Reading Lolita in the age #Me Too

World Post: In your last novel, the Newborn”, you rebuild horror and corruption, but also hedonism, after Alberto Fujimore won the elections in Peru in 1990. In your confession, sex dominates as a survival act and a response to oppression.

Mario Vargas Lalosa: This was the reality because Peruvian society at the time became subject to terrorism, oppression, and the dictatorship of Fujimore. The brutality expanded to all levels of society. There was a strict stretch that produced this remarkable outbreak of sexual and sexuality in private spaces, where life was needed. It was the only way through which he could escape the terrible threat of the real world.

During those years, all moral principles and limitations disappeared. It was a time of outbreak of terrible freedom. In my novel, I wanted to describe this paradox. I also described that in those years, yellow journalism was used by dictators to create paralysis among opponents.

World Post: As Nobel Prize winner, what was your reaction to the extraordinary decision of the Swedish Academy not to award the Nobel Prize for Literature this year due to the sex abuse scandal affecting some of its members?

Vargas Lalosa: I never thought this kind of scandal would happen in Sweden! We've stereotyped the vision of places. Now, however, we find that Swedes are also people, and these can also happen in Sweden. It has been a shock to many people, and it is unfortunate that there is no Nobel Prize for literature this year. But two awards will be given next year, and that is a compensation.

World Post: This seems part of the kind of cultural revolution going on today with the movement #MeToo. Do you feel that? 

Vargas Lalosa: Of course, I think it's fair to report abuses against women. These abuses are everywhere, so I have full sympathy for this movement in terms of justice, democracy, greater equality of opportunity for women and men. But feminism now has a kind of problem. It has become very sectarian, very dogmatic and I think you should criticize and oppose these trends. For example, we recently had a big debate in Spain, when a group of feminists attacked “Lolita” of Nabokov, whom I think is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. They attacked him because they claim the main character is a pedophile. With this criterion, the literature will disappear. It's gross! If you respect literature you must accept not only the very idealistic, altruistic vision of human beings but also their infernal vision. Georges Bataille said that angels and demons exist in human beings. Angels are sometimes important, but for literature, demons are also important. Literature is a testimony to what we want to hide in the real world. This is the raison dêtra of literature. You can't attack literature for vices, prejudices, and our bullshit. I think this is very important, because I am convinced that the voice of the feminist movement should be heard, but I do not accept the idea of censorship for literature or for culture in general.

World Post: In your 2015 essay, “Civilization of Spectall”, you write with deep regret the insignificant impact of ideas on today's world. This essay gave you the label of a “progresofobi”, whose premiere “The notes on the death of culture” have been widely rejected by the younger generation. Are they wrong? 

Vargas Lalosa: Yes, because they're raised in a culture where images are far more important than ideas, so they resist the superiority of ideas. For the first time, in an entirely global culture, without differences between East and West, we are all part of this new culture in which images are great protagonists. Young people today try to think that images can form modern and creative citizens. They don't do that. Images create a passive citizen, much easier to tame than the citizen formed by ideas. I am convinced that ideas are far more important than images. In my lifetime, I have witnessed the power of ideas and the decisive battles of ideas that developed among public intellectuals. Some were fascinated by Communism and Marxism. Although dominant for a time, these intellectuals actually opposed real progress. This is the subject of an autobiographic book that I'm writing and where I describe my political evolution from the Marxism of my teenager towards democracy and then to liberalisation. There are seven essays about seven liberal thinkers who were very important to my evolution, among them Adam Smith, José Ortega y Gasset and Isaiah Berlin. These are cases of intellectuals who resisted the radical tendency of the left that ended in social disaster.

World Post: Your first novel, “Hero Time, published in 1962, was somehow the beginning of your literary evolution to say more combative. Your anger at your authoritarian father and the Peru military establishment determines the tone of your literary voice. Would you agree? 

Vargas Lalosa: That's true. At the time, I was very influenced by Sartri's ideas that words are acts and that write things that can make changes in history or solve problems. Writing was one way to participate in the creation of another kind of society - cheaper, fairer, more liberal. They were very influential ideas for a young writer like me who came from a third world country where the literature had such a small audience. Thus, Sartre's ideas encouraged me to become a writer and made me realize that writing was not just about creating satisfaction but also about a means of change. There was much naiveness in these ideas, but I think existential thinkers back then were very encouraging to the new writers, especially in third world countries.

World Post: Prosthetic Nadia Gordimer, Nobel Prize laureate, once said that the novelist is “the historian of the unregistered”. Is that how you see it?

Vargas Lalosa: Absolutely, that's a very good definition. History and literature are the faces of a coin. They are so close, and in many cases, the literary version of a historical part dominates that of the historian. For example, we believe that Tolstoy is absolutely right in describing Napoleon's warfare in literature. Historians may be more accurate, but it doesn't matter. The way literature fills the image is what matters. I like literature that is still very close to living experiences. I don't like the idea of the fully isolated, isolated writer in a library. I can read and enjoy these writers, such as Jorge Luis Borges, but I don't want to be this kind of writer. All writers are autobiographical. In some writers, this is clearer and evident in the most hidden. But I don't think you can make anything up. The main painting is always the personal memory of current experience. 

This interview was conducted by The World Post, partner of the Berggruen Institute and The Washington Post. / Translate: Periscope