One thing that made a really negative impression on me during last night’s event with Mario Vargas Llosa was the low quality of questions the interviewer asked the writer. The entire event was structured as an interview that a professor of Hispanic Literature conducted with the Peruvian writer. Mind you, the event took place at a university, and quite a prestigious one, too.
“So how did you feel when you got the Nobel Prize?” the interviewer asked Vargas Llosa.
The writer shared a funny, detailed story in response.
“So how did you feel when you got the Seix Barral Prize?” the interviewer asked after Vargas Llosa finished the story.
The writer provided a shorter and less interesting response.
“So how did you feel when you got the Romulo Gallegos Prize?” the interviewer asked immediately after that.
At that point, I started to fear that the poor writer would be asked the same question about every single one of the numerous prizes and awards he had won in his long and productive literary career. It’s possible that Vargas Llosa feared the same thing because his answer was a lot less inspired this time.
Eventually, it began to feel like the interviewer was about to ask the writer what his favorite color was.
Vargas Llosa is an easy person to interview because he is a great story-teller and a skilled public speaker. In response to every question, he launches into a fascinating, detailed discussion that the audience follows with bated breath. All that was needed for this event to work out much better than it did was an interviewer who’d taken the trouble to prepare question that were less in keeping with the Cosmo style of interviewing celebrities.
Clarissa's Blog 
eeek how embarassing and even worse, what a freakin’ waste of time! Too bad they didn’t just give him the microphone and let him speak.
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Because when you start asking difficult questions to MVLl he is at pains answering them:
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-166793-2011-04-22.html
As you know, I am not a huge fan of MVLl.
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You know that I changed my opinion about the interview later on. I posted my afterthoughts in my blog if you want to have a look at them. You don’t have to publish this comment, we’ll talk about it on Friday.
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Your blog doesn’t allow me to post comments any more for some reason. 😦
So I’ll post my comment here:
I understand the question about the Nobel prize. It was expected and everybody wanted to hear it. But who 2 more questions about other prizes he got a long time ago? And how about that question that started, “The main character of your most recent novel is very human.” What does this even mean?
I completely understand the goal of making the interview more understandable to people who are not very aware of MVL’s work. But then why ask about Seix Barral and Romulo Gallegos prize? It is precisely the literature nerds who’d get excited about that. English speakers are completely unaware of both Carlos Barral and Romulo Gallegos.
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I have no idea why you’re not allowed to post, I’m sorry, I’ll check to see if I can fix it. You know, I agree with everything that you say. In fact, she shouldn’t have made any questions. She should have asked him to talk about whatever he wanted to. I guess, I was just trying to understand her question choices. I met her at the cocktail party, and she mentioned that what she wanted was him to have fun. That’s why I decided to cut her some slack!
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I have figured it out! I was logged into Google under a different Id, that’s all.
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