Living to Tell the Tale (Hardcover)

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Author), Edith Grossman (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Living to Tell the Tale, the first of three projected volumes in the memoirs of Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Márquez, narrates what, on the surface appears to be the portrait of the young artist through the mid-1950s. But the masterful work, which draws on the craft of the author's best fiction, has a depth and richness that transcends straightforward autobiography.

Echoing Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, Márquez uses his memoir as justification for telling an artful story that challenges notions of authoritative record or chronology. Time is porous in Márquez's Colombia, flowing back and forth among the mythic moments of his personal history to accommodate his fascination for place. While recalling a trip he took as an adult to his grandparents' house in Aracataca, he veers suddenly back to childhood and his earliest infant memories in that house. Nearly one hundred pages have passed before he returns effortlessly to the pivotal moment on the trip when he declares to himself and family: "I'm going to be a writer... Nothing but a writer.'

Similarly, Márquez toys with the boundaries of truth and fiction throughout his book. He acknowledges that his memory is often faulty, especially with regards to his crucial, formative years with his grandparents. And his explorations of key moments in his life show that, despite his vivid mental snapshots, the events were often temporally impossible. Further, he colors his tale with recollections of ghostly presences and occult events that pass without a wink into his narrative, alongside the documented accounts of his early successes as a poet and singer or details of his first published writings.

With its play on time and truth, memory and storytelling, Living to Tell the Tale's literary form acts as early evidence for Márquez's inevitable calling as a writer, and the language of Edith Grossman's translation, which frequently skirts the boundaries of poetry, mirrors Márquez's effort. While he meanders on his picaresque artistic journey--distracted by trysts with a married woman, the tumult of Colombian politics, and the raw energy of the journalist's life--he ends this first volume with the tantalizing promise of the literary career about to explode, and the impossible prospect of even greater riches for his readers. --Patrick O’Kelley

From Booklist
*Starred Review* In the opening scene in his captivating memoir, the first in a trilogy, Nobel laureate Garcia Marquez displays his rare gift for evoking the overlapping currents of time as he, now in his seventies, conjures himself at age 23 (long-haired and very poor) remembering himself as a boy during an arduous journey with his mother to his grandparents' house in northern Colombia. As this insatiable reader, erstwhile law student, and would-be writer, the oldest of 11 children, tries to convince his smart and resilient mother of the validity of his artistic quest, his future self works his signature magic, weaving together the story of his remarkable family with the story of Colombia's turbulent mid-twentieth-century politics, tragic violence, and ardent and courageous literary community. Garcia Marquez's memory is astonishing. The tenderness and wit with which he portrays his loving family and prescient mentors are poignant and entertaining. The piquant humor with which he charts his love affairs is delectable. And his frank account of his experiences as a determined (and frequently homeless) novice writer feverishly composing hundreds of newspaper editorials while teaching himself to write fiction and coping uneasily with instantaneous recognition of his immense talent is deeply moving. Clearly, Garcia Marquez was born to write, and what a volatile and compelling world he was given to write about. Invaluable in its personal and cultural history, and triumphant in its compassion and artistry, Garcia Marquez's portrait of himself as a young writer is as revelatory and powerful as his fiction. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (November 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400041341
• ISBN-13: 978-1400041343
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #159,271 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Extraordinary Memoir - Myth & History, Magic & Fact!, January 18, 2005

By	Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"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

64 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly one of the most delightful writings ever!!!, November 10, 2003

By	Xiao He "an underpaid employee" (Chino Hills, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Portrait of an Artist and his beloved Colombia, July 7, 2004

By	Bert Ruiz "Author" (Pleasantville, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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