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By: Marjorie Coughlan,
on 5/23/2016
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Author Sita Brahmachari‘s latest book is Car Wash Wish, her second novella for Barrington Stoke, a UK publisher who specialise in making books accessible to struggling readers, with a special emphasis on dyslexia. It’s an inter-generational story … Continue reading ... →
The University of Texas at Austin plans to digitize its archive of Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
The Harry Ransom Center, an institution based at the University of Texas at Austin, acquired the archive of the late author after his death in 2014.
The new project will be funded by a $126,730 grant from the nonprofit Council on Library and Information Resources, according to a report in The Associated Press. Here is more from the piece:
The 18-month project is set to start in June. It will involve scanning manuscripts, notebooks, scrapbooks, photographs and ephemera and making them accessible online. The materials date from 1950 through 2013.
Carmen Balcells, Gabriel García Márquez’s literary agent who sold his classic title One Hundred Years of Solitude, passed away this past September.
Before she died, she did one final interview with Vanity Fair in which she spoke frankly about her career. In the interview she explains discovering the work and selling it to Harper & Row. Here is an excerpt:
I was reading García Márquez—one of the early books—and I said to Luis, ‘This is so fantastic, Luis, that we have to read it at the same time.’ So I made a copy of it. We both had enthusiasm for it: it was so fresh, so original, so exciting. Every reader says in his mind, of certain books, ‘This is one of the best books I have ever read.’ When that happens to a book again and again, all over the world, you have a masterpiece. That is what happened with Gabriel García Márquez
By: Salman Rushdie,
on 9/3/2015
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Describe your latest book. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is a fairy-tale of New York (well, mostly New York). New York with added genies (jinn). It's about a jinnia princess, Dunia, who acquires a large number of human offspring, and uses them to help her battle an invasion of our world by the [...]
Which books do you like to bring with you when you go on vacation? The Fly Abu Dhabi team has created an infographic to showcase The Ultimate Holiday Reads by Destination.
The image features several beloved books including One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. We’ve embedded the full piece below for you to explore further—what do you think?
My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante
Adult
After a string of Australian books both adult and children's, I was beginning to feel like a serial Aussie reader and decided to get out from down under if only to vary my reading.
So, I went to Italy. I've been craving gelato and chianti ever since.
There is a significant difference between old-world writing and stories from the "colonies", penal and otherwise. The old-world has, not always, but very often, a very melancholy feel to it, whereas "newbies" from the colonies seem to have been able to free themselves somewhat from that melacholy. Their more upbeat feel may be what's so alluring to me. Or the accent. These have all been audio books.
Nevertheless, a little melancholia isn't a bad thing. What's more,
My Brilliant Friend is jam-packed with writing tricks. But first, a synopsis:
My Brilliant Friend is the story of two young Neapolitan girls growing up in the harsh conditions of a very working class, poor neighborhood, their dreams, the diversions those dreams have to take due to economic hardship - one girl gets to go on to school, while her smarter friend is forced to quit school and try to marry up - and the successful, but flawed, women the girls become.
What is the absolute, most brilliant aspect of
My Brilliant Friend, is its final line and how it ties the entire book together and then rips it apart, much like the last line of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's last sentence to
One Hundred Years of Solitude deconstructs and erases the entire story that has gone before with one slash of the pen. Ferrante is brilliant in her alteration of this trick, to tie and deconstruct her story at the same time - all was for nothing - or so it seems since this is the first in a series of books called the Neapolitan Novels. However, I didn't know that as I listened to the last line and actually stopped my car from the force of that line. It made me think, reponder, rethink, re-reflect. It's that brilliant.
It's usually first lines that are so mesmerizing, pulling the reader in, hooking her, and making her want more. But if the last line snags in a reader's heart, it really never lets go. It haunts the reader, challenging her to think and think and think. It's an amazing writer tool I can't wait to use.
For more great reads, cinco de mayo your way over to
Barrie Summy's website!
The Harry Ransom Center, an institution based at the University of Texas at Austin, has acquired the archive of the late Gabriel García Márquez.
The Nobel Prize-winning writer had passed on earlier this year. Some of the items in the García Márquez archive include letters, photo albums, typewriters, computers, scrapbooks, drafts of his 1982 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and the manuscripts for One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, and Memories of My Melancholy Whore.
Here’s more from the press release: “Highlights in the archive include multiple drafts of García Márquez’s unpublished novel We’ll See Each Other in August, research for The General in His Labyrinth (1989) and a heavily annotated typescript of the novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981). The materials document the gestation and changes of García Márquez’s works, revealing the writer’s struggle with language and structure…The archive will reside at the Ransom Center alongside the work of many of the 20th century’s most notable authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, William Faulkner, and James Joyce, who all influenced García Márquez.”
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<!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE <![endif]-->
Review by Ariadna Sánchez
Last week the world lost one of the most brilliant writers of the century. Gabriel García Márquez is considered a genie of modern literature. His words echo the unique and majestic essence of his intrepid spirit. García Márquez will live forever thanks to his master pieces full of imagination and beauty.
