacho's various real-life prejudices - e.g., his vitriol for Argentina and his fears about middle age - do diffuse to the stories, but not in any deep or intriguing way, only for some comic interjections. Similarly, the radio serials are mentioned in conversations in the "real" portions of the novel, but not much is done with them.

I was really hoping for the book's last chapter to be a blend of the main story and the stories of Camacho's serials, but no such luck. Indeed, the final chapter, or maybe two chapters, seemed out of place, and not as clever and humorous as the rest of the novel. I was also hoping for Camacho to play more of a role in the story itself. As it stands, Mario's and Camacho's worlds don't really intersect, except for their meetings at cafes.

For a similar back-and-forth technique between "fictional" and "real," try "Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World," by Haruki Murakami. Or for a hilarious treatment of the making of radio serials, watch the (coincidentally, also Japanese) movie "Welcome Back, Mister McDonald."

In summary, this is an entertaining book, and a good story, but with wasted potential as far as higher literary aspirations; Vargas Llosa executes his clever structural idea quite sloppily.

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter had been on my "to read" list for awhile. This entertaining and humorous book is about 18 year old Mario who lives with his grandparents in Lima, Peru. He has a large family with lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Mario's dream is to be a writer and he works as a news writer for a local radio station, while trying his hand at writing short stories in his spare moments. His Aunt Julia, moves to Lima from Bolivia after her divorce. She is 32 years old and not a blood relation (she is the sister of his uncle's wife). Mario and Julia start spending time together and Mario begins to fall in love with her, which is not something that the rest of their family would appreciate! At the same time, the radio station where Mario works hires a new scriptwriter from Bolivia named Pedro. Pedro writes the scripts and acts in the many radio serials that the station airs. Mario becomes friends with the odd scriptwriter.

The book is written so that alternating chapters tell the story of Mario and his friends and family and the stories in the serials. It is an interesting writing style and reminds me of a few other books that I have read including Blind Assassin by M. Atwood and If on a winter's night... by I. Calvino. I enjoyed this writing style very much and founf the book extermely enjoyable and recommend to anyone who may be looking for a different and light read.

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is without a doubt Mario Vargas-Llosa's most entertaining book, intelligent without being difficult and hilarious without being patronizing.

Some of the most subtle points are lost in translation -- "escribidor" in the original title, for example, has a sense of someone simply taking dictation or producing a text by rote compared to the word "scriptwriter" used in the English language version -- but that is the only significant weak point and is not enough to withhold a five-star rating for this wonderful book.

The book's account is semi-autobiographical, with two story lines alternating chapters -- a style employed in several other Vargas Llosa novels -- until they begin to link together like cogs in the gears of the narrative. But it is the way they mesh together that is part of the magic in this book. Without giving away the story line here, let it suffice to say that at certain points you'll find yourself smiling and flipping back through the pages uttering "but didn't he..." or "I thought that..."

The story itself offers a fascinating look at several aspects of life in Peru, one of the most complex and interesting countries in the world. But it does it effortlessly; using a love-torn teenage protagonist, a sexy older woman, an enraged father, an eccentric serial writer, and a compelling cast of misfit radio artists.

Though certain parts (especially the story of Julia) are well documented, the exact extent to which some of the rest of the book is based on real life is still being debated. Every once in a while in Lima, for example, an obituary will mention that its subject was one of the people the unforgettable Pedro Camacho might have been based on, and many old Peruvians have theories about the exact bar or town where certain scenes were set.

Like any writer, Vargas Llosa takes certain artistic license and some people have grumbled about inaccuracies in the text. But I shrug off those complaints: a novel is never meant to be an accurate historical document.

Nonetheless, if you are intrigued enough by the story in Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter to read more and you understand Spanish, the most important and entertaining of the complaints is by Aunt Julia (Julia Urquidi) herself, called Lo Que Varguitas No Dijo (What Little Vargas Didn't Say). She also authored a more academic version of the story in English, My Life With Mario Vargas Llosa.

Really a fantastic book, in which the novel is mixed with historical facts which not only captivates you in the way as it is written, but also introduces some light to certain facts that took place after Evita's death, specifically, the outregious destination given to Evita's body which were never publicly revealed.

For me, an Argentine citizien born in Buenos Aires some years (not many) after Evita's death, who in some way or in the other has been always captivated by Evita's personality, although did not share some of her political aspirations and procedures, was somehow tired of hearing huge and enormous amount of histories in relation to Evita's body, with this book I was illustrated in some portion of the history of my country which was secret and maintained undisclosed from the public for many years after Evita's death.

To those who may consider that some parts of this book appears more a fiction than a historical fact, well, believe it or not, it was a "real" portion of our past history and not "fiction" or "myth".

