Customer Reviews

Living to Tell the Tale

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

"Living to Tell the Tale," ("Vivir Para Contarla"), is the first book in a planned trilogy that will make up the memoirs of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the renown Colombian writer who initially won public acclaim in the mid-1960s for his novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude." At that time, Garcia Marquez, a journalist and writer, had never sold more than 700 copies of a book. While driving his family through Mexico, he had a veritable brainstorm. He remembered his grandmother's storytelling technique - to recall fantastic, improbable events as if they had actually happened - literally. That was the key to recounting the life of the imaginary village of Macondo and her inhabitants. He turned the car around and drove back home to begin "One Hundred Years of Solitude" anew. To my mind it is one of the 20th century's best works of fiction, and was highlighted in the citation awarding Garcia Marquez the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature.

"Living to Tell The Tale" relates the early years of the author's life, although some of the book's most important incidents predate Garcia Marquez's birth. The impact of these experiences, the people and their stories, were to have a powerful effect on him, as a man and as a writer. This is the tale of his parents' courtship, marriage and the birth of their children, Garcia Marquez, (Gabito), the oldest, and his ten siblings. It tells of his early years which were spent in Aracataca, in the home of his maternal grandparents. His grandfather, Colonel Nicolás Ricardo Márquez Mejía, was a Liberal veteran of the War of a Thousand Days. He was supposedly a storyteller of great repute. The Colonel told his young grandson that there was no greater burden than to have killed a man. Later García Márquez would put these words into the mouths of his characters. His grandmother, Tranquilina Iguarán Cotes, had a major influence on Gabriel's life also. Another great source of stories, her mind was filled with superstitions and folklore, and she gossiped away with her numerous sisters within hearing range of young "Gabito." No matter how fantastic her statements, she always delivered them as if they were the absolute, verifiable truth. This was the style which was to effect Garcia Marquez's fiction, sometimes called "magical realism." These women filled the house with stories of ghosts, premonitions and omens - all of which were studiously ignored by her husband. He had little interest in "women's beliefs."

Aracataca was a small village, a banana town on the Caribbean coast, where poverty was the norm and violence was an everyday occurrence. On December 6, 1928, in the Cienaga train station, near Aracataca, 3,000 striking banana workers were shot and killed by troops from Antioquia. Although still a baby, this event, recounted to him, was to have a profound effect on the author. The incident was officially forgotten and omitted from Colombian history textbooks.

In 1940, when he was twelve, Gabo was awarded a scholarship to a secondary school for gifted students, run by Jesuits. The school, the Liceo Nacional, was in Zipaquirá, a city 30 miles to the north of Bogotá. It was during his school years, 1940s and 50s, that he was first drawn to poetry - a national obsession in Colombia. Verse was revered as an art form, and also as an effective means of social and political commentary. He and his friends, fellow students, would read aloud and discuss poetry late into the night. The youths admired a group of poets called the piedra y cielo ("stone and sky") and they were strongly influenced by Juan Ramon Jimenez and Pablo Neruda. Too poor to buy his own books, Gabo would devour novels borrowed from friends.

While still a boy, he decided he wanted to be a writer. The people who surrounded him in his childhood later became instrumental when developing the characters and the storylines for his novels. "Love In The Time of Cholera" was inspired by the romance between his mother and father. And his grandfather, who had twelve children, (some say 16), by two different women, became Colonel Aureliano Buendia in "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

One of the most powerful episodes of the book tells of the period called "La Violencia." In 1948 the Liberal presidential candidate, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, was assassinated. The murder led to rioting, and left approximately 2500 dead on the streets of Bogota, during "el Bogotázo." Political violence and repression followed. One of the buildings that burned was the pension where Garcia Marquez lived, and his manuscripts were destroyed along with his living quarters. The National University was closed and he was forced to go to the university in Cartagena. Garcia Marquez began his career as a journalist, writing stories and commentary for a Liberal newspaper in Cartegana. Later he moved to the coastal city of Barranquilla where he began to associate with a group of young writers who admired modernists like Joyce, Woolf and Hemingway, and introduced Marquez to Faulkner. In 1954 he returned to Bogota, as a reporter for El Espectador.

