Vargas Llosa attempts the breakthrough into a new expression that aims to portray or perhaps even to create what he calls "total reality" by means of the "total novel."… Vargas Llosa seems to be struggling toward something new, something more apt as an expression of contemporary Spanish American reality. But the experimentation often seems to be only that, an attempt at the "new," which of course does reflect the Latin American zeitgeist exceedingly well. The problem with his methods is that he is working with elements tried and true handed down by the nineteenth century as daring innovations which, however, have become our regnant canon. We no longer riot over Brahms. (p. 30)

Mario Vargas Llosa has sought out the simultaneity suggested by the space-time continuum in his novel Conversation in The Cathedral. This long book encompasses any number of moments, which the author has daubed for identity through...