While claiming to be a novel, much of what is written in this macabre book is documentable as fact. The lines between fact and fiction are hazy at best; but this enhances the fascination with the story of a novelist obsessed with Eva Peron as he researches her profound effect on her people, and as he searches out the trail her body took in the 17 years after her death. With accidental murder and possible necrophilia involved, this is not a light tale, but it's engrossing; for poetry fans, there seems to be a deliberate parallel drawn between the cult of Evita and the cult of Sylvia Plath. Truly a fascinating and frightening story

Seeing that "the only thing that can be done with reality is to invent it again," Tomás Eloy Martínez brilliantly transposes Evita's postmortem journey into an outrageous postmodern fictional montage wherein the author, represented as a fictitious character and narrator in the novel, spins a web of biography, history and myth into a effervescently farcical and sombrely perverse narrative, mellifluously illuminating the woman who "ceased to be what she said and what she did to become what people say she said and what people say she did." The end-result is a gripping tale which sheds new light upon details that biographers and historians commonly leave behind, seeking to unfold "the unexplained blank spaces" of her domain while tracking the political, mythical, historical body of desires which Evita's cadaver, the body of the nation, incorporates. And quite marvellously, in the interim, the textuality of Santa Evita undrapes the roots of the complex set of relations which provide an understanding of the corpus of discursive regularities that extend the representation of Argentina to Evita's embalmed cadaver as the novel bares and reconstructs the miracles, desires, secrets, and mysteries including the fragments and revelations which triggered the narrative flow, as "little by little Evita began to turn into a story that, before it ended, kindled another." Simply put, a literary work of art.

Basically, if you can get past the terse text you will find a very, very out-dated system of thought. Andre Breton may have been revolutionary then, but now it is just a re-hash of an old, dilapitated art school that has nothing more to say.

It is hard to exaggerate the importance and the relevance of this book and the greatness of it's author, Andre Breton. Although a flawed and decidedly ambivalent man, Breton was the first out and out surrealist worthy of the name, seeking the spirit of magic and 'immanent transcendence' of a sort in the marvelous, a sense of mysticism and wonder in no way supernatural or otherworldly. Breton exhorts us to break the sterile and suffocating chains of rationalism and logic, and to realize the relativity of perspectives and perceptions of reality, thereby freeing both our intellect and the supreme weapon of the human mind, the imagination. The surrealist lifestyle is nothing if not a furious attempt at total liberation, and Breton knows that this cannot be said often enough. The mad, the imaginative, the dreamy and the alienated are true 'surrealists' and unwittingly live this defiant philosophy of rebellion through their resolute refusal to conform to society's norms and to replace their own thoughts with those of the uninspired, the average, the ordinary. The literary and poetic precursors Breton cites are absolutely perfect and in accordance with the ideology he is formulating:anyone who has deeply felt the power of imaginative art has felt the spirit of surrealism, and Breton was possessed by it. He once screamed furiously, "I AM SURREALISM!"--and far from seeing it as arrogant or pompous, I think he was right.

Breton's work is one of the seminal classics of twentieth century art and literature and deserves to be read, if for no other reason, purely for historical ones. However, the intersted historian will quickly be transported beyond the realm of antiquarian curiosity and into an embodied philosophy of life that profoundly critiques and challenges the status quo. In many ways, the critiques/alternatives offered by Breton and the surrealists are more desperately needed now in the beginning of the 21st century than they were in the beginning of the 20th.

As to the previous reviewers rather shallow critique, I can only say that Breton (still read in France as one of their major 20th c. poets) has written these as witty, playful, often beatiful sometimes even rambling texts. To call them terse is to either radically misuse the word or to lack an aesthetic sensibility, or perhaps both. As for the supposed rehashing of an "old, dilapitated art school that has nothing more to say", such an unsupported critique reveals far more about the reviewer than about Breton.

Enjoy this book.

Two things struck me while reading this book, the first is that I doubt there is a book out there that is truly balanced and not somewhat biased. The second thing was that Gore really got the shaft, not so much by the recount wars, but by the election official that came up with the Butterfly Ballot. In the history of the USA this decision ranks up there with new Coke and the XFL, what a mistake. As far as the reporting in the book it was not bad for a review of all the articles they had in the paper, but it did not really dig into the particular issues very deeply. I wanted more detail and behind the scenes with both the candidates. I also wanted more details on the court cases; I felt like the sky-high overview of the issues of the cases did not do such an important issue justice.

In reading the book I think a little bit of a democratic bias comes out, just a little, but enough to notice. I also thought it interesting that they had far more details of the Gore group then the Bush camp, it follows the perception that the Post is somewhat liberal in its views. The book is an overview that came out almost 10 minutes after Gore hung up the phone on the second concession call so there are a few more details out now that they did not get in the book. Overall it is a good effort and a readable book, but not the end all be all on the subject.

