Gabriel García Márquez

by Ilan Stavans

Book Overview

The captivating life and career of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist by ILan Stavans, one of the world's most esteemed thinkers and writers on Latin American literature

This long-awaited biography provides a fascinating and comprehensive picture of Garc a M rquez's life up to the publication of his classic 100 Years of Solitude. Based on nearly a decade of research, this biographical study sheds new light on the life and works...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312240333
• ISBN13: 9780312240332
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Ilan Stavans, Gabriel Garcia Marquez The Early Years

In this fine book, Ilan Stavans, the prolific author and professor of Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, discusses the first four decades of Garcia Marquez's life and work to the publication of his best selling One Hundred Years of Solitude. In the introduction, the author explains that his intent is not to do a full scale biography of Garcia Marquez but rather to explore "the background to One Hundred Years of Solitude: what prompted it and what were the conditions under which it was gestated?" In the first of a projected two volume biography, Stavans concentrates on Garcia Marquez's masterpiece, particularly how the author was able to "transform life into fiction." Stavans succeeds very well in this attempt. While not a biography in the traditional sense, Stavans provides clues as to what prompted Garcia Marquez to write what Stavans considers to be one of only two "masterpieces written in Spanish," the other being Don Quixote. Stavans explores Garcia Marquez's birth and childhood in Aracataca, his career as a law student, journalist, and then as a screenwriter in Mexico City. Garcia Marquez's experiences shaped his thoughts, Stavans claims, particularly his childhood in Aracataca which lies "in the northwestern region of South America as well as the lower edge of the Caribbean basin," the location making him feel as if "he was part of two worlds." This cultural conflict influenced Garcia Marquez's politics and led him to write "with ingredients indigenous to the Americas." Stavans, in exploring the thoughts and intentions of one man, manages to also convey the history and emotions of a whole hemisphere as well as those of Garcia Marquez's family and friends. This well written book goes far in explaining the forces that influenced the author and is certainly worth reading by the many people who were captivated by One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.).

Just. Impossible.

How do you tell the tale of a master tale-teller? Not an easy proposition, but one which Ilan Stavans has accomplished masterfully for master magical fabulist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Beginning with his own beguiling and beguiled first reading of ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE (doe everyone have enchanting experiencew with this novel?), Stavans loving constructs the early life and career, always respectful, yet never maudlin in approach and presentation. The esteemed attention to the creation of CIEN ANOS is artful, appropriate, and informative in its detao;ed extemsiveness. The prose is rich and warm, full of the same la calidad humana as permeates his subject's oeuvre. This is a fine biography of one of the literary lions of the 20th Century. I look forward to the second volume.

FASCINATING AUTHOR AND A SOLID BIOGRAPHY

TO write about such a comoplex author and writer is no easy task particularly when that author is so embedded in the revolutionary sensibilty of America. Some may have their misgivings because of his communistic beliefs but the biogrpaher of this telling and clean biography give the context of Mrquezezes influences and beliefs. THis to me more than explains how a writer of his creative depth held such beliefs. Marquez wrote from the essesnce of his culture and in doing so created Magical Realism with its beautiful almost musical intonations. The stories told are done in a mythic way and as such seem to speak to a global audience. Some will argue this point to death but Marquez's popularity went so far beyond just the working class of South America precisely because he hit the great primal source of story telling and as such went far beyond the more primitive political systamatic thinking of a "Commie". This biogpaher gives a clear and unbiased view of Marquez's work and life and as such allows the reader to make their own informed decisions about his politics but without loosing sight of the tremendous gift of Marquez's creative voice. I highly recommend this balanced and insightful biography for its intelligence and the grasp of a worldwide political and creative subject matter. Well Done!

The Biography of a Novel

Many biographies can be read and enjoyed thoroughly without actually being familiar with the subject's work. This is often true whether the subject is a historical figure, or an artist or even a writer (whose work is usually much more easily and directly available). "Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The Early Years" is not that biography. Yes, it goes into considerable detail about the author's life from an early age. Ilan Stavans is meticulous in showing the parallels between Marquez's life, interests and the places he knew, and his book which is already an acknowledged masterpiece in world literature. This is not easy research to do (and is complicated by straddling cultures), and is even more difficult to weave together into coherent, interesting and insightful prose. Stavans has pulled all this research together in a way that makes "Early Years" a great gift for anyone who loves the novel--or even to anyone who plans to read it soon for the first time. For readers like me who were unfamiliar with many of the historical and cultural references that are so important to Marquez, this is an essential companion to the novel. It explains so much that will be unfamiliar to most American readers that, seeing this book now (after reading "One Hundred Years of Solitude" twenty years ago), it seems inconceivable to me that I could ever have understood much about the novel. This would be a fine book to read first if you plan to read "One Hundred Years" soon after. Or, to read them together. But it is not really the biography I would choose to learn about Marquez himself, his feelings and inner response to the personal events that shaped him. Insofar as he has put those into his novel, THAT still remains his best "biography". And insofar as one can have (and wants to read) a biography of a book, not a man, "Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The Early Years", is that book

Masterly Portrait of Garcia Marquez and his Magnum Opus

Since falling under the spell of One Hundred Years of Solitude by the Colombian writer, and Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a dozen years ago, I have waited for a kind of key into its foundations and obscurities. I still recall my stunned and almost intoxicated response to its first sentence. I read the book in one sitting, as have so many others, and have reread it many times since. In wanting to approach nearer to the miracle of this masterpiece, I was disappointed in Garcia Marquez's own Living to Tell the Tale, which provided little insight for me into the making of "One Hundred Years of Solitude." This book is that key, and much, much more! I knew I had found a great fellow traveler in Ilan Stavans in his brilliant preface, in which he places "One Hundred Years of Solitude" in its true literary rank: "In my opinion," he writes, "there are only two novelistic masterpieces written in Spanish whose influence radically revamped our understanding of Hispanic civilization: "Cervantes's Don Quixote and Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude." Stavans's book then becomes less of a biography than an explanation of the coming forth of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Garcia Marquez's life, from his early life in Aracataca, to his journalistic apprenticeship at various newspapers in Bogata, Mexico and even eastern Europe, to his first attempts in mid life at creating fiction. I was intensely fascinated at this little jewel Stavans dug up from Garcia Marquez's early journalistic writing, as it seems almost a description of his future efforts on "One Hundred Years of Solitude." In writing of the work of his friend, Cepeda Samudio, Garcia Marquez wrote (13 years before finishing his "One Hundred Years"): "This manner of writing history, arbitrary as it might seem to the historian, is a splendid lesson in poetic transformation. Without distorting reality or playing loose with the serious political and human aspects of the social drama, Cepeda Samudio has subjected it to a kind of purifying alchemy and has given us only its mythical essence, which will remain forever, far longer than any man's morality, justice, and ephemeral memory. The super dialogues, the straight-forward and virile richness of the language, the geniune compassion aroused by the character's fate, the fragmentary and somewhat loose structure which so closely resembles the pattern of memories--everything in this book is a magnificent example of how a writer can honestly filter out the immense quantity of rhetorical and demagogic garbage that stands in the way of indignation and nostalgia." Among other insights from this book: 1. In Stavan I find a devotee of One Hundred Years of Solitude as devout as me--though he is much more erudite and eloquent. He writes: "In short, One Hundred Years of Solitude is my aleph. I quote from it to shed light on Garcia Marquez's life and vice versa. I'm enthralled by the way it isn't only a novel; it is a bitacora, an accoun