I have to say that the more I think about the talk by Mario Vargas Llosa with professor Olga Arbeláez, the better job I think she did. When I was there I kept complaining in my head about the lack of profundity in her questions. My colleague and fellow blogger Clarissa explains in her blog what the "interview" consisted on. In fact, we chatted for a while after the talk, and we both agreed that professor Arbeláez could have done a better job. Every scholar there probably had the same opinion.
However, I was incredibly lucky to be invited to the cocktail that followed the talk, and there my opinion changed. As Clarissa said, "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." This is the reason,many of us that were there came out of the interview a little disappointed for the simple questions, but at the same time happy to have heard the eloquence of one of the best writers alive in a language that is not his, but that he managed pretty well to deliver a highly entertaining monologue (after each questions he gave lengthy answers full of anecdotes).
Realizing that this was a time for Mario Vargas Llosa to enjoy the prize was the biggest achievement of Dr. Arbeláez. Deeper, more complex questions (as much as I would have like them) would have deprived the Nobel prize of delivering a joyful speech such as the one he gave us. Also, in the cocktail party I realized that basically nobody of the attendants were literature experts, and some of them hadn't read more than one book by Vargas Llosa (if they were saying the truth), so nobody complained about the questions.
Would have I enjoyed better a different set of questions? Absolutely. Did professor Olga Arbeláez fail as an interviewer? Not exactly, she just didn't do the job that we as academic nerds would have loved her to do.
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