In "The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto," Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa weaves the story of a Lima Insurance executive by day and avid collector and erotic lover to his second wife, Lucrecia, by night.
The story unfolds with Lucrecia living with her maid after being cast out of her home by Don Rigoberto, due to an indiscretion with her stepson, Fonchito. "Don Rigoberto" is layered with subtle messages of value, given in the form of Rigoberto's diatribes, his stinging and articulate-yet-unsent letters to the likes of Playboy and a Lima Rotary organization. Rigoberto vicariously lives through his collection of art and literature. In his notebook, Rigoberto writes, "my desire... suspends me in midair, and drives me to this study to defend myself against annihilation, finding sanctuary in the antidote of my notebooks, pictures, and books. This alone cures me."
Obsessed with the artist Egon Schiele, Fonchito (who believes he is the reincarnation of Schiele) torments his stepmom with afternoon teatime visits to tell her tales of Schiele's life and work. Through the youthful Fonchito, we learn a semester's worth of insightful art criticism on the work of Schiele. Indeed, it is not just as words that erotic art plays a significant role in Vargas Llosa's work. Reproductions of Schiele's drawings of nudes grace the pages between sections. In Rigoberto's erotic fantasies inscribed in his notebook, he details Lucrecia re-enacting poses from famed works of art. Like father like son, Fonchito connives for Lucrecia and her maid, Justiniana, to undress and play "the picture game" by enacting Schiele's "Two Girls Lying in an Embrace." The story is told through a cycle of points of view: letters, notebook entries, and an omniscient narrator who reveals only enough detail to keep the reader entranced and on edge. Is what we are reading happening now, is it memory, or is it fantasy? Vargas Llosa writes, "All appeared as if viewed from a height by a rapacious bird that soared above them with an all-encompassing, merciless eye." The masked deception here is reminiscent of John Fowles' "The Magus," keeping readers engulfed in the tale until the mysterious finale.
(Krista Finstad Hanson)
- The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto
copyright 1998 New City Communications, Inc.