Sunday, April 25, 2010

Mario Vargas Llosa- The Cubs

The Cubs is written in a very abstract, stream-of-consciousness style. It immediately reminded me of Kerouac or Ginsberg but I had a lot of trouble following it at first. Once I got used to it I could appreciate the interesting feel it gave the story. I think the way it is written almost imitates the way we think when we're really young... never quite finishing a sentence or jumping from thought to thought. It makes the story feel very urgent.

Vargas Llosa's language is very beautiful but never flowery. I think he is able to convey very specific feelings of adolescents just through the actions of his characters and fairly succinct descriptions. He sets the scene of 60s very well, or I get that feeling from the story.

The Cubs is about a group of boys growing up from grade school to adulthood- and particularly about Cuellar, the friend that has turned into a rock n roll James Dean type while the others have gone on to studies and girlfriends. They find their adult lives easily and end up middle aged and soft around the middle with wives and children while Cuellar dies at a young age in a car wreck, I believe. The point of view is third person but it feels, somehow, that we're hearing from everyone but Cuellar.

I wasn't absolutely in love with this story, but it does such an incredible job of spanning 15 years or so in very few pages and depict the moving from childhood through adolescences with a group of friends so well. But I'm always attracted to those types of stories

1 comment:

  1. However, rather than a stream of consciousness the narrator is collective. It is as if the neighborhood, which includes the I and the we, told the story of Cuellar.

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