Marquez between fact and fiction

The timeline of this book stops in 1984, which was published last year, but it is contemporary. Gabriel Garcia Marquez won a Nobel Prize for literature. This book has assorted journalistic writings, opinion pieces and reportage, and is not a book of stories. But in a way, it is. After all, journalists call their reportage a “story”. The book is factual and takes much narrative licence with facts. It is not necessary to read it as a journalistic reportage. It could be read as fiction. Just as well. With the passage of time, facts embellished by interpretations, with human nature being studied and the literary flourish, it hardly matters if it is a fact or a fiction.

It is written by Marquez and lends itself to the same interrogation. When critics review fiction, they interpret and explain known human behaviour, societal norms, feelings and responses. If we are not looking at a book of history narrating a series of events, but a bunch of writings picked up from here and there, does it matter if it is journalism or literature?

Take for instance the small essay “An Understandable Mistake” which discusses two newspaper reports. A man is in Cali and has been drinking. The news report says that he jumped out of the window due to nervous excitement produced by alcohol. There is another report of a downtown city street with the presence of hundreds of small silvery fish strewn all over the place.

The Scandal of the Century and Other Writings

Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf. 2019

Pages:  302 

Price: $27.95

 

But Marquez’s essay indicates that the man did not jump because of alcohol, but a tapping on the floorboards beside the bed — a fish in the room — jumping struggling and gleaming, leading to nervousness. Only a writer of Marquez’s calibre can blend two realistic reports into a magical story. So, was he a journalist or a story teller? What is the difference?

There are delightful essays that come from different parts of the world, including Europe. The story of Marquez’s arrival in Europe is the result of another fascinating series of dramatised writing of his interviews with a crewman in 1955 (eventually published as the “Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor”). Marquez’s account was so different from the official line — that the shipwreck occurred due to the overload of contraband cargo rather than a storm, the official version. This created a journalistic storm. Marquez was packed off to Europe, away from the controversy. But trust Marquez to find stories wherever he went! The title essay — Scandal of the Century —is a similar serialised piece of writing running to 60 pages in this volume.

A very brief but fascinating essay is “Literaturism”. It picks up a small news item — a homicide, in which the perpetrator first fires at the victim, attacks the corpse with a machete and finally cuts the tongue. Marquez ends the essay with the observation that “there is nothing extraordinary about it, since as a news item, it is too common and a novel too gruesome”. Marquez wrote this in 1954. But does it ring a bell when we think of the Mohammad Akhlaq case in 2015. When he is lynched, the meat in his refrigerator is sent for forensics to figure out if it was beef or not.

In 1980, Marquez writes a long essay on the spectre of the Nobel Prize, starting with why Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most fascinating Argentinian writers, would never get a Nobel, because of a speech he made when he visited Augusto Pinochet — a speech oozing with sarcasm. But “the Swedes did not understand the Buenos Aires sense of humor,” Marquez says. This looks contemporary as well. Recall the recent controversy over Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge where the destruction of “idols” was interpreted as anti-Hindu because they were literally understood as sculpted stone in temples?

And then, he writes a fascinating account of how Pablo Neruda knew in advance that he’d got the prize, even threw a party but announced the purpose of the party only after the official announcement was made because “I just don’t believe in anything until I see it in print”. The trivia of the acceptance speech for the Nobel was written by Neruda on a page of a menu as they were having lunch, just 48 hours before the ceremony!

The essay ends up with a meeting with Artur Lundkvist — the only member of the Swedish Academy who reads Spanish. Garcia Marquez browses through a range of autographed Spanish books in Lundkvist’s collection and finds a range of his fellow writers inscribing affectionate and heartfelt messages. So when it’s Marquez’s turn to sign his book, he thinks just signing would be indiscreet. He won the Nobel two years later in 1982!

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mssriram@pm.me 

(The reviewer is faculty member, Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore)