Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez
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35. GGM, Mexico City, to Plinio Mendoza, Barranquilla, 8 December 1963: GGM says he finished the script “this morning.”
36. GGM says he met Fuentes in 1961; Eligio García says 1962; Fuentes himself says 1963; Julio Ortega, Retrato de Carlos Fuentes (Madrid, Círculo de Lectores, 1995), p. 108, says 1964.
37. Carlos Fuentes, El Nacional (Mexico City), 26 March 1992. In Mexico, as elsewhere, GGM’s close relationships would be with the most important writers (with the exception of Octavio Paz, who was generally hostile to him). His warmest relationships, among the leading authors, would be with Fuentes and with Carlos Monsiváis.
38. Miguel Torres, “El novelista que quiso hacer cine,” Revista de Cine Cubano (Havana), 1969.
39. GGM, Panamá City, to Plinio Mendoza, Barranquilla, late October 1964.
40. GGM, Mexico City, to Plinio Mendoza, Barranquilla, late November 1994.
41. GGM, “Sí, la nostalgia sigue siendo igual que antes,” El Espectador, 16 December 1980.
42. Emir Rodríguez Monegal, “Novedad y anacronismo de Cien años de soledad,” Revista Nacional de Cultura (Caracas), 185, July-September 1968.
43. GGM, Mexico City, to Plinio Mendoza, Barranquilla, 22 May 1965, says he finished the script “a week ago” and it now has a definitive title, Tiempo de morir.
44. Miguel Torres, “El novelista que quiso hacer cine,” Revista de Cine Cubano (Havana), 1969; Emilio García Riera, Historia documental del cine mexicano (Mexico City, Universidad de Guadalajara, 1994), 12 (1964–5), pp. 229–33.
45. See Plinio Mendoza, “Entrevista con Gabriel García Márquez,” Libre, 3, March-May 1972, where he says that in Mexico he wrote film scripts (“very bad ones, according to the experts”) and learned all there was to know about the industry and its limitations (p. 13). He stated that the directors he most admired were Welles and Kurosawa but the films he had most enjoyed were II Generale della Rovere and Jules et Jim.
46. Emilio García Riera, Historia documental del cine mexicano, 12 (1964–5), pp. 160–5.
47. Miguel Torres, “El novelista que quiso hacer cine,” Revista de Cine Cubano (Havana), 1969.
48. José Donoso, The Boom in Spanish American Literature: A Personal History (New York, Columbia University Press/Center for Inter-American Relations, 1977), pp. 95–7.
49. His book would be called Los nuestros [Our People] in Spanish but the English title was more historically significant: Into the Mainstream.
50. Eligio García, Tras las claves de Melquíades, pp. 55–6, 469.
51. Luis Harss and Barbara Dohmann, Into the Mainstream: Conversations with Latin-American Writers (New York, Harper and Row, 1967), p. 310.
52. Ibid., p. 317.
53. Eligio García, Tras las claves de Melquíades, pp. 68–9.
54. Carme Riera, “Carmen Balcells, alquimista del libro,” Quimera, 27 January 1983, p. 25.
55. Eligio García, Tras las claves de Melquíades, p. 608.
56. He would tell Mendoza in a letter that he had the first sentence when he was seventeen!
57. Two examples: in The Fragrance of Guava GGM assures Plinio Mendoza categorically that he turned the car around (“It’s true, I never got to Acapulco,” p. 74) but in “La novela detrás de la novela,” Cambio (Bogotá), 20 April 2002, he states that they did drive on to Acapulco for the weekend (“I didn’t have a moment’s peace on the beach”) and got back to Mexico City “on the Tuesday.”
15 / Melquíades the Magician: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1965–1966)
1. GGM, “La penumbra del escritor de cine,” El Espectador, 17 November 1982.
2. Mendoza, The Fragrance of Guava, p. 80.
3. Poniatowska, interview, September 1973, Todo Mexico, op. cit., pp. 218–19.
4. See Alastair Reid, “Basilisk’s Eggs,” in Whereabouts. Notes on Being a Foreigner (San Francisco, North Point Press, 1987), pp. 94–118. Reid is excellent on the question of veracity and verisimilitude in García Márquez.
5. Eligio García, Tras las claves de Melquíades, p. 59. In a letter Paco Porrúa told me: “Gabo’s experience in Buenos Aires, lived in a kind of rapture of communion and enthusiasm, was undoubtedly very exceptional. The book in the street, the theatre in the street … Gabo was a popular personage in the streets and in the parties that took place night after night. There were scenes bordering on hysteria: it was surprising how many señoras from Buenos Aires said they had an uncle or grandfather identical to Aureliano Buendía” (Barcelona, 6 May 1993).
