Different Kinds of Wives, Part 1

Mario Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian writer and a Nobel Prize winner in Literature. He’s one of my favorite Hispanic writers, and he’s pretty unique among Latin American intellectuals in that he’s not left-wing. Vargas Llosa is a libertarian. US lefties haven’t forgiven him that, and even now The Nation and the likes keep publishing pouty screeds about him. But he’s a genius, and his contribution to world literature is immense.

Vargas Llosa was married to his wife Patricia forever. Their marriage was an institution in Latin American literature. She was one of those “the wife of an important man” types. He was the sun, and she orbited him. She existed to be supportive of him.

When they were in their seventies, Vargas Llosa dumped Patricia for Enrique Iglesias’s mom Isabel Preysler. She was no spring chicken either, having gone through a string of rich and famous husbands between Julio Iglesias and Vargas Llosa.

Isabel is used to moving from man to man, and none of this was big deal to her, but imagine poor Patricia. Vargas Llosa was her life. All of a sudden, she was 70, and let go like hired help. This was all mega public because Vargas Llosa and Isabel are both celebrities, and she even more than he among the less well-read among us.

What do you think happened next?

It’s easy to guess. Vargas Llosa and Isabel stayed together for 7 years but then Isabel got bored, like she always does, and moved on. She’s on boyfriend # 3, I think, since dumping the Peruvian writer. All the boyfriends are famous, rich, aristocratic. She’s 72 and very rich but the boyfriends are richer.

And Vargas Llosa?

He’s a Latin American man of the older generation. He can’t live alone. He went back to Patricia. And, of course, she took him because she has no existence outside of serving him.

There’s a point I want to make here but I’ll put it in the next post because I know everybody hates long posts.