Vargas Llosa on Onetti

Alfaguara has posted a few things Mario Vargas Llosa had to say about his recent book on the work of Juan Carlos Onetti, which was published last month:

Básicamente lo que yo hago en este ensayo es investigar la manera en la que Onetti utilizó la ficción como un mundo alternativo. La respuesta a la derrota cotidiana es la imaginación: huir hacia un mundo de fantasía. Es decir, aquella operación de donde nació la literatura, por la que existe la literatura y por eso el título del libro.

("Basically, what I do in this essay is investigate the way in which Onetti used fiction as an alternate world. The answer to everyday defeat is the imagination: to flee to a world of fantasy. That is, the operation from which literature was born, for which literature exists, hence the title of the book.")

The first 22 pages of El viaje a la ficción: El mundo de Juan Carlos Onetti (The Journey to Fiction: The World of Juan Carlos Onetti) are up at Alfaguara's site (as a PDF), as well as the original press release.