This book, by the editors of the Washington Post, does a good job of describing the events which led to the deadlocked 2000 Presidential election. In addition to detailing the paths which led to the deadlock, the book discusses all the post-election issues in a very readable format. Surprisingly, the books editors seem only slightly tilted towards Gore (especially considering it is the Washington Post, which is noted for its liberal bias), so no matter who you voted for, there is much to be found here for anyone with an interest in contemporary politics.

I personally think the Washington Post and NY Times are liberal rags that are generally not worth the paper they are printed on. However, in fairness, when they do well I think they should be commended. I read the NY Times "36 Days" and still think that book was not worth the paper it was printed on. It was nothing more than a reprint of their articles.

Conversely, though, Deadlock was a well-written book. Two passages are worth noting. The first is about the book itself. About one-third of the way into the first chapter the book says: "These are the ... decisions, alliances, power plays, snap judgments and personality flaws revealed when a flukishly close election is played out for staggering high stakes. Both sides were nimble and brilliant and occasionally shady; both sides were also capable of miscalculations, divisions and blame. The best and worst of politics were on displayed in those 36 days, and both sides trafficked in each. This is how it happened." Although the Post endorsed Al Gore (no surprise) they tried to be equal in their appraisal of how the two campaigns sought resolution in their favor.

As for the two sides' strategy one only has to look within the first three pages of Chapter 2 where the Post records that the Democrats enlisted the services of three authors who wrote "The Recount Primer". The book reads: "Anyone who read and heeded the booklet could predict how the two sides would play America's closest president election -- at least in the broad outlines. Gore would gamble; Bush would stall. Gore would preach a doctrine of uncounted ballots; Bush would extol the dependability of machines. Gore needed more: more counting, more examination, more weighing and pondering of more ballots. Bush needed it over while he was still ahead." The only trouble for the Gore forces with this gospel was that the Republicans knew the same gospel. The book attempted to show how the two sides played out the roles assigned them.

For a behind the scenes objective look at the two sides, I think the Post did a very decent job. This could have been a... job on the Republicans and conservatives, but generally it was not (though I expected it). It could have been a... job on the Democrats and liberals, but it was not (nor did I expect it). I am not accustomed to this degree of fairness from the liberal Washington Post nor do I expect to see it very often in the future.

Extremely dense, muddy prose slung half way between poetic delerium and hardened theory, this vast experiement in writing is fascinating in its ability to have turned over seemingly everything- and liberally shaken. This can be a masochistic experience for any reader, although I think that it is one of the most interesting philosophical texts written this century. Certainly seems essential reading for budding psychoanalysts, intending social theorists and anybody interested in the problem of fascism. 'Dip in and out of it', as has been suggested by another reviwer.

This is, in my opinion, the most important work of theory/philosophy for the latter half of the twentieth century. Although D&G's jargon tends to be weighty at times, it is ultimately playful. there is the tendency, amongst numerous D&G fans, to reduce their philosophy to a text merely about postmodern criticism. i believe this is a mistake. ultimately, Anti-Oedipus (and its companion volume) are about politics--radical politics at best--written by two Marxists who are looking for a new revolutionary theory. indeed, Guattari once said in an interview that postmodernism is "the very paradigm of every sort of submission, every sort of compromise with the existing status quo".

Anti-Oedipus is important for political activists, otherwise it becomes just another piece of "knowledge-capital"...

If you're into sociology, and you're curious about Deleuze, then read this one first. Skim some of the bits on psychoanalysis. But read the opening and the sections on representation closely. This is the book that gives birth to Empire, currently a hot one in the anti-globalism movement. It's in this one that D/G show how any social order requires a means by which to articluate desire. They argue that desire is fundamentally productive, creative. But that it must be harnessed if a society is going to survive it's chaotic impulses and forces.
Anti Oedipus is really a book of anthropology. It shows how "primitive," "despotic," and finally "capitalist" regimes differ in their organization of production, recording (inscription, representation), and consumption. It's also a history insofar as it covers the process by which capitalism ultimately commands all the flows and chains of production, submitting them to a form of organization that is abstract (money is abstract) rather than local and physical.
The oedipal part of it is a critique of the Oedipal complex insofar as the complex articulates a model of society based on the family triangle. They want to show that the family is a kind of organization that must colonize its members, repress their desires, and give them complexes if it is to function as an organizing principle of contemporary society.
Their alternative, to be taken literally, is schizoid: subvertive, resistance, and always escaping capture by slipping in between the categories that organize capitalist society and its way of thinking.