6. Carlos Fuentes, “No creo que sea obligación del escritor engrosar las filas de los menesterosos,” “La Cultura en Mexico, ¡Siempre! (Mexico City), 29 September 1965.
7. Saldívar, GM: el viaje a la semilla, p. 433.
8. See José Font Castro, “Anecdotario de una Semana Santa con Gabriel García Márquez en Caracas,” Momento (Caracas), 771, April 1971, pp. 34–7.
9. Eligio García, Tras las claves de Melquíades, p. 617.
10. Poniatowska, interview, September 1973, Todo Mexico, op. cit., p. 195.
11. I talked to María Luisa Elío about this in 1992 and to GGM in 1993.
12. Poniatowska, interview, September 1973, Todo Mexico, op. cit., p. 197.
13. Claude Couffon, “A Bogotá chez García Márquez,” L’Express, 17–23 January 1977, p. 77.
14. José Font Castro, “Anecdotario de una Semana Santa con Gabriel García Márquez en Caracas,” Momento (Caracas), 771, April 1971, p. 36.
15. Mendoza, La llama y el hielo, pp. 110–11.
16. Eligio García, Tras las claves de Melquíades, pp. 88–91. See also GGM, “Valledupar, la parranda del siglo,” El Espectador, 19 June 1983.
17. Eligio García, Tras las claves de Melquíades, pp. 505fr.
18. Ibid., pp. 570–71.
19. Carlos Fuentes, “García Márquez: Cien años de soledad,” “La Cultura en Mexico,” ¡Siempre! (Mexico City), 679, 29 June 1966.
20. Plinio Mendoza, The Fragrance of Guava, p. 77.
21. Fiorillo, La Cueva, pp. 105–6.
22. Ibid., pp. 268–9.
23. As Jorge Ruffinelli has perceptively pointed out, the only way to tell the story of this book’s writing, publication and reception (and the way it mainly has been told) is as a fairy tale (La viuda de Montiel [Xalapa, Veracruz, 1979]).
24. James Papworth, interview, Mexico City, 1994.
25. GGM, “Desventuras de un escritor de libros,” El Espectador, Magaztn Dominical, 7 August 1966.
26. GGM, Mexico City, to Plinio Mendoza, Barranquilla, 22 July 1966.
27. Claude Couffon, “A Bogotá chez García Márquez,” L’Express (Paris), 17–23 January 1977, p. 77. In Mendoza, The Fragrance of Guava, however, GGM says Mercedes alone took it to the post office (p. 75) … (Perhaps this was the second package?)
16 / Fame at Last (1966–1967)
1. Alvaro Mutis, quoted by Saldívar, GM, p. 498. This chapter draws particularly on conversations with Mutis (Mexico City, 1992, 1994), Tomás Eloy Martínez (Washington, 1997, Warwick, 2006, Cartagena, 2007), Paco Porrúa (Barcelona, 1992 and by letter), Eligio GM, José (“Pepe”) Stevenson, as well as many others.
2. Eligio García, Tras las claves de Melqutades, pp. 618–19.
3. See Claudia Dreifus, “Gabriel García Márquez,” Playboy 30:2, February 1983, p. 174.
4. See Eligio García, Tras las claves de Melqutades, pp. 32–3.
5. As reprinted in A. D’Amico and S. Facio, Retratos y autorretratos (Buenos Aires, Crisis, 1973), which included photos of GGM taken in Buenos Aires in 1967.
6. Ernesto Schóo, “Los viajes de Simbad,” Primera Plana (Buenos Aires), 234, 20–26 June 1967.
7. Mario Vargas Llosa, “Cien años de soledad: el Amadís en América,” Amaru (Lima), 3, July-September 1967, pp. 71–4.
8. See GGM, “La poesía al alcance de los niños,” El Espectador, 25 January 1981, where GGM, railing against literary critics, says that even Rojo doesn’t know why he put the reverse letter on the cover.
&nbs
p; 9. “Cien años de un pueblo,” Visión, 21 July 1967, pp. 27–9.
