If two alpha animals form a close friendship and celebrate it in front of everyone, it is almost predictable that the relationship will at some point turn into open hostility. This was seen recently when the world’s richest man and the biggest dealmaker of all time were mercilessly voted out after a period of striking unanimity.
How could two highly successful writers, after forming a close friendship, become so enemies that they could no longer see each other until they died? It was proven that the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa suddenly hit his Colombian colleague Gabriel García Márquez with a punch in a Mexican cinema in February 1976. This meant that the close friendship that had previously existed between the two winners of the Nobel Prize for literature was finally broken.
None of them has commented in detail about the incident. The sentence that Vargas Llosa threw at García Márquez at the same time he punched him is recorded: “This is for what you did to Patricia!” The episode, which is still a mystery to this day, stimulates the imagination to all kinds of speculation. Peruvian-American writer Jaime Bayly used the incident as the pretext for an ambitious literary project, the novel “Los Genios.” Germany too: “The Geniuses”.
The secret is still out
Hopes are high that Bayly will reveal the secret of the doomed friendship between these two superliterate Latin American writers, but a note makes it clear from the start that this is not a historical text or a journalistic study. In contrast, a novel is a work “that combines several real events with fictional elements that arise from the author’s imagination.” At least in the end he gave a reasonable, but unsatisfying explanation for the legendary blow: The knockout was punishment for the fact that “Gabo” García Márquez slept with Patricia, Vargas Llosa’s second wife.
The plot of the novel, which covers a wide period of time leading up to the event, is described as if the omnipresent narrator had personally experienced the scene as well as countless other episodes in the lives of the two authors. Bayly achieves this pseudo-authenticity primarily through constantly quoted dialogue in direct speech. More marginally, it seems that the rift between Vargas Llosa and García Márquez has deeper reasons than just the women’s story surrounding Patricia, for example the differences in political views between the two of them have increased over time.
One looks different, the other is stupid
Jaime Bayly, novelist, journalist, and talk show host, is an accomplished writer who prioritizes a pleasant narrative style over depth and reflection. The text, eloquently and reliably translated by Willi Zurbrüggen into German, would benefit from a little more zest and ironic spice. Some events seem overly constructed, such as the episode in which Vargas Llosa’s father serves his son incognito as a servant. After the father “unmasks” him, the son takes revenge for his brutal parenting methods and humiliates him by accusing him of smelling of sweat.
While Vargas Llosa is characterized by great detail and nuance, García Márquez seems a bit pale – like a brilliant but also somewhat stupid writer. The example of two literary “geniuses” – two macho men with their own unique qualities – makes clear how violence experienced during childhood and adolescence through barbaric educational methods or military training can poison the bonds of friendship.
This novel reads smoothly and is funny and entertains for a longer period of time. Unfortunately, overly trivial passages and repetition make the text unnecessarily large. Bayly could have gained more than a well-told story from the rather original idea of choosing a spectacular blow as the starting point of a novel.
Jaime Bayly: “Geniuses.” Novel. Translated from Spanish by Willi Zurbrüggen. Dtv, Munich 2025. 336 pages, hardcover, €24.
