Article 11

"I try not to go to conferences. 1 don't know what to do there. And I found this one very intimidating. President Mi~terrand-as you know hes a friend-personally (n¥ited me and I told him ( would go. But then 1 looked at the agenda and at the 60 or so prize~winners and saw the French had drawn up subjects that were ent(rely abstract. 'Culture and Society,' for example. What would 1 do at a seminar with Claude Simon on culture and society? , .. "I think a lot about culture, but about popular culture. And I'm the product of a culture of immediate and burning problems. The French move in the: thoroughly glacial sphere aT pure ideas. And they don't suc~ cumb easily. They are brought up and fonned in academic tournaments. ( don't like to theorize.. I told Mitterrand that I considered myself culturally incompatible and that recognizlI~g ones own limitations is a privilege of age. Mitterrand, who is a man of culture, understood this very well."

GARCIA MARQUEZ AS STUDIED

OTHER AUTHORS FREQUENTLY STUDIED WITH GARCiA MARQUEZ "In a literary panorama dominated by Julio Cortazars Hopscacc11, Lezama Lima's Paradiso. Carios Fuentes's A Change of Shin, and Guill~ erma Cabrera Infante:; Thee Trapped Tigers," critic Emir Rodriguez Monegal has written, "all experimental works to the limit of expertmentation itself; aU hard and demanding on their readers." Garcia Marquez, tn his One Hundred Years oJ Soliwde:, "with an Olympian indifference to alien technique, sets himself free to narrate, with an Incredible speed and apparent innocence, an absolutely linear and chronological story ... with its beginning, middle and end. "I These authors, Cortazar, Jose Lezama Lima, Fuentes, and Cabrera Infante, writing out of their shared Latin American experience, might be studied with Garcia Marquez both because they all belong to the same liter~ all' movement, the Boom, and. no less because they are all e:xpenmemal writers In their choice of fonn. With other writers belonging to this "Boom," Garcia Marquez shares the cultural geography of Latin America. Adding Mana Vargas Uosa to the list, they share the experience of exile and a degree of cosmopolitanism. Although Jorge Luis Borges does not belong chronologically to thts movement, he has influenced all these writers; the frequent metaphor of the labyrinth in the works of GarcCa Marquez may be traced to its appearance in the work of Borges. A course in twenlieth~century Latin American fiction would include Borges, Cortazar, Juan Rulfo, AlejO Carpentier, Vargas Llosa, Fuentes, Cabrera Infante, Miguel Angel Asturias, Lezama Lima, and, of course, Garcia Marquez. Garcia Marquez shares themes with the Guatemalan wrtter Asturias, who 1s also a Nobel laureate. AstUrias wrote a trilogy on the banana boom and the United Fruit Company invasion of Latin Amenca. In El Sellar presidel1ce (1946; translated as TIle President, 1963), Asturias

134

Gnlc Sludy GuIdo 10 Gn:al LlrcmlUrc; LilCfory MaH
135

!E

deals with the theme of dictatorship, and its main character is a composite of several Latin Amertcan dictators. There is, Asturias has said, an "intuition" possessed by these figures. "
·~f/~~ -.,.:'i r

Garcia Marquez in the late 1960S

136

Gal.: Swdy GlIldC1 10 Gn:ollllcrCllurc: lllcrary MoSlcrs

Mark Frisch has proposed teaching One Hundred Years of Solitude with Tile Sound and Ille FIlI)~ "Viewmg Faulkner as a novelist in the New World,'" Garda Marquez has hImself remarked that "the Faulltnerian method is very effective for relating Latin American reality."~ He has also noted that Yoknapatawpha County in fact has banks on the Gulf of Mex· Gabnel Garcia Mdrquc::;

· '"

...... ,

ico and thus the. Caribbean. so that "in a way, Faulkner 1S a Latin Amencan wrtter.",

Olle Hundred Years oj Solitude might also be studied alongside the novel of fantasy, although this study would deemphasize the strong.politIcal context that runs through the entire noveL Yet, GarCia Marquez
138

(1983; translated as I ... RigobCi1Cl Meltdill: An Indian Woman tn Guatemala, 1984) and

---~l~,.L'- - - -

the Mexican American writer Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima (972) whIch has a Mexican setting. 1

RECLAIMING HISTORY

ciellca

50 varied is the fiction of Garcta Marquez that though he could be studied in a course on literary modernism as a movement, he might JUSt as effectivdy appear in a course on postmodernism In fiction, which would draw on the work of CalVino, Don Delillo, Cabrera Infante, Pynchon and other post· modernIst writers. As a political novelist, Garda Marquez mIght be studied with authors such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky, joseph Conrad. 19nazio Silane, and Andre Malraux. A course in the theme of brotherhood in the novel might include Conrad, Faullmer. Garcia Marquez, and the cinema of Luis BunueL'

"'Aqu( no pasa nada.' 'Nothing happens here.' The obligatory pause in the conversation, the look that waits to see whether the listener knows the reference. The moment's pause to let the quotation marks smk in. I know the passage well. It's from the Garcia Marquez. classic, One Hundred Yaars of Solituda. The book that a former Commandante Supremo of the M'19 Revolutionary Movement-Alvaro Fayad-used to say was the only text where a Colombian could recover the history of his country, the onlY required reading for a Colombian revolutIon· ary."

