Narrating to live it
Briton Gerald Martin publishes first "authorized"
biography of Gabo: a monumental literary and editorial event
Michel PORCHERON
One would have had to have been in New York in person on Wednesday,
May 27 to understand what happened at the Americas Society. British
academic Gerald Martin launched what he called "a tolerated biography"
of Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel
Prize for Literature.
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Gabriel
García Márquez |
This book of more than 600 pages (of the 2,500 of manuscript) is
already considered a monumental literary and editorial event which will
obviously have a place apart in the history of world literature. The
English-language edition of Gabriel García Márquez: A Life was launched
for the first time in the United Kingdom, published by Bloomsbury, which
described it as an "authorized" biography. Since May 5, it has been
distributed in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf publishers, which
issued the U.S. edition.
Spanish-language editions will be published in the United States by
Knopf, in the rest of the world by RH Mondadori publishers. Milena
Alberti, director of the Knopf Spanish-langue publications department,
said translation is underway and the goal is to have the book out by
October 6.
"It is a real process, given that now the translation team has to
research the writings of García Márquez translated into the English book
with the writer's originals," Alberti said. "The translation is being
done in Spain, and an adaptation to Latin American Spanish is also
needed."
During the New York event, Martin described García Márquez as "the
finest novelist in the world, if one does not consider the world to be
just the United States and the United Kingdom." Martin also said that as
far as he knew, García Márquez was not working on a book at present.
Gerald Martin, 64, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh
(U.S.A.) and researcher with the London Metropolitan University in
London, a translator for Miguel Angel Asturias (Mr. President), spent
almost 20 years researching the life and work of García Márquez. He
spoke with him on numerous occasions, for hundreds of hours, and talked
to and interviewed more than 300 people close to the Colombian,
including relatives, friends, heads of state, starting with those in
Colombia, Fidel Castro, politicians like Felipe González and writers
such as Alvaro Mutis, Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa.
"At first, García Márquez told me that he wouldn't collaborate with
my project. 'What do you want to do with this, are you sick? I haven't
died yet!'" That was how García Márquez reacted about 18 years ago when
Martin presented the idea to him, he said. "After an hour and a half and
several whiskies, he finally agreed to participate in the biography, but
he said to me, 'OK, but don't make me work,'" the biographer said
humorously during the New York event. That's why his book is more of a
"tolerated" biography than an authorized one, Martin says, and in fact,
García Márquez would have preferred for it not to be published. In the
book's epilogue, he says that, given that Gabo had tolerated the
project, had told him that he wouldn't oppose it or prevent Martin from
talking to his people.
He adds, "But he could have told me that he would appoint me his
authorized biographer, and give me all of his notebooks, letters and
access to all his personal effects. But he never did anything of the
sort." Martin says he did not raise the issue so as not to seem
ungrateful; on the contrary, he feels enormously grateful to García
Márquez for his collaboration, although gratitude is not the best
motivation for a biography. He said they got along very well,
considering that it was difficult. Nobody likes having a biographer, he
said...
PREVIOUS CHAPTERS
On March 26, 2006, Granma International published an article, "Gabo
stuck," which said, "The publication of the second volume of his
autobiographical trilogy may be postponed." García Márquez published the
first volume, Living to Tell the Tale, in 2002. His most recently
published work was Memories of My Melancholy Whores, a short novel
(2004).
Actually, everything began with an interview of García Márquez
published by La Vanguardia, in Barcelona, Spain, in its Sunday
supplement of January 29, 2006. Outside of its deep interest, at that
time it did not have the importance, the worldwide impact then that it
now has three years later. It can now be read differently, because
between the interview (with journalist Xavi Ayén) and Martin's
biographical work, there is an obvious, strong and fundamental tie that
allows the reader to better understand how and why the authorized
biography came about, and the relevance of Gabriel García Márquez: a
Life. Moreover, since then, Gabo has not accepted any other interview
with a "historical" span and that sums everything up.
Some information must be noted. García Márquez himself wondered,
could his inspiration be on the way to expiring? It was not a matter of
numbers but of faculties in front of his cutting-edge computer keyboard.
GGM (for ease and also one of the signatures of the journalist García
Márquez in the Colombian newspaper El Espectador, as of 1954) told Ayén,
"This year, 2005, I have taken a sabbatical. I have not sat down in
front of the computer. I have not written one line. And moreover, I do
not have a project or any prospect of having one. I had never left off
writing; this has been the first year in my life that I have done so..."
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