Garcia Marquez begins his book, however, not with his real birth in 1928, but with his "birth as a writer," at age 22. He and his mother took a trip from Baranquilla, where he was working as a reporter, to his childhood home in Aracataca, now virtually a ghost town. They were going to sell the ancestral house. Vivid memories were stirred up here, memories which electrified his imagination. This trip was to change the course of his writing life. "With the first step I took onto the burning sands of the town, Aracataca instantly became Macondo, an earthly paradise of desolation and nostalgia." His one great subject became his family, "which was never the protagonist of anything, but only a witness to and victim of everything." His is not a chronological autobiography. Garcia Marquez cuts back and forth through time to show how memory colors experience. As he says in the book's epigraph, "Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it."

Humor, dry wit, a sense of the absurd, is a trademark throughout the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and this autobiography is full of his deadpan humor. His anecdotes of his many mistresses and cafe society are wonderful. "Living To Tell The Tale" is not a conventional literary memoir. It is a magical combination of memoir and national history written in the author's remarkable voice. It is his personal mythology, from the repertoire which birthed Macondo. The narrative is intimate and sincere, filled with bewitching details and descriptions. In spite of poverty, and the political turmoil so prevalent in Colombia during his lifetime, Gabo acknowledges his early years were filled with joy, a sense of well-being and encouragement from many people. Garcia Marquez leaves us, at the end of this volume, with a glimpse of his future love, his wife, ""wearing a green dress with golden lace in that year's style, her hair cut like swallows' wings, and with the intense stillness of someone waiting for a person who will not arrive."

Edith Grossman has done a fine translation. Kudos to her. Bravo Gabriel Garcia Marquez!!

JANA

Oh~~the long expected English version finally came out. Reading such a book is definitely an extraordinary mental experience, especially for those who have read the fictional writings of Garcia Marquez. As you are reading through the book, you will find that it reminds you of what you read in his other books, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. You will awe him because of the fact that Garcia Marquez is capable of transforming the simplest trivialities in his life into the most delicate and imaginary stories that one could ever read. Hope everyone enjoy reading this book~~

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This superbly written portrait of an artist unlocks many mysteries. First and foremost it explains the incredible genius of Gabriel Garcia Marquez the writer. Moreover, it also provides a probing insight to the bloody political violence inside the Republic of Colombia. "Living to Tell the Tale," is a great read for lovers of literature but also objectively gives students of Colombian political history an eye-witness account of a government that was savage with its people.

In the words of Gabito..."I was brought up in the lawless space of the Caribbean,"...the Nobel laureate explains with pride the difference between "Costenos" (Colombians raised on the coast) and "Cachacos" (Colombians raised in Bogota). In some ways...it is comparable to the difference between very laid-back, open minded Californians and super-serious, ambitious New Yorkers. However, the essential point the author makes is the cultural mind-set he was raised with. A mind-set filled with surreal coastal dreams and the reality of the 1928 banana workers massacre in Cienaga which his loving Mother explained to him, "that's where the world ended."

Gabito was born on March 6, 1927. He was heavily influenced by the sensitivities of his Mother and grandfather, Colonel Nicolas Ricardo Marques Mejia (called Papalelo by his grandchildren). The Colonel was a veteran of the Liberal/Conservative War of One Thousand Days (1899-1903). Consequently, the author learned from an early age that Colombia was a nation of many civil wars and that political differences inside the borders of his nation often ended in violence.

Papaledo taught his devoted grandson that General Simon Bolivar (the George Washington of South America) "was the greatest man born in the history of the world." But Gabito is quick to inform the reader that he grew up with a formal education at the splendid Liceo Nacional de Zipaquira and grew up "bloodthirsty for Faulkner." He adds that he started smoking heavily at 15 (he eventually quits) and strongly appreciated the genius of "Ulysses" by James Joyce and "Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka. Interestingly enough the author credits journalism for his sharp "reporter's eye" and states, "the novel and journalism are children of the same mother."

Still and all, the author is responsible and does not ignore the widespread "scorched earth policy of the government." In one of the most fascinating segments of this book he provides an eye-witness account of the April 9, 1948 murder of the beloved Colombian populist Jorge Eliecer Gaitan and vividly decribes the subsequent "Bogotazo" the greatest riot in the history of the Western Hemisphere. He also offers his own credible conspiracy theory that there was a well dressed man who incited the crowd after the murder of Gaitan and "the man managed to have a false assassin killed in order to protect the identity of the real one." Gabito also goes to extremes to document the heavy handed government censorship of the press afterwards.