My Name is Gabito written by the award-winning author Monica Brown and delightfully illustrated by Raúl Colón depicts the childhood of the 1982 Nobel Prize Literature recipient Gabriel García Márquez.
Gabito was born on March 6, 1928 in Aracataca, Colombia. Gabito was nurtured by his grandparents along with a 100-year-old parrot named Lorenzo el Magnifico. His grandfather was an important figure for the development of Gabito’s talent. Gabito loved learning words from his grandfather’s dictionary. Gabito realized that the more he read, the more imaginative his stories became. Gabito witnessed the struggles of poor banana workers in his hometown. This situation created an urgent sense of justice and equal opportunity for all people. This life experience was evident in his novels because he often shared stories about the banana workers.
Gabito grew, grew, and grew. Gabito became one of the most famous Latin-American writers in the world. As a result, Gabriel García Márquez became an international figure. Gabito wrote more than thirty books, some of his emblematic novels are
Love in the Time of Cholera, Living to Tell the Tale, and the best-seller
One Hundred Years of Solitude. During his lifetime, Gabito received the most prestigious awards for his merit. In 1982 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature reaffirming the remarkable gift to produce incomparable stories. Gabito married his boyhood girlfriend, Mercedes Bacha Pardo, and they had two sons named Rodrigo and Gonzalo. This is a phenomenal life for an incredible human being.
My Name is Gabito helps children learn and appreciate the extraordinary journey of Gabriel García Márquez, and it also allows them to discover the dynamism of the renowned author. His legacy will last for an eternity in our hearts and in our mind. Thanks to the Tlapazola community from Oaxaca, Mexico for spreading the legacy of the eternal Gabito.
¡Viva Gabriel García Márquez por siempre!
* * *
My Name is Gabito/Me llamo Gabito Presentation
for ELL Bilingual Reading Night
By: Olga Garcia Echeverria,
on 4/20/2014
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I don't have much to say about Easter. Like Thanksgiving and Santa Claus Day, it's a holiday that makes me feel awkward and rebellious. Pastel colors and Catholic mass make me nauseous. I've never been into wicker. I hate fake grass. I confess I have in my lifetime eaten my good share of chocolate bunnies and yellow marshmallow chicks, but nowadays I mostly feel resurrected by the literary word. Here are a few treats to sink your teeth into on this Easter Sunday. Enjoy!
Marquez On Writing from Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life by Gerald Martin
(Alfred A. Knopf 2009).
 |
| GGM on his 1st Birthday |
I am a writer through timidity. My true vocation is that of magician, but I get so flustered trying to do tricks that I’ve had to take refuge in the solitude of literature. Both activities, in any case, lead to the only thing that has interested me since I was a child: that my friends should love me more.
In my case, being a writer is an exceptional achievement because I am very bad at writing. I have had to subject myself to an atrocious discipline in order to finish half a page after eight hours of work; I fight physically with every word and it is almost always the word that wins, but I am so stubborn that I have managed to publish four books in twenty years. The fifth, which I am writing now, is going slower than the others, because between my debtors and my headaches I have very little free time.
I never talk about literature because I don’t know what it is and besides I’m convinced the world would be just the same without it. On the other hand, I’m convinced it would be completely different without the police. I therefore think I’d have been much more useful to humanity if instead of being a writer I’d been a terrorist.
David Sedaris: An Easter Excerpt
One of the funniest stories I have ever read is "Jesus Shaves" by David Sedaris. His entire collection Me Talk Pretty One Day (Little, Brown and Company 2000) is hilarious and highly recommended. In "Jesus Shaves," Sedaris describes his experience as an adult second language learner in a French class in Paris, France. In their limited French, Sedaris and fellow students attempt to explain the meaning of Easter to a Moroccan Muslim classmate.
The Italian nanny was attempting to answer the teacher’s latest question when the Moroccan student interrupted, shouting, “Excuse me, but what’s an Easter?”
It would seem that despite having grown up in a Muslim country, she would have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. “I mean it,” she said. “I have no idea what you people are talking about.”
The teacher called upon the rest of us to explain.
The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability. “It is," said one, “a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus and …oh, shit.” She faltered and her fellow country-man came to her aid.
“He call his self Jesus and then he be die one day on two…morsels of …lumber.”
The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm.
“He die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father.”
“He weared of himself the long hair and after he die, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples.”
“He nice, the Jesus.”
“He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody make him dead today.”
Part of the problem had to do with vocabulary. Simple nouns such as cross and resurrection were beyond our grasp, let alone such complicated reflexive phrases as “to give of yourself your only begotten son.” Faced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of Christianity, we did what any self respecting group of people might do. We talked about food instead.
“Easter is a party for to eat of the lamb,” the Italian nanny explained. “One too many eat of the chocolate.”
“And who brings the chocolate?” the teacher asked.
I knew the word, so I raised my hand, saying, “The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate.”
“A rabbit?” The teacher, assuming I’d used the wrong word, positioned her index fingers on top of her head, wriggling them as though they were ears. “You mean one of these? A rabbit rabbit?”