10. See, for example, “De cómo García Márquez caza un león,” Ercilla (Chile), 168, 20 September 1967, p. 29.
11. GGM, Mexico City, to Plinio Mendoza, Barranquilla, 30 May 1967.
12. Saldívar, GM: el viaje a la semilla, p. 500.
13. Tomás Eloy Martínez, “El día en que empezó todo,” in Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda, ed., “Para que mis amigos me quieran más …”: homenaje a Gabriel García Márquez (Bogotá, Siglo del Hombre, 1992), p. 24.
14. Ibid.
15. Saldívar, GM: el viaje a la semilla, p. 501.
16. Martínez, “El día en que empezó todo,” in Cobo Borda, op.cit., p. 25.
17. Ibid.
18. José Emilio Pacheco, “Muchos años después,” Casa de las Américas (Havana), 165, July-December 1987.
19. Quoted by Paternostro, Paris Review, 141, op. cit.
20. See Vargas Llosa, Historia de un deicidio, p. 80.
21. Ibid.
22. Emir Rodríguez Monegal, “Diario de Caracas,” Mundo Nuevo (Paris), 17, November 1967, pp. 4–24 (p. 11).
23. Semana (Bogotá), 19 May 1987, notes that OHYS was scarcely mentioned in the Colombian press at this time.
24. Mendoza, La llama y el hielo, p. 111.
25. Eligio GM, in Galvis, Los GM, p. 257.
26. See, for example, Félix Grande, “Con García Márquez en un miércoles de ceniza,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos (Madrid), June 1968, pp. 632–41.
27. Iáder Giraldo, “Hay persecución a la cultura en Colombia,” El Espectador, 2 November 1967.
28. Alfonso Monsalve, “La novela, anuncio de grandes transformaciones,” Enfoque Internacional (Bogotá), 8, December 1967, pp. 39–41; reprinted in El Tiempo, “Lecturas Dominicales,” 14 January 1968, p. 4.
17 / Barcelona and the Latin American Boom: Between Literature and Politics (1967–1970)
1. GGM, Bogotá, to Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Paris, 30 October 1967.
2. GGM, Barcelona, to Plinio Mendoza, Barranquilla, 21 November 1967.
3. This chapter and the two following draw on interviews with Juan Goytisolo (London, 1990), Luis and Leticia Feduchi (Barcelona, 1991, 2000), Paul Giles (Barcelona, 1992), Germán Arciniegas (Bogotá, 1991), Germán Vargas (Barranquilla, 1991), Margot GM (1993), Eligio GM (1991, 1998), Jaime GM (Santa Marta, 1993), Mario Vargas Llosa (Washington, 1994), Jorge Edwards (Barcelona, 1992), Plinio Mendoza (Bogotá, 1991), Nieves Arrazola de Muñoz Suay (Barcelona, 1992, 2000), Carmen Balcells (Barcelona, 1992, 2000), Rosa Regás (Havana, 1995), Beatriz de Moura (Barcelona, 2000), Juan Marsé (Barcelona, 2000), José María Castellet (Barcelona, 2000), Tachia Quintana (Paris, 1993), Ramón Chao (Paris, 1993), Claude Couffon (Paris, 1993), Jacques Gilard (Toulouse, 1999, 2004), Roberto Fernández Retamar (Havana, 1995), Víctor Flores Olea (Providence, R.I., 1994), Rafael Gutié-rrez Girardot (Barcelona, 1992), Joaquín Marco (Barcelona, 1992), Annie Morvan (Paris, 1993), Paco Porrúa (Barcelona, 1992, and letter), Juan Roda and María Forna-guera de Roda (Bogotá, 1993), Alfonso López Michelsen (Bogotá, 1993), as well as many conversations with others.
4. On this and on Spain in general, see GGM, “España: la nostalgia de la nostalgia,” El Espectador, 13 January 1982.
5. Note that as late as 1978 GGM declared to Angel Harguindey of El País that if he were a Spaniard he would be in the Spanish Communist Party. (See Rentería, ed., p. 172). It should be emphasized that he always stressed that such decisions depended on the specific circumstances of the case.
6. Rosa Regás, interview, Havana, January 1995.
7. Luis and Leticia Feduchi, interviews, Barcelona, 1992 and 2000.
8. Both Rodrigo and Gonzalo García Barcha told me this.
9. Paul Giles, interview, Barcelona, 1992.
10. Carmen Balcells, interview, Barcelona, 1991.
11. Francisco Urondo, “La buena hora de GM,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos (Madrid), 232, April 1969, pp. 163–8 (p. 163).
