Gabriel García Márquez (27 page)

23
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 20.

24
. García Márquez, “Vuelta a la semilla,” published on December 21, 1983, in
Notas de prensa: 1980–1984
. Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma, 1991: 643–646. See also Gerald Martin,
Gabriel García Márquez: A Life
: 103.

25
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 17.

26
. See Ilan Stavans, “Sangre y origen,”
El Diario
(New York), April 14, 2009.

27
. Gabriel García Márquez,
One Hundred Years of Solitude
, translated by Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper & Row, 1970: 135.

28
. Mario Vargas Llosa,
García Márquez: Historia de una deicidio
: 28.

1
. Gabriel García Márquez,
Living to Tell the Tale
: 136.

2
. When I wrote my essay “The First Book” (included in
Art and Anger.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996) for
The Washington Post Book World
in 1995, I had a long debate with the newspaper's fact checker who pointed out that Emilio Salgari didn't exist because his name doesn't appear in the Library of Congress catalog. To my dismay, I realized he was right once I checked the source. How come such an influential young-adult author had no footing in the English-speaking world? It's a mystery . . .

3
. Gabriel García Márquez,
Living to Tell the Tale
: 137.

4
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 96.

5
. Registered at the Ministerio de Educación, in Folio 345, Libro 18.

6
. Pete Hamill, “Love and Solitude”: 130.

7
. Pete Hamill, “Love and Solitude”: 130.

8
. Gabriel García Márquez,
One Hundred Years of Solitude
: 379.

9
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 39.

10
. For instance, Silvia Galvis,
The García Márquez
: 73–106 and 133–156. Also, Dasso Saldívar,
El viaje a la semilla
: 75–128.

11
. Jacques Gilard,
Gabriel García Márquez
:
Obra periodística
, vol. 1
Textos costeños
. Barcelona: Editorial Bruguera, 1982: 7–8.

12
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 48.

13
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 48.

14
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 41.

15
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 30, 49. “Bloody Hell” is the same type of expression used by Úrsula Iguarán in
One Hundred Years of Solitude
, for instance, upon discovering the corpse of her son José Arcadio Buendía in the house he shared with Rebeca.

16
. Efraín Kristal,
Invisible Work: Borges and Translation
. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002: 186.

17
. Cristina Pestaña Castro, “¿
Quién tradujo por primera vez ‘La meta-morfosis' de Franz Kafka al castellano
?,”
Espéculo: Revista de estudios literarios
, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1999.

18
. Gabriel García Márquez, “The Third Resignation,”
Collected Stories
, translated by Gregory Rabassa. New York: Harper & Row, 1984: 5.

19
. Eligio García Márquez,
Tras las claves de Melquíades: Historia de “Cien años de soledad
.” Bogotá: Editorial Norma, 2001: 96.

20
. See Ilan Stavans, “Buffoonery of the Mundane,”
The Nation
(October 7, 2002). Reprinted as “Felisberto is an Imbecile,”
A Critic's Journey
. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.

21
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 32.

22
. See Ilan Stavans, “Beyond Translation: Faulkner and Borges,” in
Look Away!: The U.S. South in New World Studies
, edited with an introduction by Jon Smith and Deborah Cohn. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

23
. Juan Carlos Onetti,
Confesiones de un lector
. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1995: 20–21.

24
. Gabriel García Márquez,
“El amargo encanto de la máquina de escribir,”
in
Notas de prensa: 1980–1984
. Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma, 1991: 362–365.

25
. See Raymond Leslie Williams,
Ideology and the Novel in Nineteenth-and Twentieth-Century Colombia: The Colombian Novel, 1844–1987.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991: 20–51.

26
. Herbert Braun,
The Assassination of Gaitán
: 135.

27
. Herbert Braun,
The Assassination of Gaitán
: 149.

28
. Herbert Braun,
The Assassination of Gaitán
: 203.

29
. Gabriel García Márquez, “Bogotá 1947,” published on October 21, 1981, in
Notas de prensa: 1980–1984
. Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma, 1991: 218–220.

30
. Peter H. Stone, “Gabriel García Márquez”: 185.

1
. Peter H. Stone, “Gabriel García Márquez”: 185.

2
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 55.

3
. Germán Vargas Cantillo, “García Márquez y el Grupo de Barranquilla,”
El arte de leer a García Márquez
, edited by Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda. Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2007: 46.

4
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 55.

5
. Gabriel García Márquez, “El amargo encanto de la máquina de escribir,” in
Notas de prensa: 1980–1984
. Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma, 1991: 362–365. See Dasso Saldívar,
El viaje a la semilla
: 498.

6
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 55.

7
. Peter S. Stone, “Gabriel García Márquez”: 189–190.

8
. Interview with Susana Cato, “Soap Operas Are Wonderful, I've Always Wanted to Write One,”
Gramma
(January 17, 1988). Reprinted in Gene H. Bell-Villada,
Conversations with Gabriel García Márquez
. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006: 148–153. Tracing the possible inspirations of
One Hundred Years of Solitude
has become a sport of sorts among academics. As I state elsewhere in this volume, the usual suspects are, aside from
Diary of the Year of the Plague
, Virginia Woolf's
Orlando
, William Faulkner novels about the Deep South, and Honoré de Balzac's La Comédie humaine. I place at the top of the list the source of sources: the Bible. Intriguingly, David T. Haberly, in his essay “Bags of Bones: A Source for
One Hundred Years of Solitude
,”
MLN
, vol. 105, num. 2 (March 1990): 392–3, suggests an unlikely option: Chateaubriand's
Atala, which is mentioned prominently in a predecessor of García Márquez's novel in Colombia, Jorge Isaac's
María
.