“Well, sure, “ I said. “He come in the night when one sleep on a bed. With a hand he have a basket and foods. “
The teacher sighed and shook her head. As far as she was concerned, I had just explained everything that was wrong with my country. “No, no, “ she said. “Here in France the chocolate is brought by a big bell that flies in from Rome.”
I called for a time-out. “But how do the bell know where you live?”
“Well,” she said, “how does a rabbit?”
It was a decent point, but at least a rabbit has eyes. That’s a start. Rabbits move from place to place, while most bells can only go back and forth-and they can’t even do that on their own power. On top of that, the Easter Bunny has character. He’s someone you’d like to meet and shake hands with. A bell has all the personality of a cast-iron skillet. It’s like saying that come Christmas, a magic dustpan flies in from the North Pole, led by eight flying cinder blocks. Who wants to stay up all night so they can see a bell? And why fly one in from Rome when they’ve got more bells than they know what to do with right here in Paris? That’s the most implausible aspect of the whole story, as there’s no way the bells of France would allow a foreign worker to fly in and take their jobs. That Roman bell would be lucky to get work cleaning up after a French bell’s dog-and even then he’d need papers. It just didn’t add up.
Nothing we said was of any help to the Moroccan student. A dead man with long hair supposedly living with her father, a leg of lamb served with palm fronds and chocolate; equally confused and disgusted, she shrugged her massive shoulders and turned her attention back to the comic book she kept hidden beneath her binder. Adios Querida Doris Pilkington Garimara author of Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence |
| Doris Pilkington Garimara and her mother Molly |
It's midnight, Easter Sunday, and I've just heard that author Doris Pilkington Garimara passed away last week of ovarian cancer. Among the many books she wrote, Pilkington Garimara documented her Australian aborigine mother's escape from a government camp and her amazing 1,500-mile trek home. Her book,
Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence, brought to light the systematic racist policies to forcibly assimilate Australian natives by tearing them away from their families. Her book was later made into the highly acclaimed film,
Rabbit Proof Fence. Like all great literature and art,
Rabbit Proof Fence is a story that touches the heart in powerful and timeless ways. Through the years, I have returned to it numerous times--for its bravery, its mastery, and its poetic resilient spirit.
Last but not least, and in honor of our recently departed Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Doris Pilkington Garimara, I leave you with a few lines from one of my favorite Pablo Neruda poems. What is there not to love about Neruda?
This excerpt is from "Ode to a Few Yellow Flowers," which is translated by Ilan Stavans in All The Odes: Pablo Neruda.
Polvo somos, seremos.
Ni aire, ni fuego, ni agua
sino
tierra,
solo tierra
seremos
y tal vez
unas flores amarillas.
We are dust, we shall become.
Not air, or fire, or water
but
earth,
we shall be
mere earth
and maybe
a few yellow flowers.
"The day shit is worth money, poor people will be born without an asshole."
Those aren't my words; they're from Gabriel García Márquez, who's given us some of the greatest in any language.
QEPD = Que en Paz Descanse is the Spanish equivalent to "rest in peace." After I posted notes about Marquez passing, an Anglo friend sent me condolences: "Lo siento," he said, "sorry."
I'll say the sentiment was good, but the intended audience was too narrow. Latinos don't need condolences from Anglos, about Márquez's death. He belongs to the world's peoples and in that sense, is relevant and part of us all.
 |
| Márquez, a political creature |
There's the tendency to mention magical realism whenever Márquez's name comes up. That bothers me as an indirect slotting of his work, like it was "only" an example of latinoamericano speculative literature. Anymore than Crime and Punishment should be called genre horror or thriller. Some works and writers defy delimiting, like Márquez and his works. However much he defined magical realism, he also shred that envelope, passing into the realm of Classic.
Here's more of his words, not usually quoted:
The world must be all fucked up when men travel first class and literature goes as freight.
I don’t think you can write a book that’s worth anything without extraordinary discipline.
With The Thousand and One Nights, I learned and never forgot that we should read only those books that force us to reread them.
Literature was the best plaything that had ever been invented to make fun of people.
If men gave birth, they'd be less inconsiderate.
The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.
Whatever type of reader you are, you haven't lived unless you've experienced at least one of Márquez's epics. Below are the openings to two novels. Go outside somewhere by yourself, read them once for meaning, sentido, then read them aloud for the music. This might make you wonder if you should read the entire book. You should.
from Love in the Time of Cholera:
(translation): It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.
from One Hundred Years of Solitude:
Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo. Macondo era entonces una aldea de veinte casas de barro y cañabrava construidas a la orilla de un río de aguas diáfanas que se precipitaban por un lecho de piedras pulidas, blancas y enormes como huevos prehistóricos. El mundo era tan reciente, que muchas cosas carecían de nombre, y para mencionarlas había que señalarlas con el dedo.
 |
| a children's book on Márquez |
(translation): Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, General Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.
I'm not sad Márquez died. He was mortal and reached a logical end. I don't know how his last weeks, months, years were, given a cancer he suffered; perhaps he was grateful to end his time, even. But before that, he left his people, his species, with enough to prove that he'd been here and done good. Great. Phenomenal. So, while his energy has left his body, some remains locked in his prose, to be shared by those to come.