Ultimately, the author tells us, "life itself taught me that one of the most useful secrets for writing is to learn to read the hieroglyphs of reality without knocking or asking anything." This is a true masterpiece and deserves to be read by all lovers of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and of the Republic of Colombia. Highly, highly recommended.

Bert Ruiz

Thankfully, volumes of scholarly papers will continue to be written, seminars and graduate-level university courses will continue to be developed focusing upon this literary giant --and deservingly so. We are all the more priviledged as beneficiaries of this extraordinary talent. Garcia Marquez writes with the simplicity, serenity, ease and purity that are the mark of an absolute master. His ingenius combination of grace and vibrancy is astonishing. With this new offering, Living to Tell the Tale [Vivir Para Contarla], it all comes together in this long-anticipated personal account of one of the world's remaining literary treasures. The imagery of Garcia Marquez, my all-time favorite writer, is breathtakingly superb. Here we have an exquisite amalgam of Marquezian genius: all the fabulous characters, descriptions and locales we have come to know and cherish from the full range of his fiction. I couldn't agree more with those insightful reviewers who wishly urge for anyone new to Garcia Marquez a necessary reading of several of his important novels prior to indulging in this glorious triumph: "One Hundred Years of Solitude," "Love in the Times of Cholera," "No One Writes to the Colonel," and "The General in His Labyrinth." And for anyone able to read the original Spanish version is indeed for a sublime treat. Don Gabriel, mil gracias de nuevo; you are Humanity's Gift to the World!

Alan Cambeira
Author of AZUCAR! The Story of Sugar (a novel)

We are a lucky generation of readers; we live in a time when we can buy the "new" book by Garcia Marquez, the most beloved writer of our time, who will go down in literary history as a veritable giant. It would be as if we could go back in time and say: let's go over to the Globe Theater and watch the "new" Shakespeare play, or buy that "new" book called "Don Quixote" by Cervantes, or "Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain. So here we are, still receiving the gifts of Garcia Marquez. May he live many, many more years and continue to give us his gifts!

"Living to Tell the Tale" is a resplendent memoir in which Garcia Marquez gives us the fascinating autobiographical clues to many of the characters and places we know and love from his fiction. Moreover, this memoir (the first volume of three) reads like some of Garcia Marquez's best novels. Like always, Garcia Marquez reminds us of the power of literature in our lives. His memoir is as much an homage to literature as it is to the people and places of his past. He says that what is most important about our lives is not what happened or did not happen, but the way we choose to tell our stories.

There are great moments to savor:

*The origin of the name "Macondo," the name of the village in which "One Hundred Years of Solitude" takes place.
*The stories of love and friendship that frame the life of Garcia Marquez and the lives of the members of his family, especially his parents.

*Garcia Marquez's experiences during the bloody riots of 1948 in Colombia.
*The thrill of being a poor, bohemian journalist in 1940's Colombia.
*What "classic" book did Garcia Marquez kept in the bathroom?

Garcia Marquez is one of the most original and influential writers of the modern era. This book was so anticipated in Latin America that it was bootlegged months before it's official release. Now readers of English can indulge in the privilege of reading this beautiful book. It is full of humor, memorable people and descriptions, and narrative verve. You won't be disappointed.

But if you are new to Garcia Marquez and his writing, you best wait a little before reading this book. You should read his novels first, particularly "One Hundred Years of Solitude," "Love in the Times of Cholera," "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," and "The General in his Labyrinth."

Living to Tell the Tale is like winning the lottery for Gabriel Garcia Marquez lovers. After drifting off to Maconda, or agonizing over the long love affair in Love in the Time of Cholera, or being spirited off to so many of the places in his stories, Marquez gives his readers the oft-denied chance to peek into the true-life origins of his characters, locations and story-lines. Absolutely fascinating and wonderful. I'd be hard-pressed to suggest reading this first, only because the magic of his previous works are so wild and fabulous - reading that reality had some part of those stories might detract from the magic. Nevertheless, this is a stand alone work.

