35. In Living to Tell the Tale GGM says he barely spoke to his mother on the return journey; but in Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda, “Cuatro horas de comadreo literario con GGM,” he says that he immediately began to ask her about “the story of my grandfather, the family, where I’d come from.”
36. GGM, “°Problemas de la novela?,” El Heraldo, 24 April 1950.
37. Fiorillo, La Cueva, pp. 20–21.
38. El Heraldo, 14 March 1950.
39. Escalona remains the best-known composer of vallenatos and a national institution. See Consuelo Araujonoguera, Rafael Escalona: el hombre y el mito (Bogotá, Planeta, 1988), a biography by the woman who would stage the now traditional vallenato festivals in Valledupar until she was killed, apparently in a firefight between the army and FARC guerrillas, in September 2001.
40. See Fiorillo, La Cueva, p. 36.
41. See Living to Tell the Tale, Fuenmayor, Crónicas sobre el grupo, and Gilard, ed., Textos costeños 1.
42. See Fiorillo, La Cueva, pp. 186–7.
43. On GGM and Hemingway, see William Kennedy, “The Yellow Trolley Car in Barcelona: An Interview” (1972), in Riding the Yellow Trolley Car (New York, Viking, 1993), p. 261.
44. GGM, “Faulkner, Nobel Prize,” El Heraldo, 13 November 1950.
45. Eligio García, Tras las claves de Melquíades, pp. 360–61.
46. Carlos Alemán gave me a copy of the letter when we met in Bogotá in 1991. The Spanish version was later reprinted in Arango, Un ramo de nomeolvides, pp. 271–3.
47. Curiously, two years before, Gaitán had been buried in the courtyard of his house in Bogotá because it was feared that his tomb would attract unhealthy attention from both his admirers and his enemies.
48. “Caricatura de Kafka,” El Heraldo, 23 August 1950.
49. Martín is both sinister (he uses Guajiro witchcraft, including sticking pins in dolls’ eyes) and bland: a curious combination.
50. “El viaje a la semilla,” El Manifesto (Bogotá, 1977), in Rentería, p. 161.
51. GGM told Elena Poniatowska (interview, September 1973, in Todo México, p. 224), that he “has never been able to use Mercedes literarily because he knows her so well that he has no idea what she is really like.”
52. I talked to Meira Delmar about those days in November 2006.
53. Ligia GM, in Galvis, Los GM, pp. 165–6. Mercedes said the same to me in 1991.
54. See Antonio Andrade, “Cuando Macondo era una redacción,” Excelsior (Mexico City), 11 October 1970.
55. Aida GM, interview, Barranquilla, 1993.
56. See “El día que Mompox se volvió Macondo,” El Tieinpo, 11 December 2002. Margarita Chica died in Sincelejo in May 2003. The best source on the causes of this murder and its aftermath is Eligio García, La tercera muerte de Santiago Nasar (Bogotá, Oveja Negra, 1987).
57. See Living to Tell the Tale, pp. 384–6.
58. Ligia GM, in Galvis, Los GM, p. 154.
59. See Angel Romero, “Cuando GM dormía en El Universal,” El Universal, 8 March 1983, which would become a key source for Arango’s book.
60. Gilard, ed., Textos costeños 1, p. 7.
61. Gustavo GM, in Galvis, Los GM, p. 211; GGM mentions the incident in “El cuento del cuento,” El Espectador, 23 August 1981.
62. Living to Tell the Tale, p. 390.
63. García Usta, Como aprendió a escribir García Márquez, pp. 34–5.
64. Arango, Un ramo de nomeolvides, p. 274.
65. Ibid., p. 211.
66. Gustavo GM, in Galvis, Los GM, p. 194.
67. GGM, “Nabo. El negro que hizo esperar a los ángeles,” El Espectador, 18 March 1951.
68. It is also manifestly “Faulknerian.”
69. Saldívar says this visit was in 1949. This appears to be based on a false memory due to GGM having lived in Cartagena twice: in 1948–9 and in 1951–2. Mutis himself has always been clear that he used his position with the airline Lansa to travel to Cartagena to meet GGM and he did not work for Lansa until 1950.
70. GGM, “Mi amigo Mutis,” El País (Madrid), 30 October 1993. The fact that he did not meet Mutis until 1951 does not inhibit GGM from stating that he used to tell Mutis and Mallarino his stories in Bogotá in 1947-8: see “Bogotá 1947,” El Espectador, 18 October 1981.
