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=== Gabriel García Márquez

1928-

Occupation: Writer, journalist.

Biographical Essay:

Gabriel García Márquez is one of Latin America's most influential writers. He writes best sellers using "magic realism," a technique whereby fantastic happenings are interwoven with realistic, matter-of-fact events. His most acclaimed work is his 1967 novel, Cien años de soledad (published in English in 1970 as One Hundred Years of Solitude). For that masterpiece and for his entire body of writings, García Márquez was awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize for literature in 1982.

García Márquez was born in 1928 in Aracataca, Columbia, the oldest of sixteen children born to Gabriel Eligio García Márquez and Luisa Santiaga Márquez Iguaran. He lived in the Caribbean part of Colombia, which he has described in interviews as a "fantastic place." The people there were descendants of pirates, smugglers, and slaves, a mixture of cultures given to magical stories and legends. Because his family was poor, he lived with his grandparents until he was eight years old.

Childhood Filled With Ghosts

García Márquez grew very close to his grandparents. He claims his writing style comes from his grandmother, who would invent fantasies to avoid answering his questions about their life and its often sad realities. "I had an extraordinary childhood surrounded by highly imaginative and superstitious people," he explained to Manuel Osorio in the UNESCO Courier, "people who lived in a misty world populated by phantasms."

When his grandfather died in 1936, García Márquez was sent back to live with his parents. He found this change very disturbing at first. However, he soon realized that his parents were a positive influence for him. Raising many children in extreme poverty resulted in a hard life for his mother. Since García Márquez was the oldest child, his relationship with her was always very serious. He said later that there was nothing they could not tell each other. His father was a telegraph operator who wrote poetry, played the violin, and loved to read. He shared his love of the arts with his oldest son.

Free public schools are uncommon in much of South America. Since García Márquez's family was desperately poor, he had to apply for a scholarship to attend school when he was twelve. To take a qualifying exam for the scholarship, he was forced to undertake a seven-hundred-mile, eight-day voyage by ship and train to th

e capital city of Bogot--Lupita Faz (talk) 18:38, 17 July 2010 (UTC)á. He was competing with three thousand students for only three hundred scholarships. While on the train, García Márquez met and befriended a shy man. It turned out that this man was in charge of the scholarship program. He awarded a scholarship to García Márquez, whose schooling was thus assured.

Journalism Verses Creative Writing

By the time García Márquez finished high school in 1946, he had earned a reputation as a writer. Although he next studied law at the University of Bogatá, he began to write short stories. In 1950 he joined the staff of a newspaper. During the day, he worked as a journalist; at night, he worked as a novelist. By 1955 he had completed work on his first book, La hojarasca ("Leaf Storm").

In 1958 García Márquez married his childhood sweetheart, Mercedes Barcha. After he had first proposed to her when he was thirteen, they maintained a sporadic, casual relationship until they were ready to marry. The couple eventually had two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo. García Márquez continued to work as a reporter, covering stories throughout Latin America, including the Cuban Revolution in 1959. By 1961 he had also managed to write two more books, El coronel no tiene quien le escriba ("No One Writes to the Colonel") and La mala hora ("The Evil Hour").

In 1965 García Márquez left journalism to write fiction full time. He spent eighteen months in Mexico working on One Hundred Years of Solitude. When he finished the book, he was so poor he couldn't afford to mail it all at once to his publisher. To raise the money needed for postage, his wife sold their blender. She then divided the bundle of pages into two halves. By mistake she mailed the second half of the book first. Then, when she had raised more money, she sent along the first half. Luckily, the publisher recognized the excellence of the book, no matter in what order he received it.

Magical Masterpiece Is a Best-seller

One Hundred of Years of Solitude is set in an imaginary community on the coast of Colombia and follows the lives of several generations of the Buendia family. Besides describing the complicated family relationships, the story reflects the political, social, and economic problems of South America. The mix of historical and fictitious elements in the book give it its air of "magic realism."

The novel was a best-seller from the day it appeared in 1967. It has been translated into thirty languages and has sold more than ten million copies. One Hundred Years of Solitude has been so popular that García Márquez has been offered millions of dollars to have a film version made of the book. He refuses to allow it. "I want readers to go on imagining the characters as they see them," he told interviewer Claudia Dreifus. "That isn't possible in the cinema. In movies, the image is so definite that the spectator can no longer imagine the character as he wants to, only as the screen imposes it on him."

