Gabriel García Márquez Read Free Page B

characteristics.” 1 The ambivalence is tangiblein the literary movement known as McOndo, which came about in the eighties and promoted the work of young voices, such as those of Alberto Fuguet and Edmundo Paz-Soldán. The movement’s name was a refutation of Latin America as a geography populated by Macondos: provincial towns in the middle of the jungle, besieged by epidemics of insomnia. 2
    The McOndista narratives were defined by hyper-realists à la Raymond Carver. They were about urban life, included a dose of crime and drugs, made constant references to popular culture, and addressed issues of globalization and sexuality. In an essay published in Salon.com, entitled “I am not a magic realist!” Fuguet stated: “Unlike the ethereal world of García Márquez’s imaginary Macondo, my own world is something much closer to what I call ‘McOndo’—a world of McDonald’s, Macintoshes and condos. In a continent that was once ultra-politicized, young, apolitical writers are now writing without an overt agenda, about their own experiences. Living in cities all over South America, hooked on cable TV (CNN
en español
), addicted to movies and connected to the Net, we are far away from the jalapeño-scented, siesta-happy atmosphere that permeates too much of the South American literary landscape.”
    Parricide is an essential part of the process of growing up. The classics are references in opposition to which younger writers define themselves. However, García Márquez’s towering reputation has only heightened with time. Will there come a period when his aesthetics are totally eclipsed? I believe that, like Cervantes, his standing is secure for the ages. While he will surely continue to be attacked,
One Hundred Years of Solitude
is an irreplaceable piece in the Latin American cultural puzzle. It contains the DNA of its people.
    A word about names and the sequential approach I take. To keep my objective distance, I refer to my subject as García Márquez and not as the overly familiar Gabo, or even the diminutive Gabito. I also avoid referring to the author asMárquez, as many in the English-speaking world are wont to do. Such simplification is an outright aggression to Hispanic onomastics. People in Spanish-language countries often have not one but two or three names. The popular singer José Antonio Jiménez doesn’t go by José, nor is he known as Tony. Likewise with patronymics: Mario Vargas Llosa isn’t Llosa to his readers in Lima. García Márquez always uses his two last names, the former referring to his paternal heritage, the latter to his maternal one. To drop one of them is a sign of laziness. I have respected the way names are articulated in interviews and newspaper clippings.
    As for the chronology of events, I follow the biographer’s mantra that a life lived and a life narrated must parallel each other. In other words, I move from García Márquez’s childhood until the success of
One Hundred Years of Solitude
in a linear fashion. I deviate from it only to give a general picture—historical, social, and cultural—of the environment in which García Márquez moved. And I interrupt the sequence when discussing the reception of his work in the English-speaking world. For instance,
La hojarasca
appeared in Spanish, in book form, in 1955, but the English translation was published only in 1972. To avoid needless repetition, I discuss the volume’s reception in Spanish and in English in the same section.
    In October 1982, several months after my discovery of
One Hundred Years of Solitude
in a reading marathon that began one rainy April afternoon, I read the triumphant headline of the daily newspaper
Unomásuno:
“
Gabo gana el Nobel!”
The Swedish Academy in Stockholm had awarded García Márquez the Nobel Prize in Literature. The jubilation in Mexico City was uncontainable. There were special