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Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto by Mario…
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Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto (edition 2015)

by Mario Vargas Llosa (Author)

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1,0381819,591 (3.56)1 / 29
Don Rigoberto - insurance executive by day, pornographer and sexual enthusiast by night - misses his estranged second wife. As he compensates for her absence by filling notebooks with a steamy mix of memory and sexual fantasy, readers are drawn into his confusion between imagination and reality.
Member:celaneus
Title:Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto
Authors:Mario Vargas Llosa (Author)
Info:Debolsillo (2015), Edition: 001, 400 pages
Collections:Your library, Lieu Vidauban
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Tags:roman

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The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto by Mario Vargas Llosa

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English (13)  Spanish (2)  Hungarian (1)  Catalan (1)  Italian (1)  All languages (18)
Showing 1-5 of 13 (next | show all)
Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto
Mario Vargas Llosa
Publicado: 1997 | 271 páginas
Novela Erótico

Los personajes del Elogio de la madrastra despiertan de su ensueño y vuelven a enfrentarse en esta novela que cambia de eje para ser monitoreada por don Rigoberto, tímido erotómano, que vuelca en sus fantasías la frustración que le produce la separación de esa limeña-pituca-maroca-pizpireta que es Lucrecia. La novela se deja conducir por ese personajillo temible, Fonchito, ser asexual y por eso encantadoramente deseable, que con su inocente maldad va poniendo en jaque a su madrastra y al padre. Los pasajes eróticos, cursis adrede, sólo perturban a los lectores modosos, en realidad —más allá de la publicidad— la clave de la novela es el humor hepático que destilan en las cartas, mensajes y páginas de ese secreto cuaderno y que le da al «facho» Rigoberto profundidad (aunque no como los partes que enviaba a sus superiores el encantador Pantaleón Pantoja). La única referencia auténticamente perversa —los dibujos, las pinturas, la vida y los deseos de Egon Schiele— escapa al cuadro dramático de estos picarones burgueses bien aposentados en sus rutilantes vidas urbanas. Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto es, sin lugar a dudas, la obra definitiva de Mario Vargas Llosa sobre el erotismo. En ella se despliegan ante el lector las claves que nuestra memoria cultural ha dado, a través del arte, sobre los misterios del placer sensual.
  libreriarofer | Sep 14, 2023 |
I wanted to like this book a lot more, but in the end I was only lukewarm at best about it. I have some mixed feelings about it, and I hope I can convey that as I write this note. On the one hand, Vargas Llosa is indeed a master writer who can craft a sentence. The erotic and love scenes in the novel are simply beautifully described. The language and imagery are great. The use of literary and artistic references is also very good, and I tend to like books that make use of references and allusions as this book does. I tend to like reading erotica (and some porn as well), so you would think this book would have been perfect given the positive attributes I have described so far. So, what was the problem?

The problem was that the passages in between the nice stuff were boring and dry as hell. And to be perfectly honest, I found the character of Fonchito, Don Rigoberto's son, to be annoying and irritating. I just wanted to smack the kid and tell him to get lost. Mind you, the taboo angle did not bother me. For those not in the know, the basic plot of the novel is that Don Rigoberto and Lucrecia got separated after she had an affair/liaison with the precocious Fonchito. Fonchito is Lucrecia's stepson. Rigoberto still misses Lucrecia dearly, so he writes to her and about her in his notebooks, which make quite an exploration of sensuality in various facets. Ok, that all I can handle just fine, and I would think it would make a good tale. Problem was that, aside from the sensual parts, the rest of the novel was, well, pretty boring and the reading experience was pretty slow. A pity because, as I said, this book does have things to like.

As a final note, keep in mind this book is a sequel to the novel Elogio de la madrastra (available in translation as In Praise of the Stepmother ). I have not read the previous novel, and I don't think you have to have read it to appreciate this one. However, those who have read it may likely get more out of this novel.

