Author Anita Nair pays tribute
My journey with Gabriel Garcia Marquez began with love in the Time of Cholera. It was my introduction to the literary genre of “magical realism’’ — blending fantastic elements into portrayals of daily life that made the extraordinary seem almost routine and making it plausible even if not always believable.
The novel painted a picture of romance that endures. Maybe it was his way of seeking respite from the exploitative politics of the time in latin America, maybe it was his way of romancing life, but to
me it is one of the finest love stories ever told. There’s a beautiful fluidity in the entire plot. I think that’s the unforgettable attribute of Marquez — to combine an excellent story-telling narrative with a lyrical flourish. While The Autumn of the Patriarch, which the author himself called a “poem on the solitude of power”, has a great degree of dignity, the most chilling book I have read of his is News of a Kidnapping. I read it before my trip to Colombia.
When I reached there, I asked my editor there how believable was the account. That was when she told me how there were few homes in Colombia that were untouched by the horror of a kidnapping. Her own father was kidnapped and his body was never recovered as they were unable to meet the ransom demand. It made that book that much more real. Generally, some amount of hyperbole is expected in reportage especially if the writer is also a fiction writer. But Marquez narrates the kidnapping, imprisonment and release of a few prominent Colombians in a crisp and terse fashion so unlike his fictional style that it makes an indelible impact on the reader. In his writing, extraordinary was normal and the ordinary was sharp.
Marquez is a writer’s writer. In many ways, readers discover that he takes story-telling to another realm with his imaginative flourish and such is the spectrum of his imagination that writers aspire to attain the kind of stylistic elements he brings into his writing. In contrast, an average reader feels his is not an easily accessible prose and that his books demand his readers make an effort. A sense of accomplishment follows, an almost self congratulatory feeling pervades. Sometimes I think his ability to speak across tiers of readers is also one of the reasons that makes him so popular across the globe.
When I was in Colombia, I was a state guest at Bogotá International Book Fair. There, I met a lot of contemporary Colombian writers. During discussions and interactions, they were often asked how Marquez shaped their sense of literature. To my surprise a promising author said, “Marquez was then, we are now.” There’s a kind of attempt among Colombian authors to break the spell the legendary writer has cast over the years. However, such is the impact of his novels that publishers and readers expect more clones of Marquez from the country. No matter how market mechanisms function, there’s a limitless legacy the Nobel laureate has left behind.
It may seem like blasphemy in the literary world, but frankly, I am not breathless the way the rest of the world is about One Hundred Years of Solitude. There is nothing more enduring than a honest book, a book that is true to its characters even if it’s lacking a little in metaphor. Read the last 22 pages of love in the Time of Cholera and you will understand that the triumph of Marquez’s imagination needn’t always stem from a magic mushroom induced realism.