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My Kind of Day (Go, Mario Vargas Llosa!)

Thursday was the kind of day that starts well, begins to fall through in the middle, and then takes off again towards the evening, to reach a happy climax at night.

I had a good meeting in the morning, made an unsuccessful trip home (I couldn’t get in the house!), tried to get to a public lecture but couldn’t find the place where it was held, and spent over an hour in a cafe in one of the Moscow theatres reading about cinema and writing synopses. Some time during the day I learnt that the Russian physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov who currently work at the University of Manchester were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their research in graphene. As you may know, I graduated from the Manchester Uni, too, so my congratulations go not merely to my compatriots but also to people affiliated with the same academic institution.

Mario Vargas Llosa,
Nobel Prize in Literature 2010
But the most exciting news still awaited me at home. In 2006 I was keeping my fingers crossed for a certain author who has since been mentioned many times on this blog. Mario Vargas Llosa has been considered “nobelizable” for many years, but, as some argue, his political views stood in the way of his getting the well-deserved award. For the record, even in a novel as sexually charged as The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, Llosa didn’t leave his protagonist void of political views.

Four years ago I said I’d be over the Moon had he won. In October 2010, when Llosa did finally scoop the Prize, I was screaming with joy and pride for some 5 minutes. As Rory Carroll reports for The Guardian, even the novelist himself thought the news was a joke. And I find it truly auspicious that so many wonderful things had happened on the same day: the Russians won the Prize, and a favourite author of a Russian writer won the Prize.

Now, the Russian writer and the author of this blog was told in the morning that she accomplished a lot for her age. If I think about it I shall agree, but I don’t feel like I did enough; and this also hints at how much I will do in the next few years. Yet I’d be nowhere had it not been for people whose examples I chose to follow. These figures don’t dominate me, and I’m not a slave to their success or status; but they DO inspire me, force me how to push the envelope, and uncover, help me me see, the possibilities in my own life. As far as Literature goes they are:

William Somerset Maugham – for insights into the life of the Artist;
Kurt Vonnegut – for “telegraphic” style and the study of war;
Mario Vargas Llosa – for “cinematographic” style and the study of an evolving human character;
Pascal Quignard – for the erudition, hard to find in a contemporary author;
Romain Gary – for maintaining several preoccupations alongside the writing career, and winning the Goncour Prix twice;
Mikhail Bulgakov – for setting the example of how to adapt himself to the stage.

These names stand out, as far as I am concerned. These people’s output has been immense. Their influence on Literature and other arts has been critical. They were all “adaptable” and sometimes even were directors or scriptwriters. Their input into their profession was huge as far as knowledge is concerned, and they all have been included in the world affairs. For the record, Maugham and Gary were both diplomats, while Vargas Llosa even ran for presidency.

Lastly, they were all successful. We often fall into this trap of eulogising and admiring the genuines who live poorly, never receive public praise, and maybe die before they hit 25. There is nothing wrong with genuises, but what about our mindset? If every genuis dies before 25, what becomes to the race of genuises? And it’s hard to create on an empty stomach. Besides, in reality nobody likes poor artists because poverty equals failure.

You can see why I am so ecstatic for Vargas Llosa. But I have to say that Romain Gary (who died a week before I was born) still poses the biggest challenge. The first time he won the Goncour Prix under his own name; the second time he won it under his pen name. If I do something similar in my career, I will dedicate my prize to him.

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