9
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 59.

10
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 59.

11
. Alfred Kazin: “Review of
Leaf Storm and Other Stories
,”
New York Times Book Review
, February 20, 1972: 14.

12
. Alfred Kazin, “Review of
Leaf Storm and Other Stories
”: 14.

13
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 33.

14
. Heriberto Fiorillo,
La Cueva: Crónica del grupo de Barranquilla
. Barranquilla: Ediciones La Cueva, 2006: 354.

15
. Meira Delmar, interview with the author, Barranquilla, November 2007.

16
. Miguel Fernández-Braso,
La soledad de Gabriel García Márquez
. Barcelona: Planeta, 1972: 58–59.

17
. Heriberto Fiorillo,
La Cueva
: 310.

18
. Heriberto Fiorillo,
La Cueva
: 313.

19
. Heriberto Fiorillo,
La Cueva
: 313.

20
. Miguel Fernández-Braso:
La soledad de Gabriel García Márquez
: 59.

21
. Gabriel García Márquez,
Living to Tell the Tale
: 373.

22
. García Márquez: “
El cuento del cuento
,” published on August 26, 1981 in
Notas de prensa: 1980–1984
. Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma, 1991: 188–190.

23
. Gabriel García Márquez,
One Hundred Years of Solitude
: 393–394.

24
. Regarding the metaliterary devices, another point of coincidence—another tacit tribute?—between
Don Quixote
and
One Hundred Years of Solitude
is the recurrence of the palimpsest (etymologically, from the Latin
palimpsestum
, meaning
scraped again
, and defined as “a manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible”). The narrator of Cervantes's novel finds in Toledo, a town known for its academy devoted to translation, a scroll written originally in Arabic by the historian Cide Hamete Benengeli and asks a Moor he comes across on the street to translate it for him. In the last pages of García Márquez's novel, the last
Aureliano finds a series of parchments written by the Gypsy Melquíades that chronicles the Buendía saga and includes an italicized epigraph that reads: “
The first of the line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by the ants
” (
One Hundred Years of Solitude
: 420). In other words, the two texts have murky origins. Or, to go even further with the cultural connotations, both narratives aren't only presented as spurious; furthermore, they have been composed by chroniclers (an Arab, a Gypsy) whose standing in Hispanic civilization is defined by rejection.

25
. Gene H. Bell-Villada, “A Conversation with Gabriel García Márquez,”
Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Casebook
, edited by Gene H. Bell-Villada. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002: 22.

26
. Gustavo Arango,
Un ramo de nomeolvides: García Márquez en “El Universal
.” Cartagena: El Universal, 1995.

27
. Gabriel García Márquez,
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor
, translated by Randolph Hogan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986: v.

28
. Gabriel García Márquez,
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor
: vii.

29
. Gabriel García Márquez,
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor
: vii .

30
. Gabriel García Márquez,
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor:
ix . The reportage belongs to what has come to be known as the “Robinsonade” genre, i.e., narratives about shipwrecks and/or island survivors. It's a reference, obviously, to Daniel Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe
(1719), but the shelf is ample enough to include a predecessor: Thomas More's
Utopia
(1516), as well as Jonathan Swift's
Gulliver's Travels
(1726) and
Candide, ou l'Optimisme
(1759). The genre is a favorite of contemporary authors such as William Golding (
Lord of the Flies
, 1954), J. M. Coetzee (
Foe,
1986), José Saramago (
The Stone Raft
, 1986), Umberto Eco (
The Island of the Day Before,
1994), and Yan Martel's
Life of Pi
(2001).

31
. Rita Guibert,
Seven Voices: Seven Latin American Writers Talk to Rita Guibert
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973: 317.

32
. John Updike,
Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991: 493–494.

1
. Gabriel García Márquez, “
La desgracia de ser escritor joven
,” published on September 9, 1981, in
Notas de prensa: 1980–1984
. Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma, 1991: 195–198.

2
. Harley D. Oberhelman, “William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez: Two Nobel Laureates,” in
Critical Essays on Gabriel García Márquez
, edited by George R. McMurray. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1987: 78–79.

3
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 97.

4
. Claudia Dreifus, “Interview; Gabriel García Márquez,”
Playboy
(February 1983). Reprinted in
Conversations with Gabriel García Márquez
, edited by Gene H. Bell-Villada. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2006: 97.

5
. Gabriel García Márquez: “
Polonia: verdades que duelen
,” published on December 30, 1981, in
Notas de prensa: 1980–1984
. Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma, 1991: 255–258.

6
. Jacques Gilard,
Obra periodística
, vol. 4:
De Europa y América
: 53.

7
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 97.

8
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
The Fragrance of Guava
: 97.

9
. Peter H. Stone, “Gabriel García Márquez”: 181, 187.

10
. Dasso Saldívar,
El viaje a la semilla
: 375.

11
. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza,
Aquellos tiempos con Gabo
. Barcelona: Plaza & Janés, 2000: 79.