71. See Santiago Mutis, Tras las rutas de Maqroll el Gaviero (Cali, Proartes, 1988), p. 366.
72. See Fernando Quiroz, El reino que estaba para mí: conversaciones con Alvaro Mutis (Bogotá, Norma, 1993), pp. 68–70.
73. Vaina. Colombianism: “whatsit,” “thingumajig.” A whole dissertation could be written on this word, which is an integral part of the Colombian national character. It is used, at first sight, when the speaker is unable or cannot be bothered to come up with a precise word. In a country, however, where speech is normally unusually precise, the use of vaina is almost always quite deliberate (while feigning spontaneity), a kind of national custom or even addiction, a way of leaving things imprecise, even a way of showing that one wishes to be free, un-pompous—or even, in the country where “the best Spanish in the world” is spoken, transgressive. And obviously, for vaina to mean “everything,” as here, rather than, as is usually the case, some insignificant object unworthy of a name, shows a still more ironic and irreverent attitude. The word is used overwhelmingly by male speakers—possibly because women are aware that it comes from the Latin vagina.
74. Vivir para contarla, p. 481. (My translation.)
75. In a 1968 interview, GGM said Vinyes consoled him over the rejection: see Leopoldo Anzacot, “García Márquez habla de política y literatura,” Indice (Madrid), 237, November 1968; but of course Vinyes had left in April of that year.
76. There were still some remarkable moments. One of the most memorable was “The Coca-Cola Drinker” (“El bebedor de Coca-Cola,” 24 May 1952), his salute to Ramón Vinyes following his death in Barcelona on 5 May, just before his seventieth birthday. It is a testament to the “wise old Catalan” but also to the vision and originality of Gabito himself, his last disciple, who found a way of saying goodbye which was at once irreverent, self-mocking and touching. It ended, “Last Saturday they called us from Barcelona to say that he’s died. And I’ve sat down to remember all these things; just in case it’s true.”
77. I interviewed Poncho Cotes in Valledupar in 1993. See Rafael Escalona Martínez, “Estocolmo, Escalona y Gabo,” in Mera, ed., Aracataca-Estocolmo, pp. 88–90, on their relationship.
78. Interview, Manuel Zapata Olivella, Bogotá, 1991. See Zapata Olivella, “Enfoque antropológico: Nobel para la tradición oral,” El Tiempo, Lecturas Dominicaks, December 1982.
79. See Ciro Quiroz Otero, Valknato, hombrey canto (Bogotá, Icaro, 1983).
80. (My translation.) This song won the composition prize at the Vallenato Festival in 1977. García Márquez’s knowledge of the virtually unknown vallenato genre in the 1940s had been deepened by Clemente Manuel Zabala and Manuel Zapata Olivella (both from the Bolívar side of the Costa) even before he met Escalona, but he had always loved the popular music of his region.
81. See GGM, “Cuando Escalona me daba de comer,” Coralibe (Bogotá), April 1981.
82. See, for example, “La cercanía con el pueblo encumbró la novela de Amãrica Latina,” Excelsior (Mexico City), 25 January 1988.
83. Vivir para contarla, p. 499. (My translation.)
84. Cobo Borda, Silva, Arciniegas, Mutisy García Márquez, p. 479.
85. See Plinio Mendoza, “Entrevista con Gabriel García Márquez,” Libre, 3, March-May 1972, p. 9, where GGM quotes the line and confesses that it may be the inspiration for The Autumn of the Patriarch.
86. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold his fictionalized self would also become an encyclopedia salesman, “during an uncertain period when I was trying to understand something of myself” (London, Picador, 1983), p. 89.
87. See map of the Colombian Atlantic/Caribbean Coast.
88. See Gilard, ed., Gabriel García Marquez, Obra periodtstica vol. III: Entre
cachacos 1, p. 66.
89. Remembered in a letter from GGM Barcelona to Alvaro Cepeda Samudio Barranquilla, 26 March 1970. I am grateful to Tita Cepeda for sight of this letter.
90. Vivir para contarla, p. 504 (my translation); though Gilard was informed that GGM left first (Textos costenos I, p. 25).
