Marquez Downs Pen

Although it was rumoured last year that Gabriel Garcia Marquez was working on a new novel, his agent announced this week that she thinks the 82 year old master of magical realism has put down his pen for good.

Now 82, Marquez's last book Memoirs of My Melancholy Whores, which attracted very mixed reviews, was published five years ago. Marquez in fact told fans last year that he was worn out by writing.
Mark Lawson on The Guardian blog reckons that great writers usually knock off work well before the ends of their lives as a way to control quality, but notes that fans and publishers find it hard to let go.

Postscript :

Did Agatha Christie suffer from Alzheimer's towards the end of her life? Academics at Toronto University have found :

... statistically significant drops in vocabulary, and increases in repeated phrases and indefinite nouns in 15 detective novels from The Mysterious Affair at Styles to Postern of Fate ... These language effects are recognised as symptoms of memory difficulties associated with Alzheimer's disease.

Thanks, Chet, for this link!

Incidentally, here's the original article in PDF and the analysing tool is here so you can try it yourself!

Nother Postscript :

Or have we just been too premature? Literary Saloon raps all our knuckles for spreading ill-founded gossip. Note to self - resist being sensationalist when the newspapers go down that route. We bloggers should be the real professionals!

More at The Guardian.

Question : what kind of agent doesn't know whether her star author is writing or not?

Marquez's Tapestry

Verbose, overtly descriptive with meagre smatterings of dialogue, irritating flashes forwards and backwards through time, an annoying amount of foreshadowing, inhumanly long paragraphs leading to chapters of unholy length and what is surely the death blow for a love story: Unlikeable Romantic Leads (She's Cold, He's Creepy)-By all accounts, this reader should have hated Love In The Time Of Cholera.

But surely, slowly and insidiously, Marquez worked his magic, reeling me in when I had no idea of being hooked, an Omniscient narrator not so much creating a world, but convincing me that one exists and inviting me to partake of it's peoples' lives and loves as they live through a change of century, civil wars, modernisation and the titular epidemic.

Our last book club read was Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in The Time of Cholera, and I'd like to point you in the direction of this review on our member KayKay's blog.

I think I have a problem with Marquez. I can acknowledge that he's a wonderful writer and find a delight in the humour, colour and detail. But when I read him I feel as if I have been sucked into a huge and overcoloured tapestry where we are expected to appreciate each stitch. The prose is so cloying he gives me a headache. This isn't my thing. I run screaming for simpler, more straightforward prose.

But KayKay - a lover of the fast-paced thriller - constantly surprises me in his responses. And this is the great thing about book clubs - you let yourself be surprised by books that you would perhaps not have chosen yourself.

Of course the film of the book is now out :

Banned Books Become Most Widely Read!

We long suspected it, didn't we, but it seems that it really is true: nothing promotes a book half as well as much as banning it!

The Iranian government banned Gabriel Garcia Marquez's A Memory of My Melancholy Whores, even after the title was changed to Memories of My Melancholy Sweethearts to get past the censors.

But now, reports Global Voices Online, thousands of Iranians have downloaded the free version of the book from the Internet.

On our own banned books front, one book which was not exactly banned but withdrawn from sale by its publisher Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia at the behest of the Ministry of Information. Photocopies of former communist leader Shamsiah Fakeh's memoir passed hand-to-hand, but now the book is available again, this time published by the Strategic Information and Research Development Centre.

Her son, Jamaludin Ibrahim who helped Shamsiah to set down her memories was there at the launch on November 18th and talked about his mother's experiences to the Star:

She got lost in the jungle for as long as five nights. She was dirty, cold at night, wet, lonely and afraid. She foraged for food, even eating tree roots. There were times she starved. ... But the eight years in the jungle made her a strong woman and she persevered. She had no regrets because she fought for what believed in ...

There's a Malay and Chinese version of the book, which you can buy via Kinibooks, and I really hope there will be an English one soon too as this is a book that should be available to the wider world.

Still on the subject of banned books, another seven books:

...whose contents distort the sanctity of Islam and its true teachings (and) could create confusion and anxiety among Muslims and harm public peace if their publications were allowed to continue

were banned by the Internal Security Ministry:

They are Tajul Muluk; Fiqh Perempuan; Tasawuf Perenial Kearifan Kritis Kaum Sufi; Kumpulan Ilmu Ghaib; The Muslim Jesus: Kisah dan Sabda Yesus dalam Literatur Islam; Penyembuhan Cara Sufi and Kitab Kaysf Al-Asrar.

So ... titles about Jesus written from the Islamic perspective, and a book about Sufism.

I have no more information about these titles so would be grateful if any readers could shed some light ...

Found this fascinating little chart in the November issue of Off The Edge. it gives the breakdown of reasons books being banned in Malaysia since 1971. It is taken from the information collected as part of Sharon Chin's exhibition on banned books. (Click to fully enlarge.)

Bringing Magic to Macondo

Perhaps the bookish biggest news story of the last few days was the story of Columbian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez' return to the town of Aracataca which he immortalised as Macondo in his classic novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. The book has sold 30m copies worldwide.

Marquez spent the first eight years of his life in the town, living with his grandparents. Writes Juan Forero in the Washington Post:

It was here that a young García Márquez heard ghost stories, fairy tales and one adventure yarn after another, drawn from the region's rich and often blood-soaked history. The inspiration led him to become one of the leading writers in the style known as magical realism, with its penchant for weaving sharply drawn realism with dreamlike, even preposterous twists, all presented in a deadpan tone.

Marquez arrived in style on the Macondo Express decorated with yellow butterflies that have come to symbolise Macondo and a train-load of musicians, singers, friends and family - and even a government minister. Forero describes the scene:

Thousands of people had lined the route, screaming "Gabo, Gabo, Gabo" and holding up giant posters featuring the irreverent author's smiling face framed by enormous glasses. They threw confetti, set off fireworks and let loose yellow balloons. Brass bands played and pint-size schoolgirls performed, dressed as butterflies.

Marquez' triumphant return marks the launch of a new passenger service which it is hoped with bring much needed tourism to the area. A holiday with a little magical realism sprinkled in, anyone?

(Pics nicked from Guardian (top) and the Age (bottom))

Thirty Years of Authors' Feud

It's sad when a close friendship degenerates into enemity, deeply unfortunate when it ends in fisticuffs.

Gabrial Garcia Marquez's close friendship with Mario Vargas Llosa ended in a punchup in a Mexican cinema in 1976. The reasons for the fight have never been revealed, and the two have not spoken since. (Marquez is apparently not prepared to write the second volume of his memoirs because he does not want to have to reveal the cause of the feud.)

Now after thirty years, it seems that relationship between the two giants of Latin American literature has thawed a little, the Guardian reports. A special edition of García Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, is to be published by the Spanish Language Academy, marking this year's 40th anniversary of the book's publication. It is to include a prologue by Vargas Llosa which is an excerpt from his book about García Marquez History of a Deicide (1971)

Guy Dammann on the Guardian blog ponders this and other favourite literary feuds, but reckons:

... pens unsheathed in enmity write with more wit and interest than do the nibs of praise - nobody now reads the panegyrics of eighteenth-century English literature, but everyone reads Pope and Swift - and I'd prefer any literary feud to the soppy, self-serving associations that most great writers have in place of friendship.

He asks which literary feuds would you like to see ended? (And more wickedly, begun?)

We certainly don't have writers' feuds here in Malaysia ... or do we?

Postscript:

Want more? A reader on the Guardian blog points to this essay on the subject in the New York Times.

(Picture nicked from the Guardian shows Marquez (left) and Vargas Llosa (right))