During the 1960s and 1970s, works by Latin American writers were increasingly translated and made available to American readers. One Hundred Years of Solitude helped solidify the presence of these writers in the American market. A critic for the Antioch Review, quoted in Hispanic Writers, wrote that García Márquez's work would also help insure that "Latin America itself will be looked on less as a crazy subculture and more as a fruitful, alternative way of life."

Nobel Prize in Literature

When García Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1982, he was praised for his literary talents. The Swedish Academy that presents the prizes noted in its citation the "each new work of his is received by critics and readers as an event of world importance, is translated into many languages and published as quickly as possible in large editions."

The Academy also cited García Márquez for his activities on behalf of the poor and the oppressed in Latin America. The writer is a well-known social activist who uses his fame to promote political goals. García Márquez indicated that the money he received with the Nobel Prize would be used to help political prisoners and leftists in Latin America. His close friendship with Cuban President Fidel Castro and his communist political views eventually caused him to flee Colombia and settle in Mexico City, Mexico. The U.S. government has prohibited García Márquez from spending time in the United States because of his views and his involvement with Castro.

After the Nobel

García Márquez hasn't rested on his success. He has published numerous books—both fiction and nonfiction—and has written several screenplays for Spanish television. One of his most beloved works is the 1985 novel El amor en los tiempos del cólera (published in English in 1988 as Love in the Time of Cholera). It is the captivating story of Florentino Ariza's undying love for the woman who rejected him twice. Merle Rubin, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, labeled the novel "a boldly romantic, profoundly imaginative, fully imagined work of fiction that expands our sense of life's infinite possibilities."

With El general en su labertino (The General in His Labyrinth), first published in 1989, García Márquez told yet another type of story: historical fiction. The novel relates the story of the final months in the life of the great South American revolutionary leader Simón Bolívar (1783-1830), who gained independence for the northern colonies of South America. The General in His Labyrinth details Bolívar's renouncing of the Colombian presidency and his final long journey down the Magdalena River to his death near the Caribbean coast in 1830. Applauded for its research, the novel was dubbed "a fascinating literary tour de force and a moving tribute to an extraordinary man," by novelist Margaret Atwood in the New York Times Book Review.

In 1992 García Márquez published Strange Pilgrims, a collection of a dozen short stories, all set in Europe. His 1995 novel, Of Love and Other Demons tells a story he covered as a young journalist, recreating the fabulous life of Sierva Maria, the daughter of wealthy parents who grows up with the African slaves on her family's plantation. Bitten by a rabid dog, the girl undergoes an exorcism.

García Márquez produced a more journalistic book in the 1997 News of a Kidnapping, which recounts the edge-of-the-seat tale of a series of kidnappings mounted by the drug lords of Colombia in their attempts to avoid U.S. extradition. In 2001 García Márquez came out with a series of short picture books. The illustrated short stories in hard cover books are somber and haunting and not necessarily for children. Among them are La siesta del martes (Tuesday's Siesta or Nap), Maria dos Prazeres, and Un senor muy viejo con unas alas enormes (A Very Old Man with Large Wings).

As prolific in his senior years as he was as a younger man, it is clear that García Márquez connects with his craft at a level many writers can only hope to achieve. He explained in an interview with the UNESCO Courier: "When you are working hard on something, trying to make sense of it, worrying at it, fanning it into a blaze, you reach a point where you control it and identify with it so completely that you feel that a divine wind is dictating it to you. That state of inspiration exists, yes, and when you experience it, although it may not last very long, it is the greatest happiness that anyone could possibly experience."

"I had an extraordinary childhood surrounded by highly imaginative and superstitious people, people who lived in a misty world populated by phantasms."

FURTHER READINGS

For More Information

•Atwood, Margaret, review of The General in His Labyrinth, New York Times Book Review, September 16, 1990, pp. 1, 30. •Christian Science Monitor, May 12, 1988. •Dolan, Sean, Gabriel García Márquez, Chelsea House, 1994. •Elnadi, Bahgat; Rifaat, Adel; Labarca, Miguel, "Gabriel García Márquez: The Writer's Craft," UNESCO Courier, February 1996, p. 4. •Hispanic Writers, 2nd Edition, Gale, 2000. •Lopez, Adriana, "Tuesday's Siesta, Review," Library Journal, June 1, 2001. •UNESCO Courier, October 1991, pp. 8-9.

Mención de la fuente:"Márquez, Gabriel García (1928-)." UXL Hispanic American Reference Library. Ed. Sonia Benson. 2nd ed. Detroit: UXL, 2003. Student Resource Center - Gold. Gale. Colegios. 17 July 2010 .