Both Mario Vargas Llosa and Antonio García Ángel participated in the Madrid press briefing held on
12 March 2007 to launch Recursos Humanos in Spain.
Antonio García Ángel’s Speech
12 March 2007
On Working with Mario Vargas Llosa
The first thing is that Mario, without knowing it, has been my teacher through my reading of his work. Ever since the age of fourteen, when his novel Who Killed Palomino Molero? fell into my hands, I have always felt that there was something in his work that was speaking to me.
I was really delighted when I won this scholarship, especially when I discovered that Mario was the mentor chosen for this initiative. The bonus was Mario’s thinking about literature and his willingness to teach. He had already written books like Letters to a Young Novelist that had something of this in them. In this respect, I was very motivated.
On Discovering Artistic Freedom
When I filled out the questionnaire they sent, they asked what outcome I wanted to achieve at the end of this mentorship. I replied that I wanted to find a personal voice and polish a style in the full meaning of the term. I think that if I have achieved this, it is largely thanks to Mario, who has always defended the freedom of literature and continues to be a libertarian. I remember once we were walking in Paris and I had started to get very nervous because, in this novel, there was a character who was rebelling, just thirty pages or so from the end, and, grammatically, this was a little difficult. So, one day I said to him, “What if I do this or don’t do it...?” He answered that, no, in literature you can do what you want. You can do whatever pleases you, as long as it is well done. I realised that what he was saying was right and I felt relieved. I realised that I had complete freedom to do whatever I wanted, which is just what I did, learning from all the guidance and experience that he was kind enough to place at the disposal of this story through his sound advice.
I must thank him for the time he took to do things that were beyond the call of duty, such as inviting me for meals and attending exhibitions and going to the theatre with him. He gave me two things that were missing for me, that at some stage I had lost and with which thanks to Mario I have reconnected. One of these is the theatre, where one hears the spoken word with such passion. He took me to see a play in London. It was like an excursion, like you do at school. The first things that I started to write were play adaptations of short stories by Juan Rulfo. This was my literary awakening.
The other thing he did for me came when it became impossible for me to write if I wasn’t in front of the computer and wasn’t open to writing. Mario said to me, “Well, I go out to a café and start to write by hand.” So I said to myself, I can do that. Now I feel the freedom with which words come to me without having to connect to anything. This too I owe to Mario, among the many other things I learned.
I am aware that the best way to pay tribute to the memory of this mentorship is to shine very brightly, but with my own light.