12. Dislike of critics would become almost an obsession for this man who had himself been an occasional critic in his journalism from 1947 onwards, and sometimes a cruel one (his review of Biswell Cotes’s book Neblina azul in El Universal, late 1949, is typical: see Gilard, ed., Textos costeños 1).
13. In 1973 the film director Pier Paolo Pasolini would agree with GGM about OHYS and its conception and would go even further in perhaps the most scathing attack ever launched against the writer and his book. See “GGM: un escritor indigno,” Tempo, 22 July 1973, an article characteristic of Pasolini’s fanaticism and exaggeration.
14. In the prologue to Strange Pilgrims (1992), GGM writes that after a few years in Barcelona he had a life-changing dream: he was at his own burial (Spanish entierro: it is important to remember that this concrete word is the one normally used in Spanish for “funeral”) and had a good time chatting to his old friends until the moment when he realized that they were leaving after the ceremony and he could not.
15. GGM talked about this repeatedly after 1967, to the irritation of many critics (none of whom, needless to say, were as famous as him). But compare Bob Dylan, Chronicles. Volume I (New York, Simon and Schuster, 2004): “After a while you learn that privacy is something you can sell, but you can’t buy it back … The press? I figured you lie to it” (pp. 117–18).
16. GGM’s aversion to OHYS may to some degree have extended to Buenos Aires, where fame first beset him. In a letter, Paco Porrúa, the midwife to his celebrity, told me: “When I met Gabo again in Barcelona, I noticed some changes. Above all I had the impression that Gabo no longer spoke with the inspired spontaneity of before, and that in some way he was constructing a new persona. Years later, in 1977, I saw him again in Barcelona and had a conversation with him and Mercedes about those days in Buenos Aires. Well, I embarked on a monologue about how wonderful those days had been. Gabo and Mercedes listened reluctantly, almost with an air of disapproval. Later I thought that the famous dream he had had in Barcelona about attending his own funeral had evidently pointed on to other deaths” (Barcelona, 6 May 1993).
17. See Franco Moretti, Modern Epic: The World System from Goethe to García Márquez (London, Verso, 1996). Compare and contrast Pasolini’s response, noted above, with Moretti’s assessment of the book’s transcendental importance.
18. Fernández-Braso, Gabriel García Márquez. (Una conversación infinita), p. 27.
19. París: la revolución de mayo (Mexico, Era, 1968).
20. GGM, Barcelona, to Plinio Mendoza, Barranquilla, 28 October 1968.
21. Ibid.
22. GGM seems never to have made any comment on the Tlatelolco events even in his private correspondence. This is at first sight extraordinary given that he had lived in Mexico for six years (though probably explicable in the sense that he intended to return there), not least considering its similarity to the 1928 Ciénaga massacre, undoubtedly the best-known and most controversial episode alluded to in GGM’s entire oeuvre.
23. Beatriz de Moura, interview, Barcelona, 2000.
24. Juan Marsé, interview, Barcelona, 2000.
25. Julio Cortázar to Paco Porrúa, 23 September 1968. See Julio Cortázar, Cartas, ed. Aurora Bernárdez, 3 vols. (Buenos Aires, Alfaguara, 2000).
26. GGM, “El argentino que se hizo querer de todos,” El Espectador, 22 February 1984.
27. Carlos Fuentes, Geografía de la novela (Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1993), p. 99. While they were in Prague Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata received the Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm. García Márquez would be an enthusiastic reader of his works.
28. Carmen Balcells, interview, Barcelona, 1991.
29. Gonzalo’s first child, Mateo, was born in 1987.
30. See Régis Debray, Les Masques (Paris, Gallimard, 1987) for a superb insight into the mind-set of the bien-pensant leftists of the 1970s.
31. Rodrigo García Barcha, interview, New York, 1996.
32. See “Memorias de un fumador retirado,” El Espectado
r, 13 February 1983, in which GGM recalls giving up smoking “fourteen years ago.”
33. See Eligio GM’s chronicle in Aracataca-Estocolmo (pp. 22–4): “Feduchi, the analyst of the thousand pipes, the one who helped GGM with the motivation of the murderers in Chronicle and helped him give up smoking, though ironically he couldn’t keep to it himself.”
34. See E. González Bermejo, “Ahora doscientos años de soledad …,” Triunfo, November 1971, in Rentería, p. 50.
35. John Leonard, New York Times Book Review, 3 March 1970. The New York Times published a favourable review on 8 March which it later included in 1996 as one of the reviews anthologized to celebrate the newspaper’s centenary.