We are living in a luminous time if we have a NEW Gabriel Garcia Marquez book to look forward to. His strenghts in storytelling are unrivalled in this century, and this book is one of a projected three that chronicle his life. That the book is written when he is a robust 70+ years old showcases his truly remarkable capacity for memory of events that happened 50, 60 years past. He dresses these events in his life up until they resemble short stories of their own. The massacre in Bogota is given an almost hallucinatory nature through Marquez's account and is quite surreal. The book ends with a proposal (nay, an ultimadum), to the girl that Marquez loves: I've just went to Europe, and if I don't receive a response to this letter in a month, I am staying forever. I cannot wait to read the next two editions.
I also feel rather bad for the people that don't "understand" this book or don't "get it." This book is not a ramble, it is a cohesive effort at chronicling a young man's long-ago past. It's just our luck that the man led an extraordinary life, that he is still here to tell it, and that his name is Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Read it today.

Gabriel García Marquez says that "Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it." And that is, in few words, "Living to tell the tale": the author's version of his own life, as he remembers it now.

This book is merely the first volume in the author's three-part autobiography, but it is an essential way to start if we want to know more about him, as a writer but also as a person. As we read this book, we become enchanted by the author's eccentric extended family (he is the oldest of 15, between brothers and sisters, in and out of wedlock), and by all the events that would give him inspiration for future books. One of those events is his trip to his native town of Aratacata, in order to help his mother to sell her parents' house in that town. It is in that trip that he decides "I'm going to be a writer...Nothing but a writer".

Of course, this isn't a traditional biography, but that is something the reader is likely to know in advance, if he takes into account that the author of "Living to tell the tale" is García Marquez. You can expect a wonderful prose, interesting and somewhat strange metaphors, and the kind of description that manages to capture a moment in such a way that the reader feels that he was there too. That happened to me many times while I was reading this book, for instance when he describes his visit to Aratacata, his inspiration for Macondo: "The first thing that struck me was the silence. A material silence I could have identified blindfolded among all the other silences in the world. The reverberation of the heat was so intense that you seemed to be looking at everything through undulating glass. As far as the eye could see there was no recollection of human life, nothing that was not covered by a faint sprinkling of burning dust".

What is more, García Marquez shares details of his school years, his multitude of friends, and the innumerable nights all of them passed discussing many things, but mainly literature, and Colombia. The aspiring writer, or the curious reader, will know more about his favourite books, ideas, and reasons for writing ("Each thing, just by looking at it, aroused in me an irresistible longing to write so I would not die"). García Marquez also gives us some small details that make him more real, for example that he always has had lots of problems with orthography :)

Notwithstanding that, I suppose that a warning is in order: if you cannot stand a book that isn't linear, you aren't likely to like this book. "Living to tell the tale" is beautifully written, and gives us an enormous amount of information about García Marquez's life. However, the author jumps between years and events quite frequently, something that some people might dislike. I wasn't bothered by that, mainly because I think that is merely another resource he uses to succeed in his aim, that is tell a good story and charm his reader.

Also, I would like to point out that even though this translation to English is quite good, it isn't the same than reading "Vivir para contarla" (= "Living to tell the tale") in the original Spanish edition. There are some things that cannot be translated, particularly in literature, without losing at least some nuances of meaning. If that is the case, you might ask yourself why do I give the English edition of this book 5 stars out of five. The answer is simple: I loved this book so much that I even liked the translation. All the same, the only true solution to appreciate just how good it is would be to read it in Spanish, so if you don't speak it yet, learn it. You won't find a better reason to do so :)

On the whole, I highly recommend this book. Yes, "Living to tell the tale" might seem at first sight rather long (544 pages), but that first impression changes quite quickly once you start to read it, because you realize that such a simple looking book contains the events and people that shaped the boy, teenager and young adult that would grow to become one of the best writers of our times. What can I say?. Not to be missed !!!!

Belen Alcat

These book is what it wraps it all. His life is so important, because it has a direct effect on his other novels and short tales. I have read some of his other books and is amazing how his life experiences relate so much to the way he writes. What I like the best of these and all his other books, is the way he can describe situations and things, and makes you be part of it because of these vivid descriptions. For example in his autobiography (Living to tell the Tale) says a lot about stories that make such an impact in his live, and memory, that later he writes them and that is how extrodinary books come to life: "Del amor y otros Demonios", "One hundred years of SOlitude", "El otono del patriarca", and of course his fist novel "la hojarasca".
Worth reading it, but more worth it if you know his previous novels and short stories. Highly recommend it.

Magisterial Magical Memoir by the Maestro period!
You are with him in a hot room in Macondo and while he smokes he tells you his life in poetry.