What a delicious little book this is. An autobiographical novel where Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza collaborate and collectively reminisce to produce what is part memoir, part interview, and part a rich cultural, political and literary commentary on the various factors that formed Marquez the man and Marquez the writer. The background narratives read beautifully and seamlessness fuse into candid conversations where the two assemble the jigsaw puzzles of the past, share at times different understandings of people and events, and the interviewer deftly probes the inner recesses of the writer's mind. For anyone who loves Marquez's work as well as those generally interested in the influences, preoccupations, idiosyncrasies and craft, this book is a treasure cove. And it is so engrossing that I finished it in a session.
So much of how Marquez grew up, whom he interacted with, and what he lived through defines and forms what was to later become his fictional work of incredible imagination and superb complexity and texture. Time and again one gasps as a relative or an event or an impression from his recollections reminds one of a character, an episode and a sensation etched in one's memory from one of his great novels. As he himself states, the haunting stories his superstitious maternal grandmother told, the recollections of civil war recounted by his maternal grandfather - the liberal colonel, the company of his calm, strong, and persevering mother, and the diverse and at times desperate years he spent in sleepy Aracataca on the margins of the United Fruit Company, the feisty Barranquilla, the cold and rainy Bogota, and the sensual and quintessentially Caribbean Cartagena, all defined what he was to later produce. His Caribbean identity with its multiple cultural roots, the thin line between myth and reality, and its rich oral narrative traditions is something that he celebrates as an important defining phenomenon.
The book is compartmentalized into the following sections, all of which work very well: Origins, Family, His Craft; Education; Readings and Influences; Work; Waiting; One Hundred Years of Solitude; The Autumn of the Patriarch; Now; Politics; Women; Superstitions, Mania and Taste; and, Fame and the Famous. The book contains some memorable photographs. Of particular interest to me as a writer are the sections His Craft; Readings and Influences; and Work, and they bring out the laboriousness, the multifariousness and the multiplicity of factors and influences that form and define the writing process. At the same time, his interfaces both romantic and political, further show how Marquez the activist, Marquez the romantic, and Marquez the writer influenced each other. Marquez of course was a celebrity writer not in terms of his literary influence and impact but his popularity amongst and friendship with global political leaders, as indeed his own left ideology and activism. His insights into the politics and persona of many leaders, notably Castro and Mitterrand, are also of great interest. Of particular interest also are the two chapters on his two famous novels that provide insights into the inspirations behind many memorable moments and characters.
Only rarely during the reading of this book did I feel that any of its positions, postures, stances and foibles that one encounters, are affected. On the whole it reads honestly, fluidly and spontaneously as the life story of someone who rose from a poor background and a childhood in the backwaters in a turbulent milieu, and who through his obsessive commitment to reading and writing, sheer hard work and many years of struggle and waiting, managed to eventually break through and become a global literary celebrity figure whose appeal remains undiminished. He had no props or support due to his background and he achieved all that he did purely due to the genius and innovation of his writing and the vastness of his imagination. Remarkably, he maintained meanwhile a highly respectable career, a staunch and principled political commitment, a stable and happy marriage, and much cherished and old friendships, traveling cross the world and living life on his terms, while retaining a sharp questioning mind, a redeeming empath and the ability to write sentences that read like spells that bewitch.
This is a highly recommended book for Marquez fans, those interested in the art and craft of writing, and indeed those who seek out a well-told and riveting memoir. A fairly outstanding life - both real as well as magical in its nature - led to the creation of Marquezian worlds that continue to live on in the realm of magical realism.