My mother used to say that even great writers put out a dud once in a while. I am taking this as just being a novel that was so-so. If you want to truly sample Vargas Llosa, especially now that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he has much better works (some of which I have read). This is more for those fans of the author that want to say they have read it all. Who knows, I may give it a second chance down the road, or skim the passages I like (some of those make for good bedtime reading), but not anytime soon.
( )
  bloodravenlib | Aug 17, 2020 |
This novel held my attention because it is both erotic and funny. If you like erotic literature written in the magical realism style, you will give this book by a great writer far more than my meager 3 stars, but I can't - because in the end I started reading something else and was never inclined to finish "The Notebooks." ( )
  CindaMac | Mar 26, 2017 |
What is contained in the ‘notebooks’ of Don Rigoberto? Intellectual musings, sometimes outrageous, about the world, art, and life. Narration of the present day events of his wife Lucrecia, who he’s cast out because of some sort of indiscretion between her and his son (who is the child of a previous marriage, and so her son-in-law). The son-in-law shows up at her house in an attempt to get his parents reconciled, but it’s apparent pretty quickly that his behavior is a little dangerous. He draws her attention to the art of Egon Schiele in seemingly innocent ways, but always with a touch of flirtation so that she (and her maid) struggle to understand whether he’s truly naughty, or if their adult minds are just in the gutter.

What else do the notebooks contain? Sexual fantasies. Lots of them. One of the very early chapters has a bunch of cats licking honey off of her naked body as a part of foreplay, and it’s apparent on page 10 that you’re in for a ride. I won’t describe the range of acts which follow except to say it may seem pretty “dirty” depending on your tastes, so if you’re sensitive to that, I wouldn’t recommend the book. Personally I never felt cheap reading it, because the writing is beautiful, and it’s filled with such intelligence and honesty. It feels like eroticism, not pornography (and indeed Rigoberto rails against the latter at one point), and it’s all told very naturally, without shame, and with a mix of playful flirtation and bold directness. The line between reality and fantasy is blurred and one becomes seduced, just as Lucrecia finds herself being seduced.

Intellectually the novel is a “defense of hedonism and the individual”; emotionally it is a love story of regret and of understanding; sexually it is not only an acceptance of desires as being natural, but something to foster, and an embrace of our differences and fetishes because they are a “privileged form of expression of human particularity that allows men and women to define their space, mark their difference from others, exercise their imagination, express their anti-herd spirit, and be free.”

Beyond that there are references to art from father and son that are fun to look up while reading, and all of these threads were woven together in a dreamlike array throughout the book so that I never knew what was coming next. This one really surprised me, even all the way up to now, when I decided to give it five stars.

Quotes:
On desire:
“All human activity that does not contribute, even indirectly, to testicular and ovarian arousal, to the meeting of sperm and egg, is contemptible. For instance, the selling of insurance, to which you and I have devoted the past thirty years, or misogynistic Rotary luncheons. As well as everything that distracts us from the truly essential purpose of human life, which in my opinion, is to satisfy desires. I see no other reason for being here, spinning like slow tops in a gratuitous universe.”

On nonconformity:
“I know of no lie more base than the phrase taught to children: ‘A sound mind is a sound body.’ Who ever said that a sound mind is a desirable goal? In this case, ‘sound’ means stupid, conventional, unimaginative, and unmischievous, the vulgar stereotype of established morality and official religion. Is that a ‘sound’ mind? It is the mind of a nonconformist, a pious old woman, a notary, an insurance salesman, an altar boy, a virgin, a Boy Scout. That is not health, it is an impairment. A rich, independent mental life demands curiosity, mischief, fantasy, and unsatisfied desires, which is to say a ‘dirty’ mind, evil thoughts, and the blossoming of forbidden images and appetites that stimulate exploration of the unknown, renovation of the known, and systematic disrespect towards received ideas, common knowledge, and current values.”

On religion:
“I spent the best years of my youth working to realize the Christian Republic, that collectivist utopia of the spirit, enduring with all the zeal of a convert the brutal refutations endlessly inflicted on me and my companions by a human reality vexed at the lunacy of every effort to construct something coherent and egalitarian out of the vortex of incompatible particularities which constitute the human conglomerate.”

