Separate the author from the work (politics)

The death of Mario Vargas Llosa has unleashed the eulogies that rightly befit a great writer like him. But his figure transcends that of literature, and it's amusing, then, to see how certain media outlets deploy a whole range of strategies to explain why, politically, his legacy is far more unsympathetic than that of his literary fiction. There are those who, quite simply, view this aspect from a benevolent perspective. Digital Freedom, For example, the headline is "Mario Vargas Llosa, tireless fighter for freedom and democracy, dies." Saying this about the man who always ruminated that South Americans voted badly and who supported figures like Pinochet's José Antonio Kast or Trump's Jair Bolsonaro implies having a very malleable and elastic concept of democracy. Other media, such as The reason, The Country either The Vanguard (at the time of writing, mid-afternoon) didn't have any specific headlines on their digital front page about the deceased's ideological drift in his later years and his rampant protests. Or about his disconnection with the people: all the candidates he supported ended up losing the elections.

These considerations don't diminish his literary figure, because we learned long ago that genius expresses itself outside of other, so-called, humanistic considerations, even though a romantic instinct drives us to believe that good literature emanates from a healthy moral architecture. With a guilty conscience, we separate artist and work to continue enjoying the latter despite the former. But, journalistically speaking, it's necessary to address both, even if in separate pieces. After all, an author is also his political work, if he wants it.