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.
Mario Vargas Llosa’s Speech
12 March 2007
On the Mentor Experience
Perhaps I should start by telling you something about my experience. It is totally unique, one that I had never experienced before, despite having been a teacher of literature and creative writing. This experience was very different because it was far more personal. Over the course of a year, I witnessed the gestation of a novel from the moment the first seed was planted. After spending so many years writing novels about what I do, I don’t have the same perspective working with Antonio from the first idea he came up with for this story. From that moment on, it was a fascinating experience, very different from my experience writing other novels. The way in which writers work is not identical; it varies greatly. It depends on their personalities, idiosyncrasies, psychology, obsessions and the goals the writers set themselves. In the case of Antonio, the way in which he goes about constructing a story is markedly different from the way I go about writing a story. And for this reason, the experience was truly fascinating.
When we started working together, he had an idea that I thought would be very entertaining for this novel for which he still did not have a title. His idea was the following: in a modern company in Bogotá, or another big city, during one of those restructuring processes that are so frequent in corporations these days, one employee is left out of the organisational chart. He doesn’t disappear, he’s still there as if forgotten, as an exile from the operating system, except in two respects. He still has a desk and an office, and he still has a salary. But he has nothing to do and he remains living in a stratosphere within the company.
The idea could hardly be more entertaining or more appealing. I was very intrigued as to how the story was going to unfold, what was going to happen to this individual who was going to experience an increasingly solitary and almost clandestine existence within the world of a large, modern corporation.
On Watching the Book Evolve
He started working with this idea, and for me the most interesting thing was seeing how, without imposing itself, almost despite itself, this initial idea gradually transformed itself into something different. One of the story’s minor characters, a character who was going to be secondary, suddenly took on greater importance as the story progressed. The character started imposing himself and gradually displaced the one that was to be the protagonist. As he was writing the episodes and chapters, this process became more pronounced, until at a given point, the initial project actually became a very different project. Without entirely disappearing, the idea of the employee who was left off the radar screen, as it were, without ceasing to exist, evolved into another character who became the protagonist and took over the reins of the story.
Finally, for me, it was a fascinating process in which, from the outset, I had absolutely no input except to make reader’s comments. In fact, my work with Antonio was that of a privileged reader. I read not the final copy, but drafts. And I commented on the drafts in a way that could be useful to him, if he considered that my comments contributed to what he was discovering and wanted to do with his novel. In many cases, he did well to cast aside my suggestions. Except in one respect where I think I did help him. I convinced him that to write means work, inspiration. Without a doubt, if someone does not have any imagination, does not have a certain imaginative flight, then it would be difficult to write a novel. But if all this is not backed by discipline, an effort, perseverance, a certain stubbornness, then it often fails. I believe this advice, fortunately, convinced Antonio that discipline is an essential aspect of the creative process.
On the Result
I am very pleased with the result. The novel is magnificent. It is a humorous novel. You know that in our language humour is not a major part of our literature. I confess that I, too, suffer from the prejudice of having thought that humour is incompatible with serious literature. Now it no longer is. And a good example of it’s no longer being so is Recursos Humanos. There is a lot of humour in this novel. On almost every page, it is impossible not to smile, or at times to laugh out loud. At the same time, it is an extremely serious novel. On many of its pages, it is tremendously sad because it relates an aspect of human nature that is broken and pitiful. But even in these moments there is a cheerfulness that Antonio makes bubble up with natural authenticity.
The novel’s structure evolved, more intuitively than rationally, as Antonio worked. I was fascinated by this process, as it is not something that happens to me when I write. I tend more to plan the organisation of stories in a more conscious way. Not so Antonio. As things occurred to him, he found a place to insert them in the novel’s overall structure.
In addition to being entertaining and interesting, the novel is very well constructed. It’s a novel with a creative and original construction, giving the impression of having been very carefully planned. But that is not how it happened, as I can testify, since I followed the creation of its structure step by step.
On the Initiative
The experience was exceedingly interesting, a truly magnificent programme. I would have liked to experience it myself when I was a young writer just starting out, to have had the possibility of working with a known author whom I had read, an experienced author. It’s also a valid approach for a painter, a musician, a ballerina or a film-maker. This programme is magnificent and the experience was very instructive. I am sure that others, who, like me, have had the experience of being a mentor have learned as much as their protégés.