On tolerance to homosexuality: (I giggled over the wording in this one)
“I am delighted that they enjoy themselves, and I support their campaigns against discriminatory laws. Beyond that I cannot go, for very practical reasons. Nothing related to what Quevedo called the ‘eye of the ass’ gives me pleasure. Nature, or God, if He exists and wastes His time on these matters, has made that concealed aperture the most sensitive of all orifices that pierce my body. Suppositories wound it, and the tip of an enema syringe makes it bleed (once, during a period of stubborn constipation, one was forced into me, and it was terrible), and so the idea that certain bipeds enjoy having a virile member inserted there fills me with horrified amazement. I am certain, in my case, that along with howls and screams, I would experience a true psychosomatic cataclysm if that aforementioned opening were to be penetrated by an erect penis, even if it were a Pygmy’s. The only punch I ever threw in my life was aimed at a physician who, without warning and on the pretext of determining if I had appendicitis, attempt to commit upon my person a form of torture disguised by the scientific label ‘rectal examination.’ Despite this, I am theoretically in favor of human beings making love inside out, upside down, alone or in couples or in promiscuous collectives (ugh! [sic]) matings in which men copulate with men, and women with women, and both with ducks, dogs, watermelons, bananas, cantaloupes, and every imaginable disgusting thing if it makes them agreeable to the pursuit of pleasure…” ( )
1 vote gbill | Sep 28, 2013 |
New Year’s Day hits me the hardest. Flood gates are opened with gusto of treacherous past mocking my civilized sanctuary. Liquor cabinets once again see the light generating frenzy in my large intestine. Endless boxes of Kleenex are opened in utter delight, warm vegetable broth stream down my esophagus, Tylenol suddenly seems appetizing and the family physician prances like Rudolph as he can now put a down payment on his new condo. So, there it is one of the many traditions of a new dawn. As for resolutions, I can’t keep any. There is one noble idea of writing in a notebook that keeps me occupied for couple days. I write when I am thoroughly depressed or sloshed. Rarely do I pen down my fantasies or lunatic testimonies of an unruly imagination. What would I write down? Let’s see. "I see dead people. Unicorns copulating on purple tapestries. Kim Jong-il crooning to Hula hoop with Alvin &Co. The absence of baculum(penis bone) in humans." Bollocks! I’m mystified. Wish I knew what to write?

Don Rigoberto sure knows to fill the blank pages of his notebooks. At nightfall his fantasies come alive with numerous pages brimming with pulsating characterizations of Lucrecia’s sex acts. Lucrecia adorns the various roles of a prostitute , a subtle lover, a law professor; erotic scenes of her naked body being licked by several cats, orgies with castrated Corsican motorcyclists ,lesbian encounters with her maid Justiniana or the wife of an Algerian ambassador and many more were crafted in the flowing sheets of Rigoberto’s notebooks. The ludicrousness in his textual delusions for his estranged wife Lucrecia reinforces through every deprived desire to be with her. Rigoberto’s passion for erotic art, sexual reveries of Lucrecia and acute OCD (burns additional art/books to maintain certain numbered collectibles) embraces individual freedom denigrating the racist and ethnic segregations that proliferates under the pretext of patriotism or customary diatribes against sportsmen. A bureaucrat, liberal and a self-proclaimed monogamist, Rigoberto is terribly in love with his wife. Desiring a woman who was found in bed with his cherubic teenage son Alfonso makes him more of a harebrained imbecile than a helpless romantic. I have freaking no idea whatsoever to how a man who terms himself as well thought-of chap can think of reconciling with his wife who bedded her adolescent stepson. Moreover, Llosa further goes on to construe the notion of Alfonso being a catalyst in patching things up between his father and stepmother. Gosh! This book surely cracks me up. What a twisted little fucker Alfonso is! The funniest part of this ambiguous erotica is the boy’s fixation to the 20th century Austrian painter, Egon Schiele. The alter ego, which he relates to the artist’s life and nude portraits living in his own modest fantasies with the apparent of Lucrecia being a model to perform the mock paintings.

Some of Schiele's illustrations featured in the book.

Self-Portrait



Reclining woman


Schiele Drawing a Model in Front of a Mirror, 1910




What is Llosa trying to say? Is he demarcating individual freedom and moral demeanor? Is incest abortive to overlook its facts and pursue the offender out of sexual irresistibility? What would be the repercussions if reality and fantasies mesh together?Is Rigoberto a good father or a selfish one? This book can be easily pushed forward as an outright erotica. Regrettably it is not. We have a child here who explores the world of sex through his step-parent. A father who is more interested in unification with his adulterous ex-spouse than knowing the whereabouts of his only child. Limits of sexuality seem to disappear in this warped triad termed family. And Rigoberto’s notebooks; the words might seem nontoxic on paper, but isn’t his notion of individual liberty haunting him churning out little erotic quirks. Am I reading way too much into this ambitious canvas of an erotomaniac or perceiving the loopholes of civilized autonomy.


( )
1 vote Praj05 | Apr 5, 2013 |
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Mario Vargas Llosaprimary authorall editionscalculated
Grossman, EdithTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Матерновск… ЕкатеринаTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Don Rigoberto - insurance executive by day, pornographer and sexual enthusiast by night - misses his estranged second wife. As he compensates for her absence by filling notebooks with a steamy mix of memory and sexual fantasy, readers are drawn into his confusion between imagination and reality.

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