Salud al maestro Marquez!
Columbian author Gabriel García Márquez has passed away. He was 87-years-old.
In 2012, Márquez’s brother Jaime revealed that the beloved writer was suffering from dementia. Earlier this month, he was hospitalized in Mexico City.
Throughout his career, Márquez wrote nonfiction, short stories, news articles, and novels including his best known works, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). In 1982, he won the the Nobel Prize in Literature and accepted the award by delivering his now famous speech, “The Solitude of Latin America.” (via Latin Times)
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Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been admitted to a hospital in Mexico City. The One Hundred Years of Solitude is reportedly suffering from lung and urinary tract infections.
The Associated Press has the story: “The 87-year-old Nobel laureate entered the hospital Monday suffering from the infection and from dehydration, Mexico’s Secretary of Health said in a written statement. ‘The patient has responded to treatment. Once he’s completed his course of antibiotics his discharge from the hospital will be evaluated,’ the statement said.”
In 2012, the Nobel Literature Prize-winner was reportedly suffering from dementia. In October 2010, Random House Mondadori editor Cristobal Pera claimed that Márquez was writing on a not-yet-finished novel.
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By: Anthony McCarten,
on 10/11/2013
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My endless interrogation of myself continues... What keeps you awake at night? Everything that can wait until tomorrow. When were you happiest? When I realized that a congenial monotony is the best anyone can hope for. I'm not sure how old I was or what I was doing — perhaps I was 13 and hiking [...]
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The title of a book is so important – and not many people have titles as consistently good as Gabriel Garcia Marquez (in my humble opinion) – and I suppose that is linked to the fact that not many people write as well as he does (again … in my humble opinion..)
Think of these:
Love in the time of Cholera
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
No-one writes to the Colonel
Memories of my Melancholy Whores.
The General in his Labyrinth
Other titles I like, from other authors
Up in Honey’s Room – Elmore Leonard
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
Of Mice and Men – Steinbeck
And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street – Dr Seuss
Death is a lonely business – Ray Bradbury
Dandelion Wine – Ray Bradbury
Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
Looking for Transwonderland – Noo Saro Wiwa
OK I’ll stop now … but it is a hard thing getting a title right, and it does matter!
Most people know, or at least have heard, about Project Gutenberg. Its mission is simple – to encourage the creation and distribution of e-books. Up until now it’s focused on amassing works, even minor ones, of major authors whose books are in the public domain – a vast array of classics now numbering more than forty thousand. What it wants is to provide as many e-books, in as many formats, to be read world-wide in as many languages as possible.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? At a time when the libraries are taking a flattening, certainly in the UK, here’s an online project appearing to achieve some of what libraries first set up to do – to spread public literacy [rather than stymie it], break down barriers that prevent people from reading, and develop an appreciation of our literary heritage. At least if one has access to a computer.
Well, the reason I’ve chosen Project Gutenberg as my subject this month is because last year they launched a new e-book enterprise called the Authors Community Cloud Library and [typically] I’ve only just come across it and [even more typically] I’m not quite sure what I think about it, and I’ve always found that writing about a thing is as good a way of working that one out as anything else.
The idea is that authors can now upload and distribute their self-published works through a self-publishing portal, and have it made available to Project Gutenberg’s vast worldwide readership. Project Gutenberg has had authors clamouring for this for years apparently. There’s even a social networking component to it all, allowing for all the stuff we’re now so familiar with - star ratings, comments, reviews, feedback etc.
All of this would have come sooner, but the sudden death of Project Gutenberg’s founder [and leading light in the Cloud Library’s development], Michael S Hart, meant that the launch didn’t happen until the 4th July last year – a great date if you happen to be American, or interested in the fact that what many consider to be the first ebook [the digitized Declaration of Independence] appeared on that date in 1971.
There’s something for everybody here. Project Gutenberg is happy because its Cloud Library enables it to add a contemporary component to its digital canon. E-authors are happy because their books are being made available to a whole new reading public and they don’t even have to give up their rights. And readers are happy because perhaps one of the biggest barriers Project Gutenberg smashes through is that of cost.
Aye, there’s the rub, as Shakespeare might have said - especially if you’re a living author seeking to keep it that way by earning a crust. Maybe all those writers of classic literature who’ve been made available again by Gutenberg are cheering from their graves. But living authors? Self-published because the e-book market is an opportunity authors? Authors like me, say, still writing and trying to earn a living today – would I, seriously, want to be a part of this library?
This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one. What do I think about books being for free? Once my books are in the Cloud Library, readers can visit the site, search the archives and download those books AT NO COST. Then again, on Amazon, readers can browse their free offers of the day [made available by e-authors who’ve signed up to Select] and download as many e-books as they want AT NO COST.
NO COST is good, apparently. Those of us authors who think otherwise have blinkered vision. NO COST has a knock-on effect. Giving away our books AT NO COST raises our profiles. Weird as it may sound it’ll actually sell our books.