91. This work won the National Short Story Prize for 1954. See Living to Tell the Tale, p. 454, where, as usual he affects indifference to both money and glory.
92. Cobo Borda, Silva, Arciniegas, Mutis y García Márquez, p. 480. GGM also says here that the novelist he most enjoys, who really sends his mind travelling, is Conrad—again, thanks to Mutis.
93. Vivir para contarla, pp. 506–7. (My translation.)
8 / Back to Bogotá: The Ace Reporter (1954–1955)
1. Interviews with Alvaro Mutis, Mexico City, 1992, 1994. For the purposes of this chapter I also talked with José Salgar (Bogotá, 1991; Cartagena, 2007), Germán Arciniegas (Bogotá, 1991), Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda (Bogotá, 1991), Ana María Busquets de Cano (Bogotá, 1991), Alfonso and Fernando Cano (Bogotá, 1993), Alvaro Castaño (Bogotá, 1991, 1998 and 2007), Nancy Vicens (Mexico City, 1994), José Font Castro (Madrid, 1997), and Jacques Gilard (Toulouse, 1999, 2004), among many others. In 1993 Patricia Castaño guided me on an expert tour of all the GGM-related sites in central Bogotá.
2. See Alfredo Barnechea and José Miguel Oviedo, “La historia como estética” (interview, Mexico 1974), reproduced in Alvaro Mutis, Poesía y prosa (Bogotá, Instituto Colombiano de Cultura, 1982), pp. 576–97 (p. 584).
3. Living to Tell the Tale, p. 439.
4. Oscar Alarcón, El Espectador, 24 October 1982, p. 2A. I interviewed Oscar Alar-cón, a cousin from Santa Marta whom GGM introduced into El Espectador, in 2007.
5. From my interview with Salgar, 1991.
6. “La reina sola,” El Espectador, 18 February 1954.
7. Gilard, ed., Entre cachacos 1, pp. 16–17. Gilard’s work is again indispensable for this period.
8. See Sorela, El otro García Mdrquez, p. 88. Sorela, a onetime journalist with Spain’s El País, has a number of illuminating insights into GGM’s journalism.
9. Gilard, ed., Entre cachacos I, is particularly severe on GGM’s film criticism.
10. Such consistency, reliability and—yes—humanity is what connects him so irresistibly to his immortal precursor, Cervantes.
11. Whereas he was more than happy to do so indirectly, much later in life, through film and journalism “workshops.”
12. Living to Tell the Tale, p. 450. See also José Font Castro, “Gabo, 70 años: ‘No quiero homenajes póstumos en vida,’” El Tiempo, 23 February 1997, for reminiscences of this period.
13. Interviews with Nancy Vicens, Mexico City, 1994 and 1997; on Luis Vicens, see E. García Riera, El cine es mejor que la vida (Mexico, Cal y Arena, 1990), pp. 50–53.
14. Quoted by Fiorillo, La Cueva, p. 262.
15. See Diego León Giraldo, “La increíble y triste historia de GGM y la cine-matografía desalmada,” El Tiempo, Lecturas Dominicales, 15 December 1982, both on La langosta azul and on his cinema criticism in Barranquilla and Bogotá. My friend Gustavo Adolfo Ramírez Ariza has pointed out that GGM’s costeño friends made—even more—frequent visits to Bogotá.
16. Living to Tell the Tale, pp. 463–5.
17. Gilard, ed., Entre cachacos 1, pp. 52–3.
18. GGM, “Hace sesenta años comenzó la tragedia,” El Espectador, 2 August 1954.
19. Published on 2, 3 and 4 August 1954 respectively.
20. GGM recalls this trip to “Urabá” in “Seamos machos: hablemos del miedo al avión,” El Espectador, 26 October 1980. One of his most detailed accounts of his manipulations, however, is in Germán Castro Caycedo, “‘Gabo’ cuenta la novela de su vida. 4,” El Espectador, 23 March 1977. See also Living to Tell the Tale, pp. 444–50. Daniel Samper, “GGM se dedicará a la música,” 1968, in Rentería, pp. 21–7, gives a particularly outrageous version of this anecdote: p. 26, “Y así fue como se salvó al Chocó.” See “GGM: ‘Tengo permanente germen de infelicidad: atender a la fama,’” Cromos, 1 January 1980, in which he goes even further (“we were modifying reality”), to the evident shock of some El País journalists.
