friday, october 8, 2010
GALLERIES Patrick
McDonough ‘Reck room’ tries to mix high art with the mass-marketing extravaganza of professional sports. C8
“ ESSAY FAMILY PHOTO VIA AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE AND GETTY IMAGES
WINNER:Mario Vargas Llosa and wife Patricia Llosa in 1967. The author, who ran for president of Peru, was praised by the Nobel committee for his “cartography of structures of power.”
triumphant election
The power of Mario Vargas Llosa’s words finally led the politically fearless writer to a Nobel Prize
by Marie Arana
Swedish Academy, has merited the coveted award. Not so on Thursday. The 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature has gone to a writer whose name is well known to and widely venerated by the global literary community: the deeply intellectual, undeniably talented Peruvian nov- elist Mario Vargas Llosa. Vargas Llosa has been a perennial candidate for the prize, his name raised year after year as an obvious choice since the 1980s. He might easily have won after the brilliant early novels of his career: “The Time of the Hero,” “The Green House,” “Conversation in the Ca- thedral,” all published before 1975. But as time passed and he continued to produce an impressively versatile body of work — “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter,” “The Feast of the Goat,” “The Bad Girl” — so, too, did hope that he would be recognized by Stockholm. When asked by an editor several years ago why the prize had eluded him, he replied with a wry smile that he was hardly the politically correct choice. If that is true, it was certainly not for literary rea-
T
sons. Vargas Llosa’s novels have garnered as much praise from the left as from the right, from serious crit- ics as well as from the masses. In Latin America he is read by consumers of pulp novels as avidly as by schol- ars. Far less predictable in genre than other Latin Americans who have been singled out for the prize — Gabriel García Márquez, for instance, or Pablo Neruda — Vargas Llosa’s work can be deadly serious or effer- vescently funny, his political essays searing, his literary criticism defiantly highbrow. According to the Nobel committee, he has won the award “for his cartography
essay continued on C5
oo often, a Nobel morning has a literary critic running for cover or, at the very least, for Google, to learn exactly who, in the capricious eyes of the
At last, a perennial candidate’s
THE RELIABLE SOURCE Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts
they didn’t conquer. S
‘Housewives’ came. We saw. But
o now we come to the end of “The Real Housewives of D.C.” It was Washington’s first major encounter with reality TV. (No, we don’t count “Top Chef” or “Real
World” and their out-of-town-visitor casts.) What, exactly, have we learned? That drama is hard to sustain when national headlines
have given away the plot. That most political types want nothing to do with the cameras, though a few are game. That the stars of these shows aren’t just caricatures but real people, with real feelings, easily hurt. And that a lot of what you, the viewer, saw on TV the past two months? Well, a lot of it was kind of fake. That’s right, reality TV doesn’t comport with reality. We tried to warn our fellow citizens, but now that the first (and perhaps final) season has come and gone, let’s examine the wreckage.
It had seemed their chance for superstardom, but
Lisa de Moraes details the show’s boffo ratings. TV Column, C2
ultimately “Real Housewives” was not kind to Tareq and Michaele Salahi. Again and again, producers allowed the horse-country socialites to spout about their supposedly charmed and glamorous life, only to sharply undercut them: The next scene would be other Housewives gossiping that the Salahis “aren’t paying their bills” or an image of withered, fruitless vines at his parents’ Oasis Winery. In some ways, the series actually helped to prop up the jet-set image the Salahis dearly wanted to project: It showed them staying in luxury
housewives continued on C2
Style ABCDE C S
A few scenes might . . . manage to shock with full and fresh force more than 60 years later.”
— Ann Hornaday, on the film “Nuremberg” C3 MUSIC REVIEW
Walk (fast) like Gyptian “Hold Yuh” hitmaker makes short work of his Crossroads concert. C4
THEATER REVIEW
Crossing cultures Studio’s “Songs of the Dragons” skewers ethnic stereotypes. C4
CAROLYN HAX Difficult discovery
? Detection of husband’s affair could open door to truth. C5 3LIVE TODAY @
washingtonpost.com/discussions Carolyn Hax tackles your problems Noon • Lisa de Moraes discusses all things television 1 p.m.
DANCE REVIEW
Trocks’ playful pas de divas keeps audience en pointe
by Sarah Kaufman In an unsettled time, it’s somehow JUANA ARIAS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
ROYALLY FUN: Joshua Grant as Prince Siegfried and Raffaele Morra as Snow Queen Odette (with Robert Carter) put a new spin on “Swan Lake.”
comforting to know that men in tutus can still get a laugh. Barrels of laughs. In fact, Wednesday’s Kennedy Center audi- ence sounded at times like a studio full of Jimmy Fallon’s faithful. Heck, even the spotlight got a laugh as it illuminated an empty Eisenhower Theater stage for a few silent, drama-freighted moments be- fore one of the heavily jeweled and rouged members of Les Ballets Trockad- ero de Monte Carlo tippytoed out, in his extra-large pointe shoes, for a shattering
rendition of “The Dying Swan” that res- urrected this weary solo from its legacy of self-important soppiness. The best part of the ribbing — true to its roots in divaliciousness — was the curtain call, wherein the knobby-kneed bull-erina, Ida Nevasayneva (Paul Ghise- lin), blew effusive kisses, toppled over in his curtsies and fumbled his way back through the curtain, all with unshakable aplomb. Laughs? He deserved a chorus of bra-
vos.
By this point, midway through the dance review continued on C8
on
washingtonpost.com
The next big talent?
The Washington Post is looking to discover the
region’s newest art talents. See the entrants in our contest at washingtonpost. com/realartdc.
SUSANA SANCHEZ-YOUNG/THE WASHINGTON POST AND BIGSTOCKPHOTO.COM
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