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Gabriel Garci­a Marquez: The Early Years

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The cover of Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The Early Years depicts a broken open pomegranate with its juice-laden seeds of a rich balaustine color. These brilliant red kernels, all bursting from one rind are potent imagery that can be likened to the fruits of a great writer who who may write many stories and novels but which all in some way promote one essential message. Garica Marquez once told someone, " 'a writer writes only one book, although the same book may appear in several volumes under different titles.' " Ilan Stavans, the prize-winning author or this brief look at Garcia Marquez (it is incomplete and impolite, Stavans writes, use only the final name, Marquez), is willing to run with that thesis. Stavans, who considers Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude to be one of only two Spanish-language masterpieces that "radically revamped our understanding of Hispanic civilization", shows that the make-believe town in the novel, Macondo, and its myriad characters are the culmination of years of percolation in Garcia Marquez's mind and in his previous published and unpublished writings. Stavans also makes the case that ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE was an inspired work: as Coleridge was divinely inspired to put down the lines of "Kubla Khan" so Garcia Marquez was inspired to pen, in eighteen months, this masterwork. However, Stavans suggests, "His inspiration didn't come from a divine source but from the injustice that surrounded him."

So, has Stavans written a biography or a literary criticism? Some of both. His own great admiration for ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, which he read in a 24-hour marathon session when he was in his early twenties and calls his "aleph", has fired this synthesis of Garcia Marquez's work and life. By and large, Stavans is successful in this mission, although the attempted portrait of Garcia Marquez, the man, sometimes recedes into the enthusiasm with which Stavans analyzes his literary history and his creations.

Perhaps the most interesting chapter is "Sleepless in Macondo" which includes a lengthy excerpt from the earlier edition of The Dictionary of Imaginary Places: The Newly Updated and Expanded Classic, describing Macondo if one one could really enter it. Stavans adds, "After reading the novel, one feels that the town isn't an escapist's dream but is within reach. And its metabolism, in my view, carries in it the DNA of Latin America."

GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ: THE EARLY YEARS will be more comprehensible to those thoroughly familiar with ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE and who are Spanish speakers (the latter because some Spanish phrases and titles are not translated into English). But these prerequisites are not mandatory for enjoyment and enlightenment. Stavans does give an early summary of the great novel: "[It] is about memory and forgetfulness, about the trials and tribulations of capitalism in a colonial society, about European explorers in the New World, about the clash of science and faith, about matriarchy as an institution...." There's more. And, of course, he discusses various aspects of it throughout the book. But he also provides insightful elucidation about the literary process, publishing, literature (South American and other), politics, human nature, and about Garcia Marquez's unique ability to create alchemy. For all these reasons, this is a very worthwhile read.

Ilan Stavans, a professor of Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, has created a fascinating portrait of Garcia Marquez and his years leading up to the publication of his opus "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

I have been a Gabriel Garcia Marquez fan since I read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" many years ago. Stavans recounts how the early life of Garcia Marquez shaped him and gave him the inspiration to pen an astounding book.

Garcia Marquez was raised in Aracataca, Columbia by his maternal grandparents. His grandfather, Nicolás Ricardo Márquez Mejía, was reputed to be a great storyteller. Because many of his formative years were spent with his grandfather, many of his political and ideological views were informed by his grandfather's stories. Likewise, his grandmother, Doña Tranquilina Iguarán, a woman who believed in the supernatural, had a unique way of telling stories and influenced much of his writings.

When Garcia Marquez was eight years old, his grandfather died. He joined his parents and a younger brother who were living in Barranquilla. He eventually studied law at the University of Cartagena and honed his journalistic skills. He joined other writers in the Barranquilla Group and that provided inspiration and support for his literary efforts. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" was the product of those early years and it earned Garcia Marquez a Nobel Prize.

Garcia Marquez's early history is compelling and Stavans' book amply illustrates that history. It is well worth the time spent reading it.

In this fine book, Ilan Stavans, the prolific author and professor of Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, discusses the first four decades of Garcia Marquez's life and work to the publication of his best selling One Hundred Years of Solitude. In the introduction, the author explains that his intent is not to do a full scale biography of Garcia Marquez but rather to explore "the background to One Hundred Years of Solitude: what prompted it and what were the conditions under which it was gestated?" In the first of a projected two volume biography, Stavans concentrates on Garcia Marquez's masterpiece, particularly how the author was able to "transform life into fiction." Stavans succeeds very well in this attempt.

