The first time I encountered Gabriel Garcia Marquez was when I read One Hundred Years of Solitude, a story set in the fiction village of Macondo. The story follows the family of Jose Arcadio Buendia, his wife Ursula and their descendants. In the search for a better life and a new home, the patriarch found Macondo after days in the jungle. The utopic village becomes the home of the Buendia family, where they are faced with trials and tribulations — one of which is the arrival of a gypsy Melquíades, who lived with them writing scrolls in a secret code. Later, these scrolls indicate the end of line of the Buendias, and was discovered by the last of the Buendias whose baby was born with a pig tail.
Through the seven generations, there is an awareness created in the reader as the different characters became self-aware, and as they try to escape their own misfortunes. The contrast between the lives of the young and the elderly Buendias is central to the novel, as it looks at the nostalgic past, through the old people's lives and the unknown future through the impatient and solitary young ones.
I was taken in by the beauty of the story, despite the sadness and tragedy it bore. The story seemed to weave through my mind, and made me interested in the characters, and created the suspense to make me flip through the pages to get to the end. The thing that stood out with Marquez is his ability to write out of the genres created for him by critics. He moved from the genealogical narration to forensics to the psychological. His quest was to tell a story and tell it well.
It was from these first book of the lawyer-turned-journalist that I can appreciate the art of magical realism, which Marquez pointed out that they were already present in Latin American Literature, and which influenced authors like Salman Rushdie. The novel opened up the eyes of the reader as well as that of the critics, earning Gabo (as he was fondly referred to) the 1972 Nobel Prize and the Romulo Gallegos Prize. While it was the novel that earned him international acclaim, it took Marquez 18 months to finish, and with it came a lot of debts in terms of rent and food.
It was therefore no surprise when I saw and picked Love in the Time of Cholera, a story about two people who find love in their twilight years. Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall in love when still very young, with Fermina's aunt acting as a bridge between them, helping them exchange letters. Once her father realises this, he sends her away to her mother's family where she still communicates with Florentino. Upon her return, her interest in him reduces and she is courted by Dr Urbino, who is dedicated to eradicating cholera. Urbino dies in an accident and Florentino starts making advancements to Fermina, and they eventually end up together.
According to Marquez, the story was inspired by an elderly couple that met every year in Acapulco, and were murdered by the boatman, making them a worthy story on a newspaper. “Through their death, the story of their secret romance became known. I was fascinated by them. They were each married to other people.”
With the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez became a world renown writer, even to the point of facilitating discussions between the guerillas and the Colombian government. He also became close friends with international leader such as Fidel Castro, with whom Marquez said they had an 'intellectual friendship.' His fame, and open views on political issues, especially US imperialism made the US immigration deny him visas but the ban was later lifted by President Bill Clinton, who cited One Hundred Years of Solitude as his favourite novel. He was also in a literary feud with Mario Vargas Llosa.
In terms of literature, Gabo's controversies arose in the writing of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, which earned him condemnation from religious and children rights circles. The book explores the romantic trysts of a 90-year-old man and a14-year-old prostitute, who occasionally meet in a room at Rosa Cabarca's brothel. The book, published in 2004, created controversy in Iran, where it was banned. It also caused a lot of discussion about child abuse. One of the award-winning columnists, Lydia Cacho, lashed out at Marquez after the film adaptation of the book, stating:
“Why did García Márquez accept taking to the screen Memories of my Melancholy Whores just at a time when the world is fighting against the growing commercial exploitation of girls? This is not about censorship or prudishness, but about the need of an in-depth debate about the ideological support for child exploitation.”
He, however, earned support from some writers, who claimed that the book, just like other works of art, should be seen as depictions of life rather than 'manuals of conduct.'
To me, the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a privilege to read. The writer not only knew his subjects but also crafted them to appease to the emotions of the reader. Marquez prepared himself for his writing career by reading a lot. From Kafka to Hemingway and so on. He believed a writer should read as much before trying out writing:
“I cannot imagine how anyone could even think of writing a novel without having at least a vague of idea of the 10,000 years of literature that have gone before,” he says.
All through his writing career, he used the local setting as the background of his stories. From his home in Aracataca to his own circumstances, Marquez used these situations as part of his fiction, giving it authenticity and grounding. The courtship story of his parents was the backdrop of the romance in Love in the Time of Cholera, while the la violencia, the civil war between the liberals and conservatives, was portrayed in his novel In Evil Hour. He also portrayed his grandfather, an ex soldier, in the book No One Writers to the Colonel.
As a journalist, he has had his ups and downs. After a report about a sailor portrayed as a hero by the Colombian government, the country dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla was irked, forcing Marquez to run away to Europe, where he stayed for two years. He also lost his job when the Pinilla shut down his newspaper.
In 1999, he was diagnosed with cancer, and he concentrated on his memoirs with Memories of My Melancholy Whores, being the exceptional novella. It was in 2012, when his brother Jaime stated that Marquez was no longer able to write as he suffered from senile dementia.
Marquez's health saw him hospitalised in Mexico City for lung and urinary tract infection, and was suffering from dehydration. He died of pneumonia on April 14, and he is survived by his wife, Mercedes, and two sons.
Even in his death, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a force to reckon with. Not only did he impact the Colombian literature, he also created buzz by his convictions that Europeans “insist on measuring us with the yardstick that they use for themselves, forgetting that the ravages of life are not the same for all, and that the quest for our own identity is just as arduous and bloody for us as it was for them,” in reference to European literature. He stayed true to his duty as a writer by writing well, and by keeping to the ideal novel, which “moves its reader by its political and social content, and, at the same time, by its power to penetrate reality and expose its other side.”
Marquez's Works
Novels
In Evil Hour (1962)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975)
Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
The General in His Labyrinth (1989)
Of Love and Other Demons (1994)
Novellas
Leaf Storm (1955)
No One Writes to the Colonel (1961)
Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981)
Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004)
Short Story Collections
Eyes of a Blue Dog (1947)
Big Mama's Funeral (1962)
The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother (1978)
Collected Stories (1984)
Strange Pilgrims (1993)
Non Fiction
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (1970)
The Solitude of Latin America (1982)
The Fragrance of Guava (1982, with Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza)
Clandestine in Chile (1986)
News of a Kidnapping (1996)
A Country for Children (1998)
Living to Tell the Tale (2002)