I was intrigued by the language in this text and learned from Dr. Seminet the importance of language in the boom novels.   One of Shaw’s characteristics of the new novel is “Linguistic inventiveness as a dominant feature and central to the interrogation of reality, language becoming the protagonist, with a decrease of character and plot”. (p.363 of Shaw article) The Cubs did this splendidly.  The language was definitely inventive, but also the language was more important, or at least as important, as the plot. 
           There are many distinguishing characteristics that stood out.  Throughout the text we see very long sentences, such as the 2nd paragraph on p.43, starting with “From…” ending with “how?” at the end of the paragraph. There are lots of commas and explanation points, and few periods, creating many voices in one sentence. There is one voice, then a comma, then another voice in response, and it continues.

            The medley of voices is infused with multiple tenses in the same sentence.  Along with that we find sentences that run together, “The boys looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes, Lalo laughed, Fina what’s wrong with them, why the horse laughs, tell us, Choto blushed, because that’s why…” (p.22) “But he no way, waste of time, our parties bored him, old before his time, he didn’t go because he had better ones where I enjoy myself more.” (p.21)

            In the preface, Vargas Llosa says that he wrote with the intention of creating a  text to be sung, not read.    But there is also a lot of play in the language, which started to drive me crazy.  “…what horse laughs, she don’t play dumb…”. (p.22) The style of the text leads us to read this as She [said] “don’t play dumb”, since that is the way he cited them speaking.  But it could also be read “she don’t [or doesn’t] play dumb” which changes the sentence.  I felt that the author wanted the reader to insert punctuation, subtlety changing meaning.  He wanted an active reader, engaged in interpreting punctuation, grammar, and therefore meaning.

Not only did the narrator language stand out, but also the language of the Cuéllar.  His stuttering could have represented his isolation and disassociation, mirrored in the confusion of the language of the text.

        The plural voices in one sentence created a sense of collectiveness of thought, a feeling of group conversation and thoughts.  Everyone’s thoughts are thrown together creating a group presence, of everyone talking together.  This linguistic style translated into energy for me.  I felt the energy, liveliness, animation of the boys running to the soccer field, running into town, or piled into a car driving, learning to dance, and standing around shooting the breeze.