Gabriel Garcia Marquez is no more. The King is dead. Long Live the King. His writings and his attitude to life and Words have influenced me and work profoundly ever since 1980, when I started to read him. I was in the USA at that time and I had a plenty of scope to read him and read him and read him and read about him and read what he commented, said, joked about, made fun of, made love to, opposed, liked, screwed, laughed about, kicked in the backsides of, laid an affectionate hand upon, lacerated, analysed, romanticised, eulogized, barked at, growled over, tried to impregnate, tried to expurgate, tried to immortalize, played with as a cat plays with a mouse, embraced, engaged in... He was an author who could say that Rabassas translation of his work into English was better than the original. He was a scribbler whose first comment on being awarded the Nobel Prize was: Now, at least, I hope my mother will get the telephone connection that she has desperately been trying but failing to get.... He was the La Prensa (Cuban News Agency)correspondent in Paris who once spotted Ernest Hemingway in a Paris street; cupped his mouth with both his hands like Tarzan (as he wrote) and yelled MA--ES---TRO--- and old Hemingway, who was walking a Paris street with a hand around the waist of a young girl at once turned around and raised a hand in acknowledgement (as another maestro writes)...indicating that Hemingway knew that he could be the ONLY MAESTRO around ... even in Paris. He was the Rajnikanth of tales and the art of story telling. Well miss him. But I hope he is by now loafing about with Italo Calvino, another journalist who was also a master. What could they be possibly talking about, laughing about? Who knows, may be the Maestro he had once spotted in Paris and yelled at is also with him and Calvino... and William Faulkner, a Marquez favourite, is probably sauntering towards them...
Posted on: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 04:39:41 +0000