21. “Hemingway, Nobel Prize,” El Espectador, 29 October 1954. The article is unsigned but Gilard is surely right in believing that the author is GGM.
22. Living to Tell the Tale, p. 472, says it was in GGM’s office in El Espectador.
23. GGM, talk given to El País, journalist’s course, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28 April 1994.
24. Interview with José Font Castro, Madrid, 1997.
25. See “La desgracia de ser escritor joven,” El Espectador, 6 September 1981. Twelve years after its first appearance, when García Márquez was briefly back in Bogotá after the publication of OHYS, he found dozens of copies of this first edition for sale in second-hand bookshops at a peso each and bought as many as he could.
26. See Living to Tell the Taie, p. 482.
27. See Claude Couffon, “A Bogotá chez García Márquez,” L’Express (Paris), 17–23 January 1977, pp. 70–78, especiallyp. 74.
28. See Dante, Vita Nuova, chapter II.
29. Mercedes was an excellent high-school student and had thought of studying bacteriology at university but it seems that the endless imminence of her hypothetical marriage to Gabito eventually made her shelve such plans.
30. See Living to Tell the Tale, pp. 467–8, 470.
31. See Juan Ruiz, Arcipreste de Hita, El libro de buen amor (fourteenth century), so influential in Spanish culture and psychology. The theme of “crazy love” is mentioned on both the first page and—implicitly, through reference to its opposite, “good love”—the last page of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, his last novel, which GGM published when he was seventy-seven years old.
32. Mexico City, 1997.
33. See for example Claudia Dreifus, “Gabriel García Márquez,” Playboy 30:2, February 1983, where he states that Mercedes said it was best for him to go or he would blame her for the rest of their lives (p. 178).
9 / The Discovery of Europe: Rome (1955)
1. “‘Los 4 grandes’ en Tecnicolor,” El Espectador, 22 July 1955.
2. This chapter draws on interviews with Fernando Gómez Agudelo (carried out by Patricia Castaño, Bogotá, 1991), Guillermo Angulo (Bogotá, 1991, 2007), Fernando Birri (Cartagena, 2007, London, 2008), and Jacques Gilard (Toulouse, 1999, 2004), and discussions with many other communicants, including, notably, John Kraniauskas.
3. “‘Los 4 grandes’ en Tecnicolor.” For a different recollection of his journey see “Regreso a la guayaba,” El Espectador, 10 April 1983, in which he states, once again, that his intention was “to return to Colombia a few weeks later.”
4. Germán Castro Caycedo, “‘Gabo’ cuenta la novela de su vida. 4,” El Espectador, 23 March 1977. Castro Caycedo 4 and 5 give one of the best accounts of GGM’s experiences in Geneva.
5. Again Gilard’s work is essential: see Gabriel García Márquez, Obra periodística vol. V: De Europa y América 1 (Bogotá, Oveja Negra, 1984), p. 21.
6. Ibid.
7. Sorela, El otro García Márquez, p. 115.
8. In fact the Pontiff’s crisis, which had arisen when García Márquez was still in Bogotá, was already long past. But see “Roma en verano,” El Espectador, 6 June 1982, where GGM insists on this story and goes into detail.
9. Ibid. In Germán Castro Caycedo, “‘Gabo’ cuenta la novela de su vida. 5,” El Espectador, 23 March 1977, he states that he was in Rome “eight months, or a year.”
10. Excelsior (Mexico City), 19 March 1988, reported that La Stampa of Turin said that GGM’s Montesi articles threw no new light on the case. More to the point, given García Márquez’s handicaps, is whether the case was summed up better by any other journalist.
11. El Espectador, 16 September 1955, p. 1.
12. Karen Pinkus, The Montesi Scandal: The Death of Wilma Montesi and the
Birth of the Paparazzi in Fellini’s Rome (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2003), p. 2.
13. See ibid., p. 36, on Bazin’s What Is Cinema?
14. GGM, “Domingo en el Lido de Venecia. Un tremendo drama de ricos y pobres,” El Espectador, 13 September 1955.
15. “Roma en verano,” El Espectador, 6 June 1982.
16. GGM, “Confusión en la Babel del cine,” El Espectador, 8 September 1955. Over a quarter of a century later Rosi, by then a firm friend, would travel to Colombia, to make a movie of GGM’s novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez Page 77