In Praise of Vargas Llosa

He fused the personal and the political, the exhilarating and the everyday, the sordid and the sublime. Who does that anymore? Who even tries?

Let’s take a moment to salute Mario Vargas Llosa, whose death at 89 this weekend puts paid to one of life’s dependable delights: the knowledge that every few years he would issue a novel to both enlighten and entertain. His passing makes my own existence, by a small yet discernible measure, that much less fantastic. Any reader unfamiliar with his work m…