Permiso para vivir (Antimemorias).

Marquez, Ismael P.

The publication in 1993 of Peruvian novelist Alfredo Bryce Echenique's widely acclaimed memoirs, Permiso para vivir (Antimemorias), coming but a few months after the publishing of Dick Gerdes's award-winning English translation of Bryce Echenique's masterpiece, Un mundo para Julius (1970; Eng. A World for Julius, 1993), is the latest chapter in a long career that has placed him among the most celebrated contemporary writers in Latin America.

However, literary fame and recognition have not come easily to Bryce Echenique. Even in the midst of unprecedented success, his memoirs have had to compete, because of a most unusual set of editorial circumstances, with Mario Vargas Llosa's highly controversial memoirs, El pez en el agua, and with La tentacion del fracaso, the personal diaries of Julio Ramon Ribeyro, who, along with Bryce Echenique and Vargas Llosa, completes the most notable triumvirate of contemporary Peruvian fiction writers.

Born in Lima in 1939 to a wealthy family that traces its lineage from a Spanish viceroy and a president, Bryce Echenique possessed a passion for writing that took him to Paris in 1964 in the footsteps of Hemingway and of countless other young Latin American writers, but not before he dutifully obtained a law degree in order to allay parental designs for an honorable career in banking. Teaching Latin American literature in French universities, he labored arduously, producing a solid oeuvre that includes such successful novels as Tantas veces Pedro (1977), La vida exagerada de Martin Romana (1981; see WLT 56:4, p. 656), El hombre que hablaba de Octavia de Cadiz (1985; see WLT 61:1, p. 73), and La ultima mudanza de Felipe Carrillo (1988; see WLT 65:2, p. 274).

Though contemporary with Vargas Llosa, Bryce Echenique was never considered part of the Boom. Moreover, his works were at first dismissed as frivolous and inconsequential because of their light tone, intimate subjective themes, and an apparently apolitical stance, at a time when many Latin American writers wholeheartedly embraced the Cuban Revolution. The antagonistic--and at times virulent--reaction to his works came from critics who viewed his portrayal of the decadent social practices of the Peruvian oligarchy as a defense of the powerful group that had ruled the country since colonial times. However, in an ironic twist of events worthy of his fiction, the leftist revolutionary government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado awarded him the National Literary Prize in 1972 for Un mundo para Julius, a novel which mercilessly dissects the banality of the life of Peru's affluent elite.

Divided into two parts, "Por orden de azar" and "Cuba a mi manera," Permiso para vivir is vintage Bryce Echenique. The first section, a haphazard recollection of his youth in Lima and of his years as a budding writer in Paris, is, regardless of its humorous patina, a poignant and moving statement by a man who confesses that "solo quiero preguntarme por mi condicion humana, y responder a ello con algunos perdurables hallazgos que ... revelen una relacion particular con el mundo." Small task indeed. "Cuba a mi manera" is a delightful account of the author's belated trips to "Castro's Cuba" during a time when most Latin American intellectuals, disillusioned by its direction, had already broken with the Revolution. His surreal encounters with the bureaucracy bordering on the farcical ("Woody Allen in Havana," the author dubs himself), his hobnobbing with such mythic figures as Fidel Castro, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Ernesto Cardenal, and his truncated affair with Trini, director of Casa de las Americas, are all memorable experiences that Bryce Echenique shares with his readers with unabashed gusto and exquisite sensibility.

Bryce Echenique has never disputed the evidence that his fiction is informed by liberal doses of autobiographical elements, though he has often downplayed its importance. It is not surprising, then, that a novelist who has made a career out of pouring his thinly veiled innermost feelings upon his readers would now formally regale them with a very selective account of his real life. Is this indeed the real life of Alfredo Bryce Echenique, or are we being presented with a new rendition of Borges y yo? His dedication page quoting the master deceiver himself does not seem to be gratuitous. Perhaps the clue can be found in the title. Borrowing from Andre Malraux, Bryce Echenique has qualified his eminently confessional book as Antimemorias, the implication being that its underlying purpose--given the futility of exploring the subconscious--is to convey the facts, just the facts. Bryce Echenique is no Malraux, however, and we can be thankful for that. In spite of his protestations that "yo solo me propongo narrar hechos, personas, lugares, que le dieron luz a mi vida," it is not the facts but the author himself who emerges as a beacon in a world that would be much darker without him.

Permiso para vivir is a splendid, heartwarming reading experience, not just because the innate oral quality of Bryce Echenique's rich prose creates the vivid illusion that we have been his friends for years, but because every page is a passionate reaffirmation of his conviction that what matters most in his life is "tan solo el amor, la amistad y el trabajo."

Ismael P. Marquez University of Oklahoma