From Thll Pafat:t/ of )usriCf:; A Colombian Traqf:dy INew York. & london: FourW/tlls Eight Windows. 199)).

GABRIEL GARCiA MARQUEZ AND THE INVENTION OF AMERICA From Carlos Fuentes. Gabriel Garcia Mdltjuez and the Invenllon oj Amerleo, E. Allison Peers Lectures, no. 2 (Liverpool: Liverpool UniverSity Press. 1987) © Carlos Fuentes. ThiS lecture was delivered on 13 March 1987 in the Senate House of the Umversity of Liverpool. This IS a Cow. She must be milked every morning so that she will produce mlllt, and the milk must be boiled In order 10 be mi~ed <with coffee to make coffee nnd milk. j need only, to malte them reappear, pronounce. the namel; Balbec, Venice, Flo. renee, within whose syllables had gradually accumulated nllthe longing Inspired In me by the pl:lces for which they slood.

MHow realities are to be learned or discovered is perhaps too great a quesl\on for you or me to detennlne, CrnlYlus; but It Is worthwhile to have reached evw this conclUSion, thnt they are: 10 b~ learned and sought for, not from lIallltl but much better through themselv5 than through names ... ~ MThnl is clear, Socrates ... ~

The first of these thre.e quotations is [rom a famous passage in One Hunrlf-ed Years of Solitude, by Gabriel GarcIa Marquez, in which, after a plag!le of insomma, the whole village of Macondo is affected by loss of memory. Gabriel GardrtMdrque.::

Gulc Study Guldel 10 Gmu Lilualurc; Llh:rnr.Y Mallen

]I

139

ISSN lH6.1SJO

LITERARY MASTERS 5

Volume

Gabriel Garcia Mdrquez

joan Mellen A MANLY, INC. BOOK

~ALE 01 Dd,olt Son Ft,:rncJ,C' london B'lSfon

Wo"dl,,'dg.,

~l.:.b

,·..d~~\h..

.c1 {}.

'''!;

TABLE OF CONT GABRIEL GARCiA MARQUEZ Matthew J. Broccoli llnd Richard Layman, Edllorlal DlrUlOfS While every dfon. has betn made to ensure the n:lIablilty of Ihe Inform:ulon presented In the public'lllon. The Gille Group dotS not guanmte:e the IIccuracy of the dala contained hertln. Gale accepl.S no payment Jor 1151lng; and Induslon 01 any organization, agency, Insmutlon, publica. tlon, service, or Individual does not Imply endorsement of the edilors or publisher. Errors brought to the attenllon of the publisher and verified to the satisfaction of the publlsher will be corrected In future editions. This publicallon 1£ 11 crcative work (ully prolcctcd by allnppliClible copyrlghllaws, as welJlls by misappropriation, Inde secret, unfair competition, lind other applicable lllo\Vs. The lIuthors lind editors of Ihts work have Il.dded vlIluc to the underlying factual material herein through one or more 01 the followtng: unique lind original selecllon, coordination, express~on, arrangement, and dass!nclltlon of the Inlonnatlon.

A Note to tltt Reader by Alvin Ktrnan Acimowledgments

CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS IN GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ'S LIFE

x

I

ABOUT GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ ••..•.••••......•...........•.... 7

Personal Data 7

CopyrighllO:l:OOO

His Childhood and Biographical Glimpses 10

The Gille Group

Awards and Recognition 20

F:mnlnglon Hills. MI 48331

_

GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

All rights reserved Including the right of reproduction In whole or In pari in lIny fonn. All rights 10 Ihb publication will be vigorously defended

27500 Drake Road

vii _

GARCIA MARQUEZ AT WORK •.••.....•..............•......••.••.. 24

Getting Establlsl"d 24 Techniques 28 ISBN 0-7876·3970·1 lSSN 1526·1530

,

Snbject To Revision 46 Criticnl ReceptIoll 49 GARCIA MARQUEZ'S ERA .•.•..•...•...••.•..•..•..•.••....•.•.•.•. 60

Prinled In the United States of America

Garcia Mdrquezs COl/lillY 60

10 9 B 7 6 5 4 3 1 1

Garefn Mdrqllezs Era alJd Time III HistolY 65

Lifestyle and Cull"re 76 GARCIA MARQUEZ'S WORKS.......•..•...•.•..•.....•.....•....... 83 BOOJlS

83

SClipts and Screenplays 103 v