Well, I haven’t seen much of that myself. On Amazon Select I’ve given away thousands of Midnight Blues and, apart from suggest I write the sort of books that have no worth, I don’t think it’s done anything for my profile. It certainly hasn’t sold truck loads of books.
And if I don’t sell, why do I write? For those of you who think starving in a garret is part of the job, I’m not joking here. This is a serious and important question. And equally important for those of us who are readers, what value do we put on the books we read?
I can only answer for myself. I write to earn a living. I earn a living to write. I write because I have to; it sorts me out. There’s no way I can separate these statements. Writing stabilizes me. Time and again it literally saves me. And it sets me free. I write fiction because I see life in terms of story, and stories are what drive me. I write non-fiction for much the same reason. There’s a story in everything, and I love finding the words that tell it – and the word ‘telling’ here is crucial. Telling implies a recipient. These stories aren’t just for me. They’re stories that need sharing, and I have faith to believe that, though I don’t always get things right, what I’m sharing is at least worth listening to.
So if the answer to my first question is to tell, and to be listened to what’s the answer to the second question, the one about the value of books? Well, if a writer’s worth listening to, they’re worth paying for. It’s as simple as that. The value I’d put on, say, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Hundred Years of Solitude, would be equal to what I’d pay for a Picasso if I could afford to buy one. I could hang them both up side by side in my very own gallery and they’d be each other’s equal. And the same for other books too. You must know what I mean. Those books that have moved you and changed your lives are of inestimable worth. And, when you think of it like that, it’s not just the 99p end of the e-book market that’s a giveaway - even a hefty £25 hardback price is a good deal.
At least, that’s what I think. What do you think? And look out for my post next month when I examine the other side of this coin – if an author’s work is of value and should be paid for, is there ever a place for giving words away?
Have been thinking about this as I am doing both – sometimes concurrently.
When I started writing The Butterfly Heart I did not have in mind a target audience, it was just a story I wanted to write. It was when I came to my characters that I realised this could be a story that children would read. I am happy however that both children and adults have read it.
I think there are different freedoms in writing for different audiences – I definitely find myself freer in language use when I am writing books specifically geared to an adult audience, I do not check myself as often. The only question I would be asking myself is whether the language I have used is the best it can be.
I would ask myself a similar question when writing for children – but added onto that would be whether it would allow for easy pleasure in its readers. There is a different freedom I find in writing for children – not sure what to call it other than flights of fancy, a freedom of imagination. Maybe I should feel that freedom in writing for adults, and I do to a certain extent, but more so with children.
One of the greatest writers ever (to my mind) is Gabriel Garcia Marquez – and I have only ever read him in translation. He combines everything in one – beautiful use of language, wondrous flights of fancy and great storytelling. There is no one writing now who comes close to him in the way he blends magic and reality, who so seamlessly takes you into a world that is real but which shimmers with a sense of unreality. Can you just imagine what it would be like to read him in Spanish?
For me he has all the freedoms combined in writing for children and adults – a freedom with language and imagination combined with a powerful storytelling ability – that ability which is at the core of any good book.
His titles alone are wondrous – has there ever been a better title than One Hundred Years of Solitude? Love in the time of Cholera? Chronicle of a Death Foretold? Memories of my Melancholy Whores? Strange Pilgrims? I’ll stop now – but can you imagine the fun that illustrators have had with designing those covers?
Here are just a few of them for One Hundred Years of Sol
itude.
Jaime García Márquez, brother of Gabriel García Márquez, said that the Nobel Prize-winning novelist is suffering from dementia.
Here’s more from The New York Times: “Jaime Abello, director of the Gabriel García Márquez New Journalism Foundation in Cartagena, said that the author had not been clinically diagnosed as having senile dementia but that his condition was open to interpretation. He said it has been understood for months that Mr. García Márquez would publish no more fiction.”
Jaime revealed that dementia runs in their family and doubted that the 85-year-old writer will be able to finish the second part of his 2002 autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale.
continued…
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I was asked yesterday about my favourite writers. Very hard to narrow this down to one or two – in a way favourite books might be easier to answer. So instead of giving an answer of say four writers (which would make me think how could I have left out so and so) I said Barbara Kingsolver as her book The Poisonwood Bible is one of my all time favourites.
I left out Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude as that almost goes without saying – it is impossible for me to think of a more perfect book. And when you stop to think that the version many of us have read is a translation, it is even more incredible. I spoke to someone once who had read it in Spanish and he described it as musical. Which is exactly what it in in English. I reckon it would almost be worth learning Spanish to read it as he wrote it (not to mention that it would enable you to speak to millions of people scattered over our planet!)
As a favourite writer for children I had little hesitation in naming Dr. Seuss. My children learnt to read with Dr. Seuss and laughed their way through the process. When I started reading up about his writing it made sense. It is in the da da dum, da da dum, da da dum, da da dum rhythm of it. Its proper name being Anapestic Tetrameter. Whatever its proper name is it has a very natural rhythm to it, it is easy on the ear but not easy to write. 
Cat in the Hat came about in the following way (thanks Wikipedia!)