While not a biography in the traditional sense, Stavans provides clues as to what prompted Garcia Marquez to write what Stavans considers to be one of only two "masterpieces written in Spanish," the other being Don Quixote. Stavans explores Garcia Marquez's birth and childhood in Aracataca, his career as a law student, journalist, and then as a screenwriter in Mexico City. Garcia Marquez's experiences shaped his thoughts, Stavans claims, particularly his childhood in Aracataca which lies "in the northwestern region of South America as well as the lower edge of the Caribbean basin," the location making him feel as if "he was part of two worlds." This cultural conflict influenced Garcia Marquez's politics and led him to write "with ingredients indigenous to the Americas."

Stavans, in exploring the thoughts and intentions of one man, manages to also convey the history and emotions of a whole hemisphere as well as those of Garcia Marquez's family and friends. This well written book goes far in explaining the forces that influenced the author and is certainly worth reading by the many people who were captivated by One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.).

If you're a diehard Garcia Marquez fan, then this is the book for you; otherwise, stick to his fiction. This is a book that is well suited for a college course specifically critiquing GM's works. It details Garcia Marquez' life down to specific addresses where he once lived. I loved 100 Years of Solitude, which is probably my all time favorite book, but I didn't really understand why until I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The Early Years. The book delves into the richness of GM's novels, and helped me to see the reasons why I thought I could actually see and smell colors in his books. The culture and times of which GM writes lends itself to what the author describes as "a sweeping genealogical narrative about a continent and its people: its corrupt politicians, its religious apsirations, its gender disparity, and its natural and historical calamities...The novel is about memory and forgetfulness, about the trials and tribulations of capitalism in a colonial society..." (see the Preface). The author sums up GM's novels neatly and succinctly. He states he is in search of the source of GM's inspiration. In this book, I believe he has found it.

Since falling under the spell of One Hundred Years of Solitude by the Colombian writer, and Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a dozen years ago, I have waited for a kind of key into its foundations and obscurities. I still recall my stunned and almost intoxicated response to its first sentence. I read the book in one sitting, as have so many others, and have reread it many times since.

In wanting to approach nearer to the miracle of this masterpiece, I was disappointed in Garcia Marquez's own Living to Tell the Tale, which provided little insight for me into the making of "One Hundred Years of Solitude." This book is that key, and much, much more! I knew I had found a great fellow traveler in Ilan Stavans in his brilliant preface, in which he places "One Hundred Years of Solitude" in its true literary rank: "In my opinion," he writes, "there are only two novelistic masterpieces written in Spanish whose influence radically revamped our understanding of Hispanic civilization: "Cervantes's Don Quixote and Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude." Stavans's book then becomes less of a biography than an explanation of the coming forth of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Garcia Marquez's life, from his early life in Aracataca, to his journalistic apprenticeship at various newspapers in Bogata, Mexico and even eastern Europe, to his first attempts in mid life at creating fiction.

I was intensely fascinated at this little jewel Stavans dug up from Garcia Marquez's early journalistic writing, as it seems almost a description of his future efforts on "One Hundred Years of Solitude." In writing of the work of his friend, Cepeda Samudio, Garcia Marquez wrote (13 years before finishing his "One Hundred Years"): "This manner of writing history, arbitrary as it might seem to the historian, is a splendid lesson in poetic transformation. Without distorting reality or playing loose with the serious political and human aspects of the social drama, Cepeda Samudio has subjected it to a kind of purifying alchemy and has given us only its mythical essence, which will remain forever, far longer than any man's morality, justice, and ephemeral memory. The super dialogues, the straight-forward and virile richness of the language, the geniune compassion aroused by the character's fate, the fragmentary and somewhat loose structure which so closely resembles the pattern of memories--everything in this book is a magnificent example of how a writer can honestly filter out the immense quantity of rhetorical and demagogic garbage that stands in the way of indignation and nostalgia."

Among other insights from this book:

1. In Stavan I find a devotee of One Hundred Years of Solitude as devout as me--though he is much more erudite and eloquent. He writes: "In short, One Hundred Years of Solitude is my aleph. I quote from it to shed light on Garcia Marquez's life and vice versa. I'm enthralled by the way it isn't only a novel; it is a bitacora, an account of the most decisive events in Colombia until the sixties. It is also a retelling of the Bible, a summation of the painful colonial past of Latin America, and an autobiographical chronical of Garcia Marquez's friendship with important figures of the time."

2. I was fascinated to read of the intense genesis of One Hundred Years of Solitude, coming as it did in an inspiration by "the muse of fiction" to Garcia Marquez while he lived in Mexico and was driving to Acupulco with his wife, Mercedes, for a vacation. So powerful was the impetus to bring forth this work, that Garcia Marquez abandoned his vacation, and returned to Mexico City, where he sequestered himself in his study for a year to write the book.