In May 1954, Life magazine published a report on illiteracy among school children, which concluded that children were not learning to read because their books were boring. Accordingly, William Ellsworth Spaulding, the director of the education division at Houghton Mifflin who later became its Chairman, compiled a list of 348 words he felt were important for first-graders to recognize and asked Geisel to cut the list to 250 words and write a book using only those words.[22] Spaulding challenged Geisel to “bring back a book children can’t put down.” [23] Nine months later, Geisel, using 236 of the words given to him, completed The Cat in the Hat.
Some achievement. Even today I read his books and they bring a smile to my face. What a gifted man – to have his way with words and an ability to draw like that, perfect.
‘Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!’
Going BovineLibba Bray
young adult
Bray knows her characters. The medley of sixteen year old underachiever/loser guy to talking garden gnome cast she creates is a fun romp to read through. Which is good because this is a looooooooooooong book. Very long. 480 pages long.
I know. I know. I sound like a griping teenager. The target audience. I wonder if the story has enough to keep them reading. I had a hard time remaining engaged.
While I enjoyed the imagination, the characters, the dialogue, the constantly changing setting, it was, ultimately, the leap of faith I was unable to take. At about the end of the first third of the book, when Cameron has already been hospitalized and is degenerating quickly - he's suffering from Creutzfeldt-Jacob (mad cow) disease, which is incurable and deadly. He sees an angel. Not just any angel. A punker angel. Okay, I'm still with you. The weird angel has appeared before in the distance. This might work. A punker angel named Dulcie.
Lost me.
We, as readers, sign a contract to take the leap of faith. To believe in the parameters of the story. Cameron's reality. It seems to incredible to be real. Sure enough, we come to discover in a
100 Years of Solitude sort of way toward the very end (and there are hints throughout that this might indeed be the case) that Cameron's been hallucinating/dreaming the last two weeks of his life. In other words, everything, including Dulcie, is a figment of his imagination. Yet his imagined life is far more alive and real than the 16 years of his life he more or less drifted through.
It's a great ending. Gabriel Garcia Marquez genius type of ending. But will the reader get there? We aren't in Latin American mysticism but modern day Texas. Realistic setting makes the leap hard. Dulcie makes the leap even harder. Granted, we're not supposed to take the leap in the end, we realize. It was a fantastical leap to begin with. One Cameron dreamed up. But because we do not know that right away, and because the fantastical keeps getting further and further out there, it's really hard to stay engaged, leaving the reader wondering, huh? What's the point? And, um, is it coming soon?
I hate not liking a book. I hate finding stuff wrong with the writing. There is no pleasure in it for me, especially with a book so close to greatness. Ultimately, it feels as though this piece lacked a stronger editorial pen. The right external input could have turned unbelievable into fantastical genius marvelous. We authors need editors. We really really do. No matter what stage of writing we are at. And we should never forget that. Because when we do, we are doomed to repeat our own mistakes without correction over and over and over again.
Read
Going Bovine for its characters. For its Garcia Marquez crafty twist on reality. But also to notice where the editorial pen would have helped. Could have tightened, condensed and lifted such promise to the next level of greatness.
For other great reads, hop over to our fearless leader's blog -
Barrie Summy Blog.
Happy reading!
Random House Mondadori editor Cristobal Pera revealed that Nobel Literature Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez is currently hard at work on a new novel. Some had worried he would never publish again.
Yahoo! News reports: “The editor said Garcia, who was last seen in public two weeks ago in Mexico City, was busy completing his latest novel En agosto nos vemos, whose title in English means We’ll Meet in August and which awaits a publishing date.”
Today marks the release date of Márquez’s latest non-fiction book, I Didn’t Come to Give a Speech (Yo no vengo a decir un discurso). This work compiles 22 speeches Márquez had given from age 17 to the present. The book includes his 1982 acceptance speech for the Nobel prize, The Solitude of Latin America.
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By:
Elaine Anderson,
on 2/29/2008
Blog:
Fahrenheit 451: Banned Books
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There isn't much to report on concerning Cuba's Freedom to Read from my personal experience there. I did learn that there is a great emphasis on education and literacy. Whether or not that translates into freedom to read or free thinking is best left with Freadom, an organization which stands up for Cuban librarians and others who have been jailed for supporting the freedom to read.
A quick visit to a public library in Havana revealed books in worn condition.
The Cuban International Book Fair is a celebration of literacy and many families take the time to visit. It is definitely a "must do," if in Cuba in February.
Surprising to me was the literacy campaign, which Castro initiated in 1961. It is reported that "eleven months later, 707,212 people had learned to read and had written letters to President Castro to prove it and say thank you." For more information visit a Photo report: Literacy and computer literacy in Cuba.
As a postscript, may I recommend a couple of authors for the "Banned Book Challenge?" Although Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in Columbia, he began to align himself with the Cuban revolution which reflected his Utopian politics. He spent time in Cuba and eventually became a person friend of Fidel Castro.
Ernest Hemmingway lived out his last days in Cuba. Visitors to Cuba will find a museum dedicated to his life and work and numerous drinking establishments that claim that Hemmingway drank there. Take a tour of Old Havana on Hemmingway's trail. He has been honoured by the people of Cuba who regard him as one of their own. Ironically, according to Study World's entry on Ernest Hemmingway, his father was a strict man who censored what his children could read.
And really, at heart, don't we all want a library that resembles a monstrous otherworldly creature bent on worldwide destruction? Today, and for your viewing pleasure, we present a model of the proposed Czech National Library.
Kinda makes the Twin Tower proposals look tame in comparison, eh?
A million thanks to Your Neighborhood Librarian who had the wherewithal to compare this library both to Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons as well as to a slightly out-of-date selection of delicious spotted dick.
Green swiss cheese. That's what it really is. HA! Got to say it before anyone else.
Wait, wait, wait! It's the cheese from Jeff Kinney's, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Bingo! I should let him know someone wanted to turn it into a library.
By: Dianna Dilworth,
on 1/5/2016
By: Stacy A. Nyikos,
on 5/5/2015
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By: Pauline Fisk,
on 2/2/2013
itude.
The Cuban International Book Fair is a celebration of literacy and many families take the time to visit. It is definitely a "must do," if in Cuba in February.
By: Betsy Bird,
on 5/17/2007
Terrific post, Pauline. It raises many questions. I have no answers though.
I didn't know about this either. Surely at the least a system like PLR would be more fair?
A wise post, Pauline, and no I can't answer the questions either. There's faulty logic to the "everything must for be free" viewpoint.
I was talking about this just last night with a friend. He had loaned me the first in a very long running comic series. I'd loved it. It cost £15 to buy both pb and ebook version. I'd been ordering the subsequent editions from the library, which took ages. An online library would have been an amazing option. But I worried about the comic producers making money. My suggestion was, as this is a very long running series, maybe the first one could be free, the next 3 at 50p, the next 3 at £3 until the most recent are £15. So, a long tail back catalogue makes money, but you preserve the spike in earnings from new launches. Doesn't have to just be for series, any new publication by a writer you love would be full-price for, say, 2 years.
Just an idea we batted around which the rugby was on...
Yes, thanks for a thoughtful post, and a big question. Have people always thought it was easy to write a good book? Maybe it is for some, but for most people it's a long hard slog, often with the cost of doing some training involved, even if, as you say, writing holds us together. Would anyone think it was easy to paint a Goya, or make a David, or do brain surgery?
I think it's great that the classics are being made available freely. But I'm a bit dubious about any boost in profile or sales from giving away work for free - except for the very few. Giving away work for charity etc is a different matter.
It seems everyone wants to write, and so maybe the writing gets devalued. Many writers seem to have to spend so much of our time on 'writing-related activity' in order to live that there's not much time to write.
On the other hand...I'm just delighted every time I hear of someone I haven't met reading my books. I love that they're freely available in the library. I'm a huge library fan, and user.
Lots of think about...
All very pertinent, Pauline.
I have been using Project Gutenburg since the 1980s. Their aim is to make everything available in electronic format, rather than specifically as e-books (as the project long pre-dates e-books as we now think of them). In the days when I was doing serious literary scholarship, it was a godsend. For my PhD I had to read everything to find stuff, as the books weren't available in electronic format (too obscure for PG then). But last summer, working on Oliver Twist, it was brilliant to be able to find a remembered phrase, or all instances of a word, instantly.
As for the Cloud initiative, I think the clue is in what you say, Pauline - authors had been clamouring for it. Not readers. Authors who have failed to find a publisher and want a readership. Not the authors that the public is rushing to read.
Remember that this is no kind of a grab - no one's books will suddenly appear there if the author doesn't volunteer the books.
I agree that free books devalue our currency. I would not do a free promotion of Amazon - it sends all the wrong messages. Then again, I don't use free e-books either - even of out-of-copyright classics. I'd rather pay a small amount for one that is more likely to be competently put together. My time is too valuable to read free crap.
I agree that free e-books are a huge worry. But then again - I spend all day listening to radio 3, which is free music. If I want a special music-time, I'll go to a concert. If I really like something, I'll buy it so that I can listen to it when I want to. Free works alongside paid-for in lots of fields. Movies - I don't have to pay £11 to see a movie, I can wait for it to be on TV. But I often don't. We could all walk or hitchhike - but we don't, we pay for transport.
Some people will use free books because they are poor or because they are stingy. But how many books would they have bought anyway?
I agree with Elen that making older books in a series cheap or free to attract people to later, costlier books is the way to go.
I think what you say in your final paragraph is very important. Value is something very subjective, but something that is, contrary to scaremongering, important to fans everywhere. I also think you make an essential point that we are readers as much as writers, and I think (very much just my opinion) as writers our duty is very much towards current and future readers and our wider culture. My problem with steering clear of projects like this is that I think I'd want to remove any possible barrier to people reading anything - it is certainly true that not everyone can get to the internet by a long chalk, and that is a key thing we need to address, but widening access to as much of culture as we possibly can is, for me, a key social and political goal for our age. As long as we recognise that things like this are only part of it, along with access to the education that will help people read, access to the channels of distribution that will enable all social groups to read similar voices to their own, being relentless in the battle against censorship both direct and indirect, then I think it's a fabulous thing.