3. The provincial setting of his home town, Arcataca, on the Caribbean side of Colombia, is the undisputed original for Macondo, the principle setting for "One Hundred Years." Reading Stavan, one comprehends for the first time the essentially Caribbean setting for "One Hundred Years." Garcia Marquez wrote: "The Caribbean is a distinctive world whose first work of magical literature was "The Diary of Christopher Columbus," a book which tells of fabulous plants and mythological societies. The history of the Caribbean is full of magic--a magic brought by black slaves from Africa and by Swedish, Dutch and English pirates who thought nothing of setting up an Opera House in New Orleans or filling women's teeth with diamonds. Nowhere in the world do you find the racial mixture and the contrasts that you find in the Caribbean. . . . I know all its islands: their honey colored mulattas with green eyes and golden handkerchiefs round their heads: their half-caste Indo-Chinese who do laundry and sell amulets; their green-skinned Asians in their ivory stalls; on one hand their scorched, dusty towns with houses which collapse in cyclones and on the other skyscrapers of smoked glass and an ocean of seven colours. Well, if I start talking about the Caribbean there's no stopping me. Not only is it the world which taught me to write, it's the only place where I really feel at home."

4. The family histories of Garcia Marquez's parents, grandparents and great grandparents are told with great richness and detail. In particular, his grandmother, Tranquilina Iquaran Cotes, who became the inspiration for one of his strongest characters, Ursula Iguaran,, is painted most vividly. "What was most important," Garcia Marquez later mused about his grandmother, "was the expression she had on her face. She did not change her expression at all when telling her stories, and everyone was surprised. In previous attempts to write One Hundred Years of Solitude, I tried to tell the story without believing in it. I discovered that what I had to do was believe in them myself and write them with the same expression with which my grandmother told them: with a brick face."

I am not too big on reading biography. I must confess that when I got this book I thought it was by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of my favorite authors, instead of the story of the early years as narrated by Ilan Stavans. I must say, however, that Ilan does a great job telling the story of Garcia Marquez in his early years, before writing his masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude. The writing is captivating and it shows the 'behind the scenes', including the influences and the history of what was going on around Marquez in those early years. If you enjoyed reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, you will likely enjoy reading this book.

I suppose I came to this book with unfair expectations. Being a biography (a mezzo-biography, following him into his forties and the publication of _One Hundred Years of Solitude_) of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I sort of half-expected it to be lyrical, fantastic and exciting.

Instead, it's a fairly thin, fairly dry account of the youth of a man of letters. He was middle class. He lived in places reminiscent of places he later wrote about. He went to school. He became political. He started writing. He moved to Europe. The surreal became part of his writing. He wrote a masterpiece.

Fair enough. If you are looking to read the material basics of Garcia Marquez's life, they're here. It's a short book, though, workman-like, straightforward and factual. Don't expect big insights or flights of fantasy.

An inspiring look behind the work and life of one of Latin America's greatest authors, "The Early Years" was satisfying for the most part, but I found some parts lacking in importance or unrelated to the overall picture the biographer was trying to paint. Overall, a great read. 4 stars.

How do you tell the tale of a master tale-teller? Not an easy proposition, but one which Ilan Stavans has accomplished masterfully for master magical fabulist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Beginning with his own beguiling and beguiled first reading of ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE (doe everyone have enchanting experiencew with this novel?), Stavans loving constructs the early life and career, always respectful, yet never maudlin in approach and presentation. The esteemed attention to the creation of CIEN ANOS is artful, appropriate, and informative in its detao;ed extemsiveness. The prose is rich and warm, full of the same la calidad humana as permeates his subject's oeuvre. This is a fine biography of one of the literary lions of the 20th Century. I look forward to the second volume.

TO write about such a comoplex author and writer is no easy task particularly when that author is so embedded in the revolutionary sensibilty of America. Some may have their misgivings because of his communistic beliefs but the biogrpaher of this telling and clean biography give the context of Mrquezezes influences and beliefs. THis to me more than explains how a writer of his creative depth held such beliefs.

Marquez wrote from the essesnce of his culture and in doing so created Magical Realism with its beautiful almost musical intonations. The stories told are done in a mythic way and as such seem to speak to a global audience.

Some will argue this point to death but Marquez's popularity went so far beyond just the working class of South America precisely because he hit the great primal source of story telling and as such went far beyond the more primitive political systamatic thinking of a "Commie".

This biogpaher gives a clear and unbiased view of Marquez's work and life and as such allows the reader to make their own informed decisions about his politics but without loosing sight of the tremendous gift of Marquez's creative voice.

I highly recommend this balanced and insightful biography for its intelligence and the grasp of a worldwide political and creative subject matter.

Well Done!