My personal preference at the moment would be for works to be downloadable for free with the opportunity for those who are able to pay to be able to contribute what they think the book is worth to them - not just at the point of download but after they've read the book, and for many years to come as books become more and more important to them. In the long term, we really need to have a full and frank conversation about how art is funded
thanks so much for your thoughtful commentary on this subject. As a writer who has worked many, many years on my craft, I hope that I have something to offer readers which is more valuable than some book that can be downloaded free from the internet.
Does having a lot of free reading material available free, reduce the demand for better writing? Like everything else, some people will demand high quality while others are satisfied with mediocre. I don't have any answers, but I wish i could make a living writing.
I have no answers either and don't know anything about this but free books is something I find myself instinctively rebelling against. Why should books be singled out? WHY should the labour that goes into books be unpaid when the labour that goes into sewing a dress, making a meal or serving in a restaurant be rewarded? Something wrong there. I think music, art, ballet, painting etc should be paid for. And books too. I'm happy to pay for books I want to keep. Those who can't afford to should use the libraries much more than they do! FREE BOOKS. FREE TO ORDER. Brilliant.
If anyone can think of another way for writers to make some dosh, then maybe things would be different. But as I say, I have no answers.
I have no answers either and don't know anything about this but free books is something I find myself instinctively rebelling against. Why should books be singled out? WHY should the labour that goes into books be unpaid when the labour that goes into sewing a dress, making a meal or serving in a restaurant be rewarded? Something wrong there. I think music, art, ballet, painting etc should be paid for. And books too. I'm happy to pay for books I want to keep. Those who can't afford to should use the libraries much more than they do! FREE BOOKS. FREE TO ORDER. Brilliant.
If anyone can think of another way for writers to make some dosh, then maybe things would be different. But as I say, I have no answers.
Thank you everybody for your thoughtful replies. Interesting idea, Elen, though I have to say, after giving it much thought, that I’m completely with Adele on the subject of free services. Nobody would expect to be served for free in a restaurant or be given free frocks in H & M, and I can’t imagine it happening either. No sane company would see that as making good business sense. They may offer deals – but free? I don’t think so.
Mary, I definitely think there’s something in what you say about the ready availability of free material reducing the demand for better writing. I was thinking along similar lines this afternoon in my local Starbucks, watching people going in and out of Waterstones across the road. It seemed to me there was a link between valuing books more highly as readers and valuing them as writers too.
If books are being hoovered up by readers who acquire them in mass, either online for free or in endless three-for-two giveaway deals [how many of those third books do you ever read?] there’s a danger that writers will only write books fit for hoovering up. Not because those authors are lazy but because, slowly but surely, they – like everybody else – will forget quite how powerful and wonderful a book can be. There’ll be a cultural shift. Books as treasures won’t be expected and books as treasures won’t be what anybody gets – or, eventually [unfortunately] writes.
Dan, I’m interested in what you say about removing barriers. I too want the greatest number of people to read books, but I want them to value them too and sometimes, strangely, barriers can be an aid in that process rather than a hindrance. Not that I’d deliberately put up barriers between people and books, but my own experience was of growing up in a totally non-bookish family, seeing my school friends with books, not having any myself – and yet coming to love and value them more than almost anything else. As a child, the library was as close as I ever got to books, but it wasn’t until I went out to work [not university; I was the girl, my brother could be scrimped and saved to send, but not me] that I owned my own books. The result of this massive barrier in my life, I say to this day, wasn’t to disadvantage me but to give me a very special sense of the value of each and every book I acquired. When I finished reading my very own copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, for example, I took it to bed with my and held it in my arms. I literally couldn’t bear to let it go. The world was a better place for such a book being in it – AND I OWNED IT.
We need to get back that sense of wonder. That sense that, yes, you could hang a book in a gallery alongside a great painting and they would be each other’s equal. Readers need to learn to respect books. By this, I don’t mean put more reviews on Amazon, or talk about books in more book clubs, but to respect the whole IDEA of a book – to see it [whether in paper form or on a reading device] as something really special, the equal of any other art or craft. And they need to learn to respect authors too. I’ve read some terrible things about authors in Amazon forums [‘why don’t they get back in their pens?’ was a typical example]. But perhaps if authors are giving away their books for free, and doing so in vast numbers, they’re bringing this on themselves.
Perhaps authors need to get back their sense of wonder too. But that’s another subject. I’ve already gone on long enough.
yes, I absolutely take your point - where I'm thinking of barriers getting in the way are with people who have no way of hoping to buy books, and no access to libraries for whatever reason. It's true that much of the globe also lacks the internet, but telling those with an hour a week's access to a communal internet in the barrios of Mexico City or the remote villages of the Congo that the knowledge (and associated power) contained in books is not for them seems to me to be very dangerous - I think many of us will always for the foreseeable future be in a privileged position in the debate in relation to them, and as such I would find it very hard to speak up in justification of denying them access.